Quote

We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.

Lin Yutang

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Impossible
Society
Make
Good
People
Expect

More quotes by Lin Yutang

Image
However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.
Lin Yutang
Image
India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.
Lin Yutang
Image
The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
Lin Yutang
Image
The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear.
Lin Yutang
Image
In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.
Lin Yutang
Image
In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin Yutang
Image
Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
Lin Yutang
Image
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
Image
Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us.
Lin Yutang
Image
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
Lin Yutang
Image
Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.
Lin Yutang
Image
Art is both creation and recreation.
Lin Yutang
Image
China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
Lin Yutang
Image
An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.
Lin Yutang
Image
The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
Lin Yutang
Image
The purpose of a short story is ... that the reader shall come away with the satisfactory feeling that a particular insight into human character has been gained, or that his (or her) knowledge of life has been deepened, or that pity, love or sympathy for a human being is awakened.
Lin Yutang
Image
Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
Lin Yutang
Image
What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
Lin Yutang
Image
The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
Lin Yutang
Image
By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
Lin Yutang