The Importance of Living Quotes

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The Importance of Living Quotes
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“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.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“I regard the discovery of one鈥檚 favorite author as the most critical event in one鈥檚 intellectual development.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its specialization and cutting up of knowledge into different departments. The over-development of logical thinking and specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. 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. This is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy, which should lie closest to men's bosom and business, has become most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of wisdom of life formed the scholars' chief occupation. Either the modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the original conception of philosophy.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, "never lay straight" in bed, "like a corpse", but always curled up on one side. I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up one's legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“When one's thoughts and experience have not reached a certain point for reading a masterpiece, the masterpiece will leave only a bad flavor on his palate.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“A good traveler is one who who does not know where he is going to , and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Who are we? That is the first question. It is a question almost impossible to answer. But we all agree that the busy self occupied in our daily activities is not quite the real self. We are quite sure we have lost something in the mere pursuit of living.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“After all, only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them. Seriousness, after all, is only a sign of effort, and effort is a sign of imperfect mastery,”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“Now it must be taken for granted that simplicity of life and thought is the highest and sanest ideal for civilization and culture, that when a civilization loses simplicity and the sophisticated do not return to unsophistication, civilization becomes increasingly full of troubles and degenerates. Man then becomes the slave of the ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“It is against the will of God to eat delicate food hastily, to pass gorgeous views hurriedly, to express deep sentiments superficially, to pass a beautiful day steeped in food and drinks, and to enjoy your wealth steeped in luxuries.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“The critical mind is too thin and cold, thinking itself will help little and reason will be of small avail; only the spirit of reasonableness, a sort of warm, glowing, emotional and intuitive thinking, joined with compassion, will insure us against a reversion to our ancestral type. Only the development of our life to bring it into harmony with our instincts can save us. I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“As Walt Whitman says, 鈥淚 am sufficient as I am.鈥� It is sufficient that I live鈥攁nd am probably going to live for another few decades鈥攁nd that human life exists. Viewed that way, the problem becomes amazingly simple and admits of no two answers. What can be the end of human life except the enjoyment of it?”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“The best social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy individual lives. If there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
“Scholars who are worth anything at all never know what is call "a hard grind" or what "bitter study" means.”
― The Importance of Living
― The Importance of Living
“Confucius said, 鈥淲hen young, beware of fighting; when strong, beware of sex; and when old, beware of possession,鈥� which simply means that a boy loves fighting, a young man loves women, and an old man loves money.”
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living
― Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living