King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Quotes about the mind

  1. The Master said, "Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

  2. Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do.

  3. The Master said, "The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain.

  4. The Master said, "A scholar, whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with.

  5. The Master said, "The superior man, in the world, does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.

  6. The Master said, "Po-i and Shu-ch'i did not keep the former wickednesses of men in mind, and hence the resentments directed towards them were few.

  7. 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.'

  8. 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.'

  1. 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.'

  2. 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.'

  3. 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.'

Wikiquote quotations are available under CC BY-SA 4.0 (links on each author page); classics passages are public-domain translations.

Data: Wikiquote (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0); English Wikisource (Public domain texts; transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.