Chinese Sayings / Proverbs

In Line with the Chinese New Year celebration, As everyone else is sharing what the Dragon Year will bring us, I am sharing Chinese sayings. These are from a collection of my quotable quotes. I love quotes or wise sayings and I have a collection of some very good ones for us to  reflect on.


1. The best thing is to be respected, the next, is to be loved; it is bad to be hated, but still worse to be despised.
2. Worldly fame and pleasure are destructive to the virtue of the mind; anxious thoughts and apprehensions are injurious to the health of the body.
3. Unsullied poverty is always happy, while impure wealth brings with it many sorrows.
4. The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
5. Good fortune is a benefit to the wise, but a curse to the foolish.
6. A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
7. The best thing is to be respected, the next, is to be loved; it is bad to be hated, but still worse to be despised.
8. A foolish husband fears his wife; a prudent wife obeys her husband.
9. A vacant mind is open to all suggestions, as the hollow mountain returns all soundsa.
10. By nature all men are alike, but by education very different.
11. He who toils with pain will eat with pleasure.
12. The fame of good men's actions seldom goes beyond their own doors, but their evil deeds are carried a thousand miles' distance.
13. The doctrine that enters only into the ear is like the repast one takes in a dream.
14. Do not anxiously expect what is not yet come; do not vainly regret what is already past.
15. Do not consider any vice as trivial, and therefore practise it; do not consider any virtue as unimportant, and therefore neglect it.
16. It is not easy to stop the fire when the water is at a distance; friends at hand are better than relations afar off.
17. A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child.
18. The man of worth is really great without being proud; the mean man is proud without being really great.
19. Those who cause dissensions in order to injure other people are preparing pitfalls for their own ruin.
20. Let every man sweep the snow from before his own doors, and not busy himself about the frost on his neighbour's tiles.


Majority of the above quotes are from the book, Book of Wise Sayings by W. A. Clouston.  Please PM or email me to request a copy of the said book. No copyright infringement intended.