Ren Confucius Quotes

The Master said, “Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. “If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it.” (Analects 4.5)

Confucius identified five central virtues that make us good: compassion (ren), ritual propriety (li), justice (yi), knowledge (zhi) and integrity (xin). Crucially, Confucius felt that these five had to be worked on over a whole lifetime. He told his followers: ‘At fifteen, I had my mind bent on intellectual learning. At thirty, I was busy and practical. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I started to learn. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I had learnt to follow the five virtues.’ In other words, training to be good takes a lot of time.

So the very first step on the path to blessedness is to be confronted by the spectre of meaninglessness… by inner discontent, sadness, anxiety, regret, frustration, depression. Confucius put it succinctly: “No vexation, no enlightenment; no anxiety, no illumination.” (Analects 7:8)

As a man raised with Confucius’s beliefs, Fengshan held dear the five virtues, Ren, Yi, Li, Zhi, and Xin—benevolence, righteousness, decorum, wisdom, and trustworthiness