TLAYT

‘Cloth against cloth, stone against stone: no clear result, and it is meaningless.’ The sense is, not to meet weakness with weakness, nor oppose hardness with further hardness.

‘If you want to know what you have done in the past,’ he said, ‘look at your present circumstances, which are the result of what you did; if you want to know what your future will be, look at what you are doing now, which will shape it.