Chinese Proverbs and Sayings

• Public before private and country before family.
• If your strength is small, don’t carry heavy burdens. If your words are worthless, don’t give advice.
• Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.
• Waiting for a rabbit to hit upon a tree and be killed in order to catch it.
• Failing to steal chickens and losing a fistful of rice into the bargain.
• Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.
• The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
• Teachers open the door but you must walk through it yourself.
• Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness
• A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
• A book holds a house of gold.
• Butcher the donkey after it finished his job on the mill.
• If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
• he drinker’s heart is not in the drop
• Keeping the company of an emperor is like keeping the company of a tiger
• Hearing a hundred times is not as good as seeing once
• The Way that can be expressed is not the everlasting way. Names that can be named are not changeless names