The wise man reads both books and life itself.

For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time...

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.

Reality – Dreams = Animal BeingReality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)Dreams – Humor = FanaticismDreams + Humor = FantasyReality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don’t believe in the good old words because we don’t believe in good old values anymore. And that’s why the world...

Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.

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.

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

There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, “never lay straight” in bed, “like a corpse”, but always curled up on one side. I believe...

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.

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.

Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.

If one’s bowels move, one is happy, and if they don’t move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.

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

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.

If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed,counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly willgive him enjoyment, invariably he will find food...

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.

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

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

Reading books in one’s youth is like looking at the moon through a crevice; reading books in middle age is like looking at the moon in one’s courtyard; and reading books in old age is...