Top 15 Mencius Quotes

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

With melted snow I boil fragrant tea.

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

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

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.

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

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

People are distressed by their inability to do it. The problem, however, is simply that they don't do it.

That's like climbing a tree to find a fish.

So it is that whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and confound his every endeavor. In this way his patience and endurance are developed, and his weaknesses are overcome. We change and grow only when we make mistakes. We realize what to do only when we work through worry and confusion. And we gain people’s trust and understanding only when our inner thoughts are revealed clearly in our faces and words.

The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom

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

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.

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.

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.