Echoes

This is the Way for men who want to learn my strategy: Do not think dishonestly. The Way is in training. Become acquainted with every art. Know the Ways of all professions. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters. Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything. Perceive those things which cannot be seen. Pay attention even to trifles. Do nothing which is of no use.

These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Slow and steady wins the race.

If you merely read this book you will not reach the Way of strategy. Absorb the things written in this book. Do not just read, memorise or imitate, but so that you realise the principle from within your own heart study hard to absorb these things into your body.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

When I reached thirty I looked back on my past. The previous victories were not due to my having mastered strategy. Perhaps it was natural ability, or the order of heaven, or that other schools' strategy was inferior. After that I studied morning and evening searching for the principle, and came to realise the Way of strategy when I was fifty.

In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into inaction. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self,—and the empire will be governed.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

Exactitude is not truth.

The man of perfect virtue is cautious and slow in his speech. When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking?