Lao Tzu Quotes
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Leadership is your ability to hide your panic from others.
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To be learned, add something each day. To be enlightened drop something each day.
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Who can enjoy enlightenment and remain indifferent to suffering in the world? This is not in keeping with the Way. Only those who increase their service along with their understanding can be called men and women of Tao.
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Weapons are not proper instruments for gentle people; they use them only when they have no other choice. Peace and quiet are what they value. They do not glory in victory.
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No weapon is sharper than will.
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The sage knows without traveling, perceives without looking, completes without acting.
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Once you arrive {at a spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness}, remember: it isn't necessary to struggle to maintain unity with it. All you have to do is participate in it.
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The best of all teachers is the one who helps people so that eventually they don't need him.
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Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear. What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure? Whether you go up the ladder or down it, you position is shaky. When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance. What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear? Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. Have faith in the way things are. Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things.
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Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
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In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season.
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The wise person dines on something more subtle: He eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non-being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source.
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That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.
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He who is attached to things will suffer much.
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The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.
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Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
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Those who praise victory relish manslaughter. Those who relish manslaughter cannot reach their goals in the world.
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The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
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Pounding an edge to sharpness will not make it last.
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Because he (the Sage) opposes no one, no one in the world can oppose him.
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To know people is wisdom, but to know yourself is enlightenment. to master people takes force, but to master yourself takes strength. to know contentment is wealth, and to live with strength resolve. to never leave whatever you are is to abide, and to die without getting lost- that is to live on and on.
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In the Universe the difficult things are done as if they were easy.
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If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled.
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Abandon wisdom, discard knowledge, and people will benefit a hundredfold.