Master Zeng said, “When people attend carefully to their parents at the ends of their lives and worship their ancestors with reverence, their virtue will naturally deepen.”
曾子曰：「慎終追遠，民德歸厚矣。」
Notes
This statement from the Analects by Zengzi (a disciple of Confucius) does not merely emphasize ritual forms (such as funerals or sacrifices). Rather, it reveals the core Confucian logic of ‘cultivating virtue through ritual’ — that specific ceremonial practices nurture inner moral sentiments, thereby transforming social ethos.
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