Lin Yutang Quotes

It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.

The world seems so clean if you only looked up.

As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.

What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

All the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns.

Where flowers bloom so does hope.

Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed. (Of Sam)

I know nothing more noble than the contemplation of the world.

After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.

Who needs the sun, when the rain is so full of life?

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?

'Tis always morning somewhere, and aboveThe awakening continents, from shore to shore,Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

I am thankful that thorns have roses.

The quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.

Life is not that complicated.

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.

You can never have too much sky . You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it.

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

In motivating people to love and defend the natural world, an ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair.

Hope is like a path in the countryside.

There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.

To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.

Without despair, we will share, and the joys of caring will not be erased. What has been, must never end, the joys of caring will not be replace.

Let us try to see things from their better side: You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes; Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods That thorns have roses.