Echoes

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors — walking, leaping, climbing, dancing.

It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.

All praise of virtue consists in action.

Of a surety, at the Day of Judgment it will be demanded of us, not what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how holily we have lived.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

He who lives sees much. He who travels sees more.

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Well done is better than well said.

To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Man is the only animal that knows nothing and can learn nothing without being taught.