10 Chinese Philosophy Quotes & Life Lessons

Good and evil deeds repaid in kind

Literal: Cause and effect return

Cause (因), effect (果), and the returning repayment (报应). The vocabulary is Buddhist and entered Chinese with the translated sutras, bringing with it a moral mechanics quite different from the older Chinese idea of heaven's mandate: consequence here is impersonal, exact, and not necessarily settled w...

Things happen when ready

Literal: Melon ripe stem falls

When the melon (瓜) is ripe (熟), the stem (蒂) drops (落) of itself. The observation is agricultural and precise: a melon taken early has to be pulled, and one left to its time separates without force. The phrase is used of anything that cannot usefully be hurried — a negotiation, a diagnosis, a decisi...

Small signs show big picture

Literal: One leaf know autumn

This one comes from the Huainanzi of the Han dynasty: 见一叶落而知岁之将暮 — seeing one leaf fall, one knows the year is drawing to its close. From a single (一) leaf (叶) one knows (知) that autumn (秋) has come. The point is inference from a small, ordinary, easily missed particular, not from a dramatic sign. R...

Never too late to fix

Literal: Fix pen after lost sheep

The Strategies of the Warring States gives it to the minister Zhuang Xin, speaking to the King of Chu after part of the kingdom has already been lost: seeing the hare and turning to call the hound is not too late, and mending (补) the pen (牢) after losing (亡) the sheep (羊) is not too late either — 亡羊...

Fates linked together

Literal: Lips gone teeth cold

This metaphor comes from the Zuo Zhuan, in the Spring and Autumn period. Jin sought permission to march through the small state of Yu in order to attack its neighbour Guo. Yu's advisor Gong Zhiqi objected that Yu and Guo depended on one another as lips (唇) and teeth (齿) do: once the lips are gone (亡...

Fail due to giving up near the end

Literal: Work fails one basket

This one comes from the Book of Documents: 为山九仞，功亏一篑 — in raising a mound nine ren high, the work (功) fails (亏) for one basket (篑) of earth. Everything already carried counts for nothing if the last load is not. The image is deliberately cruel about proportion: the shortfall is trivial and the loss ...

Actions cannot be undone

Literal: Spilled water hard to recover

This descends from the story of Jiang Ziya, whose wife left him during his years of poverty and sought to return once he had risen. He poured a basin of water on the ground and invited her to gather it up. Water once overturned (覆水) cannot be recovered (难收). The story is unsentimental about the asym...

Natural selection eliminates the unfit

Literal: Superior wins inferior eliminated

The superior (优) prevail (胜), the inferior (劣) are washed out (汰). This is not a classical idiom: it entered Chinese in the late Qing through Yan Fu's translation of Huxley, in the wave of thinking about survival and struggle that reached China at the moment it was losing wars to industrial powers. ...

Reap what one sows; suffer consequences

Literal: Self eat its fruit

To eat (食) the fruit (果) of one's own (自) tree (其). The metaphor is agricultural and its force lies in the ownership: the fruit is not a punishment sent from outside but the thing that grew from what was planted, so nobody has to be blamed for the outcome arriving. Chinese uses it with satisfaction ...

Haste makes waste; more haste less speed

Literal: Desire speed, not reach

Confucius, advising a newly appointed magistrate, told him not to want things quickly and not to be drawn by small advantages: 欲速则不达 — want (欲) speed (速) and you will not (不) arrive (达). The reasoning is administrative rather than moral, and it concerns a governor trying to show results early. The c...