Confucius spent his career failing at what he wanted: he sought office to put his teaching into practice, wandered between states for over a decade, was repeatedly rejected, and died thinking himself unsuccessful. He claimed no revelation and no originality — he said he transmitted rather than created — and the Analects is a compilation by students, not a book he wrote. Two millennia of temples, and imperial titles that eventually made him almost a god, sit on top of a man who insisted he was a teacher.