Lao Tzu Quotes
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The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao. When rich speculators prosper While farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn- all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.
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The small is easy to scatter.
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Movement overcomes cold.
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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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A winner listens, a loser just waits until it is their turn to talk.
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If I have just an ounce of sense, I follow the great Way, and fear only to stray from it.
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Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
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All action begins in rest... This is the ultimate truth.
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The sage does not strive to be great. Thereby he can accomplish the great.
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Abandon wisdom, discard knowledge, and people will benefit a hundredfold.
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Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination.
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From What-is all the world of things was born But What-is sprang in turn from What-is-not.
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Can you care for the people and rule the country and not be cunning?
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A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is.
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Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health.
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If you worry more for others' beliefs, then you will be their slave.
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Knowing the bright, but clinging to the dark, you become a model to the world.
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A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.
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Where there is no conflict, there is no fault.
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Letting the mind control the vital breath is called force.
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If you attach yourself to gross energies - loving this person, hating that clan, rejecting one experience or habitually indulging in another - then you will lead a series of heavy, attached lives. This can go on for a very long and tedious time.
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When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.
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Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.
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The Tao is great. The universe is great. Earth is great. Man is great. These are the four great powers. Man follows the earth. Earth follows the universe. The universe follows the Tao. The Tao follows only itself.