Quote

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.

Lin Yutang

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Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Amount
Says
Literature
Polished
Lying
Basis
Society
Bases
Success
Thinks
Thinking
Exactly
Life
Exist

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.
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An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.
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All human happiness is sensuous happiness.
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I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
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To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.
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Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.
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There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.
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The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
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The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
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A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.
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However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.
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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.
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The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
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I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
Lin Yutang
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All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell.
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Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
Lin Yutang