On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.

If an urn lacks the characteristics of an urn, how can we call it an urn?

Being in humaneness is good. If we select other goodness and thus are far apart from humaneness, how can we be the wise?

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

Study the past if you would define the future. I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.

Good people strengthen themselves ceaselessly