The passage at the close of the first section is among the most quoted in the whole Upanishadic corpus, and it is unusual because it is not metaphysics. A teacher tells a student who is leaving to speak the truth, to practise virtue, to neglect neither learning nor teaching, to treat mother, father, teacher and guest as one would treat a god, and to imitate only those of the teacher's own acts that are good, not the rest. It then adds an instruction on giving: give with faith, in plenty, with modesty, with fear, and with sympathy. Two features stand out. It licenses the student to judge the teacher, which is a remarkable thing to write into a formal address. And where conduct is uncertain, it says to observe how thoughtful people of good judgment behave in that situation and do likewise, which is guidance by example rather than by rule.
The passage has had a continuous public life of a kind almost nothing else in this literature has. It is used at convocation and graduation ceremonies in India, printed on certificates and recited in settings far removed from Vedic study, so that many people meet it as a spoken occasion marking the end of their education rather than as a text encountered on a page. That is close to its original function, which is a rare continuity for a passage of this age, and it is worth noticing that the words being used are still the ones addressed to a student leaving a teacher's house.