“If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.”

The sole concern of learning is to seek one’s original heart.

Never has a man who has bent himself been able to make others straight.

The way of truth is like a great highway. It is not hard to find.

Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not move others. Never has there been one who had not sincerity who was able to move others.

If you know that a thing is unrighteous, then use all dispatch in putting an end to it–why wait till next year?

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute- he simply speaks and does what is right.

A small country cannot contend with a great; the few cannot contend with the many; the weak cannot contend with the strong.

When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart. They submit because their strength is not adequate to resist.

To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets.

Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness.

Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do.

The gap between enthusiasm and indifference is filled with failures. The great man is he that does not lose his child’s heart.

When Heaven is about to confer a great office upon you, it first exercises your mind with suffering and your sinews and bones with toil.

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honour, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

The best things in life come in threes, like friends, dreams, and memories.

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

What broke you, won’t heal you.

Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult.

If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.

Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.

It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.

Do what is easy and your life will be hard. Do what is hard and your life will become easy.

You are what you believe yourself to be.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.