What can a man do with music who is not benevolent?

To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace.

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.

Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

When the wind blows, the grass bends.

The wise never doubt. The Humane never worry. The brave never fear.

One who never anticipates deceit or expects duplicity, and yet is the first to recognize such things – is that not a sage indeed?

I am not one who was born with great wisdom. I love the ancients and diligently seek wisdom among them.

Am I a man of great wisdom? Hardly! Even when a simple person brings me a question, my mind goes utterly blank, I just thrash it out until I’ve exhausted every possibility.

If things far away don’t concern you, you’ll soon mourn things close at hand.

The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it.

A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their culture by "progress.

It’s always hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it rather than going around telling you their ideas and saying how they could be a writer if they had the time.

Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a suggestion box, and they need a union to represent that thinking.

Death is always sad, I suppose, to us who look forward to it: I expect it will seem very different when we can look back upon it.

A turtle does come in it's own bowl

I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.