Confucius Quotes
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Those who break down the dikes will themselves be drowned in the inundation.
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If an urn lacks the characteristics of an urn, how can we call it an urn?
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Watch their actions, observe their motives, examine wherein they dwell content; won't you know what kind of person they are?
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Teachers open the door ... you enter by yourself.
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If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.
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A hammer shatters glass but it also forges steel.
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The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.
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Everyone eats and drinks; yet only few appreciate the taste of food.
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There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth ... lust. When he is strong ... quarrelsomeness. When he is old ... covetousness.
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Seek Not Every Quality In One Individual.
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The man who loves his job never works a day in his life.
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I daily examine myself on three points: In planning for others, have I failed in conscientiousness? In intercourse with friends, have I been insincere? And have I failed to practice what I have been taught?
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If a man remembers what is right at the sign of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger, and does not forget sentiments he has repeated all his life when he has been in straitened circumstances for a long time, he may be said to be a complete man.
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The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.
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Slater soaks into the mind as water into low and marshy places, where it becomes stagnant and offensive.
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Coarse rice to eat, water to drink, my bended arm for a pillow - therein is happiness. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means are nothing but drifting clouds.
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Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact.
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To learn without thinking is labour in vain, to think without learning is desolation.
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Sincerity is that whereby self-completion is effected, and its way is that by which man must direct himself.
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What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
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To think twice is quite enough.
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By gaining the people, the kingdom is gained; by losing the people, the kingdom is lost.
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Happiness does not consist in having what you want, but in wanting what you have.
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When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.