Try to change it and you will ruin it. Try to hold it and you will lose it.
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?
Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.
The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced.
The master accomplishes more and more by doing less and less until finally he accomplishes everything by doing nothing.
A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.
Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
A good wanderer leaves no trace.
A good person is the bad person's teacher. A bad person is the good person's task.
Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.
Use the light that is in you to recover your natural clearness of sight
Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Be still and allow the mud to settle.
Highest good is like water. Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes closest to the way.
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.
Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.
Leadership is your ability to hide your panic from others.
A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.
Hold on to the ancient Way to master the present, and to learn the distant beginning.
The high must make the low its base.
A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
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.
There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take the one with a heart.
He that humbles himself shall be preserved entire. He that bends shall be made straight. He that is empty shall be filled. He that is worn out shall be renewed. He who has little shall succeed. He who has much shall go astray.
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