📖 Meaning
Heaven's justice is clear and manifest. The idiom expresses the traditional Chinese belief that Heaven upholds justice and ensures that good and evil receive their rightful, unmistakable retribution.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom traces to the Song Dynasty, when the philosopher Zhu Xi recorded in his work 'Zhuzi Yulei' (Conversations of Master Zhu), in the section commenting on the Analects chapter 'I and Yan Hui,' that the earlier Neo-Confucian thinker Yi Chuan (Cheng Yi) used the related expression '天理昭彰' (Heaven's justice is manifest). The exact form '天理昭昭' appears in the Yuan Dynasty anonymous play 'Feng Yulan,' Act Three, which laments that Heaven's justice is so clear yet who could have foreseen the present day. The phrase reflects the deep-rooted Chinese cosmological conviction that Heaven maintains moral order and that no deed, good or evil, goes unrequited.
💡 Example Usage
他欺压百姓多年，如今终于被捕入狱，真是天理昭昭。
He oppressed the common people for years, and now that he has finally been arrested and imprisoned, truly heaven's justice is manifest.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 天理昭昭
- Pinyin: tiān lǐ zhāo zhāo
- Literal Translation: heaven, principle, manifest, manifest
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4