Nature is better than a middling doctor. Stay at home and reverence your parents; why travel afar to worship the gods? A bottle-nosed man may be a teetotaller, but no one will think so. It is easier to catch a tiger than to ask a favour. With money you can move the gods; without it, you can’t move a man. Bend your head if the eaves are low. Oblige, and you will be obliged. Don’t put two saddles on one horse. Armies are maintained for years, to be used on a single day. In misfortune, gold is dull; in happiness, iron is bright. More trees are upright than men. If you fear that people will know, don’t do it. Long visits bring short compliments. If you are upright and without guile, what god need you pray to for pardon? Some study shows the need for more. One kind word will keep you warm for three winters. The highest towers begin from the ground. No needle is sharp at both ends. Straight trees are felled first. No image-maker worships the gods. He knows what stuff they are made of. Half an orange tastes as sweet as a whole one. We love our own compositions, but other men’s wives. Free sitters at the play always grumble most. It is not the wine which makes a man drunk; it is the man himself. Better a dog in peace than a man in war. Every one gives a shove to the tumbling wall. Sweep the snow from your own doorstep. He who rides a tiger cannot dismount. Politeness before force. One dog barks at something, and the rest bark at him. You can’t clap hands with one palm. Draw your bow, but don’t shoot. One more good man on earth is better than an extra angel in heaven. Gold is tested by fire; man, by gold. Those who have not tasted the bitterest of life’s bitters can never appreciate the sweetest of life’s sweets. Money makes a blind man see. Man is God upon a small scale. God is man upon a large scale. A near neighbour is better than a distant relation. Without error there could be no such thing as truth. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE What foreign students have achieved in the department of Chinese literature from the sixteenth century down to quite recent times is well exhibited in the three large volumes which form the _Bibliotheca Sinica_, or _Dictionnaire Bibliographique des Ouvrages rélatifs à l’Empire chinois_, by Henri Cordier: Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1878; with Supplément, 1895. This work is carried out with a fulness and accuracy which leave nothing to be desired, and is essential to all systematic workers in the Chinese field. By far the most important of all books mentioned in the above collection is a complete translation of the Confucian Canon by the late Dr. James Legge of Aberdeen, under the general title of _The Chinese Classics_. The publication of this work, which forms the greatest existing monument of Anglo-Chinese scholarship, extended from 1861 to 1885.