Quote

To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.

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
Difficult
Survey
Easy
Surveys
Past
Glorify
Light
Emerge
Paint
Present
Understanding
Future

More quotes by 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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I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.
Lin Yutang
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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.
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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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang
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I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
Lin Yutang
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Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
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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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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As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.
Lin Yutang
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Let him cry whoever feels like crying, for we were animals before we became reasoning beings, and the shedding of a tear, whether of forgiveness or of pity or of sheer delight at beauty, will do him a lot of good.
Lin Yutang
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An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside he may only be disagreed with.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang
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He who is afraid to use an I in his writing will never make a good writer.
Lin Yutang