Quote

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.

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
Modern
Rounds
Toilet
Flush
Since
Invention
Baths
Weekly
Moral
Judge
Toilets
Cleaner
Seems
Winter
Carpet
Cleaners
Men
Thinks
Belly
Cleanliness
Thinking
Dog
Highly
Vacuums
Standards
Civilized
Bath
Judging
Round
Vacuum
Wrapper

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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
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All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
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No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
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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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Art is both creation and recreation.
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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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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
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The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.
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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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Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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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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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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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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My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.
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A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
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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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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.
Lin Yutang