A notable example is "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", from the Dao De Jing, ascribed to Laozi.
[11] Rosenhow notes however that some sentence fragments also fall within the category of Chinese proverbs, with ellipsis accounting for their fragmentary natures, and that a better definition is the purpose of Chinese proverbs, which is morally instructional; informing people what to do in a given situation by reference to familiar ideas, and repeatedly used in conversation in order to promote and continue a shared set of values and ways of going about things.
[3] As stated earlier, they have historically been a part of a long-standing oral culture amongst the Chinese peasantry,[4] and their continued existence in an age of more widespread literacy and written communication is explained by the political events in China of the 20th century.
[29] One factor was the May 4th Movement not only encouraging vernacular language over Literary Chinese but at the same time including proverbs into modern Chinese literature, exemplified by Cheng Wangdao's inclusion of popular sayings in the chapter on quotations in his 1932 Introduction to Rhetoric and by the parting admonition to writers in Hu Shih's 1917 Tentative suggestions for Literary Reform: "Do not avoid popular expressions.
[31] Another factor was the deliberate use of proverbs as a rhetorical technique by leaders such as Mao Zedong addressing primarily peasant audiences.
[31] Mao encouraged others to do the same as he himself did, in his 1942 Talks on Literature and Art at the Yan'an Forum, stressing to writers the importance of the use of folk idioms and proverbs in order to make their writing accessible to the majority of their audience.