Valuing unusual conduct is not as good as being careful about ordinary actions.

If you do not join the polluted, then you are pure; if you reject society in search of purity, that is not purity but fanaticism.

Don't be too severe in criticizing people's faults; consider how much they can bear. Don't be too lofty in enjoining virtue, so people may be able to follow.

People's shortcomings should be treated with tact; if you expose them crudely, this is attacking weakness with a weakness. When people are stubborn, it requires skill to influence them; if you treat them with anger and spite, this is treating stubbornness with stubbornness.

A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life. The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon: the mind must be full of light.

When one is not slipshod in small matters, not hypocritical in secret, and not reckless in disappointment, only then is one a true hero.

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.