📖 Meaning
To turn toward virtue while shutting out evil. It describes the moral discipline of actively cultivating what is right and firmly preventing what is wrong from taking root. The phrase captures both the positive pursuit of goodness and the defensive guarding against vice.
📜 Origin Story
This is a compound idiom assembled from two classical Chinese moral concepts rather than a single named anecdote. The notion of 迁善 (moving toward good) echoes Confucian and Neo-Confucian self-cultivation teachings, while 塞违 (blocking the wrong) draws on the long-standing ethical tradition of preventing evil from spreading, found in early dynastic governance texts. As a four-character unit it belongs to the later literary tradition that crystallized moral instruction into compact phrases. No single historical episode is attached to it.
💡 Example Usage
修身之道，在于迁善塞违，使心地日渐清明。
The way of self-cultivation lies in turning toward the good and blocking out the wrong, so that the heart grows ever clearer.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 迁善塞违
- Pinyin: qiān shàn sāi wéi
- Literal Translation: move toward good, block the wrong
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4