Lin Yutang

Business men who are busy the w'hole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly as he thinks.

'I have done my best.' That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor to change the character of our thought.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

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.

The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

A letter is a soliloquy, but a letter with a postscript is a conversation.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.