In trans-border relations, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies or even permanent borders. There are only permanent interests and everything should be done to secure these interests.

Even as the unborn babe is in the womb of his mother, these five are fixed as his life destiny: his life span, his activities, his acquisition of wealth and knowledge, and his time of death.

Do not put your trust in rivers, men who carry weapons, beasts with claws or horns, women, and members of a royal family.

Learning is a friend on the journey; a wife in the house; medicine in sickness; and religious merit is the only friend after death.

My dear child, if you desire to be free from the cycle of birth and death, then abandon the objects of sense gratification as poison. Drink instead the nectar of forbearance, upright conduct, mercy, cleanliness and truth.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.