Speaking of Zeng Guofan, I think everyone will be familiar with it. As a minister in the late Qing Dynasty, he fought all his life, not only quelling the Taiping Rebellion, but also suppressing other peasant movements such as Nianjun. It can be said that he broke his heart in order to maintain the rule of the late Qing Dynasty. In suppressing peasant uprisings, Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan was basically maintained by his own relationship, so he must also have a strict way of managing the family in the local area. In his later years, when asked by outsiders, Zeng Guofan revealed six words of managing the family, revealing helplessness and bitterness. What did he say?

According to the famous novelist Yi Zongkui's "On the New World", Zeng Guofan once played a joke with his aides when he was marching to fight: "I think that in today's imperial examination, besides the four subjects of morality, literature, language and politics, there should also be a subject of' conscienceless', because now we are fighting the peasant army, but Confucius and Mencius alone can't beat them." This reveals a life concept of Zeng Guofan, that is, if you want to achieve the great cause of the late Qing Dynasty, you must exile your conscience.

However, although he has so many philosophies of life, his strict teaching has not played much role in the next generation in terms of his family education level. For example, Ceng Jize Ming, his eldest son, was strictly taught by Zeng Guofan since he was a child, but when he grew up, he went abroad to study in Russia and married a foreign daughter-in-law. In Zeng Guofan's view, this is absolutely contrary to China's traditional ethical cognition, but at this time, Zeng Guofan has so much energy on the management of the next generation. Zeng Guofan had to pretend not to see this matter.

The most incredible thing is that Zeng Guofan clearly mastered the Tao of Confucius and Mencius and used it as his own family education criterion, but abandoned the experience of these decades in his later years. According to "Summer in a Rainy Window", Zeng Guofan's good friends Wu and Guo Songtao once specifically asked his famous sayings about managing the family. I saw Zeng Guofan, who was old, shook his head with a wry smile, and then reluctantly said six words: "Don't trust books, believe in luck."

In fact, Zeng Guofan is superstitious about the so-called destiny and luck, but there are different changes at different ages. For example, in the prime of life, Zeng Guofan once said: "My fame, achievements and articles all come from luck, but without good self-confidence, luck is unreliable." Although in his prime, Zeng Guofan emphasized that self-confidence was the key point, in his later years, his self-confidence gradually failed. In fact, it is no wonder that when he looks back on his life, he will basically be scared out in a cold sweat by his original choice. If he makes a wrong move, he will lose the game. Therefore, Zeng Guofan's six-word famous saying of running a family is contradictory to what he has learned all his life, but it is also a portrayal of his life.