Custom "Learning" Chinese & Japanese Calligraphy Wall Scroll

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This literally translates as: [Even a general who has won a] hundred victories [may be] hard put to see through the enemy's [strategy], [but one who has] broken [his] arm three [times] [will] be a good doctor.

Figuratively, this means: One cannot always depend on past successes to guarantee future success, but one can always learn from lessons drawn from failure.

See Also...  Failure - Mother Of Success | Experience - Mother Of Success | Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 | Hard Knocks

This Chinese philosophy tells of how we continue to learn throughout our lives. It can be translated in a few ways such as "Study has no end", "Knowledge is infinite", "No end to learning", "There's always something new to study", or "You live and learn".

The deeper meaning: Even when we finish school we are still students of the world gaining more knowledge from our surroundings with each passing day.

See Also...  An Open Book Benefits Your Mind | Wisdom | Learn From Wisdom

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You may learn when everything goes right, but the lessons learned when everything goes wrong are more vivid and lead to long-lasting wisdom.

Another way to look at this: One cannot always depend on past successes to guarantee future success, but one can always learn from lessons drawn from failure.

When you meet a wise person, you should learn from them and be inspired to become as wise as they are.

This is a pretty long phrase in English, but in Chinese it's only four characters.
However, in Chinese the deeper meaning often surpass the dictionary definition of each character.

In this case, you should seek wise people to learn from throughout your life...
Always try to learn enough to become equal to them. It also suggests that the process of learning and seeking wisdom is a non-ending cycle.

See Also...  Knowledge

This is a universal Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and old Korean Hanja phrase that means, "coming up with new ideas based on things learned in the past".

It can also be defined as, "developing new ideas based on study of the past", "gain new insights through restudying old issues", "understand the present by reviewing the past" or simply, "learning from the past".

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This literally translates as: Have a walking stick ready before stumbling.

This is similar to the English idiom, "A stitch in time saves nine".

In simple terms, this means: Always be prepared in advance.

See Also...  Fix Roof Before The Rain; Dig The Well Before You Are Thirsty

This is the transliteration to Mandarin Chinese for the name Read

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This is a lifelong suggestion for expanding your horizons by gaining knowledge, experience, and seeing the world.

Of course, this was written long ago when it was hard to travel 10,000 miles.
With air travel and the business I'm in, I often achieve that lifetime goal on a monthly basis.
However, I am a little behind in the book count.

Note: An ancient Chinese mile (lǐ) referred to in this phrase is a bit shorter than a British/American mile.

This is a famous phrase by Chairman Mao Zedong that sounds really strange when directly translated into English. I include it in our database of phrases to illustrate how different the construction and grammar can be between Chinese and English. The direct translation is "Good Good Study, Day Day Up". In Chinese, a repeated character/word can often serve to reinforce the idea (like saying "very" or suggesting "a lot of"). So "good good" really means "a lot of good". While "day day" can be better translated as "day in day out". The idea of "up" has a meaning in China of "rising above" or "improving".

After understanding all of this, we come up with a slightly better translation of "With lot of good study, day in day out, we raise above".

The more natural translation of this phrase would be something like, "study hard, and keep improving".

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This literally translates as: Mend the roof while the weather is fine, [and when you are] not yet thirsty, dig the well beforehand.

In simple terms, this means: Always be prepared in advance.

See Also...  Have A Walking Stick At The Ready Before You Stumble

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It's been said that wisdom comes from good judgment, and good judgment comes from experience, while experience comes from a series of times when you used bad judgment.

This Chinese proverb makes the simplest connection between experience and wisdom.

See Also...  Failure Is The Mother Of Success | Wisdom | Learn From Wisdom

The first character represents "to know" or "to realize". The second character alone refers to the ability to "recognize", or "realize" and can also be used to mean "knowing". Combined, these two characters have the very strong meaning of "knowledge" and in some context, "learning".

See Also...  Wisdom | Learn From Wisdom

This word is often used to describe the idea of opening the minds of the young or the new generation.

See Also...  Wisdom | Learning Is Eternal | Learn From Wisdom

This single character can be translated as wisdom, but it has more of an "intelligent" flavor. This can also mean cleverness or wit.

Japanese note: This is understood in Japanese, but seldom seen as a lone Kanji.

See Also...  Knowledge | Read

This is the simplest way to write wisdom in Chinese, Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji.
Being a single character, the wisdom meaning is open to interpretation, and can also mean intellect, knowledge or reason.

This character is also one of the five tenets of Confucius.

Beyond the title definitions, this also can mean, resourcefulness, or wit.

This character is sometimes included in the Bushido code, but usually not considered part of the seven key concepts of the code.

See our Wisdom in Chinese, Japanese and Korean page for more wisdom-related calligraphy.

See Also...  Learn From Wisdom | Confucius

The first character means, "wise" or "smart" and the second character means "intelligence".

I have also seen these two characters translated together as knowledge, sagacity, sense, and intelligence.

Note: This word is used commonly in Chinese and is a less-common word in Japanese and Korean. If your audience is Japanese, I suggest our other Japanese wisdom option.

This means intellect or wisdom in Japanese too, but is a more unusual way to write this word (though both versions are pronounced the same in Japanese).

See Also...  Learn From Wisdom