Top 99 Mencius Quotes of All time - Quotes.Pub

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When someone dies, You say, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the harvest.’ How is this different from killing someone by stabbing him and saying, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the weapon’? If Your Majesty does not blame the harvest, then the people of the world will come to You.

If someone stops where they should not, they’ll stop anywhere. If someone slights a person they should treat generously, they’ll slight anyone. And if someone races ahead, they retreat in a hurry.

They agree with the current customs. They consent with an impure age. Their principles have a semblance of right-heartedness and truth. Their conduct has a semblance of disinterestedness and purity. All men are pleased with them, and they think themselves right, but you cannot enter into the Way of Yao and Shun with them. For this reason they are called “The thieves of virtue.

There are things a person wants more than life and there are also things he or she loathes more than death.

I understand what lies hidden beneath beguiling words. I understand the trap beneath extravagant words. I understand the deceit beneath depraved words. And I understand the weariness beneath evasive words.

When men are subdued by force, they do not submit in their minds, but only because their strength is inadequate. When men are subdued by power in personality they are pleased to their very heart’s core and do really submit.

There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, ‘it is not owing to me, it is owing to the year.’ In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, ’it was not I, it was the weapon?

Words that speak of things close at hand and carry far-reaching implications – those are the good words.

Getting something done is like digging a well. You can dig a well seventy feet deep, but if you don’t hit water it’s just an abandoned well.

All tongues savor the same flavors, all ears hear the same music, and all eyes see the same beauty.

Make your learning abundant and speak of it with precision, then you will speak of essentials.

It’s simple: To say anything about the nature of things, you must attend to the facts, facts in their original form. The trouble with knowledge is that it keeps chiseling things away.

Don’t do what should not be done, and don’t desire what should not be desired. Abide by this one precept, and everything else will follow.

People are distressed by their inability to do it. The problem, however, is simply that they don’t do it.

Words that defy reality are ominous. And it’s ominous reality that confronts those who would obscure the wise and worthy.

For nurturing the mind, there’s nothing like paring your desires away to a very few. If you have few desires, there may still be some capricious whims in your mind, but they’ll be few. If you have many desires, there may be some enduring principles in your mind, but they’ll be few indeed.

There’s only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make. We each contain precious and worthless, great and small. Never injure the great for the sake of the small, or the precious for the sake of the worthless. Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them.

All beneath Heaven is rooted in nation. Nation is rooted in family. And family is rooted in self.

La amistad es una mente en dos cuerpos.

Treat others as you would be treated. Devote yourself to that, for there’s no more direct approach to Humanity.

To lay hold of the mean without taking into account the occasion is like grasping one thing only.

Where it is permissible both to die and not to die, it is an abuse of valour to die.

To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets.

The five kinds of grains are considered good plants, but if the grains are not ripe, they are worse than cockles. It is the same with regard to kindness, which must grow into maturity.

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honour, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

Incessant falls teach men to reform, and distress rouses their strength. Life springs from calamity, and death from ease.

The regular path of virtue is to be pursued without any bend, and from no view to emolument.

The people turn in allegiance to Humanity, as surely as water flows downward or as a wild animal takes cover in the wilderness.

The tendency of mans nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downward.

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death.

There is a power in everything; it is the job of the artist to determine it and express it.

Friendship with a man is friendship with his virtue, and does not admit of assumptions of superiority.

The poor attend to their own virtue in solitude.

Listen to a man’s words and look at the pupil of his eye. How can a man conceal his character?

If the prince of a State love benevolence, he will have no opponent in all the empire.

The Way lies at hand yet it is sought afar off; the thing lies in the easy yet it is sought in the difficult.

Mankind fears an evil man but heaven does not.

The way is One and only One. The way is close at hand, but men seek it afar.

Integrity, wisdom, skill, intelligence – such things are forged in adversity.

Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of our nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downward.

Every duty is a charge, but the charge of oneself is the root of all others.

Evil exists to glorify the good. Evil is negative good. It is a relative term. Evil can be transmuted into good. What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else.

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

One who believes all of a book would be better off without books.

A small country cannot contend with a great; the few cannot contend with the many; the weak cannot contend with the strong.

Only those who develop their minds and spirits to the utmost can serve Heaven and fulfill their own destinies.

The ways are two: love and want of love. That is all.

All things are complete within ourselves.

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