Proverbs and Common Sayings from the Chinese; Together with Much Related and Unrelated Matter, Interspersed with Observations on Chinese Things-In-Gen (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: star tinges the mountains of many regions, so a single unguarded expression injures the virtue of a whole life." This translation is moreover expressly reaffirmed in the Introduction (p. xiv) in the words: " And how could the danger of unguarded speech be more beautifully expressed than in the following ?" But, 1. The antithesis requires a correspondence between the effect of a star on the mountains, and the influence of a wrong expression upon the life; the star merely "tinges," the unguarded expression injures. Thus " the danger of unguarded speech " is not at all " beautifully expressed." 2. / hsing chih huo ( jj] 1j) cannot possibly mean " the light of a single star," but denotes a spark of fire. 3. Shao (jjff) cannot possibly mean to ' tinge, ' but to burn. 4; Wan ch'ing chih shan ($ tg il]) does not mean " the mountains of many regions," but a million acres ('be the same more or less'), so that the analogy between the widespread destruction caused by a single spark, and the far-reaching consequences of a single wrong word, is perfect. VARIATIONS IN CHINESE PROVERBS. The student of Chinese who essays to memorize Chinese sentences, whether gathered from books, or from the conversation of the natives, is beset with difficulties which place him at an immediate and conspicuous disadvantage with his surroundings. Among Western nations, the cultivation of a verbal memory is by no means in itself an end, and even where it appears to have been most cultivated, it may be doubted whether the success attained is equal to what in China would pass for failure. Under these disadvantages, he who ventures to launch upon the dangerous sea of quotation, will not improbably resemble the individual whose experience has been effectively described by the temperance orator, ...