Lu Xun Quotes - Page 2

Why should young people look for guides who hang out gided placards to advertise themselves? They would do better to look for friends, unite with them, and advance together towards some quarter where it seems possible to survive.

Though love is instinctive, it cannot develop without a certain stimulus and use.

If we want to work out a policy for the present, we must examine the past and prepare for the future, discard the material and elevate the spirit, rely on the individual and exclude the mass.

When you talk with famous scholars, the best thing is to pretend that occasionally you do not quite understand them. If you understand too little, you will be despised; if you understand too much, you will be disliked; if you just fail occasionally to understand them, you will suit each other very well.

As long as there shall be stones, the seeds of fire will not die.

When the Chinese suspect someone of being a potential troublemaker, they always resort to one of two methods: they crush him, or they hoist him on a pedestal.

But anyone who thinks themselves genuinely unbiased is bound to be taken in.

The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

Men who have not known the horror of death are not likely to be awed by it.

I entreat fresh visions from the painters. Be lavish with your vermilion to portray the mountains in the spring.

I naturally believe there will be a future, but I do not waste my time imagining its radiant beauty. ... It seems to me that we ought to think first about the present. Even if the present is desperately dark, I do not wish to leave it. Will tomorrow be free from darkness? We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Where are now the warriors of the world of the spirit? Where are those who raise their voices for truth, who lead us to goodness, beauty, strength and health? Where are those who utter heartwarming words, who will lead us out of the wilderness? Our homes are gone and the nation is destroyed, yet we have no Jeremiah crying out his last sad song to the world and to posterity.

Let those who hanker after the past return to the past! Let those who want to leave the world leave the world! Let those who want to ascend to heaven do so! Let those whose souls want to leave their bodies expire quickly! The earth today should be inhabited by man with a firm hold on the present, a firm hold on the earth.

But if a few awake, you can't say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.

All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.

A woman has so many parts to her body, life is very hard indeed.

Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover.

I felt that if a man's proposals met with approval, it should encourage him; if they met with opposition, it should make him fight back; but the real tragedy for him was to lift up his voice among the living and meet with no response neither approval nor opposition just as if he were left helpless in a boundless desert.

Though science has given us many marvels, it has also spoiled many of our pleasant dreams.

It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.

Revolution is a bitter thing, mixed with filth and blood, not as lovely or perfect as the poets think. It is eminently down to earth, involving many humble, tiresome tasks, not so romantic as the poets think... . So it is easy for all who have romantic dreams about revolution to become disillusioned on closer acquaintance, when a revolution is actually carried out.

Hope is like a path in the countryside.

The world is changing from day to day; it is high time for our writers to take off their masks, look frankly, keenly, and boldly at life, and write about real flesh and blood. It is high time for a brand-new arena for literature, high time for some bold fighters to charge headlong into battle!

Like students going to school, the planes on their bombing missions fly over Beijing each morning. And each time I hear their engines attack the air I feel a certain slight tension, as if I were witnessing the invasion of Death, though this heightens my consciousness of the existence of Life.