Lao Tzu Quotes
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Do nondoing, strive for non-stiving, savor the flavourless, make much of little, repay enmity with virture; plan for difficulty when it is still easy, do the great while it is still small.
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The difficult problems in life always start off being simple. Great affairs always start off being small.
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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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Meandering leads to perfection.
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The generals have a saying: "Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see. Rather than advance an inch it is better to retreat a yard." This is called going forward without advancing, pushing back without using weapons. There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself. When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield.
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The wise trusts not only to his physical eyes - thus he can see clearly.
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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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That which is achieved the most, still has the whole of its future yet to be achieved.
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Other people have more than they need, I alone seem wanting.
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When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.
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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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A winner listens, a loser just waits until it is their turn to talk.
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To be of few words is natural.
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Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.
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Sometimes gain comes from losing, and sometimes loss comes from gaining.
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Can you make your soul embrace the One and not lose it?
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He who knows how to be aggressive, and yet remains patient, becomes a receptacle for all of Nature's lessons.
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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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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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My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practice; but there is no one in the world who is able to understand and practice them.
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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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There is no greater crime than desire.
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Stop thinking, and end your problems.
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If you worry more for others' beliefs, then you will be their slave.