This sentence was said by Zhang Hengqu, a great scholar in the Northern Song Dynasty. Zhang Zai (1020- 1077), a native of Hengqu Town, Yanxian County, Fengxiang County (now Meixian County, Shaanxi Province), was a thinker, educator and one of the founders of Neo-Confucianism in the Northern Song Dynasty. Known as Mr. Hengqu in the world, Zhang Zi is honored as a saint, and he is thirty-eight in the west of Confucius Temple. His famous saying, "Make a heart for heaven and earth, be a man, link the past with the future, and create peace for all generations", was called "four sentences in a horizontal canal" by contemporary philosopher Feng Youlan. Because of its simplicity and grandeur, it has been praised by people throughout the ages.

These four sentences mean: to establish the heart of life for heaven and earth, to point out a way for the people, to inherit the knowledge that Confucius and Mencius and other sages have not inherited, and to open up the foundation of permanent peace for future generations.