"Chuang Tzu was accompanying a funeral when he passed by the grave of Hui Tzu. Turning to his attendants, he said, "There was once a plasterer who, if he got a speck of mud on the tip of his nose no thicker than a fly's wing, would get his friend Carpenter Shih to slice it off for him. Carpenter Shih, whirling his hatchet with a noise like the wind, would accept the assignment and proceed to slice, removing every bit of mud without injury to the nose, while the plasterer just stood there completely unperturbed. Lord Yuan of Sung, hearing of this feat, summoned Carpenter Shih and said, 'Could you try performing it for me?' But Carpenter Shih replied, 'It's true that I was once able to slice like that but the material I worked on has been dead these many years.' Since you died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There's no one I can talk to any more.""
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Zhuangzi, Ch. 24, as translated by Burton Watson (1968), p. 269
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hui_Shi
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Hui Shi
Hui Shi (Chinese: ć ć˝; pinyin: HuĂŹ ShÄŤ; WadeâGiles: Hui Shih; 380â305 BCE), or Huizi (Chinese: ć ĺ; pinyin: HuĂŹzÇ; WadeâGiles: Hui Tzu; "Master Hui"), was a Chinese philosopher during the Warring States period. He was a representative of the School of Names dialecticians inspired by Mozi, and is famous for ten paradoxes about the relativity of all things.
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