Book 17: 《陽貨》 Yang Huo
《陽貨》 Passage 17.15
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "There are those mean creatures! How impossible it is along with them to serve one's prince!While they have not got their aims, their anxiety is how to get them. When they have got them, their anxiety is lest they should lose them.
When they are anxious lest such things should be lost, there is nothing to which they will not proceed."
Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke (introducing a quotation)
- 鄙夫 bǐ fū
mean, contemptible, petty fellow
- 鄙 mean, low, contemptible
- 夫 man, fellow
- 可 kě
can, is it possible to
The rhetorical question implies a negative answer, which Legge renders as an outright 'impossible'.
- 與 yǔ
with, together with, alongside
- 事君 shì jūn
to serve one's ruler, serve one's lord
- 事 to serve
- 君 ruler, lord, sovereign
- 也與哉 yě yú zāi
rhetorical question/exclamation particle cluster: how could...!, is it really...?
- 也 pause particle, reinforcing a rhetorical question here
- 與 interrogative final particle (equivalent to 歟)
- 哉 exclamatory/interrogative final particle expressing strong feeling
A cluster of final mood particles marking a strong rhetorical question; English realizes the force by fronting 'how' or adding an intensifier like 'really' plus a question mark, rather than by a discrete word for each particle.
- 其 qí
he, that person (the mean man)
- 未 wèi
not yet
- 得 dé
to get, obtain
- 之 zhī
it, the thing desired
- 也 yě
particle marking the end of a subordinate/topic clause
- 患 huàn
to worry about, be anxious over
何晏 reads 患得之 as 患不得之, worrying that one will not get it (a 楚 idiom), and 朱熹 follows; Ames & Rosemont, Lau, Watson and Chin render the negative, the others 'worry about getting it'.
- 得 dé
to get, obtain
- 之 zhī
it (object pronoun)
- 既 jì
once, already
- 得 dé
to get, obtain, have gotten
- 之 zhī
it (object pronoun)
- 患 huàn
to worry about, be anxious over
- 失 shī
to lose
- 之 zhī
it (object pronoun)
- 苟 gǒu
if, supposing that
- 患 huàn
to worry about, be anxious over
- 失 shī
to lose
- 之 zhī
it (object pronoun)
- 無所不至 wú suǒ bù zhì
there is nothing he will not do, stop at nothing, go to any extreme
- 無 there is not, to lack (negative existential)
- 所 nominalizing particle: that which
- 不 not
- 至 to reach, arrive, go to (an extreme)
A fixed four-character idiom describing willingness to go to any length.
- 矣 yǐ
final particle marking completed action / emphatic assertion
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