Hsien said: To refrain from self-glorification, to subdue feelings of resentment, to control selfish desire—may this be held to constitute perfect virtue? The Master said: These things may certainly be considered hard to achieve, but I am not so sure that they constitute perfect virtue.[1]
The Master said: A man of inward virtue[2] will have virtuous words on his lips, but a man of virtuous words is not always a virtuous man. The man of perfect goodness[2] is sure to possess courage, but the courageous man is not necessarily good.
Can true love be anything but exacting? How can our sense of duty allow us to abstain from admonition?
The nobler sort of man tends upwards; the baser sort tends downwards.
The princely type of man is modest in his speech, but liberal in his performance.
The princely man has three great virtues,
- ↑ Being too purely negative.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 It is almost impossible, here and in other passages, to make any real distinction of moaning between tê, the manifestation of eternal principles in the soul of man, and jên, natural goodness of heart, though the former, being more universal and abstract, may be said to include the latter, which generally implies a certain relation to one's fellow-men.
