The Four Books and Five Classics refers to the collective name for the Confucian classics, the Four Books and the Five Classics.

The Four Books and Five Classics is the collective name for the classic works of Confucianism and was also the core content of ancient Chinese education and the imperial examinations. It is not a single book, but a system of classics composed of two parts, the Four Books and the Five Classics, and it occupies a very important place in traditional Chinese culture.

The Four Books refers to the four works The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and Mencius. The Analects records the words and deeds of Confucius and his disciples, Mencius concentratedly embodies Mencius's political and ethical thought, and The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean were originally two chapters in The Book of Rites that were later taken out separately and, together with the previous two, came to be called the Four Books.

The Five Classics refers to the five classics The Book of Songs, The Book of History, The Book of Rites, The Book of Changes, and The Spring and Autumn Annals, whose contents respectively involve poems and ballads, ancient documents, statutes and institutions, divination philosophy, and chronological historical events. These classics are said to have been compiled and edited by Confucius and preserve a large amount of the intellectual and cultural material of the pre-Qin period.

For today's readers, many maxims in the Four Books and Five Classics about self-cultivation, scholarship, and conduct in the world are still widely quoted. Beginners can start with the Four Books, which are shorter and relatively plain in language, and then gradually move on to the Five Classics; reading with annotations and translations will make it easier to understand the ideas in them.