10 Chinese Idioms for Daily Inspiration & Wisdom

Offer modest view to inspire better

Literal: Throw brick attract jade

Zhao Gu was the better poet, and Chang Jian wanted a poem out of him. Knowing Zhao Gu would visit the Lingyan Temple, Chang Jian went first and wrote two lines on the wall; Zhao Gu came, saw them, and completed the quatrain. Chang Jian's couplet was much the weaker, which is the point of the anecdot...

Perfect peaceful place

Literal: Peach spring beyond world

Tao Yuanming's account of the peach (桃) blossom spring (源) has a fisherman follow a stream through a grove, squeeze through a gap in the rock and come out among people who fled the wars of Qin: 乃不知有汉，无论魏晋 — they do not know there was a Han, still less Wei and Jin. He is entertained, leaves, marks th...

Self-reflect daily

Literal: Examine self three times

Zengzi, not Confucius, says it in the Analects: daily I examine (省) myself (吾身) on three (三) points — whether I have been unfaithful in planning for others, whether I have been untrustworthy with friends, whether I have failed to practise what was passed on to me. Whether 三 counts the occasions or t...

Live as a recluse in the wild

Literal: Pillow stream rinse stone

Sun Chu, meaning to say he would pillow on stones and rinse in the stream (枕石漱流) — the standard image of the recluse — got it out backwards as pillowing on the stream (枕流) and rinsing with stones (漱石). Asked by Wang Ji how a stream could be a pillow or a stone a mouthwash, he answered without pausin...

Experience brings wisdom

Literal: Old horse knows way

Returning from a campaign against Guzhu, the army of Duke Huan of Qi lost the road, and Guan Zhong proposed releasing the old horses (老马) and following them: they had walked the route before and would know the way (识途). They did, and the army got home. The Han Feizi tells it. What makes it a story r...

Maintain perfect dignified composure

Literal: Neither humble nor proud

Neither (不) cringing (卑) nor (不) overbearing (亢). Both halves name a failure of bearing under a difference in rank, and the phrase describes holding the line exactly between them. That is why it belongs to situations with a power gradient — meeting a superior, negotiating from weakness, representing...

Contentment with what one has brings happiness

Literal: Know enough constant happiness

The Daodejing supplies the thought in several places: there is no calamity greater than not knowing when one has enough, and the contentment that knows enough (知足) is enough for good (常乐). The claim is stronger than an argument for modest living — it is that sufficiency is a judgement rather than a ...

Choose simpler pleasures over status displays

Literal: Peaceful walking substitutes carriage

This is from the Strategies of the Warring States, where the scholar Yan Chu declines the patronage of King Xuan of Qi. Offered position and a carriage, he answers that he would rather eat late so that plain food tastes like meat, and walk unhurried (安步) so that walking serves as (当) a carriage (车)....

Live peacefully and work happily

Literal: Peaceful dwelling happy occupation

Settled in one's dwelling (安居) and content in one's work (乐业). The pairing covers the two halves of an ordinary life, house and livelihood, and Chinese political language has used it for two thousand years as the plain statement of what government is for. That is what gives it its weight: it is a mo...

Completely safe and unharmed through danger

Literal: Peaceful without illness

The Strategies of the Warring States has the Queen Dowager of Zhao receive an envoy from Qi and, before she has broken the seal on his letter, ask him three questions: is the harvest without trouble (无恙), are the people without trouble, is your king without trouble. The envoy takes offence at the or...