Lao Tzu Quotes
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A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind. Thus by nature's own decree, the soft and gentle are triumphant.
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Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?
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Those who stand on their toes are not steady.
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Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know. Close your mouth, block off your senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the primal identity. Be like the Tao. It can't be approached or withdrawn from, benefited or harmed, honored or brought into disgrace. It gives itself up continually. That is why it endures.
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When life begins we are tender and weak When life ends we are stiff and rigid All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life and dry in brittle in death So the soft and supple are the companion of life While the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind Thus by Nature's own decree the hard and strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant.
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The most fundamental seems fickle.
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Returning to the source is stillness. It is returning to one's fate. Returning to one's fate is eternal.
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Stillness overcomes heat.
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Some lose yet gain, others gain and yet lose.
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The best fighter is never angry.
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Peace and quiet govern the world.
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Does one scent appeal more than another? Do you prefer this flavor, or that feeling? Is your practice sacred and your work profane? Then your mind is separated: from itself, from oneness, from the Tao.
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There was something that finished chaos, born before Heaven and Earth.
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The master does his job and then stops. He understands that the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao.
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Accomplish but do not boast, accomplish without show, accomplish without arrogance, accomplish without grabbing, accomplish without forcing.
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Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
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The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind. The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.
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Heavy is the root of light.
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The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. What is grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.
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The sturdiest virtue seems fragile.
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Seeing the small is called clarity.
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The one who does not honor the teacher and the one who does not honor the task, although ever so knowledgeable, they are confused.
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What should be shrunken must first be stretched.
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Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. . . . Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body.