Lin Yutang Quotes

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.''What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?''Write how you are but make it straight.

The risk of insult is the price of clarity. To be clearly understood one must speak the simple, essential truth as plainly as he is able.

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.

The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.

Clarity is essential. Knowing exactly what you want builds your self-confidence immeasurably.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

sometimes the most simple conclusion is also the most correct

The language of truth is simple.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.

Every day that you attempt to see things as they are in truth Is a supremely successful day.

He who sincerely seeks his real purpose in life is himself sought by that purpose. As he concentrates on that search a light begins to clear his confusion, call it revelation, call it inspiration, call it what you will. It is mistrust that misleads. Sincerity leads straight to the goal.

Keep your lies short and simple.

What I say is what I say.

The risk of insult is the price of clarity.

It is not confused. We are.

Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so.

It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.

Say only what you mean.

The minute a thing is long and complicated, it confuses. Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made 'em short. They may not always be kept, but they are understood.

Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.

Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.