When asked by Ki K’ang whether Tsz-lu was fit to serve the government, the Master replied, “Tsz-lu is a man of decision:  what should prevent him from serving the government?”

Asked the same question respecting Tsz-kung and Yen Yu he answered similarly, pronouncing Tsz-kung to be a man of perspicacity, and Yen Yu to be one versed in the polite arts.

When the head of the Ki family sent for Min Tsz-k’ien to make him governor of the town of Pi, that disciple said, “Politely decline for me.  If the offer is renewed, then indeed I shall feel myself obliged to go and live on the further bank of the Wan.”

Peh-niu had fallen ill, and the Master was inquiring after him.  Taking hold of his hand held out from the window, he said, “It is taking him off!  Alas, his appointed time has come!  Such a man, and to have such an illness!”

Of Hwui, again:  “A right worthy man indeed was he!  With his simple wooden dish of rice, and his one gourd-basin of drink, away in his poor back lane, in a condition too grievous for others to have endured, he never allowed his cheery spirits to droop.  Aye, a right worthy soul was he!”

“It is not,” Yen Yu once apologized, “that I do not take pleasure in your doctrines; it is that I am not strong enough.”  The Master rejoined, “It is when those who are not strong enough have made some moderate amount of progress that they fail and give up; but you are now drawing your own line for yourself.”

Addressing Tsz-hia, the Master said, “Let your scholarship be that of gentlemen, and not like that of common men.”

When Tsz-yu became governor of Wu-shing, the Master said to him, “Do you find good men about you?” The reply was, “There is Tan-t’ai Mieh-ming, who when walking eschews by-paths, and who, unless there be some public function, never approaches my private residence.”

“Mang Chi-fan,” said the Master, “is no sounder of his own praises.  During a stampede he was in the rear, and as they were about to enter the city gate he whipped up his horses, and said, ’Twas not my daring made me lag behind.  My horses would not go.’”

Obiter dicta of the Master:—­

“Whoever has not the glib utterance of the priest T’o, as well as the handsomeness of Prince Chau of Sung, will find it hard to keep out of harm’s way in the present age.

“Who can go out but by that door?  Why walks no one by these guiding principles?

“Where plain naturalness is more in evidence than polish, we have—­the man from the country.  Where polish is more in evidence than naturalness, we have—­the town scribe.  It is when naturalness and polish are equally evident that we have the ideal man.

“The life of a man is—­his rectitude.  Life without it—­such may you have the good fortune to avoid!

“They who know it are not as those who love it, nor they who love it as those who rejoice in it—­that is, have the fruition of their love for it.