Lin Yutang Quotes

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

Schultz: You must speak.
Jewish barber: I can't.
Schultz: It's our only hope.

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

It is that wind it is that voice buzzing it is whispering and whistling in the wires miles upon miles upon miles on the wires in the wind in the subway track in the rolling road in the not silent bush it is the voice of the noise here it comes the Third World Express they must say, here we go again.

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me.

I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?

Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing — not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

The virtuous who are prosperous must be exalted, and the virtuous who are not prosperous must be exalted too.

Summa-lumma, dooma-lumma, you assumin' I'm a human
What I gotta do to get it through to you I'm superhuman?