Lao Tzu Quotes
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There is no greater mistake than to make light of an enemy By making light of an enemy many a kingdom has been lost.
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Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.
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Let the country be small, and the inhabitants few.
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Knowing the future is the flower of the Way, and the beginning of folly.
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Truly, only acting without thought of one's life is superior to valuing one's life.
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The surest test if a person be sane, is if she accepts life whole, as it is.
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Wise travelers always stop short before they come to danger.
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Intellectual knowledge exists in and of the brain. Because the brain is part of the body, which must one day expire, this collection of facts, however large and impressive, will expire as well. {But spiritual insight transcends death.}
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The highest tone is hard to hear.
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A good door needs no lock, still it can't be opened.
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He who treasures his body as much as the world can care for the world.
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What man has more than enough and gives it to the world? Only the man of Tao.
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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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Simple, like uncarved wood.
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For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent man works with perseverance.
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Knowing others is to be clever. Knowing yourself is to be enlightened. Overcoming others requires force. Overcoming yourself requires strength.
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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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To be of few words is natural.
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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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Fine words are traded. Noble deeds gain respect. But people who are not good, why abandon them?
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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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To produce things and to rear them, To produce, but not to take possession of them, To act, but not to rely on one's own ability, To lead them, but not to master them - This is called profound and secret virtue.
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Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.
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Creating without claiming, Doing without taking credit, Guiding without interfering, This is Primal Virtue.