William Campbell (1903), Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, page: 424, publisher: Kegan Paul, retrieved: Dec. 20 2011 Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)
“

You have by this time surely seen with your own eyes what your iron ships, with which you think you can accomplish wonders and on which you boast so much, can do against my junks; how one of them has been burned by one of my junks and has disappeared in smoke; how the others would have met with the same doom had they not taken to flight and gone out to sea.

— Koxinga

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "You have by this time surely seen with your own eyes what your iron ships, with which you think you can accomplish wonders and on which you boast so much, can do against my junks; how one of them has been burned by one of my junks and has disappeared in smoke; how the others would have met with the same doom had they not taken to flight and gone out to sea." in the context of "William Campbell (1903), Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, page: 424, publisher: Kegan Paul, retrieved: Dec. 20 2011 Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Koxinga" (Sourced) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Koxinga

About Koxinga

Koxinga (國姓爺) (August 1624 – June 23, 1662), a Chinese Ming dynasty loyalist, was born in Hirado, Japan. He led the Ming Chinese loyalist resistance against the Manchu Qing invaders, and expelled the Dutch from Taiwan.