Referring To Oneself
When referring to oneself, the regular pronoun "I" was to be avoided in most situations. When addressing a person or persons of a superior status, use of a humble form of "I" was required. For example, servants and slaves must not use the pronoun "I", when speaking to their masters. The same rule applied among royalty, government officials, and commoners based on rank and status. Socially, a person may refer to him/herself humbly in formal exchanges and settings, regardless of status and rank, in order to display virtue and enlightenment. Below is a list of some of the humble substitutes, when referring to oneself or his/her own family or possessions.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Honorifics
Famous quotes containing the words referring to, referring and/or oneself:
“For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you.”
—Bible: Hebrew Deuteronomy, 6:15.
The words are also found in Exodus 20:5, referring to the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ... for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”
“Meanwhile Snow White held court,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut
and sometimes referring to her mirror
as women do.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“[The] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)