是谓行无行,攘无臂,仍无敌,执无兵。
This latter is what we call to march without moving, to roll the sleeve, but present no bare arm, the hand that seems to hold, yet had no weapon in it, a host that can confront, yet presents no battle-front.
祸莫大于轻敌,轻敌几丧吾宝。
Now the greatest of all calamities is to attack and find no enemy. #2 I can have no enemy only at the price of losing my treasure.
故抗兵相加,哀者胜矣。
Therefore when armies are raised and issues joined it is he who does not delight in war that wins.
天下莫能知,莫能行。
Yet no one under heaven understands them; no one puts them into practice.
言有宗,事有君。
But my words have an ancestry, my deeds have a lord;
夫唯无知,是以不我知。
and it is precisely because men do not understand this that they are unable to understand me.
知我者希,则我者贵。
Few then understand me, but it is upon this very fact my value depends.
是以圣人被褐怀玉。
It is indeed in this sense that “the Sage wears hair-cloth on top, but carries jade underneath his dress.”