Hanfeizi · 喻老第二十一
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天下之難事必作於易，天下之大事必作於細
The world's difficult affairs necessarily begin in what is easy; its great affairs begin in what is small.
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes · Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed · CC BY-SA 4.0A route through this passage
38 Han characters · 23 distinct forms · 7 units separated by the witness’s punctuation
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- Test one unit.
有形之類，
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Matched by spelling. These are candidate reading procedures, not assigned grammatical analyses.
Watch recurrence: 之 × 4 必 × 4 於 × 4 大 × 2 起 × 2 天 × 2. Repetition of a graph need not mean repetition of a sense.
Computed from this exact witness · 1 contextual editorial excerpt also available. The guide is a set of reading prompts, not a translation. Sources & methods
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What sort of relation does 於 express in these clauses?
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The small or easy starting point from which an affair develops.
zimai editorial draft · not independently reviewed. Applies to 天下之難事必作於易，天下之大事必作於細
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Each connection states its purpose. Comparisons are editorial learning aids; shared wording alone does not prove influence.
Explicit textual citationA quotation that is close but not identicalThe Hanfeizi passage presents a cited maxim corresponding to Laozi 63. Its extra 之 after 天下 is visible in these witnesses. A useful textual connection records both the matching structure and the variation instead of silently producing one normalized quotation.
Shared wording
Computed exact phrases in the pinned witnesses. These links do not assign a sense or assert borrowing.
老子 · 第六十三章難事必作德。圖難於其易也，為大於其細也。天下難事必作於易，天下大事必作於細。是以聖人終不為大。故能成其大。
莊子 · 人間世第四天下之難以言，言必或傳之。夫傳兩喜兩怒之言，天下之難者也。夫兩喜必多溢美之言，兩怒必多溢惡之言。
荀子 · 非相篇第五下之大事則矣。接人用枻，故能寬容，因眾以成天下之大事矣。
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論語 · Let parallel clauses constrain a reading巧言令色，鮮矣仁論語 · Locate a relation夫子至於是邦也論語 · Let parallel clauses constrain a reading父在，觀其志；父沒，觀其行論語 · Locate a relation信近於義Edition, source, and reuse
- Work
- 韓非子 · Hanfeizi
- Attribution
- Traditionally associated with Han Fei; authorship of individual chapters is not uniform or certain.
- Digital witness
- Kanseki Repository · KR3c0005 · base edition tls
- Contributors
- Kanseki Repository (Kanripo) contributors; upstream base-edition labels retained in each original file.
- Source position
- KR3c0005_021.txt, lines 215–221. HF 21.10:01; jishi 396; shiping 691; jiaozhu 220; m196
- Version
55418cf95c05d3bcc35e26bb568cf0a8da957332- Reuse
- CC BY-SA 4.0. Text extraction and teaching additions share this licence.
- Text policy
- Source spelling and punctuation retained. Encoding headers, page markers, paragraph markers, whitespace, and leading section numbers are removed from the reading view. No silent script conversion or textual correction.
- Teaching
- zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes. English renderings are excerpt-level reading aids, not a full published translation. Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed.
Source-file SHA-256: 54e557becf584f867b4e487b9e8f543e076e809dc0126db75de55702ce4de54c. A source comment that cites a translator is an upstream reference, not the attribution of a translation imported here.