Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Interpretation
The passage of time is perceived differently depending on one's age and life experience.
This quote reflects on the subjective nature of time and its significance in human life. For young people, five years can seem like a large portion of their life, filled with change and development, whereas for older individuals, it may be seen as a much smaller measure of time, often overshadowed by the decades that have preceded it. It invites us to consider how our perception of time is influenced by our age and life stage.
In practice
During a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of every moment in youth.
You are free when you gain back yourself,β Madame Wu said. βYou can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.
God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular.
Of all whose words I have heard, no one attains to this, to know that wisdom is apart from all.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
Wishing you happiness always! Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. . . . . Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
A fault is fostered by concealment.
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