Be Close To and Learn From People of Virtue and Compassion
All are human, but their types differ. Most belong to the unrefined; the truly kind-hearted are rare. A truly kind-hearted person is feared by most people. He is not afraid of his words causing offense; his expression is not fawning. (See for the foregoing.) If I can be close to and learn from people of great virtue and compassion, I will benefit immensely. My virtues will grow daily and my wrongdoings will lessen day by day. (See for the following.) Not becoming close with the kind-hearted is infinitely harmful. Lowly people will enter, and everything will turn bad.
Read more about this topic: Ti Tzu Kui, Chapter 6
Famous quotes containing the words close, learn, people, virtue and/or compassion:
“Monte Beragon: When I’m close to you like this, there’s a sound in the air like the beating of wings. Do you know what that is?
Mildred Pierce: No, what?
Monte Beragon: My heart, beating like a schoolboy’s.
Mildred Pierce: Is it? I thought it was mine.”
—Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973)
“A child is born with the potential ability to learn Chinese or Swahili, play a kazoo, climb a tree, make a strudel or a birdhouse, take pleasure in finding the coordinates of a star. Genetic inheritance determines a child’s abilities and weaknesses. But those who raise a child call forth from that matrix the traits and talents they consider important.”
—Emilie Buchwald (20th century)
“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that everybody can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)