Confucius (551–479 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher and politician. His principles of filial piety and the “Golden Rule” have had profound cultural and political impact throughout history, spreading from China around the world.
CLEAR ALL
We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.
4
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
3
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. . . . It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
2
Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into an idea, then into more tangible action.
. . . it is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.
We are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.
It is only the mature person—the man or woman who is not conditioned by compulsive likes and dislikes, habits and opinions—who is really free in life. Such people are truly spontaneous.