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Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.

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
Matters
Says
Nothing
Matter
Men

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
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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 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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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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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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He who is afraid to use an I in his writing will never make a good writer.
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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.
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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
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No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
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The wise man reads both books and life itself.
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
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The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
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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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There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.
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Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.
Lin Yutang
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Art is both creation and recreation.
Lin Yutang
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What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted
Lin Yutang
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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!
Lin Yutang
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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.
Lin Yutang