Composition
The Thousand Character Classic is composed of 250 phrases of 4 characters each from "天地玄黃" (jyutping: tin1 dei6 jyun4 wong4, pinyin: tiān dì xuán huáng) to "焉哉乎也" (jyutping: yin1 zoi1 fu1 jaa5, pinyin: yān zāi hū yě). It was selected among the calligraphies of 王羲之 (Wang Xizhi), one of the finest calligraphers in China, and composed by Zhou Xingsi, who lived from 470 to 521 in the Liang dynasty. The characters of the poem were sometimes used to represent the numbers from 1 through 1000 (as the standard numbers could more easily be altered with an extra stroke or two), as described in this link for students: Qianziwen.
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“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
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—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)