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"I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man."
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Lin YutangOur task is not so much discovery as re-discovery. What one needs is n — Lin Yutang
"Our task is not so much discovery as re-discovery. What one needs is not so much thinking as remembering. Sometimes it suffices to sit quietly and listen well, when venerable men have thought before us. Constant forgettings of truths once perceived are the very charm of the human mind; the history of human thought is nothing more than the story of these forgettings and rememberings and forgettings again."
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Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
author
Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer, linguist, and inventor. A prolific bilingual writer in both Chinese and English, he was celebrated for pioneering a humorous prose style in modern Chinese literature and for serving as a cultural bridge between China and the West, most notably through My Country and My People (1935) and his English translations of Chinese classics. As a linguist, he compiled a seri
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"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow."
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Lin YutangQuote
"I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks."
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Lin YutangQuote
"The Chinese believe that when there are too many policemen, there can be no individual liberty, when there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice, and when there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace."
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Lin YutangQuote
"These influences of my young childhood were greatest: 1, the mountain landscape, 2, my father the impossible idealist, and 3, the upringing of a closely-knit Christian home."
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Lin YutangQuote
"By association with natures enormities, a mans heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the "Big Man" described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of Chinas first romanticists, we "live in heaven and earth as our house."
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Lin Yutang