Tao Te Ching

"When all under heaven know beauty as beauty,"

"The sage, in ruling,..."

"The Way is empty,"

"Heaven and earth are inhumane;"

"The valley spirit never dies—"

"If wealth and honor make you haughty,"

"Thirty spokes converge on a single hub,"

"We look for it but do not see it;"

"Abolish sagehood and abandon cunning,"

"There was something featureless yet complete,"

"The Way is eternally nameless."

"Rippling is the Way, flowing left and right!"

"If feudal lords and kings were ever noble and thereby exalted, they would be likely to fall."

"Striving for an excess of praise, one ends up without praise."

"Reversal is the movement of the Way;"

"The Way gave birth to unity, Unity gave birth to duality, Duality gave birth to trinity, Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures."

"Person or property, which is dearer?"

"No guilt is greater than giving in to desire,"

"Without going out-of-doors,"

"The myriad creatures respect the Way and esteem integrity."

"The fields are choked with weeds,"

"Cultivated in the person, integrity is true."

"When government is anarchic, the people are honest;"

"Only through thrift can one be prepared;"

"What was the reason for the ancients"

"Act before there is a problem;"

"A good warrior is not bellicose,"

"My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise; but there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise them."

"To realize that you do not understand is a virtue;"

"The Way of heaven"

"Heaven’s net is vast;"

"If the people never fear death, what is the purpose of threatening to kill them?"

"The Way of heaven reduces surplus to make up for scarcity;"

"The Way of heaven is impartial, yet is always with the good person."

"The sage does not hoard."

"Whoever speaks is not wise, whoever is wise always keep silence; I hear this message from Laozi. If Laozi is a wise man, why did he himself write Dao De Jing which has five thousand words?"

"Next to the Bible and the Bhagavad Gītā, the Tao Te Ching is the most translated book in the world. Well over a hundred different renditions of the Taoist classic have been made into English alone, not to mention the dozens in German, French, Italian, Dutch, Latin, and other European languages. There are several reasons for the superabundance of translations. The first is that the Tao Te Ching is considered to be the fundamental text of both philosophical and religious Taoism. Indeed, the Tao, or Way, which is at the heart of the Tao Te Ching, is also the centerpiece of all Chinese religion and thought. Naturally, different schools and sects bring somewhat different slants to the Tao, but all subscribe to the notion that there is a single, overarching Way that encompasses everything in the universe. As such, the Tao Te Ching shares crucial points of similarity with other major religious scriptures the world over."