Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/449

 take one example, which can be purchased anywhere for about a penny, consists of thirty pages of proverbs and the like, arranged in antithetical couplets of five, six, and seven characters to each line. Children are made to learn these by heart, and ordinary grown-up China- men may be almost said to think in proverbs. There can be no doubt that to the foreigner a large store of proverbs, committed to memory and judiciously intro- duced, are a great aid to successful conversation. These are a few taken from an inexhaustible supply, omitting to a great extent such as find a ready equivalent in English :

Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.

By many words wit is exhausted.

If you bow at all, bow low.

If you take an ox, you must give a horse.

A man thinks he knows, but a woman knows better.

Words whispered on earth sound like thunder in heaven.

If fortune smiles who doesn't ? If fortune doesn't who does ?

Moneyed men are always listened to.

Nature is better than a middling doctor.

Stay at home and reverence your parents ; why travel afar to worship the gods ?

A bottle-nosed man may be a teetotaller, but no one will think so.

It is easier to catch a tiger than to ask a favour.

With money you can move the gods ; without it, you can't move a man.

Bend your head if the eaves are low.

Oblige, and you will be obliged.

�� �