From The Caigentan:

"Always leave boiled rice out for mice and keep lamps dark out of pity for moths."

Robert Aitken, commenting on this line from the ancient chinese text, Vegetable Roots Discourse (The Caigentan), "The ancients had this sort of concern, and it's really the whole point of life, generation after generation. Without it, one can only be called a blockheaded carcass."