Lao Tzu Quotes
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Keep your mouth shut, and close up the doors of sight and sound, and as long as you live you will have no vexation. But open your mouth, or become inquisitive, and you will be in trouble all your life long.
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By moderation one can be generous.
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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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The difficult problems in life always start off being simple. Great affairs always start off being small.
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Countless words count less than the silent balance between yin and yang
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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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Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
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The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.
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By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love and kindness he may rule the world forever.
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When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.
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Why not simply honor your parents, love your children, help your brothers and sisters, be faithful to your friends, care for your mate with devotion, complete your work cooperatively and joyfully, assume responsibility for problems, practice virtue without first demanding it of others, understand the highest truths yet retain an ordinary manner? That would be true clarity, true simplicity, true mastery.
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Can you make your soul embrace the One and not lose it?
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The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced.
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Meet the big while it is small.
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For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent man works with perseverance.
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The great Way is very straight, but people prefer to deviate.
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What makes a kingdom great is its being like a down-flowing river,--the central point towards which all the smaller streams under Heaven converge; or like the female throughout the world, who by quiescence always overcomes the male. And quiescence is a form of humility.
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Not knowing of the eternal leads to unfortunate errors.
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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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Allow your softer, more intuitive, and less dominating feminine qualities to rise to the fore, so that you're surrendering rather than dominating, receiving rather than broadcasting, loving rather than fighting.
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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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Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars. This practice should answer the question..... The master settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.
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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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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.