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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
Worship
Many
Asylum
Asylums
Unusual
Insane
Madness
China
West

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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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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
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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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Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.
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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 fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
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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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The wise man reads both books and life itself.
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Neckties strangle clear thinking.
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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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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
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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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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
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Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us.
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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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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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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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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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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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