Philosophy Quote by Lin Yutang — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.”

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

“I have done my best: that is about all the philosophy of living one needs.”

“I have done my best: that is about all the philosophy of living one needs.”

“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”

“Between the desire”

“Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.”

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”

“Your time is the most precious thing in this world.”

“We...sin not because we want what is evil, but because we want what isn't good enough.”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”