Be merciful, moderate, and modest.
Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken.
Understanding others is knowledge, Understanding oneself is enlightenment; Conquering others is power, Conquering oneself is strength.
Those who are highly evolved, maintain an undiscriminating perception. Seeing everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of the Great Oneness. Thus they are supported by it.
Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.
Deal with difficult tasks while they are easy. Act on large issues while they are small.
Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where a wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pots not is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn’t.
Because he is a living divinity, when he acts, the universe acts.
The new life created by the final integration is self-aware yet without ego, capable of inhabiting a body yet not attached to it, and guided by wisdom rather than emotion. Whole and virtuous, it can never die.
In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.
To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, This is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, This is mental sickness. Only when we are sick of the sickness Shall we cease to be sick. The Sage is not sick, being sick of sickness; This is the secret of health.
Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish – don’t overdo it.
In the Golden Age, Rulers were unknown. In the following age Rulers were loved and praised. Next came the age When rulers were feared. Finally the age When rulers are hated.
Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings; this is the method of Tao.
He who talks more is sooner exhausted.
I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.
Worlds and particles, bodies and beings, time and space: All are transient expressions of the Tao.
By following this simple path, you become extraordinary, unfathomable, a being of profound cosmic subtlety. You outlive time and space by realizing the subtle truth of the universe.
First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then the world.
For one gains by losing And loses by gaining.