Profound Virtue Bears All; Poetry and Books Sustain the Family Line

The ancient Chinese aphorism “profound virtue bears all; poetry and books sustain the family line” is a family motto that has guided the Chinese scholarly class for millennia. It means that a person must cultivate virtue as high and broad as the earth, so that he can carry all things; and that the family must pass on poetry and books from generation to generation, so that the line does not decline.

My own family has not been a scholarly family for generations; my grandfather was a farmer, and my father was the first in our line to receive a formal education. But when I was a child, my father often told me that the reason he worked so hard to send me to school was that he hoped I would carry on this motto: cultivate virtue, love learning, and leave something for the future generation.

Later, when I grew up and studied the history of Chinese families, I found that the families that lasted longest in Chinese history were precisely those that lived by this motto. The Confucius family, the Zeng family, the Fan family, the Lin family—all produced generations of scholars and officials. They did not rely on wealth or power, but on the cultivation of virtue and the love of learning, that their descendants could stand firmly in the world.

By contrast, families that accumulated wealth and power but neglected virtue and education often declined within three generations. The saying “no noble family lasts beyond five generations” is not a curse but a law: if descendants do not cultivate themselves, they will waste what their ancestors left them.

I have come to understand that a family’s true wealth is not land, houses, or money, but the virtue and knowledge it passes down. Land and houses can be sold or lost; money can be spent; but virtue and knowledge live in people’s hearts and cannot be taken away. When I raise my own child, I do not plan to leave him great wealth; I hope only to leave him a good example and a love of learning. If he has these two, he can make his own way; if he does not, no amount of wealth will help him.

So the old saying is true: profound virtue bears all; poetry and books sustain the family line. On this journey of life, I will strive to be a person of virtue and to love learning, so that I may leave something worth passing on.