Quote

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

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
Age
Doom
Simple
Prophet
Light
Truths
Must
Calls
Would
Statements
Involved
Bring
Clear
Prophets

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
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
Lin Yutang
Image
Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.
Lin Yutang
Image
The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
Lin Yutang
Image
I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
Lin Yutang
Image
All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
Lin Yutang
Image
The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
Lin Yutang
Image
The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
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
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
Image
Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
Lin Yutang
Image
A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.
Lin Yutang
Image
In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin Yutang
Image
I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.
Lin Yutang
Image
Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.
Lin Yutang
Image
Let him cry whoever feels like crying, for we were animals before we became reasoning beings, and the shedding of a tear, whether of forgiveness or of pity or of sheer delight at beauty, will do him a lot of good.
Lin Yutang
Image
All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell.
Lin Yutang
Image
On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.
Lin Yutang
Image
No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
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