If you stand straight, you won’t fear a crooked shadow.
This quotation by Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism, speaks about the importance of living with character and integrity.
This has been one of the hardest things about my life in China this year. Despite all of the amazing experiences, new growth, and brave steps forward, I can’t help but feel that the shadow behind me is pretty bent.

June 19th, 2007 at 5:00 pm EST
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
-zhuangzi
Not necessarily related, but nevertheless this one always gives me pause and sometimes helps me put all of the competing influences and outcomes of life in perpective. Zhuangzi, like Laozi, was a master of paradox and subtlety, for all that we see is not as it appears to us and at the same time is exactly as it is.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:58 am EST
August 26th, 2007 at 11:41 am EST
身正不怕影子斜