The Quotations by Confucius

a Chinese-English Bilingual Book

Confucius was a philosopher and educatioalist in ancient China. The Analects is the most important work that recorded his ideas. It also contains some sayings of a few other Confucian scholars.

Confucius lived in an era of political chaos; he wished a moral and ordered life. Confucius believed human nature is fundamentally good. He believed in an ethical heaven and that human nature was endowed by heaven. The answer to the social problems could be found in humanity itself. The reason for people's not practicing good was due to they forgot how to be good. Therefore he decided to dedicate his life to convince prople and restore human nature's natural excellence. He believed, once people did that, everything under heaven would return to benevolence.

There are detailed descriptions of Confucius' daily life in The Analects. Through these the readers can see what kind of person Confucius was, how did he handle his daily affairs. As he said, it's not difficult to be good, everyone is capable of it.

There are words which have meanings different from the expressions in nowadays usage. For example, by "learning" Confucius meant learning of truth rather than learning of specific knowledge. "Harmony" referred tobeing in conformity to heaven's mandate for mankind. Some important terms and concepts are listed in the appendix.