Q0152

The Great Learning

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The way of great learning lies in illuminating luminous virtue, in renewing the people, and in resting in the highest good.
Thinker The Great Learning
School Confucianism
Source Liji, The Great Learning
Theme Virtue
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Liji, The Great Learning, within the tradition of Confucianism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of virtue, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In The Great Learning's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: The Great Learning. (n.d.). The way of great learning lies in illuminating luminous virtue, in renewing the people, and in resting in the highest good. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0152

MLA: The Great Learning. “The way of great learning lies in illuminating….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0152.

Chicago: The Great Learning. “The way of great learning lies in illuminating….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0152.

Same thinker

More from The Great Learning

  1. From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all alike take the cultivation of the person as the root.
  2. Things have roots and branches; affairs have ends and beginnings. To know what comes first and what follows is to be near the Way.
  3. Those who wish to cultivate themselves first rectify the mind; those who wish to rectify the mind first make the intention sincere.

All quotations by The Great Learning

Same theme

More on virtue

  1. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  2. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  3. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  4. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
  5. Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…

Browse the virtue theme