Analects 15.26: 衛靈公 (Wei Ling Gong)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 15 tests exemplary conduct under pressure: hunger, going unrecognized, bad government, and the pull of clever speech. Its sayings ask how learning becomes judgment, how humaneness directs action, and how ritual gives that action form. The portraits of unwavering straightness and timely withdrawal leave room for different responses to public disorder. Praise must answer to examination, and responsibility repeatedly returns to oneself. Short assurances sit beside difficult tensions about reputation and the cost of humaneness. The book closes with the Master guiding a visitor through a room, giving the call for consideration a precise human setting.
Analects 15.26
子曰、巧言亂德、小不忍、則亂大謀。
The Master said, “Smooth talk disrupts virtue; impatience in small matters disrupts great plans.”
Commentary
philology Two kinds of disruption 亂 repeats across the two clauses: speech can disturb virtue, and impatience can disturb plans. 巧言 is the smooth talk associated earlier with a shortage of humaneness. 小 qualifies the matters that must be borne; 大 gives the scale of the plan that can be lost. The warning turns on a mismatch of scale.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high