http://oaks.nvg.org/yutang2.html
The final test of any civilization is, what type of husbands and wives and fathers and mothers does it turn out? [166]
A civilization which ignores the home or relegates it to a minor position is apt to turn out poorer products. [168]
We are all born as babies, suck at mothers' breasts and marry and give birth to other babies. [167]
No civilization has any excuse for depriving a man or woman of his or her right to have babies. [168]
Man has not learned to live with woman, since history began. The strange thing is that no man has lived without a woman, in. spite of that fact. [168]
Confucius says, "The young should learn to be filial in the home and respectful in society; they should be conscientious and honest, [and if] they still have energy left, let them read books". [171]
Philosophy . . . has gone far astray when it departs from nature's own conception and "tries to make women happy without taking into account this maternal instinct." [171]
The rewards of political, literary and artistic achievement produce in their authors only a pale, intellectual chuckle, while the rewards of seeing one's own children grow up big and strong are wordless and immensely real. [173]
What real authority the American woman does exercise is still from her traditional old throne the hearth over which she presides as the happy ministering angel . . . she suffuses a radiance which would be unthinkable or out of place in an office. [177]
American women are trying harder to please the men than, for instance, Chinese women, so far as attention to sex appeal is concerned. [178]
Beauty aids and day creams, night creams, vanishing creams, foundation creams, face creams, hand creams, pore creams, lemon creams, sun-tan oils, wrinkle oils, turtle oils, and every conceivable variety of perfumed oil. Perhaps it is simply because American women have more time and more money to spend. Perhaps they dress to please men and undress to please themselves, or the other way round, or both. [178-79]
Women as a whole, as seen in the parks and in the streets, have better figures and are better dressed, thanks to the continuous tremendous daily efforts of women to keep their figure to the great delight of men. But I imagine how it must wear on their nerves. [179]
I . . . find it hard to understand how American women have submitted so sweetly to [commercial] exploitation of their bodies. [179]
My view of woman is not due to a motherhood complex, but is due to the influence of the Chinese family ideal. [182]
Chinese society and Chinese life are organized on the basis of the family system. [184 Why Confucius laid such emphasis on filial piety nobody knows, but it has been suggested . . . that the reason was that Confucius was born without a father. [186]
In place of this individualism and nationalism of the West, there is then the family ideal in which man is not regarded as an individual but as a member of a family and an essential part of the great stream of family life. [188]
This sense of family consciousness and family honor is probably the only form of team spirit or group consciousness in Chinese life. [188]
Confucius wanted to be pretty sure that all our human instincts are satisfied, because only thus can we have moral peace through a satisfying life, and because only moral peace is truly peace. [192]
In China, the first question a person asks the other on an official call, after asking about his name and surname is, "What is your glorious age?" . . . Enthusiasm grows in proportion as the gentleman is able to report a higher and higher age, and if the person is anywhere over fifty, the inquirer immediately drops his voice in humility and respect. [194-95]
A man able to celebrate his eighty-first birthday is actually looked upon as one specially favored by heaven. [196]
American people hate to be thought of as old. [196]
The whole pattern of Western life places a premium on youth and therefore makes men and women shrink from telling people their age. [197]
To enjoy health in old age, or to be "old and healthy," is the greatest of human luck. [198]
The Chinese . . . have always pictured an old man with "ruddy cheeks and white hair" as the symbol of ultimate earthly happiness. [198]
I find grand old men with white beards missing in the American picture . . . Perhaps it is the safety razor that has done it, a process as deplorable and ignorant and stupid as the deforestation of the Chinese hills by ignorant fanners, who have deprived North China of its beautiful forests and left the hills as bald and ugly as the American old men's chins. [198]
Gone is Uncle Sam with his goatee, for he has taken a safety razor and shaved it off, to make himself look like a frivolous young fool with his chin sticking out instead of being drawn in gracefully, and a hard glint shining behind horn-rimmed spectacles. [198-99]
Among the many human rights the American people have provided for in their Constitution, they have strangely forgotten about the right to be fed by their children . . . The Chinese idea supporting this personal service to old parents is expressly defended on the sole ground of gratitude. [199, 200]