148 Quotes by Mencius

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.

There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, 'it is not owing to me, it is owing to the year.' In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, 'it was not I, it was the weapon?

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

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

With melted snow I boil fragrant tea.

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.

If someone stops where they should not, they’ll stop anywhere. If someone slights a person they should treat generously, they’ll slight anyone. And if someone races ahead, they retreat in a hurry.

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