Getting something done is like digging a well. You can dig a well seventy feet deep, but if you don’t hit water it’s just an abandoned well. - Mencius

When someone dies, You say, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the harvest.’ How is this different from killing someone by stabbing him and saying, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the weapon’? If Your Majesty does not blame the harvest, then the people of the world will come to You.

There are things a person wants more than life and there are also things he or she loathes more than death.

Don’t do what should not be done, and don’t desire what should not be desired. Abide by this one precept, and everything else will follow.