Nothing is harder to see into thanpeoples nature. The sage looks at subtle phenomena and listens tosmall voices. This harmonizes the outside with the inside and the inside with the outside.
Interpretation
Understanding human nature is complex, requiring deep observation and attention to subtle details.
This quote emphasizes the challenge of comprehending human nature, which is often concealed beneath surface behaviors. It suggests that true wisdom comes from observing subtle cues and listening intently, which aligns one's internal understanding with the external world and fosters a deeper harmony in relationships and interactions.
In practice
In a leadership workshop, to illustrate the complexity of understanding team dynamics.
Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger.
To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity.
First organize the inner, then organize the outer ... First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, and then organize others.
Strength is but one aspect of power.
Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings.
Battles are not won by strength alone!
White supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief or the investment in the inherent superiority of some, while others are believed to be innately inferior. And it doesn't demand the individual participation of the singular bigot. It is a machine operating in perpetuity, because it doesn't demand that somebody be in place driving.
There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.
Insanity is in the eyes of the beholder. So I will continue to live my personal folly.
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.' That time, Lan did flinch. How long had it been since someone had been able to do that to him with mere words? He remembered teaching that same concept to a youth out of the Two Rivers. A sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the Pattern.
Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth.
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