Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

Meaning: Another worker can often find something to improve in work already considered finished. The second barber’s remaining task suggests that completion depends on standards and perspective, without proving that earlier work was careless or endless correction is necessary.

Meaning: The saying promises vigorous beans after sowing in mud. Growing like wood gives its confidence in that method an exaggerated image of strength.

Meaning: A large amount of material may contain little that serves the purpose. The bran and meal contrast questions apparent abundance, encouraging attention to useful substance rather than volume alone.

Meaning: Even an attentive observer cannot be assumed to notice every event. The cat-and-mouse image points to limits of oversight, without proving that an unnoticed action is harmless or acceptable.