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We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.

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
Expect
Impossible
Society
Make
Good
People

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.
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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.
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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
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The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
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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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Art is both creation and recreation.
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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
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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
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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.
Lin Yutang
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The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.
Lin Yutang
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What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
Lin Yutang
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.
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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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.
Lin Yutang