Laozi

The artist Zhang Lu painted me in the Ming dynasty riding an ox westward — toward the pass where, the story says, I stopped to write the Tao Te Ching before disappearing from history. The ox is calm. I am old. The road ends at the border of the known world.

I am said to have lived one hundred and sixty years, or two hundred and sixty years. I am said to...

The Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way. Names are useful, but they are not the root. Once a thing is named, it can be possessed, argued over, regulated, and lost. The sage returns to the source before names harden into prisons.

The highest good is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend. It dwells in low places that people disdain, and so it is close to the Way. Those who must always be above others have misunderstood power at its root.

Act without acting. Work without effort. Taste without tasting. The sage does not strive, and so nothing is left undone. This is not idleness. It is the difference between forcing a lock and finding the key. Nature never hurries, and yet everything is accomplished.

Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is enlightenment. Conquering others requires force. Conquering yourself requires strength. Knowing when you have enough is wealth. The man who knows himself cannot be confused by the opinions of others about who he is.

Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; it is the hole at the centre that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; it is the emptiness inside that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the spaces that make them useful. Therefore: the solid provides structure, but emptiness provides use.

Govern a large country as you would cook a small fish: without too much interference. The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become. The more weapons that people carry, the more trouble in the land. The more clever the laws, the more thieves there are. Act and your subjects will be transformed of themselves.

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them: compassion, frugality, and not daring to put yourself ahead of others. With compassion you become courageous. With frugality you become generous. Not daring to put yourself ahead of others, you become fit to lead. Compassion that has abandoned frugality, courage that has abandoned kindness — these are the deaths...

Return is the movement of the Tao. Yielding is the way of the Tao. The ten thousand things are born from being; being is born from non-being. Everything that rises must fall. Everything that hardens will break. Every departure is a return. The sage understands that endings are preparations.