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Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

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
Dream
Fantasy
Also
Usually
Heart
Dreams
Humor
Fanaticism
Animal
Conservatism
Wisdom
Idealism
Called
Ache
Reality
Realism

More quotes by 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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If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.
Lin Yutang
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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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In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.
Lin Yutang
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He who is afraid to use an I in his writing will never make a good writer.
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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The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear.
Lin Yutang
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The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
Lin Yutang
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin Yutang
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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
Lin Yutang
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Art is both creation and recreation.
Lin Yutang
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The purpose of a short story is ... that the reader shall come away with the satisfactory feeling that a particular insight into human character has been gained, or that his (or her) knowledge of life has been deepened, or that pity, love or sympathy for a human being is awakened.
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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It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.
Lin Yutang
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
Lin Yutang
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The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.
Lin Yutang
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All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
Lin Yutang
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
Lin Yutang
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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.
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