“The Tao is near and people seek it far away.”

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.

If the King loves music, it is well with the land.

He who wishes to be benevolent will not be rich.

The myriad things are complete in us. There is no greater joy than to reflect on ourselves and become sincere.

The foundation of the world lies in the nation. The foundation of the nation lies in the family. The foundation of the family lies in the individual.

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

The Way lies at hand yet it is sought afar off; the thing lies in the easy yet it is sought in the difficult.

Only when someone refuses to do certain things will he be capable of doing great things.

A wealthy landowner cannot cultivate and improve his farm without spreading comfort and well-being around him. Rich and abundant crops, a numerous population and a prosperous countryside are the rewards for his efforts.

All I want is to bring you the love and the joy that matches all the pain you have ever felt.

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift’s moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

I would steal the sun, if that is what it took to bring the light back into your eyes.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.