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A grub in filth is dirty, but it changes into a cicada and sips dew in the autumn breeze. Rotting plants have no luster, but they turn into foxfire and glow in the summer moonlight. So we know that purity emerges from impurity, and light is born from darkness.

Zicheng Hong

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Zicheng Hong
Darkness
Breeze
Impurity
Turn
Plants
Rotting
Turns
Autumn
Filth
Born
Purity
Emerges
Light
Dirty
Dew
Grub
Plant
Glow
Sips
Changes
Moonlight
Cicadas
Summer
Taoism
Luster

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People know that fame and position are pleasant, but they do not know that the pleasure of anonymity is most real. People know that hunger and cold are distressing, but they do not know that the distress of not experiencing cold or hunger is greater.
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Business and scholarship pass away with the person, but the soul is forever like new. Fame and fortune change with the generations, but the spirit is always the same. Enlightened people surely should not exchange the lasting for the ephemeral.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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When you meet dishonest people, move them with sincerity. When you meet violent people, affect them with gentility. When you meet warped people, inspire them with justice. Then the whole world enters your forge.
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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.
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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.
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The sickness of indulging desires can be treated, but the sickness of clinging to abstract principles is hard to treat. Obstacles presented by events and objects can be removed, but obstacles presented by social principles are hard to remove.
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Those in public office who do not love the people are thieves stealing salaries. Those who teach but do not themselves practice what they teach are mere talkers. Those who try to do successful work without considering development of character will find it insubstantial.
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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.
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The eyes and ears, seeing and hearing, are external plunderers emotions, desires, and opinions are internal plunderers. But if the inner mind is awake and alert, sitting aloof in the middle of it all, then these plunderers change and become members of the household.
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Those who trust others will find that not everyone is necessarily sincere, but they will be sincere themselves. Those who suspect others will find that not everyone is necessarily deceiving them, but they have already become deceivers themselves.
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In adversity, everything that surrounds you is a kind of medicine that helps you refine your conduct, yet you are unaware of it. In pleasant situations, you are faced with weapons that will tear you apart, yet you do not realize it.
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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
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Valuing unusual conduct is not as good as being careful about ordinary actions.
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When the rich and well-established, who should be generous, are instead spiteful and cruel, they make their behavior wretched and base in spite of their wealth and position. When the intellectually brilliant, who should be reserved, instead show off, they are ignorant and foolish in their weakness in spite of their brilliance.
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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.
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