er for
feelings of resentment?" The questioner on coming out said, "The Master
does not take his part."

"With a meal of coarse rice," said the Master, "and with water to drink,
and my bent arm for my pillow--even thus I can find happiness. Riches
and honors without righteousness are to me as fleeting clouds."

"Give me several years more to live," said he, "and after fifty years'
study of the 'Book of Changes' I might come to be free from serious
error."

The Master's regular subjects of discourse were the "Books of the Odes"
and "History," and the up-keeping of the Rules of Propriety. On all of
these he regularly discoursed.

The Duke of Shih questioned Tsz-lu about Confucius, and the latter did
not answer.

Hearing of this, the Master said, "Why did you not say, He is a man with
a mind so intent on his pursuits that he forgets his food, and finds
such pleasure in them that he forgets his troubles, and does not know
that old age is coming upon him?"

"As I came not into life with any knowledge of it," he said, "and as my
likings are for what is old, I busy myself in seeking knowledge there."

Strange occurrences, exploits of strength, deeds of lawlessness,
references to spiritual beings--such-like matters the Master avoided in
conversation.

"Let there," he said, "be three men walking together: from that number I
should be sure to find my instructors; for what is good in them I should
choose out and follow, and what is not good I should modify."

On one occasion he exclaimed, "Heaven begat Virtue in me; what can man
do unto me?"

To his disciples he once said, "Do you look upon me, my sons, as keeping
anything secret from you? I hide nothing from you. I do nothing that is
not manifest to your eyes, my disciples. That is so with me."

Four things there were which he kept in view in his
teaching--scholarliness, conduct of life, honesty, faithfulness.

"It is not given to me," he said, "to meet with a sage; let me but
behold a man of superior mind, and that will suffice. Neither is it
given to me to meet with a good man; let me but see a man of constancy,
and it will suffice. It is difficult for persons to have constancy, when
they pretend to have that which they are destitute of, to be full when
they are empty, to do things on a grand scale when their means are
contracted!"

When the Master fished with hook and line, he did not also use a net.
When out with his bow, he would never shoot at game in cover