Selected Quotations from Lao Tzu
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
When you are content to be simply yourself and
don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in
the world.
Those who know do not speak Those that speak do not know.
Tao Te Ching
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates
profoundness Kindness in giving creates love.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
He who knows others is learned. He who knows himself is wise
One who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be
deemed a scholar.
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone
deeply gives you courage.
It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be,
than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform
it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.
The way to do is to be.
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone
deeply gives you courage.
The Way of Heaven does not compete, And yet it skillfully achieves
victory. It does not speak, and yet it skillfully responds to
things. It comes to you without your invitation.
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives
to others, the more he has for his own.
He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.
Superior leaders get things done with very little motion. They
impart instruction not through many words, but through a few deeds.
They keep informed about everything but interfere hardly at all.
They are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well
if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit.
And, because they take no credit, credit never leaves them.
He who knows others is learned. He who knows himself is wise.
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered
himself is mightier still.
Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously
the head, the heart and the senses.
Nature is not human-hearted.
The truth often sounds paradoxical
To know you have enough is to be rich.
One who acts with an ulterior purpose does harm; one who takes
hold
of a thing in the same way loses his hold. The sage does not act
so, and therefore does no harm. The sage does not lay hold, and
therefore does not lose boldness. But people in their conduct
of
affairs are constantly ruining them when they are on the eve of
success. If they were careful at the end, as they should be at
the
beginning, they would not so ruin them.
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