Confucius Considers Giving Up Speech

Confucius said, "I am thinking about giving up speech." Zigong said hastily, "If you did not speak, what would there be for us, your disciples, to transmit?"
Confucius said, calmly and matter-of-factly, "What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are the four seasons going round and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven ever say?"

- tr. by Yu Dan, from Confucius From The Heart