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.

“Some there may be,” said he, “who do things in ignorance of what they do.  I am not of these.  There is an alternative way of knowing things, viz.—­to sift out the good from the many things one hears, and follow it; and to keep in memory the many things one sees.”

Pupils from Hu-hiang were difficult to speak with.  One youth came to interview the Master, and the disciples were in doubt whether he ought to have been seen.  “Why so much ado,” said the Master, “at my merely permitting his approach, and not rather at my allowing him to draw back?  If a man have cleansed himself in order to come and see me, I receive him as such; but I do not undertake for what he will do when he goes away.”

“Is the philanthropic spirit far to seek, indeed?” the Master exclaimed; “I wish for it, and it is with me!”

The Minister of Crime in the State of Ch’in asked Confucius whether Duke Ch’an, of Lu was acquainted with the Proprieties; and he answered, “Yes, he knows them.”

When Confucius had withdrawn, the minister bowed to Wu-ma K’i, a disciple, and motioned to him to come forward.  He said, “I have heard that superior men show no partiality; are they, too, then, partial?  That prince took for his wife a lady of the Wu family, having the same surname as himself, and had her named ‘Lady Tsz of Wu, the elder,’ If he knows the Proprieties, then who does not?”

The disciple reported this to the Master, who thereupon remarked, “Well for me!  If I err in any way, others are sure to know of it.”

When the Master was in company with any one who sang, and who sang well, he must needs have the song over again, and after that would join in it.

“Although in letters,” he said, “I may have none to compare with me, yet in my personification of the ‘superior man’ I have not as yet been successful.”

“‘A Sage and a Philanthropist?’ How should I have the ambition?” said he.  “All that I can well be called is this—­An insatiable student, an unwearied teacher;—­this, and no more.”—­“Exactly what we, your disciples, cannot by any learning manage to be,” said Kung-si Hwa.

Once when the Master was seriously ill, Tsz-lu requested to be allowed to say prayers for him.  “Are such available?” asked the Master.  “Yes,” said he; “and the Manual of Prayers says, ’Pray to the spirits above and to those here below,’”

“My praying has been going on a long while,” said the Master.

“Lavish living,” he said, “renders men disorderly; miserliness makes them hard.  Better, however, the hard than the disorderly.”

Again, “The man of superior mind is placidly composed; the small-minded man is in a constant state of perturbation.”

The Master was gentle, yet could be severe; had an over-awing presence, yet was not violent; was deferential, yet easy.