The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang: Quotations

All these come from Tormod Kinnes who has selected about 340 quotations and abstracts which he has annotated
  http://oaks.nvg.org/yutang2.html

The scholar, Taoist, and modernist Lin Yutang wrote The Importance of Living to express his highly subjective, personal feelings and advocate a practical and enjoyable simple life - all part of an unorthodox approach to life and philosophy among contemporary Westerners. Among ancient teachings he drew inspiration from the Chuang Tzu, where it is said, "Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely."

The Importance of Living is a witty precursor to the modern self-help book, filled with philosophical observations of life's simple pleasures. He advocates a friendly, hearty enjoyment of life and derives many of his carrying attitudes from a Chinese philosophy of a wise disenchantment (Taoism). Thus, the ideal life for Lin Yutang is that of a lazy, wandering Taoist scholar.

Steeped in the ancient wisdom of his homeland, Lin Yutang, who had lived for a few years in France and Germany, and much longer in the United States, in typical Taoist fashion deliberately avoided fame because he considered it led to troubles.

What you get below is mostly annotated quotations and abstracts of passages I have selected. There are about 340 of them.

Preface

Deprived of academic training in philosophy, I am less scared to write a book about it. Everything seems clearer and simpler for it. [xi]

I have always wandered outside the precincts of philosophy and that gives me courage. [ix]

I know there will be complaints that my words are not long enough. [ix]

Technically speaking, my method and my training are all wrong. [viii]

Chapter 1

What touches the human heart in one country touches all. [1]

High-mindedness . . . enables one to go through life . . . and escape the temptations of fame and wealth and achievement . . . And from this detachment arise also his sense of freedom, his love of vagabondage and his pride. [2]

The necessity for such common cries as "Wake up and live" is to me a good sign. [2]

It is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful". [2]

Where there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from the Western cultural world [as the Chinese], we have the right to expect new answers to the problems of life. [3]

I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs. [5]

A vague, uncritical idealism . . . lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals. [5]

I regard the Chinese as most closely allied to the French in their sense of humor and sensitivity. [7]

Idealism must stand for different things in different countries, as the so-called sense of humor really comprises a very wide variety of things. [8]

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action. [8]

High sensitivity to the pleasures and pains and flux and change of the colors of life is the very basis that makes a light philosophy possible. [9]

The Japanese and Germans are very much alike in their comparative lack of humour (such is the general impression of people) . . . and I intuitively feel that I am right. [8]

There is a robust sense of reality, a . . . spirit of reasonableness which crushes reason itself. [11]

When a friend of Confucius told him that he always thought three times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, "To think twice is quite enough." [11]

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. [13]

I am doing my best to glorify the scamp or vagabond. [Lin did not actually live like one, though. He was far behind the goal he held up for others.] [13]

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has . . . made a conscious return to simplicity. [13]

I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness. [13]

The world, I believe, is far too serious, and being far too serious, it has need of a wise and merry philosophy. [13]

To me personally the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gaily than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher. [13]

Examine what will make possible a whole-hearted enjoyment of this life and a more reasonable, more peaceful and less hot-headed temperament. Find thereby the philosophy of the Chinese people. It draws from Confucius and Laotse and other ancient philosophers; it draws from these fountain springs of thought and harmonizes them into a whole, and has created an art of living in the flesh, visible, palpable and understandable. It has become quite clear to me that the philosophy of a wise disenchantment and a hearty enjoyment of life is their common message and teaching. [13-14, abr.]

Chapter 13 If God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. [407] Chapter 14 Thinking is an art, and not a science. [411] The feeling of the average man, even of the educated person, is that philosophy is a "subject" which he can best afford to go without. [413] There is . . . a distinction between logical thinking and reasonable thinking, which may be also expressed as the difference between academic thinking and poetic thinking. [415] The Sage talks about life, as he is directly aware of it; the Talented Ones talk about the Sage's words and the stupid ones argue about the words of the Talented Ones. [417] The more [man] analyzes, the more he has need to define. [418] In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness. [421] We can . . . conceive of reasonable husbands and wives who quarrel reasonably and then patch up reasonably. [422] The Spirit of Reasonableness is the essence and best side of Chinese civilization. [422] To be 'in accord with human nature' [to be human], is a greater consideration than to be logical. [422 abr] Humanized thinking is just reasonable thinking. [423] Try to maintain a sane balance in an ever-changing sea of conflicting impulses, feelings, and desires. [424] The opposite of the reasonable spirit is fanaticism and dogmatism of all sorts in thought and behavior. [424] I am less terrified by the theories of Fascism and Communism than by the fanatical spirit which infuses them. [425] Only an insane type of mind can erect the state into a god and make of it a fetish to swallow up the individual's right of thinking, feeling and the pursuit of happiness. [425]