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When you are but slightly involved in the world, the effect the world has on you is also slight. When you are deeply enmeshed in affairs, you machinations also deepen. So for enlightened people simplicity is better than refinement, and freedom is better than punctiliousness.

Zicheng Hong

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Zicheng Hong
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More quotes by Zicheng Hong

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After one has been in a lowly position, one knows how dangerous it is to climb to a high place, Once one has been in the dark, one knows how revealing it is to go into the light. Having maintained quietude, one knows how tiring compulsive activity is. Having nurtured silence, one knows how disturbing much talk is.
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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.
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Even if you can't get rid of the heat, as long as you can get rid of bother with the heat, your body is always on a cool terrace. Even if you can't get rid of poverty, as long as you can get rid of the sadness of poverty, your mind always lives in a comfortable abode.
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If you know that whatever is made inevitable breaks down, you needn't seek too hard for achievement. If you know that all living beings inevitably die, you needn't work too hard on health lore.
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In the mind engaged in struggling with hardship, one always finds something delightful. The sorrow of disappointment arises in the complacency of satisfaction.
Zicheng Hong
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Human affairs are like a chess game. Only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players.
Zicheng Hong
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The workings of heaven are unfathomable-sometimes encouraging, sometimes suppressing. All this makes sport of heroes and tumbles the great. Enlightened people take adversity in stride and are prepared for trouble even when at ease therefore, they are not at the mercy of fate.
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When one is not slipshod in small matters, not hypocritical in secret, and not reckless in disappointment, only then is one a true hero.
Zicheng Hong
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One should not seek happiness, just nurture the spirit of joy as the basis of summoning happiness. One should not try to escape misfortune, just get rid of viciousness as a means of avoiding misfortune.
Zicheng Hong
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Desires that are just are termed Truth. Without desires, Truth cannot be understood.
Zicheng Hong
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Those who turn things around by themselves do not rejoice at gain or grieve over loss the whole world is the range they roam. Those who are themselves used by things hate it when events go against them and love it when they go their way the slightest thing can create binding entanglements.
Zicheng Hong
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When you meet silent and inscrutable people, don't tell them what you are thinking. When you meet irritable and self-serving people, be careful what you say.
Zicheng Hong
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To notice people's deceptions yet not reveal it in words, to bear people's insults without showing any change of attitude-there is endless meaning in this, and also endless function.
Zicheng Hong
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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?
Zicheng Hong
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To get rid of villains and knaves, it is necessary to give them a way out. If you don't give them any leeway at all, they will be like trapped rats. If every way out is closed to them, they will chew up everything good.
Zicheng Hong
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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.
Zicheng Hong
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In whatever you do, if you leave a sense of incompleteness, then Creation cannot resent you, ghosts and spirits cannot harm you. If you insist on fulfillment in your work and perfection in achievement, you will become either inwardly deranged or outwardly unsettled.
Zicheng Hong
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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.
Zicheng Hong
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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.
Zicheng Hong
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Even if you do no work that is particularly lofty or far-reaching, if you can shed mundane feelings, that is a great achievement. Even if you do not strive much for progress in learning, if you can minimize the influence things have on you, you will soar into the realm of sages.
Zicheng Hong