I wrote these in college when I thought about the fact that people are always quoting old Chinese proverbs and I figured it was about time for an update. I googled the name Urban Confucius and it already exists somewhere out there or else I'd take it as my own. A lot of these have ended up in my stories and songs.
New Chinese Proverbs
-Your happy days make you who you are when you're sad and your sad days make you who you are when you're happy.
-Two eggs fried in the same pan are hard to keep apart.
-Healing feels better than never hurting.
-Stars need not outshine the sun, they need only to outshine the night.
-A photograph does not fit neatly into a puzzle.
-Orange rhymes with orange.
-It takes a lot of darkness to blind you, but only a little light to help you see.
-How much sweeter the peak of a mountain when the journey began from the floor of a canyon.
-Living without love is like walking when you can fly.
-All the oceans on the planet are connected, but not all the continents are.
-A tree needs branches as well as roots or else it is just a stump.
-A puzzle piece which has been forced to fit into a different puzzle will no longer fit perfectly into its own.
-You cannot repeat a mistake. You can either learn from it or not. The opposite of lesson is moron.
-Some can speak much without meaning while others can mean much without speaking.
-Given half a chance, anyone could make a mistake. Given a million chances, some people will never learn from their mistakes.
-Every second that goes by uncherished is a second lost.
-Why did God make stars that we can't see?
-Sometimes the tip of your tongue is as hard to reach as a rainbow.
-It is more important to learn from your mistakes than to not make them.
-Without light you would not know darkness, but with light you don't have to live in darkness.
-God never intended for us to go through life without the light of one another.
-I'd rather do something stupid than do nothing at all.
-One man fell into ten pits once each while another fell into one pit ten times.
-Human hands have destroyed much of what nature has created, but nature will destroy all that human hands have created.
-The cocoon is forgotten once the butterfly has left it behind.
-The oceans do not separate the land, they only make it harder to see where the land connects.
-Apples fall every day, but there is only one Sir Isaac Newton.
-If you find a path that does not lead home, perhaps it is not the fault of the path.
-Tears are the best medicine if you ever want to truly laugh again.
-The world may be a stage, but the stage can be many worlds.
-Even the tiniest scratch on a severed hand will never heal.
-The smallest squirrel can reach branches that the tallest giraffe cannot, but the smallest giraffe can reach branches that the tallest dog cannot.
-Try stabbing your food with a spoon or drinking soup with a fork and you may learn to appreciate your spoon and your fork.
-Light does not create shadows, it merely shows them to you.
-If actions speak louder than words, then why is the pen mightier than the sword?
-You will never talk to some of the most amazing people you will come across in life.
-Sometimes you don't notice the sand in your shoes until you feel a rock.
-The difference between the friend you meet just once and remember forever and the stranger you see a thousand times and forget is up to you.
-Dirt always washes off.
-A small hole can make the best cup worthless.
-For some people, the only time their name will be known is on their stone.
-The kid who jumped off the roof wearing a cape knew what it meant to believe and to act on a dream. The kids who watched him fall were comfortable just to laugh at him.
-Two people bought a house. One had dreamed about it, the other had wanted something better. The house neither took credit for the one, nor was to blame for the other.
-Sometimes the cloud that seems to hang over your head is only the shadow of a helping hand.
-Ironically, the sense of fear is there to help keep you alive, but sometimes fear keeps people from really living.
-To admit fear is to begin to conquer it.
-A kind gesture in this hardened world is like the blade of grass which can break through the concrete of a sidewalk.
-The tree you used to climb in as a kid may now be just a stump, but it will always in your heart be the tree you used to climb in. No one can chop that down.
-Without scars we would just keep bleeding and never heal.
-I would rather be scarred for life than bleed to death.
-Cracking open and discarding peanut shells says nothing about the shells themselves, but it says everything about peanuts.
-A plant in a small pot can still grow, but its roots get damaged.
-Your truest emotions are the ones you cannot find words for.
-Your mouth cannot limit your mind.
-Your reach is not limited by the length of your arms when it comes to helping those in need.
-Each reed which makes up a basket does not have to know how to be a basket, just how to be a reed.
-Silence can be the worst insult, the biggest lie and the harshest rebuke.
-The dead tree enriches the soil so that the sapling may thrive.
-With our minds we have been able to reach out to the heavens, but it is for our hearts that the heavens have reached back out to us.
-You can neither swim in a glass of water nor drink the ocean.
-There exists on this planet more poetry than poets can ever hope to write.
-Darkness cannot make light go away.
-Silence cannot destroy music.
-A cloud can be blown around by any wind, but a cloud can cover up the sun.
-When a deer sees an apple it does not wish instead to have a pear.
-Rain does not need plants, but freely does it fall.
-For words to be erased does not mean to be destroyed.
-Blank paper does not mean that there are no ideas, but only that there is no ink.
-To be weak and admit it takes more strength than to be strong.
-When a drawer is closed no one can tell if it is empty or full.
-When an egg is painted up for Easter, people tend to forget about the inside and it all ends up rotting and being thrown away.
-An entire wall does not have to be destroyed before it is no longer any good.
-It is not the door, but what is on the other side that matters.
-Compassion is not your friend if you cannot laugh at yourself.
-The moon was beautiful long before anyone ever saw it.
-Not all waves reach the shore, but the beach is never lacking.
-For every story of someone finding a dollar bill, there is another story of somebody losing one.
-Sometimes you just have to cry.
-Every layer of an onion tastes the same.
-Uncertainty about what tomorrow will bring is the thrill of living.
-Sometimes when you see an elephant, you think of peanuts.
-Only when a candle is lit can it light another.
-You do not think to clean what you do not know is dirty.
-The truth may hurt but lies can kill.
-You don't have to see the whole diamond to know that it is a diamond.
-Negativity is a river that flows beneath a bridge of positivity.
New Chinese Proverbs
-Your happy days make you who you are when you're sad and your sad days make you who you are when you're happy.
-Two eggs fried in the same pan are hard to keep apart.
-Healing feels better than never hurting.
-Stars need not outshine the sun, they need only to outshine the night.
-A photograph does not fit neatly into a puzzle.
-Orange rhymes with orange.
-It takes a lot of darkness to blind you, but only a little light to help you see.
-How much sweeter the peak of a mountain when the journey began from the floor of a canyon.
-Living without love is like walking when you can fly.
-All the oceans on the planet are connected, but not all the continents are.
-A tree needs branches as well as roots or else it is just a stump.
-A puzzle piece which has been forced to fit into a different puzzle will no longer fit perfectly into its own.
-You cannot repeat a mistake. You can either learn from it or not. The opposite of lesson is moron.
-Some can speak much without meaning while others can mean much without speaking.
-Given half a chance, anyone could make a mistake. Given a million chances, some people will never learn from their mistakes.
-Every second that goes by uncherished is a second lost.
-Why did God make stars that we can't see?
-Sometimes the tip of your tongue is as hard to reach as a rainbow.
-It is more important to learn from your mistakes than to not make them.
-Without light you would not know darkness, but with light you don't have to live in darkness.
-God never intended for us to go through life without the light of one another.
-I'd rather do something stupid than do nothing at all.
-One man fell into ten pits once each while another fell into one pit ten times.
-Human hands have destroyed much of what nature has created, but nature will destroy all that human hands have created.
-The cocoon is forgotten once the butterfly has left it behind.
-The oceans do not separate the land, they only make it harder to see where the land connects.
-Apples fall every day, but there is only one Sir Isaac Newton.
-If you find a path that does not lead home, perhaps it is not the fault of the path.
-Tears are the best medicine if you ever want to truly laugh again.
-The world may be a stage, but the stage can be many worlds.
-Even the tiniest scratch on a severed hand will never heal.
-The smallest squirrel can reach branches that the tallest giraffe cannot, but the smallest giraffe can reach branches that the tallest dog cannot.
-Try stabbing your food with a spoon or drinking soup with a fork and you may learn to appreciate your spoon and your fork.
-Light does not create shadows, it merely shows them to you.
-If actions speak louder than words, then why is the pen mightier than the sword?
-You will never talk to some of the most amazing people you will come across in life.
-Sometimes you don't notice the sand in your shoes until you feel a rock.
-The difference between the friend you meet just once and remember forever and the stranger you see a thousand times and forget is up to you.
-Dirt always washes off.
-A small hole can make the best cup worthless.
-For some people, the only time their name will be known is on their stone.
-The kid who jumped off the roof wearing a cape knew what it meant to believe and to act on a dream. The kids who watched him fall were comfortable just to laugh at him.
-Two people bought a house. One had dreamed about it, the other had wanted something better. The house neither took credit for the one, nor was to blame for the other.
-Sometimes the cloud that seems to hang over your head is only the shadow of a helping hand.
-Ironically, the sense of fear is there to help keep you alive, but sometimes fear keeps people from really living.
-To admit fear is to begin to conquer it.
-A kind gesture in this hardened world is like the blade of grass which can break through the concrete of a sidewalk.
-The tree you used to climb in as a kid may now be just a stump, but it will always in your heart be the tree you used to climb in. No one can chop that down.
-Without scars we would just keep bleeding and never heal.
-I would rather be scarred for life than bleed to death.
-Cracking open and discarding peanut shells says nothing about the shells themselves, but it says everything about peanuts.
-A plant in a small pot can still grow, but its roots get damaged.
-Your truest emotions are the ones you cannot find words for.
-Your mouth cannot limit your mind.
-Your reach is not limited by the length of your arms when it comes to helping those in need.
-Each reed which makes up a basket does not have to know how to be a basket, just how to be a reed.
-Silence can be the worst insult, the biggest lie and the harshest rebuke.
-The dead tree enriches the soil so that the sapling may thrive.
-With our minds we have been able to reach out to the heavens, but it is for our hearts that the heavens have reached back out to us.
-You can neither swim in a glass of water nor drink the ocean.
-There exists on this planet more poetry than poets can ever hope to write.
-Darkness cannot make light go away.
-Silence cannot destroy music.
-A cloud can be blown around by any wind, but a cloud can cover up the sun.
-When a deer sees an apple it does not wish instead to have a pear.
-Rain does not need plants, but freely does it fall.
-For words to be erased does not mean to be destroyed.
-Blank paper does not mean that there are no ideas, but only that there is no ink.
-To be weak and admit it takes more strength than to be strong.
-When a drawer is closed no one can tell if it is empty or full.
-When an egg is painted up for Easter, people tend to forget about the inside and it all ends up rotting and being thrown away.
-An entire wall does not have to be destroyed before it is no longer any good.
-It is not the door, but what is on the other side that matters.
-Compassion is not your friend if you cannot laugh at yourself.
-The moon was beautiful long before anyone ever saw it.
-Not all waves reach the shore, but the beach is never lacking.
-For every story of someone finding a dollar bill, there is another story of somebody losing one.
-Sometimes you just have to cry.
-Every layer of an onion tastes the same.
-Uncertainty about what tomorrow will bring is the thrill of living.
-Sometimes when you see an elephant, you think of peanuts.
-Only when a candle is lit can it light another.
-You do not think to clean what you do not know is dirty.
-The truth may hurt but lies can kill.
-You don't have to see the whole diamond to know that it is a diamond.
-Negativity is a river that flows beneath a bridge of positivity.
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