‘Have you studied the Odes?’ ‘No.’ ‘Unless you study the Odes, you will be ill-equipped to speak’ (XVI.13). The Odes was an anthology every educated man was thoroughly acquainted with, so an apt quotation from it could be used to convey one’s meaning in polite or delicate situations. An ability to speak through the guise of a quotation was particularly useful in diplomatic exchanges. It is for this reason that Confucius said, ‘If a man who knows the three hundred Odes by heart … proves incapable of exercising his own initiative when sent to foreign states, then what use are the Odes to him,
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