Lu Xun Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.

Lu Xun
You have to reform yourself before reforming society and the world.

Lu Xun
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

Lu Xun
Like students going to school, the planes on their bombing missions fly over Beijing each morning. And each time I hear their engines attack the air I feel a certain slight tension, as if I were witnessing the invasion of Death, though this heightens my consciousness of the existence of Life.

Lu Xun
But if a few awake, you can't say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.

Lu Xun
True fighters dare face the sorrows of humanity, and look unflinchingly at bloodshed. What sorrow and joy are theirs! But the Creator's common device for ordinary people is to let the passage of time wash away old traces leaving only pale-red bloodstains and a vague pain; and he lets men live on ignobly and amid these, to keep this quasi-human world going.

Lu Xun
The world is changing from day to day; it is high time for our writers to take off their masks, look frankly, keenly, and boldly at life, and write about real flesh and blood. It is high time for a brand-new arena for literature, high time for some bold fighters to charge headlong into battle!

Lu Xun
Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?

Lu Xun
Let those who hanker after the past return to the past! Let those who want to leave the world leave the world! Let those who want to ascend to heaven do so! Let those whose souls want to leave their bodies expire quickly! The earth today should be inhabited by man with a firm hold on the present, a firm hold on the earth.

Lu Xun
A woman has so many parts to her body, life is very hard indeed.

Lu Xun
Though love is instinctive, it cannot develop without a certain stimulus and use.

Lu Xun
Revolution is a bitter thing, mixed with filth and blood, not as lovely or perfect as the poets think. It is eminently down to earth, involving many humble, tiresome tasks, not so romantic as the poets think.... So it is easy for all who have romantic dreams about revolution to become disillusioned on closer acquaintance, when a revolution is actually carried out.

Lu Xun
The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.

Lu Xun
But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

Lu Xun
The ability to forget the past enables people to free themselves gradually from the pain they once suffered; but it also often makes them repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

Lu Xun
All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.

Lu Xun
Though science has given us many marvels, it has also spoiled many of our pleasant dreams.

Lu Xun
Men who have not known the horror of death are not likely to be awed by it.

Lu Xun
True, we must dare look things in the face before we dare think, speak, act, or assume responsibility. If we dare not even look, what else are we good for?

Lu Xun