Quote

To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.

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
Paint
Present
Understanding
Future
Difficult
Survey
Easy
Surveys
Past
Glorify
Light
Emerge

More quotes by 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
An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.
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
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
Image
The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
Lin Yutang
Image
I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.
Lin Yutang
Image
Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
Lin Yutang
Image
What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
Lin Yutang
Image
Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
Lin Yutang
Image
Art is both creation and recreation.
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
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
If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.
Lin Yutang
Image
Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.
Lin Yutang
Image
The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.
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
By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
Lin Yutang
Image
Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
Lin Yutang
Image
No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
Lin Yutang
Image
O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!
Lin Yutang