Q0418

Qian Mu

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Human life is but a yearning — to look toward the far and toward the high.
Thinker Qian Mu
School Cultural Philosophy
Source Ten Essays on Life et al.
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Ten Essays on Life et al., within the tradition of Cultural Philosophy. 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 philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Qian Mu'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: Qian Mu. (n.d.). Human life is but a yearning — to look toward the far and toward the high. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0418

MLA: Qian Mu. “Human life is but a yearning — to….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0418.

Chicago: Qian Mu. “Human life is but a yearning — to….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0418.

Same thinker

More from Qian Mu

  1. Toward the past history of one’s own country, one should hold a warmth of feeling and a sense of respect.

All quotations by Qian Mu

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme