You know that whole Disapproving Asian Dad meme? Yeah, you do, this one: 

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You know where that stuff comes from, culturally speaking? It comes straight from the top, straight from the father of Eastern traditional ethics, from the father of all disappointed Asian fathers: Confucius. Confucius was harsh, man. The guy could dish out burns like no other. And not just any burns. Passive-aggressive, head-shaking, this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you burns. 

Today we're gonna dive into a blurb from The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analects" target="_blank">Analects</a> (475 BC–221 BC), a paragraph in which Confucius tears into one of his students for - ohez noez - sleeping late. Confucius did not like late sleepers. He thought sleeping in pointed to a fundamental character flaw.

Again, people, this blurb is in classical (we're talking ancient) Chinese here. The rules of grammar are a bit different, the vocabulary is a bit different, and the sentence structure is quite different than modern Chinese. I have a Deep-Drive primer on some of the most commonly used Ancient Chinese characters and their meanings here, so if this is your first jump into ancient Chinese, read that first, I won't be covering the basic vocabulary again.

<h3>Some points of interest</h3>
子曰 - 
This is it, friends. The two characters from which sprang a thousand bad jokes. "Confucius says". 子 is a polite, respectful, and even slightly affectionate form of the Chinese name for Confucius: 孔子 [pinyin]kong3 zi3[/pinyin]. Reminder, that 曰 is a [pinyin]yue1[/pinyin], not a [pinyin]ri4[/pinyin]. Visually, the only difference between 曰 and 日 is that the first is a little wider and shorter than the second. 

宰予
The name of one of Confucius' disciples.

于
This appears four times in this passage, and luckily, it means the same thing in each case, namely "as for" or "as to". 

予
This is just a shortened version of 宰予, the disciple's name. 

与
This one is a bit odd. It does not mean "and", as it does in modern Chinese. 

今
You may recognize this character from its Oscar-winning lead in the word "今天", but in ancient Chinese, this character doesn't mean "today", but rather "now". So, same ballpark, but not quite the same word. 

是
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1) <strong>宰予</strong>昼寝，<strong>子曰</strong>：“朽木不可雕也，粪土之墙不可圬也！<strong>于</strong><strong>予</strong><strong>与</strong>何诛？” 

2) <strong>子曰</strong>：“始吾于人也，听其言而信其行；<strong>今</strong>吾于人也，听其言而观其行。于予与改<strong>是</strong>。”

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1) Zai Yu was sleeping in late. Confucius said: "You can't carve rotten wood, and you can't whitewash a wall made of nightsoil. As for Zai Yu, what criticism can I give?"

2) Confucius said: "Used to be that I listened to what folks said and trusted them to behave accordingly; these days, I verify that their words match their actions. As for Zai Yu, my opinion of him has already changed."
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