Tao Te Ching Quotes

The more you know the less you talk.

If you search everywhere, yet cannot find what you are seeking, it is because what you seek is already in your possession.

Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know.

Stop thinking, and end your problems.

The best leaders are those their people hardly know exist. The next best is a leader who is loved and praised. Next comes the one who is feared. The worst one is the leader that is despised ... The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly. When they have accomplished their task, the people say, "Amazing! We did it, all by ourselves!

Free from desire, you realize the mystery, caught in the desire, you see only the manifestations.

If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

If you want to know me, look inside your heart.

Try to change it and you will ruin it. Try to hold it and you will lose it.

The Master's power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old.

If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.

If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

When there is no desire, all things are at peace

When people see some things as good, other things become bad.

He who stands on tiptoe does not stand firm.

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of all things.

To understand the limitation of things, desire them.

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Close your mouth, block off your senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the primal identity.

The more you know the less you understand.

...the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

If good happens, good; if bad happens, good.

The more you know, the less you need.

Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.

Remember that the more you know, the less you fear.

Observe how endings become beginnings.

The more you know, the less you carry

The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.

The Tao is like a well; used but never used up.

Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not.

The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.

When you study the Tao Te Ching, you have to use your heart to try to imagine what Tao really is.