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
Straight
Instead
Goal
Often
Circling
Around
Carries
Carrie
Tendency
Tendencies

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
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Art is both creation and recreation.
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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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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
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What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
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An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.
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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
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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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Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.
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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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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
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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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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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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
Lin Yutang
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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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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
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Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
Lin Yutang