Be Yourself in Chinese / Japanese...

做自己 means “be yourself” in Chinese.

The first character means “to be,” “to become,” or “to act as.”

The last two characters are a word that means “oneself” or “yourself.”

This is probably the closest way to write, “be yourself” in Japanese.

This western idea is hard to clearly express in Japanese.

Note: Because this selection contains some special Japanese Hiragana characters, it should be written by a Japanese calligrapher.

做真实的自己 means “be true to yourself” in Chinese.

Note: This is more a western-style phrase or idea, so it’s not that common to see this in Chinese.

自分を信じる means “believe in yourself,” “have faith in yourself,” or “believe in myself” (can be myself or yourself depending on if you're saying it to yourself or someone else).

Note: Because this selection contains some special Japanese Hiragana characters, it should be written by a Japanese calligrapher.

相信自己 means “believe in yourself” in Chinese.

做我自己 means “be myself” or just “being me” in Chinese.

敵を知り己を知れば百戦危うからず is the longer/full Japanese version of this proverb. This means “Know your enemy, know yourself, and you will not fear a hundred battles.”

Others will translate this as “Know thy enemy, know thyself, yields victory in one hundred battles.”

Note: Because this selection contains some special Japanese Hiragana characters, it should be written by a Japanese calligrapher.

知彼知己百戰不殆 is from Sun Tzu's (Sunzi's) Art of War. It means that if you know and understand the enemy, you also know yourself, and thus with this complete understanding, you cannot lose.

This proverb is often somewhat directly translated as “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without defeat.”

It can also be translated as “If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can come out of hundreds of battles without danger,” or “Know your enemy, know yourself, and your victory will not be threatened.”

金似金挨玉似玉 is a Chinese proverb that literally translates as: [One who is] close to gold [is] like gold [and one who is] close to jade [is] like jade.

Figuratively, this means:
A good environment produces good people.
People are influenced by the company they keep.

Basically, if you hang out with good people, you are likely to become or stay good yourself. The opposite also is true. 挨This is like the moral version of “You are what you eat.”

Note: In Japanese, they have a similar phrase, 類は友を呼ぶ (rui wa tomo o yobu) Birds of a feather flock together. However, this is not a good meaning, so we’re not offering it for wall scrolls.