Lin Yutang, 1895 - 1976
Portrait by Carl Van Vechten (16 September 1939)
Born: 10 October 1895, Banzai, Pinghe, Zhangzhou, Fujian, China
Died: 26 March 1976, Yangmingshan, Taipei, Taiwan
The eleventh of twelve children born to a Chinese Presbyterian minister in a small mountain town, Lin was educated in English at St John's at Shanghai. He studied at Tsinghua University from 1916 to 1919, then entered Harvard. When his half tuition scholarship was cut off, he and his wife left for France where he worked for the YMCA teaching basic literacy to Chinese workers, then moved on to Leipzig where he earned his PhD in linguistics in 1923. He then returned to China as a professor at Peking National University through 1926. He was briefly involved politically, joining the Nationalist Government as SEcretary to the Foreign Ministry, but left to wrote for popular magazines and edit literary publications. He met Pearl S. Buck who suggested he write about China for the American audience, his My Country and My People (1935) was soon at the top of the New York Times best seller list, a first for a Chinese author. He followed that with The Importance of Living in 1938, but his Vigil of a Nation, a tour of China at war, led to an uproar and a break with Pearl Buck. As her husband had been the publisher of his books to that date, it meant finding a new outlet for his work as well. He continued to write but spent a significant amount of time and capital developing an ingenious Chinese typewriter with a 72-key keyboard. It was seen by experts as a great step forward, but as China was engulfed in civil war at the time it went nowhere and he was forced to sell his New York home to pay the debts from the venture. Ne took a job with UNESCO at Paris, which he found frustrating if placid, then was hired as Chancellor at Nanyang University at Singapore. He managed to cause enough upset there that he left after only six months, before the school actually opened its doors, and returned to Paris. The Lins moved to New York to be near their daughters, then in 1965 moved to Taiwan where he lived for the rest of his life.
Biography from Wikipedia and University of Massachusetts Amherst
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
Lin Yutang quotes:
Quotes found : 57 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
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- 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. permalink
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. permalink
Lin Yutang - The Importance of Living (1937) - A solemn funeral is inconceivable to the Chinese mind. permalink
Lin Yutang - A vague uncritical idealism always 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. permalink
Lin Yutang - Chapter 1: The Awakening, The Importance of Living (1937) - All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress. permalink
Lin Yutang - Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body. permalink
Lin Yutang - 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 nonessentials. permalink
Lin Yutang - By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. permalink
Lin Yutang - The Importance of Living (1937) - Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves. permalink
Lin Yutang - Hope is like a road in the country; there never was a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. permalink
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. permalink
Lin Yutang - The Importance of Living (1937) - However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight. permalink
Lin Yutang - I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom. permalink
Lin Yutang - Chapter 1: The Awakening, The Importance of Living (1937) - I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth. permalink
Lin Yutang - The Importance of Living (1937) - I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs. permalink
Lin Yutang
Quotes found : 57 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
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