“All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.”

A path is made by walking on it.

And how do I know that the hate of death is not like a man who has lost his home when young and does not know where his home is to return to?

True men” are strong willed, have dignity in their demeanor, serenity in their expression. They are cool like autumn, warm like spring. Their passions arise like the four seasons, in harmony with the ten thousand creatures, and no one knows their limits.

But you now, you wear your soul on your sleeve, exhausting your energy, propping yourself up on a tree, mumbling, or bent over your desk, asleep. Heaven gives you a form and you wear it out by pointless argument.

The eyes envy the mind.

Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

You are still guided by your expectations.

Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied.

The right way to go easy is to forget the right way.

When I talk about having good hearing, I don’t mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don’t mean just looking, but looking at yourself.

When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten. When the belt fits, the belly is forgotten. When the heart is right, “for” and “against” are forgotten. No drives, no compulsions, no needs, no attractions: Then your affairs are under control. You are a free man.

Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!

The living all find death unpleasant; men mourn over it. And yet, what is death, but the unbending of the bow and its return to its case?

Heaven is in everything: follow the light, hide in the cloudiness and begin in what is. Do this and your understanding will be like not understanding and your wisdom will be like not being wise. By not being wise you will become wise later.

When there is no more separation between ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the still-point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.

Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.

How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?

In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed:.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us.

And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.