Book 15: 《衛靈公》 Wei Ling Gong (Duke Ling of Wey)
《衛靈公》 Passage 15.16
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "When a man is not in the habit of saying — 'What shall I think of this? What shall I think of this?' I can indeed do nothing with him!"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 Master, teacher; refers to Confucius
- 曰 to say, speak
- 不 bù
not
- 曰 yuē
to say
- 如之何 rú zhī hé
what to do about it, how is it to be handled
- 如 how, in what way
- 之 it, him (object pronoun)
- 何 what
- 如之何 rú zhī hé
what to do about it, how is it to be handled
- 如 how, in what way
- 之 it, him (object pronoun)
- 何 what
- 者 zhě
nominalizing particle: one who, those who
- 吾 wú
I, me
- 末 mò
no way to, nothing can be done
末 functions here as a negator equivalent to 無/无 ('there is no...'), not its literal sense of 'end.'
- 如之何 rú zhī hé
what to do about it, how is it to be handled
- 如 how, in what way
- 之 it, him (object pronoun)
- 何 what
- 也已矣 yě yǐ yǐ
final particle cluster marking strong assertion: that is all, indeed
- 也 sentence-final particle reinforcing assertion
- 已 final particle: that is all
- 矣 final particle marking completed or emphatic assertion
English typically conveys this emphatic final-particle cluster through exclamatory punctuation or an intensifier rather than a discrete word; only Legge and Peimin Ni supply one here.
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