When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for a long time it will dull your forces and blunt you edge...If you keep your armies out in the field for a long time, your supplies will be insufficient. Transportation of provisions itself consumes 20 times the amount transported.

As water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.

If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.

Know thy self, know thy enemy.

Who can determine where one ends and the other begins?

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted.

Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.