I am pleased with your intelligent virtue, not loudly proclaimed nor portrayed, without extravagance or changeableness, without consciousness of effort on your part, in accordance with the pattern of God.—She King, ii., Major Odes, Hwang I.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.—Confucian An., Wei Ching (ch. xv.).
Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven it is impossible to be a superior man.—Confucian An., Yaou Yue (ch. iii.).
Be tremblingly fearful,
Be careful night and day;
Men trip not on mountains,
They trip on ant-hills.
Yaou's Warning, Poem from Hwae Nan.
The ways of God are not invariable; on the good doer he sends down all blessings, and on the evil doer he sends down all miseries.—Shoo King, Instructions of E (ch. iv.).
In the way of superior man there are four things, not one of which have I as yet attained:—To serve my father as I would require my son to serve me; to serve my Prince as I would require my minister to serve me; to serve my elder brother as I would require my younger brother to serve me; to set the example in behaving to a friend as I would require him to behave to me.—Doctrine of the Mean (ch. xiii.).
Virtue has no invariable model. A supreme regard to what is good gives the model of it. What is good has no invariable characteristic to be supremely regarded; it is found where there is conformity to the uniform decision of the mind.—Shoo King, Both Possessed Pure Virtue (ch. iii.).
This King Wan
Watchfully and reverently
With entire intelligence served God,
And so secured the great blessing.—
She King, Decade of King Wan II.