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Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

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
Imagination
Boredom
Men
Plus
Bored
Merely
Blessing
Difference
Differences
Probably
Monkeys

More quotes by 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.
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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
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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.
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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
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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.
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He who is afraid to use an I in his writing will never make a good writer.
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The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.
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If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.
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Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us.
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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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The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
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No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
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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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Art is both creation and recreation.
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The wise man reads both books and life itself.
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Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.
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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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It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards.
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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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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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