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Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of 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
Short
Serious
Business
Make
Life

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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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.
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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.
Lin Yutang
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Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
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The wise man reads both books and life itself.
Lin Yutang
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No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
Lin Yutang
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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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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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By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
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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Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.
Lin Yutang
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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
Lin Yutang
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I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.
Lin Yutang
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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
Lin Yutang
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Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
Lin Yutang
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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.
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