Mencius Quotes

If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

Trying to meet a worthy man in the wrong way is as bad as closing the door on an invited guest.

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.

Friends are the siblings God never gave us

When someone dies, You say, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the harvest.’ How is this different from killing someone by stabbing him and saying, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the weapon’? If Your Majesty does not blame the harvest, then the people of the world will come to You.

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.

La amistad es una mente en dos cuerpos.

If others do not respond to your love with love, look into your own benevolence; if others fail to respond to your attempts to govern them with order, look into your own respect. In other words, look into yourself whenever you fail to achieve your purpose. When you are correct in your person, the Empire will turn to you.

Filling with food,
Warming with clothes,
Living leisurely without learning,
It is little short of animals.

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do.

Those with cringing postures and flattering smiles work harder than those who till the fields in summer.

Don’t do what should not be done, and don’t desire what should not be desired. Abide by this one precept, and everything else will follow.

Mencius went to see King Huei of Liang. The king said, "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied, "Why must your Majesty use that word "profit"? What I am provided with, are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics."

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