读万卷书

Pronunciation: dú wàn juàn shū Literal meaning: Read ten thousand scrolls

Origin & Usage

This is from the couplet 读万卷书，行万里路 — read (读) ten thousand (万) scrolls (卷书), walk ten thousand li — made famous by the Ming painter and critic Dong Qichang, who used it in his writing on painting; a Yuan-dynasty verse by Fang Hui has it earlier still. It is often misattributed to Du Fu, who wrote something different: 读书破万卷，下笔如有神, on reading wearing out ten thousand scrolls until the brush moves as if inspired. Ten thousand is not literal; in Classical Chinese it stands for an exhaustive quantity. The pairing matters, since reading alone was never the whole prescription. Modern usage argues that study and direct experience each finish what the other starts.

Examples

English: "She broadened her perspective through extensive reading"

Chinese: 她通过广泛阅读拓宽了视野