Tais Emtrai > Tais's Quotes

“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“The wise man reads both books and life itself.”
― Lin Yutang

“The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
― Lin Yutang

“There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence. ”
― Lin Yutang, Pleasures of a Nonconformist

“Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“Of all the rights of woman, the greatest is to be a mother”
― Lin Yutang

“Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.”
― Lin Yutang

“And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

“If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing. . . If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Language disguises thought.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

“Don't think, but look! (PI 66)”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Tell them I've had a wonderful life.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951

“Tell me," Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein