Mencius Quotes

The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

Only when there are things a man will not do is he capable of doing great things.

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

There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination.

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.

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?

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.

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

The great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart.

A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed.

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

The great man is he that does not lose his child-heart.

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.