Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practices.

Heaven gives long life to the just and the intelligent.

To rein a kingdom efficiently it is necessary, before all, to put into good order the family. It's impossible for a man who doesn't know how to lead his own family to know how to lead a country.

Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.

When you have become one with the Great Universal, you will have no partiality, and when you are part of the process of transformation, you will have no rigidity.

Isn't it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned? Isn't it also great when friends visit from distant places? If one remains not annoyed when he is not understood by people around him, isn't he a sage?

At fifteen my mind was directed to study, and at thirty I knew where to stand.