Mencius quotes
Mencius said, 'People have this common saying, "The kingdom, the State, the family." The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.'
Mencius said, 'The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in what is remote. The work of duty lies in what is easy, and men seek for it in what is difficult. If each man would love his parents and show the due respect to his elders, the whole land would enjoy tranquillity.'
Mencius said, 'There are cases of praise which could not be expected, and of reproach when the parties have been seeking to be perfect.'
Mencius said, 'Men's being ready with their tongues arises simply from their not having been reproved.'
Mencius said, 'The evil of men is that they like to be teachers of others.'
Mencius, addressing the disciple Yue Zheng, said to him, 'Your coming here in the train of Zi Ao was only because of the food and the drink. I could not have thought that you, having learned the doctrine of the ancients, would have acted with a view to eating and drinking.'
Mencius said, 'There are three things which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them. Shun married without informing his parents because of this, lest he should have no posterity. Superior men consider that his doing so was the same as if he had informed them.'
Mencius said, 'When scholars are put to death without any crime, the great officers may leave the country. When the people are slaughtered without any crime, the scholars may remove.'
Mencius said, 'If the sovereign be benevolent, all will be benevolent. If the sovereign be righteous, all will be righteous.'
Mencius said, 'Acts of propriety which are not really proper, and acts of righteousness which are not really righteous, the great man does not do.'
Mencius said, 'Men must be decided on what they will NOT do, and then they are able to act with vigour in what they ought to do.'
Mencius said, 'What future misery have they and ought they to endure, who talk of what is not good in others!'
Mencius said, 'Zhong Ni did not do extraordinary things.'
Mencius said,'The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute - he simply speaks and does what is right.'
Mencius said, 'The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart.'
Mencius said, 'The nourishment of parents when living is not sufficient to be accounted the great thing. It is only in the performing their obsequies when dead that we have what can be considered the great thing.'
Mencius said, 'In learning extensively and discussing minutely what is learned, the object of the superior man is that he may be able to go back and set forth in brief what is essential.'
Mencius said, 'Never has he who would by his excellence subdue men been able to subdue them. Let a prince seek by his excellence to nourish men, and he will be able to subdue the whole kingdom. It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of the heart.'
Mencius said, 'Words which are not true are inauspicious, and the words which are most truly obnoxious to the name of inauspicious, are those which throw into the shade men of talents and virtue.'
Mencius said, 'The influence of a sovereign sage terminates in the fifth generation. The influence of a mere sage does the same. Although I could not be a disciple of Confucius himself, I have endeavoured to cultivate my virtue by means of others who were.'
Mencius said, 'If the lady Xi had been covered with a filthy head-dress, all people would have stopped their noses in passing her. Though a man may be wicked, yet if he adjust his thoughts, fast, and bathe, he may sacrifice to God.'
The officer Chu said to Mencius, 'Master, the king sent persons to spy out whether you were really different from other men.' Mencius said, 'How should I be different from other men? Yao and Shun were just the same as other men.'
Mencius said, 'Of all seeds the best are the five kinds of grain, yet if they be not ripe, they are not equal to the ti or the bai. So, the value of benevolence depends entirely on its being brought to maturity.'
Mencius said, 'Yi, in teaching men to shoot, made it a rule to draw the bow to the full, and his pupils also did the same. A master-workman, in teaching others, uses the compass and square, and his pupils do the same.'
Mencius said, 'If a scholar have not faith, how shall he take a firm hold of things?'
Mencius said, 'There are many arts in teaching. I refuse, as inconsistent with my character, to teach a man, but I am only thereby still teaching him.'
Mencius said, 'All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination. If one acts with a vigorous effort at the law of reciprocity, when he seeks for the realization of perfect virtue, nothing can be closer than his approximation to it.'
Mencius said, 'To act without understanding, and to do so habitually without examination, pursuing the proper path all the life without knowing its nature - this is the way of multitudes.'
Mencius said, 'A man may not be without shame. When one is ashamed of having been without shame, he will afterwards not have occasion to be ashamed.'
Mencius said, 'The sense of shame is to a man of great importance. Those who form contrivances and versatile schemes distinguished for their artfulness, do not allow their sense of shame to come into action. When one differs from other men in not having this sense of shame, what will he have in common with them?'
Mencius said, 'The mass of men wait for a king Wen, and then they will receive a rousing impulse. Scholars distinguished from the mass, without a king Wan, rouse themselves.'
Mencius said, 'Add to a man the families of Han and Wei. If he then look upon himself without being elated, he is far beyond the mass of men.'
Mencius said, 'Let the people be employed in the way which is intended to secure their ease, and though they be toiled, they will not murmur. Let them be put to death in the way which is intended to preserve their lives, and though they die, they will not murmur at him who puts them to death.'
Mencius said, 'Let a man not do what his own sense of righteousness tells him not to do, and let him not desire what his sense of righteousness tells him not to desire - to act thus is all he has to do.'
Mencius said, 'Hui of Liu Xia would not for the three highest offices of State have changed his firm purpose of life.'
Mencius said, 'A man with definite aims to be accomplished may be compared to one digging a well. To dig the well to a depth of seventy-two cubits, and stop without reaching the spring, is after all throwing away the well.'
Mencius said, 'Benevolence and righteousness were natural to Yao and Shun. Tang and Wu made them their own. The five chiefs of the princes feigned them. Having borrowed them long and not returned them, how could it be known they did not own them?'
Mencius said, 'The bodily organs with their functions belong to our Heaven-conferred nature. But a man must be a sage before he can satisfy the design of his bodily organization.'
Mencius said, 'When right principles prevail throughout the kingdom, one's principles must appear along with one's person. When right principles disappear from the kingdom, one's person must vanish along with one's principles. I have not heard of one's principles being dependent for their manifestation on other men.'
Mencius said, 'He who stops short where stopping is acknowledged to be not allowable, will stop short in everything. He who behaves shabbily to those whom he ought to treat well, will behave shabbily to all. He who advances with precipitation will retire with speed.'
Mencius said, 'In regard to inferior creatures, the superior man is kind to them, but not loving. In regard to people generally, he is loving to them, but not affectionate. He is affectionate to his parents, and lovingly disposed to people generally. He is lovingly disposed to people generally, and kind to creatures.'
Mencius said, 'In the "Spring and Autumn" there are no righteous wars. Instances indeed there are of one war better than another. "Correction" is when the supreme authority punishes its subjects by force of arms. Hostile States do not correct one another.'
Mencius said, 'A carpenter or a carriage-maker may give a man the circle and square, but cannot make him skilful in the use of them.'
Mencius said, 'Shun's manner of eating his parched grain and herbs was as if he were to be doing so all his life. When he became sovereign, and had the embroidered robes to wear, the lute to play, and the two daughters of Yao to wait on him, he was as if those things belonged to him as a matter of course.'
Mencius said, 'Anciently, the establishment of the frontier-gates was to guard against violence. Nowadays, it is to exercise violence.'
Mencius said, 'If a man himself do not walk in the right path, it will not be walked in even by his wife and children. If he order men according to what is not the right way, he will not be able to get the obedience of even his wife and children.'
Mencius said, 'A bad year cannot prove the cause of death to him whose stores of gain are large; an age of corruption cannot confound him whose equipment of virtue is complete.'
Mencius said, 'A man who loves fame may be able to decline a State of a thousand chariots; but if he be not really the man to do such a thing, it will appear in his countenance, in the matter of a dish of rice or a platter of soup.'
Mencius said, 'There are instances of individuals without benevolence, who have got possession of a single State, but there has been no instance of the throne's being got by one without benevolence.'
Mencius said, 'Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man. As embodied in man's conduct, it is called the path of duty.'
Mencius said, 'The reason why the superior man was reduced to straits between Chen and Cai was because neither the princes of the time nor their ministers sympathized or communicated with him.'
Mencius said, 'Anciently, men of virtue and talents by means of their own enlightenment made others enlightened. Nowadays, it is tried, while they are themselves in darkness, and by means of that darkness, to make others enlightened.'
Mencius said to the disciple Gao, 'There are the footpaths along the hills; if suddenly they be used, they become roads; and if, as suddenly they are not used, the wild grass fills them up. Now, the wild grass fills up your mind.'
Mencius said, 'There are the exactions of hempen-cloth and silk, of grain, and of personal service. The prince requires but one of these at once, deferring the other two. If he require two of them at once, then the people die of hunger. If he require the three at once, then fathers and sons are separated.'
Mencius said, 'The precious things of a prince are three: the territory, the people, the government and its business. If one value as most precious pearls and jade, calamity is sure to befall him.'
Mencius said, 'To nourish the mind there is nothing better than to make the desires few. Here is a man whose desires are few - in some things he may not be able to keep his heart, but they will be few. Here is a man whose desires are many - in some things he may be able to keep his heart, but they will be few.'
Public-domain translations: Mencius (James Legge, 1861).
Data: English Wikisource (Public domain texts; transcription CC BY-SA 4.0); Chinese Wikisource (Public domain texts; transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.