When you can't make waves, you can't travel thousands of miles to Yuma. -Eastern Jin medical scientist, Taoist scholar and alchemist Ge Hong's "Bao Puzi Punishment"

Society just plays jokes on clowns, with no other requirements, and forgets in a blink of an eye; Unlike meeting a great man, he has to be extraordinary before he can kneel down to him. Each has its own laws: diamonds that can't be ground for a long time can't have any flaws, and the popular products at present may be thin, eccentric and flashy. Balzac, French writer

Flashy, empty and useless. -Han Fei, philosopher at the end of the Warring States Period.

Flashy, brittle but not firm. -"Zuo Zhuan" by Zuo Qiuming, a historian and blind man in the Spring and Autumn Period.