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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.

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
Change
Conceive
Character
Chemical
Chemicals
Function
Humor
Literature
Thought

More quotes by 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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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
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Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.
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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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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
Lin Yutang
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India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.
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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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
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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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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The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
Lin Yutang
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The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
Lin Yutang
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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
Lin Yutang
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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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No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
Lin Yutang
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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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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Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
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A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang