Q0482

Wang Guowei

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

In the realm with a self, one views things through the self, so things take on one’s coloring. In the realm without a self, one views things through things, and no longer knows which is self and which is thing.
Thinker Wang Guowei
School National Learning
Source Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World, within the tradition of National Learning. 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 Wang Guowei'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: Wang Guowei. (n.d.). In the realm with a self, one views things through the self, so things take on one’s coloring. In the realm without a self, one views things through things, and no longer knows which is self and which is thing. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0482

MLA: Wang Guowei. “In the realm with a self, one views….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0482.

Chicago: Wang Guowei. “In the realm with a self, one views….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0482.

Same thinker

More from Wang Guowei

  1. Those who in ancient or modern times achieved great enterprises and profound learning must pass through three realms: first, standing alone atop a high tower after the west wind withers the green trees, gazing to the end of the road at heaven's edge; second, the belt growing looser without regret, wasting away for the beloved; third, searching a thousand times in the crowd, then suddenly turning — and finding that person standing where the lanterns grow sparse.

All quotations by Wang Guowei

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