The Importance Of Living

The Importance Of Living

Language: English

Pages: 462

ISBN: 0688163521

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The Importance of Living is a wry, witty antidote to the dizzying pace of the modern world. Lin Yutang's prescription is the classic Chinese philosophy of life: Revere inaction as much as action, invoke humor to maintain a healthy attitude, and never forget that there will always be plenty of fools around who are willing-indeed, eager-to be busy, to make themselves useful, and to exercise power while you bask in the simple joy of existence.At a time when we're overwhelmed with wake-up calls, here is a refreshing, playful reminder to savor life's simple pleasures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

angel paint without pigment, sing without the hearing of sounds, smell the fine morning air am without a nose? scratching an How itch,, if would he enjoy the immense satisfaction of And what a terrible loss his skin doesn't itch? VIEWS OF MANKIND 26 in the capacity for happiness that bodies and have spirits I all and have no would be! Either we have to we are or else have our bodily wants satisfied, satisfactions at All satisfactions imply want. sometimes think what a

ghost or an angel to have all. terrible no body, pure punishment it would be for a a stream of cool water to look at and have no feet to plunge into it and get a delightful cooling sensation from it, to see a dish of Peking or Long Island duck and have no tongue to taste it, to see crumpets and have no teelh to chew them, to sec the beloved faces of our dear ones and have no emotions to feel toward them. Terribly sad it would be if we should one day return to this earth as ghosts

ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and is the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the same time a kindlier view of life; then in the sunset of our life, the endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to it, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and contentment; fi- and one goes into eternal sleep, never to wake One be able to sense the beauty of this

sense of human comedy. This a beautiful thought suggested by the enlightening essay of Clarence Day, This Simian World. Reading that essay of Day's, we can forgive all our fellowmen, the censors, publicity chiefs, Fascist edi- is Nazi radio announcers, nomic experts, delegates to tors, busybodies who senators and lawmakers, dictators, eco- international conferences try to interfere with other people's and lives. all the We can them because we begin to understand them, la this

if mankind of their past, they will also have a better mastery The knowledge we have an animal heritage and that we are very near the beasts might help to check our behaving like beasts. This animal heritage of ours makes it easier to over themselves. see ourselves as we that are in animal fables and in Aesop's satires, as Fables, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowles, Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Anatole France's Penguin Island. These animal fables were good in Aesop's day and will

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