For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
I understood . . . that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.
The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.
The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".
Do not vainly lament, but do wonder at the rule of transiency and learn from it the emptiness of human life. Do not cherish to unworthy desire that the changeable might become unchanging.
A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.