This sentence comes from A Man Crossing a Well and Lv Chunqiu.

The original text is as follows:

Song family, there is no well irrigation at home, and they often live alone. His family crossed the well and told people, "I crossed the well alone." The person who heard about it said, "A man has gone down the well in Shi Ding." The people of China know that they have heard from Song Jun. Ding asked. Shi Ding said to him, "If you want to be alone, you have to be alone in the well." Smell it if you want, and don't smell it if you don't smell it.

Vernacular translation:

In the Song Dynasty, there was a family named Ding. There was no well at home, so they had to go out to fetch water to water the distant fields. One of them was sent to fetch water. I often stay outside alone. When his family dug a well, Shi Ding told others, "My family dug a well and got a man." The listener sent a message: "Shi Ding dug a well and dug a man."

People in the capital are talking about this matter, so that the monarch of Song State can know about it. Song Guojun sent someone to ask Shi Ding about the situation. Shi Ding replied: "Saving the labor of an idle person is not digging a living person in a well." It's better not to listen to such rumors.

Extended data:

Creative background:

Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals is a masterpiece compiled by a group of scholars under the auspices of the Prime Minister of Qin State. This book was written on the eve of Qin Shihuang's unification of China. This book is based on Confucianism, Taoism, Ming, Fa, Mohism, Agriculture, Soldiers, Yin and Yang, and is full of hundreds of theories, shining with profound wisdom.

Lv Buwei wanted to take this as the ideology after the unification of Daqin. However, the ruling Qin Shihuang later chose Legalism, which frustrated hundred schools of thought, including Taoism. Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals is a work of Taoism in the pre-Qin period and a masterpiece of Taoism in the late Warring States period. The book is divided into 26 volumes, 160 articles, with more than 200,000 words.

Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals is the first organized and planned work in the history of China. Based on Taoist thought, it adheres to the code of conduct of doing nothing, locates the value scale with Confucian ethics, absorbs Mohist view of justice, famous experts' speculative logic and legalists' skills of governing the country, and forms a whole set of national governance theory with the change of military tactics and farmers' pursuit of geographical location.

Lv Buwei was a legendary businessman at the end of the Warring States Period. He went from business to politics, helped to establish a monarch and entered the political top. He was ambitious and edited "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals", leaving an allusion that "in a word, money is hard to buy". Later generations generally classified Lu Chunqiu as a saint. In the history of management thought, this book has special value.

This is the first anthology in the history of China. From an academic point of view, it has a strong naturalistic color; From the perspective of management, it is full of utilitarianism. After the revision of the pre-Qin philosophers, Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals has formed its own characteristics and made its own achievements in the management thought of wholeness, wholeness and profundity.

From the theoretical framework of yin-yang and five elements to the concrete demonstration of empiricism; From the "inner saint" who cares for health and respects himself to the "outer king" who governs the country and the world; From adjusting the relationship between individuals and state, society and political power to the mutual matching of physiology, physics, rationality and psychology under the control of the natural way, a complete system has been formed. Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals summed up the pre-Qin philosophers, opened the voice of Qin and Han dynasties, and occupied an important position in the history of management thought.