Ancient Chinese Quotes

To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river, - the River of Heaven, - the Silver Stream. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

When I lived in New York and went to Chinatown, I learned that these flavors and their meanings were actually a foundation of ancient Chinese medicine.
Salty translated to fear and the frantic energy that tries to compensate for or hide it.
Sweet was the first flavor we recognized from our mother's milk, and to which we turned when we were worried and unsure or depressed.
Sour usually meant anger and frustration.
Bitter signified matters of the heart, from simply feeling unloved to the almost overwhelming loss of a great love. Most spices, along with coffee and chocolate, had some bitterness in their flavor profile. Even sugar, when it cooked too long, turned bitter. But to me, spice was for grief, because it lingered longest. ~ Judith Fertig

It's the fear of what's in the dark that scares us, not the dark itself. Thanks, ancient Chinese philosophers. You guys are the best. And the deadest. But mostly the best. Jack's ~ Sara Wolf

it might seem advisable to prove that the haunt of the walrus was known to the ancient chinese writers who have furnished accounts of america, but it is unnecessary to do this, seeing that the phenomenon of the ten suns, which is only visible at the arctic circle, is referred to in the ancient books. ~ Alexander McAllan

The title 'Now He Sings, Now He Sobs' comes from 'I Ching,' an ancient Chinese book that I was into in the '60s when I was studying different philosophies and religions. ~ Chick Corea

If we don't change the direction we're going, we're likely to end up where we're headed. Ancient Chinese proverb ~ Stacey Hall

We are not scholars researching an ancient Chinese emperor - a matter of objectivity and disinterestedness; we are sons and daughters who want to get to know our father - someone with whom we have an essential relationship. ~ Brian D. McLaren

(1) Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at innovation, is more widespread in some societies than in others. (2) The scientific outlook is a unique feature of post-Renaissance European society that has contributed heavily to its modern technological preeminence. (3) Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a strongly traditional outlook (as in China's emphasis on ancient Chinese classics) stifles it. (4) Religions vary greatly in their relation to technological innovation: some branches of Judaism and Christianity are claimed to be especially compatible with it, while some branches of Islam, Hinduism, and Brahmanism may be especially incompatible with it. ~ Jared Diamond

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet. ~ John Updike

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

You can not ignore his current life. Bowie has become a family man and enjoys to see his children grow up close to him. But after six years he feels the urge to get in the studio with musicans he likes. He closely follows bands like Arcade Fire in recent months. But he is inspired by ancient Chinese folk and jazz these days as well. ~ Gail Ann Dorsey

It is because of its emptiness that the cup is useful. ~ Carole Wilkinson

Everyone sees the violence of the swollen river.

Few see the violence of the embankments that constrain it. ~ Ancient Chinese Proverb

Ancient Chinese custom if you were a guest in one of their homes and you admired some particular thing, they would wrap it up and present it to you as a gift. But isn't that what life does. ~ Sterling W. Sill

To make an artwork good enough to enter people's hearts is like what ancient Chinese called 'making stone into gold.' It is alchemy. ~ Li Shan

When the snipe and the mussel struggle, the fisherman gets the benefit. Ancient Chinese saying ~ Robert Greene

If you look at ancient Chinese culture, and depictions of it, the relationship between people and nature was very different. It almost felt as though feelings were always attached to a certain landscape. ~ Jia Zhangke

Relationships
An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.
Ancient Chinese proverb ~ Aminta Arrington

So considering how the current official religion of China seems to be something like "Stand still while we bulldoze your house to build this dam" it's hard to put a finger on the relationship between ancient Chinese tales and any specific religion. ~ Cory O'Brien

Artificial creatures date back to the ancient Chinese and Greeks. Renaissance automata were designed primarily to entertain, reflecting the value placed on leisure. ~ Ken Goldberg

If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there. ~ Laurence Eubank

Laozi was an ancient Chinese philosopher. According to Chinese tradition, Laozi lived in the 6th century BC, however many historians contend that Laozi ~ Lao-Tzu

The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot. ~ Arne Glimcher

was permitted to start business. Soon the royal partner ran up such huge debts on equity that the company went bankrupt. The Chinese partner was left with the bill, and could not leave Thailand until his family paid everyone off. He had been royally plundered. ~ Sterling Seagrave

Civil disobedience can help to focus attention on a particular injustice. It was used historically to highlight wrongs in society - turning ancient redwood forests into paper towels or preventing people from sitting down at lunch counters because of the color of their skin. On climate change, we have not seen strong leadership coming from Washington, DC.In particular the president has an enormous opportunity to follow up on his inaugural speech with a concerted course of action to aggressively take on a clean energy transition. ~ Michael Brune

China no longer has an ideology that makes any sense to them, but what they do have is great pride in the Chinese nation. ~ Evan Osnos

You're staring blankly at the fifties now. I'm thirty-ish. Once you were my teacher, my master and I was your student, your apprentice. College years long gone and a decade between us. I think of you every winter and my heart still stops dead, my mouth opening and shutting as if you were still here. I lost something when I found you, something ancient. ~ Abigail George

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Blossom time has come and many ancient seekers are today getting their Self Realization. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Aiden smirked. "Wonder what this one is called?"
The hellhound's ears twitched as the massive body lowered preparing for attack. I slid my hand to the middle of the blade, feeling my heart pound and the adrenaline kick my system into overdrive. In the pit of my stomach, the cord started to unravel.
I swallowed. "Let's call this one ... Toto."
Three mouths opened in a growl that sent a cold chill down my spine, and a wave of hot, fetid breath smacked into us. Bile burned the back of my throat.
"I guess it doesn't like the name," I said, moving slowly to the right.
Aiden's powerful body tensed. "Here, Toto ... " One head snapped in his direction. "That's a good Toto."
I slipped around the ancient cross, creeping up on the hellhound from the right. The middle and left head focused on me, snapping and growlying.
Aiden clucked his tongue. "Come on, Toto, I'm pretty tasty. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Be modest in speech, but excel in action. ~ Horace

As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never best found there, and it is subverted, time and again, by ancient savagery and superstition. ~ Sam Harris

My Ancestor Series of adventure-thrillers run like a raging river. I'm now in the editing process with my next thriller, "The Apothecary." Please go to my website for excerpts, synopses, and book trailers of all my works: http://www.gracepublisihing.org. ~ Marshall Chamberlain

Shakespearean tragedy is neither ancient history nor fairy tale. Perhaps to express this is the most important thing. In which period does the action of the play take place? It is in that past which can become the future. ~ Grigori Kozintsev

O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern" instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,–that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else? ~ George Eliot

This was a man who moved like the gods were watching: every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector ~ Madeline Miller

Perhaps the strangest manifestation of the Eurocentric approach to the history of military technology is ... the attempt to discern fundamental cultural roots in the distant past that have resulted in the perceived current Western dominance of the world. This essentialism attempts to contrast ancient Greek logic and philosophy with the less rationally minded philosophies of the non-West. Modern science and technology, in this view, is a simple jump from ancient Greece to early modern Europe. ~ Peter A. Lorge

Well-referenced, with numerous quotations from renowned Egyptologists and classical scholars, Acharya's penetrating research clearly lays out the very ancient pre-Christian basis of modern Christianity. Those who espouse Christianity beware! After digesting the evidence, you will never again view your religion in the same light. ~ Robert M. Schoch

We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country. ~ Pearl S. Buck

The basic operating premise for the ancient Mesopotamians throughout all periods of their history is that humans were created and placed on earth so the gods did not have to work. ~ Tammi J. Schneider

about 40 million Chinese, a tenth of the country's population, were opium addicts. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

In ancient Greece, politics and the market were not decoupled. ~ George Papandreou

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins. ~ Raymond Chandler

Idolatrous beliefs have eroded the foundations of truth. Whether ancient or modern, all have posed alternatives to the biblical way of approaching God. ~ Billy Graham

Poor white trash quoting de Maistre and Carlyle and fancying themselves elite while they scrabbled to survive in a world where they were outstripped economically by the Chinese and intellectually by their own phones. ~ Ken MacLeod

The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven. ~ Michael Hudson

I am obsessed with Chinese restaurants. Like many Americans, I first discovered them in my childhood. ~ Jennifer Lee

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, h eart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits. ~ William H. Gass

There is a Western phenomenon called the male midlife crisis. Very often it is heralded by divorce. What history might have done to you, you bring about on purpose: separation from woman and child. Don't tell me that such men aren't tasting the ancient flavors of death and defeat.
In America, with divorce achieved, the midlifer can expect to be more recreational, more discretionary. He can almost design the sort of crisis he is going to have: motorbike, teenage girlfriend, vegetarianism, jogging, sports car, mature boyfriend, cocaine, crash diet, powerboat, new baby, religion, hair transplant.
Over here, now, there's no angling around for your male midlife crisis. It is brought to you and it is always the same thing. It is death. ~ Martin Amis

The wheel of Rome spins constantly. Gods rise and fall, mortals live and die, and round and round we go. We all play a part in that wheel ... And I make sure the wheel never stops spinning. You see, if the wheel stops, balance is lost. ~ Katlyn Charlesworth

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men ... This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Everything that occurs in the world, in every epoch, has something that corresponds to it in ancient times. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy. ~ Plutarch