This sentence comes from "Suiyuan Shihua" written by Yuan Mei in the Qing Dynasty.
Original text:
When bees eat mulberry trees, the silk they spit is not mulberry; bees pluck flowers, and the honey they make is not flowers. Reading is like eating. Those who are good at eating will be energetic, while those who are not good at eating will develop phlegm tumors.
Translation:
When silkworms eat mulberry leaves, what they spit out is silk, not mulberry leaves; when bees pick flowers, what they spit out is honey, not flowers;
Reading is like eating. People who are good at eating are full of energy. People who are not good at eating will develop diseases and tumors.
Extended information:
Creative background:
In the fourteenth year of Qianlong (1749), his father passed away, and Yuan Mei resigned to adopt his mother. At the age of 34, he settled in Jiangning (today's Nanjing) purchased the abandoned garden of the Sui family. Suiyuan was the garden of Emperor Kangxi and Sui Gong. It had been abandoned for a long time and was dilapidated. Yuan Mei invested in the purchase. He changed "Sui" to "Sui" and named it "Suiyuan".
After acquiring Suiyuan, Yuan Mei loved it very much and wrote eleven prose and poems including "Suiyuan Notes", "Suiyuan Postscript", "Suiyuan Three Notes" and "Suiyuan Miscellaneous Xing". It expresses his leisurely and comfortable life in Suiyuan and reveals his unrestrained life after retreating to seclusion.
What "Suiyuan Poetry Talk" discusses is from the poet's innate qualifications to acquired moral cultivation, reading and learning, and social practice;
From describing scenes, romance, and chanting objects , chanting history; from conception to planning and refining sentences; from diction and rhythm to various expression techniques and artistic styles such as metaphor, sustenance, nature, emptiness, twists and turns, as well as revision of poems, appreciation of poems, poetry From the compilation and selection to the writing of poems, it can be said to cover all aspects related to poetry.