Home > Author > Michael Puett
21 " If you use a chariot and horses, your feet have not improved one bit, but you can travel a thousand li. If you use a boat and paddle, you haven’t learned to swim, but you can still cross the rivers and seas. One who is cultivated is no different from others at birth; he is simply good at making use of "
― Michael Puett , Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages from the Chinese Philosophers in The Path
22 " With all this investment in our self-definition, we risk building our future on a very narrow sense of who we are - what we see as our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and dislikes. Many Chinese thinkers might say that in doing this, we are looking at such a small part of who we are potentially. We're taking a limited number of our emotional dispositions during a certain time and place and allowing those to define us forever. By thinking of human nature as monolithic, we instantly limit our potential. "
― Michael Puett , The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life
23 " The key for the players is to be conscious that they are pretending; that together they have entered an alternate reality in which they imagine different sides of themselves. "
24 " To learn and then at the appropriate time put into practice what you have learned: Is this not a pleasure? To have friends arrive from afar: Is this not a joy? To be patient even when others do not understand: Is this not the way of an accomplished person? "
25 " One who is not good can neither endure adversity nor feel enduring joy. Those who are good feel at home in goodness; those who are crafty seek profit from goodness. "
26 " Things will happen that we can’t control, but we have a choice to act: to get out of the way of the falling wall, to respond to our ming and shape our future accordingly. "
27 " This is how we tend to learn about world history: as discrete civilizations that developed on their own over time. Now imagine a different kind of museum, one organized solely by era. You could stroll through a gallery, for example, and see a Roman silver denarius coin, a bronze coin from China’s Han dynasty, and a punch-marked coin from India’s Mauryan Empire. You would see right away that three major civilizations were going through remarkably similar changes at roughly the same time, despite the vast distance between them: each had become an empire, and each was running an economy based upon coin currency. "
28 " When we can let go of the idea that there are clear guidelines and a stable world, then what we are left with is the heart-mind to guide us. The heart-mind is all there is, and we develop it every day through our relationships with the people we’re with. It helps us to sense things correctly, to lay the groundwork for growth, and to work with what we have. And as you do so, all that you thought you were will begin to change. You will find parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. The world you once thought of as stable starts instead to seem like a world of infinite possibilities. "