Politicians From China

"Probably China's greatest descriptive poet."

"戰哭多新鬼，愁吟獨老翁。 亂雲低薄暮，急雪舞迴風。 瓢棄尊無綠，爐存火似紅。 數州訊息斷，愁坐正書空。"

"人生不相見，動如參與商。 今夕復何夕，共此燈燭光。 少壯能幾時，鬢髮各已蒼。 訪舊半爲鬼，驚呼熱中腸。 焉知二十載，重上君子堂。 昔別君未婚，兒女忽成行。 怡然敬父執，問我來何方。 問答乃未已，兒女羅酒漿。 夜雨剪春韭，新炊間黃粱。 主稱會面難，一舉累十觴。 十觴亦不醉，感子故意長。 明日隔山嶽，世事兩茫茫。"

"無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江滾滾來。"

"好雨知時節，當春乃發生。 隨風潛入夜，潤物細無聲。"

"Tu Fu was the master stylist of regulated verse, the poet of social protest, the confessional poet, the playful and casual wit, the panegyricist of the imperial order, the poet of everyday life, the poet of the visionary imagination. He was the poet who used colloquial and informal expressions with greater freedom than any of his contemporaries; he was the poet who experimented most boldly with densely artificial poetic diction; he was the most learned poet in recondite allusion and a sense of the historicity of language. One function of literary history is to account for a poet’s identity; Tu Fu’s poetry defies such reduction: the only aspect that can be emphasized without distorting his work as a whole is the very fact of its multiplicity."

"Tu Fu is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a majority of those qualified to speak, the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language."

"my mother did the chant of Fa Mu Lan. I learned to talk by repeating those things. I never knew, until I got to college and was taking an Asian Lit class, that that was important poetry. I just thought it was my parents' tales. My brothers thought, oh, those are just village ditties. They sing that on the farm. And then I thought later, oh, Tu Fu and Li Po-this is important stuff."

"His poems do not as a rule come through very well in translation."

"China's greatest poet."

"When we were young, we have to memorize those texts from Tu Fu and others. And my grandmother used to carry me on my back and chant to me Chinese poems and sayings. The first kind of poetry I heard was Chinese poetry, and it ingrained in my ear, even though English is my main language. I can hardly read Chinese. The Chinese poem was ingrained in me when I was very young."

"飯顆山頭逢杜甫，頭戴斗笠日卓午。 借問別來太瘦生，總為從前作詩苦。"

"朱門酒肉臭路有凍死骨"

"Tonight my wife must watch alone the full moon over Fu-zhou; I think sadly of my sons and daughters far away, too young to understand this separation or remember our life in Chang'an. In fragrant mist, her flowing hair is damp; In clear moonlight, her jade-white arms are cold. When will we lean at the open casement together while the moonlight dries our shining tears?"

"A visible darkness grows up mountain paths; I lodge by the river gate high in a study, Frail cloud on a cliff edge passing the night. The lonely moon topples amid the waves; Steady, one after another, a line of cranes in flight. Howling over the kill, wild dogs and wolves. No sleep for me. I worry over battles— I have no strength to right the universe."

"Clear waters wind Around our village, With long summer days Full of loveliness; Fluttering in and out From the house beams The swallows play; Waterfowl disport together As everlasting lovers; ... What more could I wish for?"

"Nature ever calls people to live Along with her; why should I be lured By transient rank and honours?"

"Birds the more white, against green stream Blooms burst to flame, against blue hills I glance, the spring is gone again. What day, what day, can I go home?"

"君不見青海頭 古來白骨無人收 新鬼煩冤舊鬼哭"

"I'm empty, here at the edge of the sky."

"天際秋雲薄，從西萬里風。 今朝好晴景，久雨不妨農。 塞柳行疏翠，山梨結小紅。 胡笳樓上發，一雁入高空。"

"親賢臣 遠小人 此先漢所以興隆也. 親小人 遠賢臣 此後漢所以傾頹也。先帝在時 每與臣論此事 未嘗不歎息痛恨於桓靈也。"

"There is no fixed road to wealth, and money has no permanent master."

"He had no penchant for beauty of style, but aimed merely to make his record complete... We shall find none of the brilliance of Taine in the pages of Szuma Ch’ien, no charming gossip and anecdotes in the style of Herodotus, no sober concatenation of cause and effect as in Thucydides, no continental vision pictured in music as in Gibbon; for history seldom rises, in China, from an industry to an art. From Szuma Ch’ien to his namesake Szuma Kuang, who, eleven hundred years later, attempted again a universal history of China, the Chinese historians have labored to record faithfully—sometimes at the cost of their income or their lives—the events of a dynasty or a reign; they have spent their energies upon truth, and have left nothing for beauty. Perhaps they were right, and history should be a science rather than an art; perhaps the facts of the past are obscured when they come to us in the purple of Gibbon or the sermons of Carlyle. But we, too, have dull historians, and can match any nation in volumes dedicated to record—and gather—dust."

"吳王曰：「將軍罷休就舍，寡人不願下觀。」孫子曰：「王徒好其言，不能用其實。」於是闔廬知孫子能用兵，卒以為將。西破彊楚，入郢，北威齊晉，顯名諸侯，孫子與有力焉。"

"余嘗西至空峒，北過涿鹿，東漸於海，南浮江淮矣，至長老皆各往往稱黃帝、堯、舜之處，風教固殊焉，總之不離古文者近是。"

"I suddenly remember the distance that I must travel; I spring from bed and look out to see the time. The stars and planets are all grown dim in the sky; Long, long is the road; I cannot stay. I am going on service, away to the battle-ground, And I do not know when I shall come back. I hold your hand with only a deep sigh; Afterwards, tears—in the days when we are parted. With all your might enjoy the spring flowers, But do not forget the time of our love and pride. Know that if I live, I will come back again, And if I die, we will go on thinking of each other."

"[Su Wu] relates how he shed tears during this separation, and urges his wife to remember their first love. He vows to return to her if he survives his ordeal, but if he dies first, then he hopes she will remember him with love. The courtly tone of his message to his wife, and his expression of integrity are mirrored in Su Wu's political life. In captivity he was offered the chance of liberty if he renounced his country, but he refused to become a traitor, for which he was honoured on his return."

"one of my soldiers can handle three Communist soldiers"

"Without establishing national laws, how can you suppress the rebellion?"

"I have always had one answer for Communists-kill them all."

"Chiang Kai-shek does not like my policies but he cannot do anything to me. I am too far away from his reach."

"We shall first confront them [the Russians] with arguments...and then settle it on the battlefields."

"「農村工人一點沒受過教育，蠢得很，什麽也不懂，甚至比一般農民還要落後些」（《王明言論選輯》）"

"「只有蘇維埃政府是唯一的廉潔政府，這種廉潔政府是中國人民有史以來時時刻刻的希望出現的。中華蘇維埃共和國已經完全具備有現代國家的一切條件和成份，它完全有資格稱作文明的人民共和國」（《王明言論選輯》）"

"「在許多地方的土匪漸與農民運動相接近，漸漸直接的幫助農民的鬥爭，這種事實尤其使共產黨員不能不注意到他們對於土匪的關係的問題。我們應當鑽進土匪隊伍中去……可以組織他們作革命的爭鬥」（《武裝暴動》的序言指示）"

"「中國共產黨有以斯大林爲領導的列寧主義共產國際的直接領導」（王明《中國革命危機的加深和中國共產黨的任務》"

"“今天中國面臨的是‘兩國之爭’，即新生的'中華蘇維埃共和國'與腐朽的'中華民國'的鬥爭”，“‘兩國’之爭，決定著中國目前的全部政治生活”，“‘兩國’政權的尖銳對立，是目前中國全部政治生活的核心。(見《王明傳》)"

"The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit...they are just a heap of loose sand...Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat."

"I am the one who will crush the Qing utterly. With the power of sun and moon I will smash through the boundaries of Helanshan pass. With fire and fury I shall come to the city of the Nanluo kings, and the might of the Yanhuang will rise again."

"To understand is difficult; to act is easy."

"In the construction of a country, it is not the practical workers but the idealists and planners that are difficult to find."

"China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable."

"It is only after mature deliberation and thorough preparation that I have decided upon the Program of Revolution and defined the procedure of the revolution in three stages. The first is the period of military government; the second, the period of political tutelage; and the third, the period of constitutional government."

"And 'speak truth unto power'? What does this mean? It means giving your best advice to superiors based on the best information available and objective analysis even when you know it may not be music to their ears."

"For the first ten years or so, you would always question whether the decisions were right or wrong, but you have to learn to put things behind you once a decision is made. You can't be wishy-washy about it."

"I do not say what I do not mean. Neither can anyone force me to say what I don't wish to say."

"琴詩酒伴皆拋我   雪月花時最憶君"

"The most striking characteristic of Po Chü-i's poetry is its verbal simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expression which she could not understand. The poems of his contemporaries were mere elegant diversions which enabled the scholar to display his erudition, or the literary juggler his dexterity. ... No poet in the world can ever have enjoyed greater contemporary popularity than Po."

"Although there have been many wars in China, the natural outlook of the Chinese is very pacifistic. I do not know of any other country where a poet would have chosen, as Po-Chui did in one of the poems translated by Mr. Waley, called by him The Old Man with the Broken Arm, to make a hero of a recruit who maimed himself to escape military service."