This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
In the development of Chinese, besides the many idioms it has left behind, there are also many proverbs, maxims and famous sayings that have circulated in streets and neighborhoods, greatly enriching the expressive power of the language. Here are a few excerpts.
Human feelings are like paper, every sheet thin; worldly affairs are like chess, every game new.
Poor in the bustling market, no one asks after you; rich in the deep mountains, you have distant relatives. If you don’t believe it, just look at the wine at a banquet: every cup is first offered to the rich and noble. Tie a tall horse at your door, and even those who are not kin become kin.
Leave a beggar’s stick at your door, and relatives and old friends will not come. In this world, making friends requires gold; without much gold, friendships are not deep. Even if promises are made for a while, in the end they are just strangers passing on the road. With money and wine you have many brothers; in an emergency, when did you ever see one of them? The winner becomes king and the loser a bandit; people value only clothes and hats, not the person.
Three times poor, three times rich, before reaching old age; in ten years, how many people rise and fall! For three days in office, people ask after me; three days out of office, I must ask after others. People of old never saw today’s moon, yet today’s moon once shone on people of old. The tower near the water gets the moonlight first; flowers and trees facing the sun meet spring easily. Who is not talked about behind his back, and who does not talk about others behind their backs?
Tempered a hundred times, become a man of iron; seal your mouth three times and learn from the bronze statue.
Of ten parts of cleverness use seven, and always leave three for your children and grandchildren. A gentleman ends up being a gentleman; a petty man is a petty man in vain. In the mountains there are trees a thousand years old, but in the world it is hard to meet a person of a hundred. Even the tears of longing for kin on a distant road cannot match parents’ love for their child.
The two elders in the hall are living Buddhas; why go to Vulture Peak to worship the World-Honored One?
If in your life you do nothing to make others frown, there should be no one in the world who gnashes his teeth at you. The more treacherous and cunning, the poorer; treachery and cunning are not tolerated by heaven. If wealth and rank came from treachery and cunning, the simple folk of the world would be drinking the west wind. When asking for help, ask a true man; when helping others, help them in their moment of need. Across the vast four seas there are countless people, but which man among them is a true man?
Human feelings are like water, finding high and low; worldly affairs are like clouds, rolling and unrolling as they please. In the mountains, fear not the tiger that wounds people; fear only the two-edged knife of human feelings. Strive to be on good terms with people everywhere; if you don’t drink, let wine prices be as high as they will. Know few affairs, and you have few worries; know many people, and you have much gossip. When autumn comes, the mountains are full of beauty; when spring comes, flower fragrance is everywhere. When poor, no great man will give you gold; when sick, there are wise people to tell you prescriptions.
For a beauty to sell her smile for a thousand gold is easy; for a hero at the end of his road to get one meal is hard. When young one always thinks it easy to be a person; only in the prime of life does one know how hard it is to build a career. Scheming with all your heart, everything goes wrong; thinking back on it, everything is hard. The idle sorrows of the world come by the ten thousand bushels; do not let even a little of them reach your brows.
The day one ruins oneself is always a day of doing evil; one’s name is always made in a time of doing good. Do not waste your true heart on calculating; only great virtue enjoys ten thousand years. Slander ruins true gentlemen; beauty wears away reckless youths. Even immortals find it hard to judge matters of hidden merit; the heavens do not overlook those who work with a sincere heart. When a person is evil, people fear him but heaven does not; when a person is good, people bully him but heaven does not.
Good and evil are rewarded in the end; it is only a matter of sooner or later. If in your life you do nothing against your conscience, a knock at the door at midnight will not startle you. In all things, people are urged not to deceive, for three feet above your head there are gods. Ghosts and gods may be revered but not flattered; enmity should be untied, not tied. Where in life will people not meet again? Do not show anger over small grudges.
Loving righteousness is indeed respected by people; coveting profit is laughed at by ghosts. The worthy do not flaunt their strengths; the gentleman does not take what others love. Good deeds that can be done should be done with effort; idle matters of right and wrong are not worth your trouble. Good fields are not acquired except through the field of the heart; property turns into karmic debt and is lost. In a thousand years heaven and earth have eight hundred owners; the field is the master and people are the guests.
A burial site is not as good as new land; fate lies with people, not with heaven. With reason on your side you can question even the king; with money you cannot buy worthy descendants. Whether the water is warm or cold, the fish knows; flowers bloom and fade, and spring does not care. Contending for victory on a snail’s horn; competing for long and short in a spark struck from stone.
Taking care to learn from the ancients is hard; once you stand, fear only being swept along with the flowing water.
Young and with few desires, your complexion is good; old and not seeking office, even your dreams are at ease. Wonderful medicines cannot cure illnesses of karmic debt; windfall wealth will not enrich one fated to be poor. Since ancient times, the passionate are left only with regret; good dreams have always been the easiest to wake from. If you are fated to have only eight ge of rice, you can travel the whole world and still not fill a sheng.
Those who know kindness and repay it are few in the world; those who turn their backs ungratefully are many. Beside glory and favor, disgrace lies waiting; behind poverty and lowliness, blessings follow. Each person’s life and death is each person’s own to settle; meddle in others’ affairs and you will be worn down by them. Mountain streams rise easily and fall easily; the hearts of petty men turn easily and reverse easily.
Do not call a rouged beauty old; do not call a romantic rake poor. A dragon in shallow water is teased by shrimps; a tiger come down to the plain is bullied by dogs. A cat that has found food is stronger than a tiger; a phoenix that has lost its feathers is worse than a chicken. Do not make thousand-year plans in life: thirty years east of the river, forty years west.
A leaky roof meets days of continuous rain; a slow boat meets a headwind. I remember riding a bamboo horse as a boy, and look, I am already a white-haired old man. A peerless beauty is at bottom a bewitching thing; much wealth in troubled times is the root of disaster. Animals are easy to save, people hard to save; better to save animals than people.
Heaven is the chessboard and the stars the pieces; water has its source and trees have roots. Yesterday’s flowers bloomed and today they fade; a person of a hundred years has a heart of ten thousand years. In the desolate graves of Beimang there is no rich or poor; heaped clouds and floating clouds change past into present. The affairs of the world are vast and hard to foresee; the clear wind and bright moon look coolly on people.
Guard your mouth and do not talk of affairs new or old; true friends are hard to find, two or three at most. To know the ways of the world you must taste gall; having seen all of human feelings, you nod silently. Right and wrong come only from opening your mouth too much; troubles all come from forcing yourself to the front. A life of seventy has been rare since ancient times; may I ask, sir, how many springs and autumns you have left? A family’s plan lies in harmony; a life’s plan lies in diligence.
Each emperor has his own ministers; each generation is fresh and then grows stale. Each sprout has its own dew, each blade its own grass; each layer of hills and waters has its own people. Sitting gloomily in the study, idly worrying, it all seems to be discussing past and present. In books where there is truth there is also falsehood; worldly people recognize the false and not the true.
When the false is taken for true, the true becomes false; when the true is taken for false, the false also becomes true.
Truth and falsehood are hard to tell apart; the false is false of itself and the true is true of itself. Looking back on events, everything was false; borrow the false to cultivate the true and break through the maze of delusion. Wealth and rank have always been a dream in the third watch of the night; why trouble your heart so painfully?
