My words are easy just to understand:
To live by them is very easy too;
Yet it appears that none in all the world
Can understand or make them come to life.

My words have ancestors, my works a prince;
Since none know this, unknown I too remain.
But honor comes to me when I’m least known:
The Wise Man, with a jewel in his breast,
Goes clad in garments made of shoddy stuff. – Lao-Tzu

(Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 70, 123.)