You look upon the seasons with expectation and await them: wy not seize the seasonal opportunities and exploit them?
XUNZIIn antiquity the sage kings recognized that men’s nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
More Xunzi Quotes
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If the blood humor is too strong and robust, calm it with balance and harmony.
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The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.
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Man’s nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.
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Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
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Now it is human nature to want to eat to ones fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired. These all are a part of people’s emotional nature.
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Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles.
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There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.
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The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere.
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Thus, anybody who follows this nature and gives way its states will be led into quarrels and conflicts, and go against the conventions and rules of society, and will end up a criminal.
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If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others.
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They are done merely for ornament. … the common people regard them as supernatural.
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Human nature is what Heaven supplies.
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Pride and excess bring disaster for man.
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Music is a fantastic peacekeeper of the world, it is integral to harmony, and it is a required fundamental of human emotion.
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In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men’s nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
XUNZI