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btapia
New member
Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 1
Location: San Diego
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 Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 9:42 am Post subject: mistake with Lao Tzu |
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| I am a Professor of Philosophy and I wanted to inform you of a rather common mistake on your page regarding Lao Tzu. The quote on your page "the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step" appears in some translations. However, the best translations and the original chinese says "the journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet". This is a subtle but important difference. The concept being discussed involves action that arises naturally and spontaneously from stillness. Hence "the Tao does nothing and nothing is left undone." All pure action for Lao Tzu is "wei wu wei". A doing that arises from not doing. |
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thenostromo
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Joined: 04 Apr 2002
Posts: 1675
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| Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 11:57 am Post subject: |
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When I google "miles begins beneath one's feet" I get only one hit
http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/64.html
This is the first time I've heard this, and as far as Internet resources go there is only this one webpage resource that is in agreement (at least for that exact phrasing).
I actually like this version a lot better. Thanks for checking in with this. A very interesting post. Welcome to Quotations Page.
Oops. Found some more.
| Quote: | The following is a famous sentence from Chapter 64 of Dao De Jing:
It is cited in our article in the following form:
"A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step."
This form is very appropriate because the article considers the extent to which the limit of an infinite sequence of steps is determined by the first one. However, the Chinese quotation does not mention first steps, and, moreover, is in the present tense. The excellent Zhongwen.com web site gives interpretations of pictograms, allowing us to translate the characters in order as
thousand li of walk, begins at foot below
In the order corresponding to English, the list is
walk of thousand li begins at below foot
Over the centuries, the li-to-mile ratio has varied in the interval from 0.30 to 0.41. The sentence could be rendered as:
"A four-hundred mile walk begins beneath one's feet."
or
" Even the longest journey must start from where you stand."
These forms are not readily applicable to anything considered in our article. It is a consolation that the Zhongwen.com web site accepts tradition and gives the translation of the sentence in question as
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
http://mat.uab.es/~dicks/Cannon.html
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mgm
Site Admin
Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Posts: 500
Location: Utah
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| Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 4:33 am Post subject: |
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I'm readying a feature that will let me keep the traditional quote in cases like this but will let us post annotations and cross-references about the quotation.
Probably in a few days, stay tuned.
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Michael Moncur
Owner and maintainer, The Quotations Page |
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Phantom_Delta
QuoteMaster
Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Posts: 810
Location: Jackson, Tennessee
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:33 am Post subject: |
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"the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step" appears in some translations
In 2002 I was browsing through the Oxford Book of Quotations or the Oxford Book of Aphorisms and found this to be attributed to Confucius. I even made a note of it and stored it in a file. (But I did not make a note of the source so I may be in error.) In any event, it is attributed to Confucius in the book that I browsed.
Another one that I noted is attributed as a Dutch Proverb.
He who is outside his door already has the hard part of his journey behind him. |
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mgm
Site Admin
Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Posts: 500
Location: Utah
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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I've added an annotation to this quotation pointing this out -
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24004.html
Let me know what you think.l
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Michael Moncur
Owner and maintainer, The Quotations Page |
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