The learned should be vigorous and diligent, but they should also be free-spirited. If they are too rigorous and austere, they have the death-dealing quality of autumn but lack the life-giving quality of spring. How can they develop people then?

A thousand pieces of gold may hardly bring a moment's happiness, but a small favor can cause a lifetime's gratitude. Too much love can turn to enmity, while aloofness can produce joy.

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 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.

Your own feelings may be reasonable or unreasonable; how can you expect others to always be reasonable? It is useful to see things in this light and thereby correct the contradictions in your expectations for yourself and others.

One of our predecessors said, "Throwing away the inexhaustible treasury of your own home, you go with your bowl from door to door, acting like a beggar"

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.