2 pieces from Analects — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
Between the maxims, the Analects lets the Master describe himself — and the self-portrait is humbler than his reputation. A man who claimed to transmit rather than invent, who forgot to eat when a problem gripped him, who was happy with coarse rice and a bent arm for a pillow, and who measured his life in decades of slowly getting it right.
The Analects opens not with a god or a king but with the pleasure of learning something and coming back to it. Gathered here: what Confucius meant by learning — never just facts, but the slow work of becoming a person — and why he rated a love of it above his own talent.