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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

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Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Unusual
Insane
Madness
China
West
Worship
Many
Asylum
Asylums

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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
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I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
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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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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
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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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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
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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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On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.
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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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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
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Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.
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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
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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.
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
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It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards.
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Art is both creation and recreation.
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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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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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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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