If the impulse to daring and bravery is too fierce and violent, stay it with guidance and instruction.

When you concentrate on agriculture and industry and are frugal in expenditures, Heaven cannot impoverish your state.

Sacrifices are concerned with the feelings of devotion and longing.

A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.

In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.

Quarreling over food and drink, having neither scruples nor shame, not knowing right from wrong, not trying to avoid death or injury, not fearful of greater strength or of greater numbers, greedily aware only of food and drink - such is the bravery of the dog and boar.

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.