Confucius Quotes
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I am not an originator but a transmitter.
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Exemplary people concern themselves with virtue, small people concern themselves with territory. The ruling class thinks of punishment, the lower classes hope for benevolence.
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Study the past, if you would divine the future.
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Friendship with the upright, with the truthful and with the well informed is beneficial. Friendship with those who flatter, with those who are meek and who compromise with principles, and with those who talk cleverly is harmful.
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Rather than caring about whether or not you are known, strive to be worth knowing.
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How should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this?
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To find the Tao, there is nowhere you need to search. If it is not inside you, it is not the Tao.
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When a man comes to me, I accept him at his best, not at his worst. Why make so much ado? When a man washes his hands before paying a visit, and you receive him in that clean state, you do not thereby stand surety for his always having been clean in the past.
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When the multitude detests a man, inquiry is necessary; when the multitude likes a man, inquiry is equally necessary.
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Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.
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Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.
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The highest kind of man is the one who does before talking and practices what he professes.
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Care not for want of place; care for thy readiness to fill one. Care not for being unknown, but seek to be worthy of note.
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Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things.
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For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We should be careful indeed what we say.
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Some are born with knowledge, some derive it from study, and some acquire it only after a painful realization of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some study with a natural ease, some from a desire for advantages, and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing.
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A man exercising no forethought will soon experience present sorrow.
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The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this. In a position of wealth and honor, he does what is proper to a position of wealth and honor. In a poor and low position, he does what is proper to a poor and low position.
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A hammer shatters glass but it also forges steel.
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It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who never change.