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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.

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.

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

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 is sick.

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.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks. - The Importance of Living, 1937.

Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.

Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.

No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.

Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.

It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.

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.

Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.