Meaning: Giving friendly advice or encouragement to others is much more valuable than giving jewelry and jade.
Excerpt from the original:
Therefore, giving people words is more important than stones and jade; Persuading people with words is more beautiful than articles; Listen to people, take pleasure in bells, drums and harps. Therefore, a gentleman's words are not enough.
Translation:
Therefore, a gentleman's kind words to others are more valuable than a stone, a bead or a jade. Showing kind words to others feels more beautiful than letting people see colorful patterns on the dress; I prefer to say friendly words to others than to listen to bells, drums, lyres and harps. Therefore, a gentleman never tires of listening to the propaganda of kind words.
Xunzi is an expanded material, which aims to summarize the thought of a hundred schools of thought contending at that time and his own academic thought, and reflect Xun Kuang's materialistic view of nature, epistemology and ethics, politics and economy.
This article writes that a gentleman is good at expressing his opinions, which is the virtue of a gentleman and the difference between him and a pedant.
There are many difficulties in persuading others, so a gentleman can show tolerance and accept other people's opinions when interacting with others. The method of persuading others mainly lies in distinguishing different situations and proceeding flexibly.
Xunzi criticized all the schools, but praised Confucius' thought as the best idea of governing the country. Xunzi claimed to be the heir of Confucius, especially the "foreign Wang Xue" who inherited Confucius.
From the standpoint of epistemology, he critically summarized and absorbed hundred schools of thought's theoretical viewpoints, formed a unique view of nature, morality and social history, and summarized the pre-Qin philosophy on this basis.
Xunzi naturalized, objectified and regularized "Heaven", "Destiny" and "Heaven", which can be found in his article "On Heaven". "The stars spin, the sun and the moon pass, the four seasons are royal, the yin and yang are big, and the wind and rain are generous. Everything has its own harmony and life, and its own support. You can see its merits without seeing it. The husband is called God; Everyone knows its success, but it is invisible, and the husband is called heaven.
In Xunzi's view, heaven is nature, without reason, will, good and evil, likes and dislikes. Heaven is a natural day, not a personality god. He called it the subtle functions of yin and yang, wind and rain, etc. God, and the nature formed by this function is called heaven. The creation of the universe is not created by God, but the result of the movement of all things themselves.
Baidu encyclopedia-Xunzi