Confucius failed in his lifetime to rescue a crumbling civilization with his teachings, but he was to become the most influential sage in human history. His thought, still remarkably current, survives here in The Analects --a collection of brief aphoristic sayings that has had a deeper impact on more people's lives over a longer period of time than any other book in human history.Highly regarded for the poetic fluency he brings to his award-winning work, David Hinton is the first twentieth-century translator to render the four central masterworks of ancient Chinese thought: Chuang Tzu, Mencius, The Analects, and Tao Te Ching. His new versions are not only inviting and immensely readable, but they also apply a much-needed consistency to key terms in these texts. Breathing new life into these classics, Hinton's translations will stand as the definitive series for our era.