While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?… While you do not know life, how can you know about death?

About Confucius

Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BCE), born Kong Qiu, was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the philosophy and teachings of Confucius. His philosophical teachings, called...

More quotations from Confucius

Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.

—Confucius

mistakes

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

—Confucius

learning

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.

—Confucius

kindness

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.

—Confucius

kindness

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.

—Confucius

ignorance

More quotations tagged with “service”

Be alert to give service. What counts a great deal in life is what we do for others.

—Unknown

service

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

—Arthur Ashe

others heroism service drama

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

education greatness physics service college

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have bought it or baked it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

—Daniel Berrigan

hope suffering loss service

Excuse me, sir; I cannot consent to receive pay for services I do not render.

—Robert E. Lee, explaining his rejection of a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year salary to act as titular head of an insurance company after the Civil War

morality money work service

History

11 Jul 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?...While you do not know life, how can you know about death?