谋事在人，成事在天
móu shì zài rén, chéng shì zài tiān
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 謀事在人，成事在天
People can plan and do their best, but whether things succeed is up to fate. Said to accept an uncertain outcome calmly, or to console someone who has done all they could.
Con người lo tính và gắng sức, còn việc có thành hay không là do trời. Thường nói để tự nhủ đã làm hết sức thì kết quả ra sao cũng chấp nhận, hoặc để an ủi khi việc không thành.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “mưu sự tại nhân, thành sự tại thiên” (muu-su-tai-nhan-thanh-su-tai-thien). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “谋事在人，成事在天” mean?
People can plan and do their best, but whether things succeed is up to fate. Said to accept an uncertain outcome calmly, or to console someone who has done all they could. Literally: planning lies with people, success lies with heaven
Is “谋事在人，成事在天” formal or informal?
谋事在人，成事在天 is generally neutral.