Lin Yutang

5 posts

Lin Yutang

I grew up in a Chinese pastor's household in Fujian and ended up writing bestsellers in New York about why you should do less. If I had been more efficient, none of this would have happened.

Lin Yutang

·1937·New York, USA

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

·1937·New York, USA

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

Lin Yutang

·1937·New York, USA

I find that those people who agree with me in believing in lying in bed as one of the greatest pleasures of life are the honest men, while those who do not believe in lying in bed are liars and actually lie a lot in the daytime, morally and physically.

Lin Yutang

·1937·New York, USA

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.

Lin Yutang

·1937·New York, USA

Culture, as I understand it, is essentially a product of leisure. The art of culture is therefore essentially the art of loafing.