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The wise man reads both books and life itself.

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
Books
Reading
Book
Men
Life
Reads
Wise

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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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.
Lin Yutang
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Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
Lin Yutang
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As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.
Lin Yutang
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
Lin Yutang
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
Lin Yutang
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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
Lin Yutang
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My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.
Lin Yutang
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Winter in Peking is insurpassable, unless indeed it is surpassed by the other seasons in that blessed city. For Peking is a city clearly marked by the seasons, each perfect in its own way and each different from the others.
Lin Yutang
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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
Lin Yutang
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On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.
Lin Yutang
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O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!
Lin Yutang
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Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.
Lin Yutang
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I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
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Let him cry whoever feels like crying, for we were animals before we became reasoning beings, and the shedding of a tear, whether of forgiveness or of pity or of sheer delight at beauty, will do him a lot of good.
Lin Yutang
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A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.
Lin Yutang
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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
Lin Yutang
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
Lin Yutang
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All human happiness is sensuous happiness.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang