The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes

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Legge, 1872 - China
 

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Page 328 - As if treading on thin ice,' are descriptive of a good man in a high situation. When that is the case, there are no people in the State trusting to luck. ' When there are many people trusting to luck,' the common saying goes, 'that is unlucky for the State.
Page 11 - The sun and moon announce evil, Not keeping to their proper paths. All through the kingdom there is no proper government, Because the good are not employed. For the moon to be eclipsed Is but an ordinary matter. Now that the sun has been eclipsed, — How bad it is ! "Grandly flashes the lightning of the thunder; — There is a want of rest, a want of good.
Page xv - ... calculated to command our admiration, or a deed of atrocity fitted to awaken our disgust, it can hardly be said that there is anything in the language to convey to us the shadow of an idea of the author's feeling about it. The notices, for we cannot call them narratives, are absolutely unimpassioned. A base murder and a shining act of heroism are chronicled just as the eclipses of the sun are chronicled. So and so took place; — that is all. No details are given ; no judgment is expressed.
Page 175 - Teze-yu [the duke's brother, Muh-e; (see the Chuen at the end of the 8th year, and of the 9th)], said, "Anciently, the six domestic animals were not used at the same sacrifice ; for...
Page 291 - Anciently, when Hsia was distinguished for its virtue, the distant regions sent pictures of the [remarkable] objects in them. The nine pastors sent in the metal of their provinces, and the tripods were cast with representations on them of those objects.
Page 318 - prowess' is made up of [the ideographs for] 'to stay' and 'a spear' (cessation of hostilities). Military prowess is seen in the repression of cruelty, the calling in of weapons, the preservation of the appointment of Heaven, the firm establishment of merit, the bestowal of happiness on the people, putting harmony between the princes, the diffusion of wealth.
Page lxiii - Elgin, p. 892. sympathy with power than with weakness, and would overlook wickedness and oppression in authority rather than resentment and revenge in men who were suffering from them. He could conceive of nothing so worthy of condemnation as to be insubordinate.2 Hence he was frequently partial in his judgments on what happened to rulers, and unjust in his estimate of the conduct of their subjects.
Page 152 - A flaw in a white sceptre-stone may be ground away ; but for a flaw in speech, nothing can be done.
Page lxii - at all points of the circle described by man's intelligence, the Chinese mind seems occasionally to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken and vision?'1 Well — we have examined the model summary of history from the stylus of the sage, and it testifies to three characteristics of his mind which it is painful to have thus distinctly to point out. First, he had no reverence for truth in history, — I may say no reverence for truth, without any modification. He...
Page 155 - I have heard that the Spirits of the dead do not enjoy the sacrifices of those who are not of their kindred, and that people only sacrifice to those who were of the sanie ancestry as themselves.

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