理
Symbols Virtues
principle
ㄌㄧˇ lǐ
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
The rule or underlying pattern you hold to when it would be easier not to.
Before you commit
Choose with care理 is principle as reason or natural pattern, not as a moral rule. If you mean the line you will not cross, a reader will understand 義 or 原則 and may not read that from 理.
Pairs well with道理 means sense or reason in the everyday way people argue; 天理 means the moral order of heaven and is far heavier.
At small sizesEleven strokes, jade radical plus a regular right side. Even and legible at most sizes.
Meaning
The underlying pattern or reason in things; principle in the deep sense.
The classical word for how things actually work beneath appearances.
Other characters for “principle”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts