Lin Yutang Quotes

The soul of a child is the loveliest flower that grows in the garden of God.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

...if I have ever met someone without a single shadow on their heart, it was surely a child too young for speaking.

She has the heart of a child, you know. Yeah, it's in a box beside her bed. - Kaia Skyhawk

Just try to stay a child as long as you can. Don't force into adulthood.

Jessica stopped beside him, said: 'What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.' He spoke mechanically: 'If only adults could relax like that.' 'Yes.' 'Where do we lose it?' he murmured. 'We do, indeed, lose something,' she said.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it...until they have grown so old that they forget the way. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again...The world calls them singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.

My children inspire me with their innocence and enormous capacity to love.

He (God) can be revealed only to the child; perfectly, to the pure child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children, that God may be revealed to them.

The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it.

Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.

The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.

It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood, as we can muster... And even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with any skill, if we love it, then it's like Peter Pan - we remain boys forever, we don't die.

I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature; and do what a little child could do — love.

I thought children were pure and innocent, and that was inherently better.

...and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.

Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one's mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.

If I had influence with the good fairy... I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

He was a very young boy; quite a little child. His hair still hung in curls about his face, and his eyes were very bright; but their light was of Heaven, not earth.

We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death