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.
Lin YutangTags: happiness philosophy sleeping bed philosophy-of-life confucius chinese-philosopher
Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.
Lin YutangThe 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.
Lin YutangTags: life reading philosophy
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.
Lin YutangTags: philosophy specialization chinese-philosopher
For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature.
Lin YutangTags: reason philosophy human-nature logic chinese-philosophy
In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin YutangTags: reason philosophy logic common-sense chinese-philosophy
When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
Lin YutangThe wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the nonessentials.
Lin YutangSometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.
Lin YutangTags: ability
The passion fades, the remorse is eternal.
Lin Yutang« first previous
Page 3 of 4.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.