報任安書（節選）报任安书（节选）

The reason I have borne it in silence and gone on living, sunk in dung and dirt without refusing it, is that something in my heart is still unfinished, and I would be ashamed to come to the end of my life with my writing never shown to those who come after.

In antiquity there were rich and noble men beyond counting whose names have worn away; only the free and extraordinary are still spoken of. The Lord of the West, held captive, worked out the Changes; Confucius, in distress, made the Spring and Autumn Annals; Qu Yuan, banished, composed "Encountering Sorrow"; Zuo Qiu lost his sight, and there were the Discourses of the States; Master Sun had his kneecaps cut out, and his Art of War was set in order; Lü Buwei was sent away to Shu, and the world hands down his Survey; Han Fei was imprisoned in Qin, and we have "The Difficulties of Persuasion" and "Solitary Indignation". The three hundred Songs were, for the most part, made by sages and worthies giving vent to their indignation. These men all had something knotted in their hearts that they could not carry through, so they recounted past events and thought of those to come. Zuo Qiu without his eyes and Master Sun with his feet cut off could never again be employed; so they withdrew to write out their arguments and plans, to give vent to their indignation, thinking to hand down writings in which they themselves would be seen.

I have not been modest. Lately I have entrusted myself to my unskilled words. I have gathered up the old accounts scattered and lost throughout the world, examined them against what was actually done, and inquired into the principles of success and failure, of rise and fall, in a hundred and thirty chapters, wishing also to search out the boundary between heaven and man, to see through the changes of past and present, and to found a school of my own. The draft was not yet finished when I met with this disaster; and because I could not bear that it should go uncompleted, I submitted to the extreme punishment without a look of resentment. If I truly have written this book, and it can be stored in a famous mountain and passed to the people fit to receive it, and travel the towns and great cities, then I shall have paid the debt of my earlier disgrace, and though I were cut down ten thousand times, what would I regret? But this can be said to the wise; it is hard to say to the vulgar.