I am currently reading “The Importance of Living” by author Lin Yutang. I read quite a bit, but never heard of the author. Perhaps I need to read more. Anyways, the book is easy to understand and fun to read. I get bored very easily, so it is always a pleasure finding a book that keeps by attention. I have read 103 pages and found a few quotes that I thought worth mentioning (of course there are many more; Yutang, 1937, pp. 11-103):
“The mature Chinese is always a person who refuses to think too hard or to believe in any single idea or faith or school of philosophy whole heartedly. When a friend of Confucius told him that he always thought three times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, “To think twice is quite enough” (p.11).
In China as compared with the west, man lives a life closer to nature and closer to childhood, a life in which the instincts and the emotions are given free play and emphasized against the life of the intellect, with a strange combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the spirit, of profound wisdom and foolish gaiety, of high sophistication and childish naïveté (p.11).
Now it happens that subtle common sense, gaiety of philosophy and simplicity of thinking are characteristic of humor and must arise from it (p.79).
It is difficult to imagine this kind of a new world because our present world is so different. On the whole, our life is too complex, our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber, and our thoughts too involved. This seriousness and this involved complexity of thought and scholarship make the present world such an unhappy one today (p.79).
The ideal character best able to enjoy life is a warm, carefree and unafraid soul (p. 97).
The courage to be one’s own natural self is quite a rare thing. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them” (p.103).
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