Lao Tzu Quotes
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There is no greater crime than desire.
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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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Not knowing of the eternal leads to unfortunate errors.
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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.
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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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Creating without claiming, Doing without taking credit, Guiding without interfering, This is Primal 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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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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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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By moderation one can be generous.
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Meet the big while it is small.
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By compassion one can be brave.
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Going forward seems like retreat.
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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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Those who know it do not speak about it. Those who speak about it do not know it.
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. . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment.
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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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Do not strive for the shine of jade, but clatter like stone.
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Only by working within the laws that govern the flow of water will happiness be achieved.
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Sometimes gain comes from losing, and sometimes loss comes from gaining.
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Appetite for food and sex is nature.
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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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Those who know others are intelligent Those who know themselves have insight. Those who master others have force Those who master themselves have strength.Those who know what is enough are wealthy. Those who persevere have direction. Those who maintain their position endure. And those who die and yet do not perish, live on.
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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.