When you meet a wise person, you should learn from them and be inspired to become as wise as they are.
This is a pretty long phrase in English, but in Chinese it's only four characters.
However, in Chinese the deeper meaning often surpass the dictionary definition of each character.
In this case, you should seek wise people to learn from throughout your life...
Always try to learn enough to become equal to them. It also suggests that the process of learning and seeking wisdom is a non-ending cycle.
You May Learn from Victory, You Will Learn from Failure
bǎi shèng nán lǜ dí sān zhé nǎi liáng yī
Characters shown above are read vertically, starting from the right
This literally translates as: [Even a general who has won a] hundred victories [may be] hard put to see through the enemy's [strategy], [but one who has] broken [his] arm three [times] [will] be a good doctor.
Figuratively, this means: One cannot always depend on past successes to guarantee future success, but one can always learn from lessons drawn from failure.
This Chinese philosophy tells of how we continue to learn throughout our lives. It can be translated in a few ways such as "Study has no end", "Knowledge is infinite", "No end to learning", "There's always something new to study", or "You live and learn".
The deeper meaning: Even when we finish school we are still students of the world gaining more knowledge from our surroundings with each passing day.
You May Learn from Victory, You Will Learn from Failure
katte erumono mo areba makete erumono mo aru
Characters shown above are read vertically, starting from the right
You may learn when everything goes right, but the lessons learned when everything goes wrong are more vivid and lead to long-lasting wisdom.
Another way to look at this: One cannot always depend on past successes to guarantee future success, but one can always learn from lessons drawn from failure.
Learn from the Past
New ideas coming from past history
wēn gù zhī xīn on ko chi shin 온고지신
This is a universal Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and old Korean Hanja phrase that means, "coming up with new ideas based on things learned in the past".
It can also be defined as, "developing new ideas based on study of the past", "gain new insights through restudying old issues", "understand the present by reviewing the past" or simply, "learning from the past".
Experience is the Mother of Wisdom
jīng yàn shì zhì huì zhī mǔ
Characters shown above are read vertically, starting from the right
It's been said that wisdom comes from good judgment, and good judgment comes from experience, while experience comes from a series of times when you used bad judgment.
This Chinese proverb makes the simplest connection between experience and wisdom.
The first character represents "to know" or "to realize". The second character alone refers to the ability to "recognize", or "realize" and can also be used to mean "knowing". Combined, these two characters have the very strong meaning of "knowledge" and in some context, "learning".
This is the simplest way to write wisdom in Chinese, Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji.
Being a single character, the wisdom meaning is open to interpretation, and can also mean intellect, knowledge or reason.
This character is also one of the five tenets of Confucius.
Beyond the title definitions, this also can mean, resourcefulness, or wit.
This character is sometimes included in the Bushido code, but usually not considered part of the seven key concepts of the code.
The first character means, "wise" or "smart" and the second character means "intelligence".
I have also seen these two characters translated together as knowledge, sagacity, sense, and intelligence.
Note: This word is used commonly in Chinese and is a less-common word in Japanese and Korean. If your audience is Japanese, I suggest our other Japanese wisdom option.
This means intellect or wisdom in Japanese too, but is a more unusual way to write this word (though both versions are pronounced the same in Japanese).
The scroll that I am holding in this picture is a "medium size" 4-character wall scroll. As you can see, it is a great size to hang on your wall. (We also offer custom wall scrolls in larger sizes)
Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days. Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.
There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form
of art alive.
Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.
The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also
attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over
6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers
in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt
such a feat.
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Chinese Wisdom - Confucius - 551 B.C. If you showed a sincere desire to be good, your people would likewise be good. ... Love of knowledge without the will to Learn casts the shadow called insensibility. ...
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Symbolic Chinese New Year Recipes Chinese New Year Recipes - Symbolic Chinese recipes to celebrate the Chinese New ... Learn More ... In "Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen," Grace Young notes ...
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Wisdom - Japanese character (Kanji) This is the sample of Japanese symbol of. Wisdom ... FREE Special Report to learn the basics of 3 different Japanese scripts called; ...
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Netscape.com Tag Search - "learn" ... .com/story/2007/01/31/learn-japanese-video-greetings-and-salutationshttp: ... of-wisdom-series-benjamin-franklinhttp://men.netscape.com/story/2007/01/29/words ...
Wisdom Publications :: Zen and Japanese Buddhism ... from Today's Librarian for his previous book, Uncovering the Wisdom of ... most importantly: How can we best learn from these two systems of thought that ...
Japanese: FUN STUFF! Learn Japanese for free: Explore the fun side of the Japanese language. ... Katakana English 101. Clay's Proverbs. Reversed Kanji Combos. 10 reasons. 9 answers ...
The following table is only helpful for those studying Chinese (or Japanese), and perhaps helps search engines to find this page when someone enters Romanized Chinese or Japanese
If you have not set up your computer to display Chinese, the characters in this table probably look like empty boxes or random text garbage.
This is why I spent hundreds of hours making images so that you could view the characters in the "Learn From Wisdom" listings above.
If you want your Windows computer to be able to display Chinese characters you can either head to your Regional and Language options in your Win XP control panel, select the [Languages] tab and click on [Install files for East Asian Languages]. This task will ask for your Win XP CD to complete in most cases. If you don't have your Windows XP CD, or are running Windows 98, you can also download/run the simplified Chinese font package installer from Microsoft which works independently with Win 98, ME, 2000, and XP. It's a 2.5MB download, so if you are on dial up, start the download and go make a sandwich.