Lin Yutang Quotes

There's so much competition for leisure time, more than ever.

The fact is that modern life has deprived us of life's one great luxury: time.

I'm always wondering: Have all these time-saving devices actually saved us any time, or have they just created a million fetishes and obsessions that keep us from the quiet half hour we should be taking to sit and do nothing every day?

In modern life, we tend to forget family values because of the hectic schedule.

The world isn't getting any easier. With all these new inventions I believe that people are hurried more and pushed more... The hurried way is not the right way; you need time for everything - time to work, time to play, time to rest.

Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air?

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time anymore for anything but work, work, work.

We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it.

The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat...nor make love for eight hours...

The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.

Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription.

The Logos is a voice heard, in the head. And the Logos was the hand on the rudder of human civilization for centuries, up until, in fact, the collapse of the ancient mystery religions and the ascendancy of Christianity to the status of a world religion.

Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. It faces the deepest social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time. Without clearly recognizing it, we are engaged in building a remarkable new civilization from the ground up. This is the meaning of the Third Wave.

I'd like to describe a sort of life 20 years ago as being a fried egg. There was a yolk and a white and the white was maybe work, and the yolk was life. Today, it's more of an omelet. It's more mixed and it's more interspersed and I think that that's a more interesting state of being and for some people, they'll say well I want the crisp, fried egg approach to life.

At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is 'community' - the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother.

With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life.

When you are living your dreams it doesn’t feel like work, but it’s important to take some time away for yourself. It’s goot to make some time for your own company.

Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself, is a slave.

To postpone unpleasantness is human; to forget it is divine.