When thoughts arise, as soon as you sense them heading on the road of desire, bring them right back onto the road of reason. Once they arise, notice them, once you notice them, you can change them. This is the key to turning calamity into fortune, rising from death and returning to life.

If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed, there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves?

In dealing with good people one should be magnanimous; in dealing with bad people one should be strict. In dealing with average people one should combine magnanimity and strictness.

When those who give charity do so without any sense of self-satisfaction and without any thought of reward, even a small gift is great. When those who aid others calculate their own sacrifice and demand gratitude and recompense, even a great gift is small.

If you are not lax when at leisure, you will be effective when busy. If you are not absentminded in tranquility, that will be useful in action. If you are not hypocritical in private, that will show up in public.

When you are constantly hearing offensive words and always have some irritating matter in mind, only then do you have a whetstone for character development. If you hear only what pleases you, and deal only with what thrills you, then you are burying your life in deadly poison.

Compromise to please others is not as good as integrity that annoys others. Rather than be praised without being good, it is better to be slandered without being bad.