Quotes on Taoism

When you have accomplished your goal simply walk away. This is the path way to Heaven.

When Simplicity is broken up, it is made into instruments. Evolved individuals who employ them, are made into leaders. In this way, the Great System is United.

Intelligent people know others. Enlightened people know themselves.

The Tao is told is not the Tao.

The Tao principle is what happens of itself.

When there is no more separation between 'this' and 'that,' it is called the still-point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.

If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained (It is Tao's gift), if you persist in making effort to obtain what effort cannot get, if you persist in reasoning about what cannot be understood, you will be destroyed by the very thing you seek. To know when to stop, to know when you can get no further by your own action, this is the right beginning!

When you accurately perceive the fluidity of things, you can also begin to perceive the constancy behind them: the creative, transformative, boundless, immutable Tao.

The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to all things... The complete whole is the complete whole. So also is any part the complete whole... But forget about understanding and harmonizing and making all things one. The universe is already a harmonious oneness; just realize it.

The Tao's principle is spontaneity.

Heaven and Earth last for ever. Why do Heaven and Earth last for ever? They are unborn, so ever living. The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead. He is detached, thus at one with all. Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

The truest sayings are paradoxical.

So the unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.

If you want to nourish a bird, you should let it live any way it chooses. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the sages never require the same ability from all creatures. . . concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. The true saint leaves wisdom to the ants, takes a cue from the fishes, and leaves willfulness to the sheep.

Goodness in words creates trust, goodness in thinking creates depth, goodness in giving creates love.

Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.

Beneath the light, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around. On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping.

A little child paddles a little boat, Drifting about, and picking white lotuses. He does not know how to hide his tracks, And duckweed's opened up along his path.

A strip of water's spread in the setting sun, Half the river's emerald, half is red. I love the third night of the ninth month, The dew is like a pearl; the moon like a bow.

Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, find no place in that man's breast; for to him all creation is ONE. And all things being thus united in ONE, his body and limbs are but as dust of the earth, and life and death, beginning, and end, are but as night and day, and cannot destroy his peace. How much less such trifles as gain or loss, misfortune or good fortune?

The love of a Sage for his fellows likewise finds expression amongst mankind. Were he not told sop, he would not know that he loved his fellows. But whether he knows it or whether he does not know it, whether he hears it or whether he does not hear it, his love for his is without end, and mankind cease not to repose therein.