Lin Yutang - Man Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

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We all have obligations and duties toward our fellow men. But it does seem curious enough that in modern neurotic society, men's energies are consumed in making a living and rarely in living itself. It takes a lot of courage for a man to declare, with clarity and simplicity, that the purpose of life is to enjoy it.

Lin Yutang
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
Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.

Lin Yutang
The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.

Lin Yutang
The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world.

Lin Yutang
Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?

Lin Yutang
There is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy, wise old man.

Lin Yutang
It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards.

Lin Yutang
The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

Lin Yutang
My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.

Lin Yutang
By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.

Lin Yutang
How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

Lin Yutang
A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.

Lin Yutang
I am willing to allow that smoking is a moral weakness, but on the other hand, we must beware of the man without weaknesses. He is not to be trusted. He is apt to be always sober and he cannot make a single mistake. His habits are likely to be regular, his existence more mechanical and his head always maintains its supremacy over his heart. Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings.

Lin Yutang
It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

Lin Yutang
Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

Lin Yutang
The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.

Lin Yutang