---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 4
number: 7
published: 1901-05
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Favorite Proverbs of the Chinese," *Improvement Era* 4, no. 7 (May 1901): 544.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0407unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0407unse
start_page: 544
end_page: 544
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-05)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0407unse
  publication_year: 1901
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Favorite Proverbs of the Chinese

<!-- page:544 -->

FAVORITE PROVERBS OF THE CHINESE.


      Politeness before force.   I


      If you bow at all,   bow low.
      Money makes a blind man see.
      Better not be than be nothing.
      Oblige and you will be obliged.
      More treeg are upright than men.
      Gold is tested by fire; man by gold.
      No child thinks its own mother ugly.
      Some study shows the need for more.
      Great truths cannot penetrate rustic ears.
      The highest towers begin from the ground.
      Free-sitters at the play always grumble most.
      Every man gives a shove to the tumbling wall.
      One man makes a road, and another walks on it.
      If Fortune smiles, who doesn't; if Fortune doesn't, who does?

      With money you can move the gods; without it you can't move
a man.
      No image-maker worships the gods; he know3 what they are
made of.
      If you suspect a man, don't     employ him;   if   you employ him,
don't suspect him.
      Happy is he who fights with himself; wretched is he who con-
tends with others.
      No distance can separate what heaven unites; nothing can
unite what heaven separates.