Laozi
持而盈之， 不如其已； 揣而銳之， 不可長保。 金玉滿堂， 莫之能守； 富貴而驕， 自遺其咎。 功遂身退 天之道。
James Legge
It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempt to carry it when it is full. If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.
When gold and jade fill the hall, their possessor cannot keep them safe. When wealth and honours lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself. When the work is done, and one’s name is becoming distinguished, to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven.
Victor H. Mair
Instead of keeping a bow taut while holding it straight, better to relax. You may temper a sword until it is razor sharp, but you cannot preserve the edge for long. When gold and jade fill your rooms, no one will be able to guard them for you. If wealth and honor make you haughty, you bequeath misfortune upon yourself. To withdraw when your work is finished, that is the Way of heaven.
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
It is better to leave alone, than to grasp at fullness.
Sharpness, which results from filing, cannot be preserved.
None can protect the hall that is filled with gold and jade.
Opulence, honors, pride, necessarily bequeath calamity.
Merit established, a name made, then retirement—this is the way of Heaven. [^1]
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone,” says Thoreau.
”In praying, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do.” “When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance; for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast.” Such “grasping at fulness” had better be left alone.
”Meat will not commend us to God: neither, if we eat not, do we lack.” Asceticism which begins and which ends in the outer leaves the heart without permanent trace; it is a sharpness which is filed; it leads to self-assertion, to pride and to disputations. “Each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.” Minds full of names and parties are as vulnerable as a “hall filled with gold and jade.”
Honors are shadowed by calamities; therefore “I thank God that I baptized none of you… We are fools for Christ’s sake… While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seer: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
"Merit established, a name made, then retirement—this is the way of heaven.”
[^1] Literally—“Heaven’s Tao.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
Brim-fill the bowl, it’ll spill over. Keep sharpening the knife, you’ll soon blunt it.
Nobody can protect a house full of gold and jade.
Wealth, status, pride, are their own ruin. To do good, work well, and lie low is the way of the blessing.