It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.

At 15 I set my heart on learning; At 30 I firmly took my stand; At 40 I had no delusions; At 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven; At 60 my ear was attuned; At 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Tea tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties.

When superiors are fond of showing their humanity, inferiors try to outstrip one another in their practice of it.

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.