Book 14: 《憲問》 Xian Wen (Xian Asked)
《憲問》 Passage 14.20
子曰：「其言之不怍，則為之也難。」
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, teacher; honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 to say, said
- 其 qí
generic third-person subject pronoun: he, one, whoever
- 言 yán
to speak, say
- 之 zhī
subordinating particle: nominalizes the preceding clause as a topic phrase
- 不怍 bù zuò
to be shameless, without shame in what one says
- 不 not
- 怍 to be ashamed, to feel shame
- 則 zé
consequential connector: then, in that case
- 為 wéi
to do, act on, carry out (fulfilling one's words)
- 之 zhī
object pronoun referring back to one's own words: it, them
- 也 yě
topic-marking particle: marks the preceding phrase as topic of what follows
- 難 nán
difficult, hard to do
A text file for Anki 2.1.55 or later: File → Import. The cards go to the deck “Analects”, tagged by passage, and importing again updates them instead of adding copies.
Discussion
No one has started on this passage yet.
Start the discussion in r/analects