Quote

A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.

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
Carrie
Tendency
Tendencies
Straight
Instead
Goal
Often
Circling
Around
Carries

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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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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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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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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The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
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What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
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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.
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.
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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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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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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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Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.
Lin Yutang
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The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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.
Lin Yutang
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The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
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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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
Lin Yutang
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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
Lin Yutang
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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.
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