Lu Xun Quotes

Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing - but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.

Lies written in ink cannot disguise facts written in blood.

You have to reform yourself before reforming society and the world.

I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.

Discontent is the wheel that moves people forward.

The ability to forget the past enables people to free themselves gradually from the pain they once suffered; but it also often makes them repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

I have a dream that I will fulfill. And nothing else will distract me from my path.

The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.

Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?

Trust only him who doubts.

If there are still men who really want to live in this world, they should first dare to speak out, to laugh, to cry, to be angry, to accuse, to fight-that they may at least cleanse this accursed place of its accursed atmosphere!

The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.

Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.

Despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope!

Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path.

I could not blot out hope, for hope belongs to the future.

When a great man has become petrified, and everyone begins to proclaim his greatness, he has already turned into a puppet.

To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect.

Since someone ate crabs, others must have eaten spiders as well. However, they were not tasty. So afterwards, people stopped eating them. These people also deserve our heartfelt gratitude.

True fighters dare face the sorrows of humanity, and look unflinchingly at bloodshed. What sorrow and joy are theirs! But the Creator's common device for ordinary people is to let the passage of time wash away old traces leaving only pale-red bloodstains and a vague pain; and he lets men live on ignobly and amid these, to keep this quasi-human world going.

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

True, we must dare look things in the face before we dare think, speak, act, or assume responsibility. If we dare not even look, what else are we good for?

To protect myself from the rear, I have to stand slantwise.

Women have a mother-nature and a daughter-nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter.

If men refuse to be kindled, sparks can only burn themselves out, just as paper images and carriages burn out on the street during funerals.