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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of 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
Thought
Outward
Symbol
Symbols
Simplicity
Sign
Depth

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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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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By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
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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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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.
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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.
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What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
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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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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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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!
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The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
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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.
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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
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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 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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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
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I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
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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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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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Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.
Lin Yutang