A Perfectly Useless Afternoon

I would like to have called [this book] ‘A lyrical Philosophy,” using the word ‘lyrical’ in the sense of being a highly personal and individual outlook.

-Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, 1937

Amplify’d from www.quoteland.com

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

...by association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.' Engrave this quote in Our Store! | Rate this Quote! | Read more at www.quoteland.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bzjii