Well-makers lead the water wherever they like; fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; good people fashion themselves.
[CHAPTER XI]
OLD AGE
How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning? Do you not seek a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness?
Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined together, sickly, full of many schemes, but which has no strength, no hold!
This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.
After one has looked at those gray bones, thrown away like gourds in the autumn, what pleasure is there left in life!
After a stronghold has been made of the bones, it is covered with flesh and blood, and there dwell in it old age and death, pride and deceit.
The brilliant chariots of kings are destroyed, the body also approaches destruction, but the virtue of good people never approaches destruction—thus do the good say to the good.