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.

"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