Meaning: A person must have lofty ambitions and ambitions, and only seek a moderate fate. Do not force it. What is important is that you can lower your profile, live an ordinary life, and enjoy the blessings of ordinary people.
This is the first couplet of a couplet by Zuo Zongtang. The second couplet is "Choose a high place to stand, sit on a flat place, and walk toward a wide place." The second couplet teaches people how to behave and deal with things, take a long-term view of problems, be low-key, and leave room for yourself and others in everything.
This is Li Ka-shing’s favorite couplet, the only calligraphy couplet in his study, and it can also be said to be his life guide.
Extended information:
Zuo Zongtang (November 10, 1812 - September 5, 1885), Han nationality, with the courtesy name Jigao, Pu Cun, and the nickname Xiangshang Farmer. A native of Xiangyin, Hunan. An important minister of the late Qing Dynasty, a strategist, politician, a famous general of the Hunan Army, one of the representatives of the Westernization Movement, and one of the four famous ministers of the Zhongxing Dynasty in the late Qing Dynasty.
Zuo Zongtang studied at Changsha Chengnan Academy and passed the provincial examination at the age of 20, although he failed repeatedly in the joint examination thereafter. Later, he became a member of the Kuomintang and participated in the pacification of the Taiping Rebellion, founded the Westernization Movement, suppressed the Nian Army, quelled the Tongzhi Rebellion in Shaanxi and Gansu, recovered Xinjiang, and promoted the establishment of Xinjiang as a province. During the Sino-French War, he invited himself to go to Fujian to supervise the army. He died of illness in Fuzhou in the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885) at the age of seventy-three.
Zuo Zongtang wrote "Chu Army Camp System" and "Pu Cunge Nong Shu", etc. His memorials and documents were compiled into "The Complete Works of Zuo Wenxiang Gong", and later generations also compiled "The Complete Works of Zuo Zongtang"
Baidu Encyclopedia—Zongtang Zuo