Nowadays, people often use some famous aphorisms as their motto to constantly motivate and spur themselves. The word "motto" originated from Cui Yuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Cui Yuan was a famous calligrapher in the Eastern Han Dynasty. According to Lu Yanji's annotation in "Selected Works? Cui Yuan's Motto": "Ai's brother Zhang was killed by others, so Ai then killed his enemy, fled, and was pardoned. He wrote this inscription to warn himself. , try to put it on the right side of the seat, so it is called motto. "Of course, the "motto" does not have to be placed on the right side of the seat.
Later, many people followed suit and wrote "mottos". For example, Du Fu, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote this poem in order to urge himself to correct his alcoholism: "To endure the contents of the cup, only look at the motto."
"Motto" can sometimes be used as a warning. Warn others. For example, there was an eminent monk in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. When he saw the monks in the temple being lazy and afraid of hardship, he wrote a motto to encourage them: "Be diligent and diligent, and the ultimate path is not perfect." This means to be more diligent and more diligent. The time to realize the truth is not far away.
In the first year of Daoguang reign of the Qing Dynasty, Chen Hailou, the commander of Dongyang, obtained an inkstone from Yue Fei in Beijing. The inkstone was purple in color, square and long, with the Chinese character "Insist on keeping white, not phosphorus, not slippery" engraved on the back. For running script. This inkstone was later acquired by Wen Tianxiang, who engraved an inscription on it: "Although an inkstone is not as hard to penetrate as iron, and although your heart is not as strong as stone, keep it and don't lose track of yourself." Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang took this inscription as their guideline for life. .
Mottoes are often written as banners and hung in the study room and the place where one often rests, such as the word "control anger" written in Lin Zexu's handwriting.