The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.

On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.

When nature exceeds culture, we have the rustic. When culture exceeds nature, we have the pedant.

I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother. After a short while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed that she could no longer see them and that she wasn't like them any more. What they loved in their mother wasn't her body, but whatever it was that made her body live.

Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.

Do not use a cannon to kill a mosquito.

Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I have not seen the case in which his strength would be sufficient.