The teacher said: true scholarship endures like a river through ten thousand years.
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From 杜甫《戏为六绝句》: 尔曹身与名俱灭，不废江河万古流 - 'you lot will perish body and name, but the great rivers will flow on for ten thousand ages.' Du Fu's rebuke to those who belittled the four great poets of the earlier Tang (王杨卢骆).
usage
Almost always quoted with 尔曹身与名俱灭 - the two lines together make the point: the hecklers vanish, the masters flow on. 万古 = 'ten thousand ages,' a classical intensifier.
