Quote

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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Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Happy
Moving
Bowels
Unhappy
Move

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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
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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.
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
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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 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.
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Neckties strangle clear thinking.
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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
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The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
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The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
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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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What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted
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I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
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