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Daoism -> Zhuangzi -> Outer Chapters -> The Revolution of Heaven -> 4.2

'If you are travelling by water, your best plan is to use a boat;
if by land, a carriage.
Take a boat, which will go (easily) along on the water, and try to push it along on the land,
and all your lifetime it will not go so much as a fathom or two:
are not ancient time and the present time like the water and the dry land?
and are not Zhou and Lu like the boat and the carriage?
To seek now to practise (the old ways of) Zhou in Lu
is like pushing along a boat on the dry land.
It is only a toilsome labour, and has no success;
he who does so is sure to meet with calamity.
He has not learned that in handing down the arts (of one time) he is sure to be reduced to extremity in endeavouring to adapt them to the conditions (of another).


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