Sunned for one day but frozen for ten
Mecius was the exponent of Confucianism after Confucius.
He lived in the period of the Warring States in China when exponents as the various scholls of thought travelled from state to state persuading the feudal princes into accepting their respective ideas of government. He told the prince of the State of Qi bluntly, "Your majesty, you have not been wise. Although there are living things with great enduring capacity of survival, do you thing such living things will be able to live if you expose them to the sun for one day but have them frozen for ten days ? My stay with you is short and even if you accept my idea, the moment I leave you, some one would hookwink you into believing their words. What can I do about this ?"
Mencius illustrated, "Playing chess is a small matter, but without concentration, one will not be able to master it. Yi Qiu, the chess champion in the country, had 2 disciples. One devoted himself to the learning of chess-playing but the other thought of shooting sawns with his bow and arrows. Both learnt the same art but with different results. It is not because of the differences of intelligence but because of a different degrees of devotion."
The saying, means an instant enthusiasm which cools off soon like a flash in the pan or the lack of sustained interest and effort in doing something.
He lived in the period of the Warring States in China when exponents as the various scholls of thought travelled from state to state persuading the feudal princes into accepting their respective ideas of government. He told the prince of the State of Qi bluntly, "Your majesty, you have not been wise. Although there are living things with great enduring capacity of survival, do you thing such living things will be able to live if you expose them to the sun for one day but have them frozen for ten days ? My stay with you is short and even if you accept my idea, the moment I leave you, some one would hookwink you into believing their words. What can I do about this ?"
Mencius illustrated, "Playing chess is a small matter, but without concentration, one will not be able to master it. Yi Qiu, the chess champion in the country, had 2 disciples. One devoted himself to the learning of chess-playing but the other thought of shooting sawns with his bow and arrows. Both learnt the same art but with different results. It is not because of the differences of intelligence but because of a different degrees of devotion."
The saying, means an instant enthusiasm which cools off soon like a flash in the pan or the lack of sustained interest and effort in doing something.
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