1,000 sayings · 3,000 years · two minutes a day
Read it, hear it, and learn the story behind it. Two minutes each morning, on a poster worth looking at.
iPhone, iOS 17 or later. Free, with a Pro if you want the whole archive.
On the App Store
What the store shows is what you get on the first morning — the poster, the reading, the source, the characters, the widget and the shelf.
Drag
The daily page
Every saying arrives set the way it deserves: the characters large, the pinyin under them, the English in its own voice, and the person who said it.
Swipe once
The saying opens into the passage it came from, in the original and in translation, with a note on what it actually meant and how it gets used — who said it, to whom, and why anyone still repeats it.
A breakdown gives every character its own reading and gloss, so a line you liked becomes a line you can partly read.
One switch, everywhere: the poster, the story, the widget, the notification. Pinyin and audio are the same in both.
From Laozi and Sun Tzu to Lu Xun and Bruce Lee, each drawn from a verifiable, out-of-copyright text and cited to the work and chapter it came from.
By topic, from patience to strategy, or by who said it: the schools of thought, the poets, the statesmen, the generals, the proverbs.
Make it yours
Each theme is a photograph or a pattern with its own ink, its own Chinese face and its own Latin face. Pick one and the whole app turns with it — poster, story, widget and all.
The day's saying on your Home Screen, or the English line, the Chinese line, or a character of the day on the lock screen.
From once a day to ten, inside the hours you choose, on the days you choose. Free on every tier, because a habit shouldn't be the paid part.
无 · nothing
No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no tracking, no ads. Your favourites, your history and your settings are written to your iPhone and stay there. Nothing is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere to send it.
Purchases go through Apple, so even those never reach me. This website counts visits; the app does not. See the privacy policy, which is short.
Pricing
Today's saying, its audio, its breakdown and your reminders are free forever, along with a set of themes and icons.
Prices in US dollars. Apple sets the equivalent in your region. Full details in the terms.
A thousand of them, each one read aloud, cited, and set on something worth looking at.
Download on the App StoreiPhone, iOS 17 or later.