Lin Yutang

“Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.”

“A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.”

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

“Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are idiots and dead men.”

“What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?”

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

“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”

“The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.”

“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”

“Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.”

“All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.”

“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.”

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

“It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.”

“I have done my best. That is all the philosophy of life.”