Confucius was born on this day in history. He went on to have a pretty substantial impact on the next 2,500 years of human history, as you know. Still going strong today, in fact.

#资源选图 纪念孔子诞辰2568周年 pic.twitter.com/JWAVTuK5R2

— Shuge Library (@shugeorg) September 28, 2017

A few days ago Shuge.org, a digital library of ancient Chinese books, posted a series of high-resolution scans of a famous Ming Dynasty reprint of a classic Confucian text, The School Sayings of Confucius (孔子家语), no doubt in commemoration of the master’s birth. The Sayings are some of the oldest and most important texts in the Confucian tradition, purportedly coming straight from the mouth of the sage. The book has been in circulation since at least 220 AD.

The volume scanned and uploaded by Shuge is a Ming Dynasty edition of the Sayings annotated by politician and scholar Gu Xinchou:

Find a PDF of the ancient book here, and more old pictures of Master Kong here.

Assuming you don’t read Classical Chinese, find an English translation of The School Sayings of Confucius here.