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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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"If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored."
"Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you're lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent's preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it's supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn. If talent's the foundation you rely on, and yet it's so unreliable that you have no idea what's going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?"
"A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate."
Explore more quotes by Xun Zi
"There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men."
"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."
"If the quickness of the mind and the fluency of the tongue are too punctilious and sharp, moderate them in your activity and rest."
"Thus, that one can find no place to walk through the breadth of the earth is not because the earth is not tranquil but because the danger to every step of the traveler lies generally with words."
"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."
"When you locate good in yourself, approve of it with determination. When you locate evil in yourself, despise it as something detestable."
"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."
"Therefore, a person should first be changed by a teacher's instructions, and guided by principles of ritual. Only then can he observe the rules of courtesy and humility, obey the conventions and rules of society, and achieve order."
"In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled."
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