Lu Xun Quotes

#1. People with good memories are liable to be crushed by the weight of their suffering. Only those with bad memories, the fittest to survive, can live on. - Lu Xun

Peter Hessler

#2. 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. - LU XUN

Jacqueline Novogratz

#3. The sorrow and happiness of those people are not related.
I only find them noisy.

Lu Xun

#4. 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.

Lu Xun

#5. 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.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#11. 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.

Lu Xun

#12. 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.

Lu Xun

#13. Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#16. 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!

Lu Xun

#17. 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.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#19. 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.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#21. 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.

Lu Xun

#22. With the weight of four thousand years of cannibalism bearing down upon me, even if I was once innocent how can I now face real humans?

Lu Xun

#23. Discontent is the wheel that moves people forward.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#25. 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.

Lu Xun

#26. 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.

Lu Xun

#27. Despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope!

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#31. John Stuart Mill declared that tyranny makes men cynical. He did not know that a Republic makes them silent.

Lu Xun

#32. 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.

Lu Xun

#33. In China, especially in the cities, if someone fainted on the streets, or if someone was knocked over by a car, you'll find lots of gawkers and gloaters, but rarely will you find someone willing to extend a helping hand.

Lu Xun

#34. 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.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#36. 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.

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

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

Lu Xun

#39. Trust only him who doubts.

Lu Xun

#40. Lies written in ink cannot disguise facts written in blood.

Lu Xun

#41. 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!

Lu Xun