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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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Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Think
Simplicity
Thinking
Complete
Conscious
Civilization
Return
Called
Living
Progressed
Made
Sophistication

More quotes by 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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If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.
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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.
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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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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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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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Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
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Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.
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I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
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All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell.
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
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Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
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No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
Lin Yutang
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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
Lin Yutang
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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!
Lin Yutang
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Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.
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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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Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
Lin Yutang