When the liver is diseased, the eyesight fails; when the kidneys are diseased, the hearing is adversely affected. The disease is not visible, but its effects are. Therefore, enlightened people, wishing to be free from obvious faults, first get rid of hidden faults.

Warm weather fosters growth: cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an unsympathetic temperament has a scant joy: but a man with a warm and friendly heart overflowing blessings, and his beneficence will extend to posterity.

If those who give are conscious of their own generosity and those who receive feel indebted, they are no longer family but rather strangers doing business.

If you fear that people will know if you do something bad, then there is something good in bad. If you are eager for people to know when you do something good, then there is something bad in good.

Those who live simply are often pure, while those who live luxuriously may be slavish and servile. It seems that the will is clarified by plainness, while conduct is ruined by indulgence.

When enlightened people are so poor that they cannot help others, if they speak a word to awaken the confused or to resolve a problem, there is also boundless merit in that.

People are considered pure of heart when they do not approach power and pomp; but those who can be near without being affected are the purest of all. People are considered high-minded when they do not know how to plot and contrive; but those who know how yet do not do so are the highest of all.