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“Nimirum hac die Una plus vixi mihi, quam vivendum fuit.”

If our expectation of advantage be tempered in this way, we may succeed in accomplishing the essential part of our schemes.

When the Master went to Wei, Zan Yu acted as driver of his carriage. 2. The Master observed, 'How numerous are the people!' 3. Yu said, 'Since they are thus numerous, what more shall be done for them?' 'Enrich them,' was the reply. 4. 'And when they have been enriched, what more shall be done?' The Master said, 'Teach them.'

Martin, a young man, three-and-twenty years old, who had already given sufficient testimony of his valour, playing a match at tennis, received a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, as it gave no manner of sign of wound or contusion, he took no notice of it, nor so much as sat down to repose himself, but, nevertheless, died within five or six hours after of an apoplexy occasioned by that blow.

[The simile is doubly appropriate, because the wind is not only swift but, as Mei Yao-ch’en points out, "invisible and leaves no tracks."]

The Master said, 'He who is not in any particular office, has nothing to do with plans for the administration of its duties.'

[I think Sun Tzŭ meant "stores accumulated in dépôts." But Tu Yu says "fodder and the like," Chang Yu says "Goods in general," and Wang Hsi says "fuel, salt, foodstuffs, etc."]

The Master said, 'If a truly royal ruler were to arise, it would still require a generation, and then virtue would prevail.'

Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient.

[That is, as Wang Hsi says: "they predominate alternately."]

[An aphorism which puts the whole art of war in a nutshell.]

Some one asked about Tsze-ch'an. The Master said, 'He was a kind man.' 2. He asked about Tsze-hsi. The Master said, 'That man! That man!' 3. He asked about Kwan Chung. 'For him,' said the Master, 'the city of Pien, with three hundred families, was taken from the chief of the Po family, who did not utter a murmuring word, though, to the end of his life, he had only coarse rice to eat.'

[Meng Shih’s note contains an excellent example of the idiomatic use of: "cause them to forget pien (the reasons for acting otherwise than on their first impulse), and hasten in our direction."]

Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, 'It is, when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest; to employ the people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself; to have no murmuring against you in the country, and none in the family.' Chung-kung said, 'Though I am deficient in intelligence and vigour, I will make it my business to practise this lesson.'

["In order to tempt the enemy to cross after you," according to Ts’ao Kung, and also, says Chang Yu, "in order not to be impeded in your evolutions." The T’ung Tien reads, "If the enemy crosses a river," etc. But in view of the next sentence, this is almost certainly an interpolation.]

The Master said of Yen Yuan, 'Alas! I saw his constant advance. I never saw him stop in his progress.'

Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we daily suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and sense of our bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the vigour of his youth and better days?

The philosopher Tsang said, 'The superior man on grounds of culture meets with his friends, and by their friendship helps his virtue.'

The Master said, 'The way of the superior man is threefold, but I am not equal to it. Virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear. 2. Tsze-kung said, 'Master, that is what you yourself say.'