Zeng Guofan’s sixteen-character family motto is:

1. Honor can make the body glorious, but it cannot make the mind glorious. Articles can be written with one's own body, but not with one's own words.

2. Family Three: Filial piety to filial piety, diligence to kindness, forgiveness to kindness.

3. The ancients used virtue to avoid fame, but today people regard honor as beauty. Therefore, the ancients did not take away the New Year's Day, but now people see small profits and easy maintenance.

4. Show wisdom and virtue; speak wealth.

5. Evil is more destructive than good, and more unfair than white people.

6. Xuanmian is also respectful, which is fake. Love is secret, but not secret.

7. Don’t pour wine into your mouth when you are worried.

8. The way to stand is to be firm on the inside and soft on the outside; a fat man’s approach is from top to bottom. Disharmony cannot be connected, and laxity cannot be achieved.

9. If you don’t make mistakes, if you don’t think of others, you will still be in class. If you become a person, you will regret and change quickly.

10. A scholar has three kinds of struggles: he does not compete with gentlemen for reputation, he does not compete with villains for interests, and he does not compete with the world for treachery.

11. Work hard in the country, prosper in the family, be loyal in words, and be serious and respectful in work.

12. To be self-reliant, to be able to be self-reliant, to be self-reliant, then you are both a villain and a gentleman.