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The end of living is the true enjoyment 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
True
Ends
Life
Enjoyment
Living

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
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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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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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By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
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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.
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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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What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted
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The wise man reads both books and life itself.
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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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The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
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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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Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
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As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.
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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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Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
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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.
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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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