Quotes from Laozi

Make your heart like a lake, with calm, still surface, and great depths of kindness.

Kindness in words creates confidence.

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.

Perfect kindness acts without thinking of kindness.

Requite injury with kindness.

Those who are right do not argue. Those who argue are not right.

Those who seek knowledge, collect something every day. Those who seek the Way, let go of something every day.

True words are not pleasing. Pleasing words are not true.

Fine words are traded. Noble deeds gain respect. But people who are not good, why abandon them?

He does not seek glory - yet people respect him.

Those who understand others are clever, those who understand themselves are wise.

Knowing that you do not know is the best. Not knowing that you do not know is an illness.

To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.

The sage is not ill, because he sees illness as illness.

Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

Knowledge of the eternal is all-embracing. To be all-embracing leads to righteousness, which is majestic.

Truly, only those who see illness as illness can avoid illness.

Those who know it do not speak about it. Those who speak about it do not know it.

That so few understand me is why I am treasured.

The more clever and cunning people are, the stranger the events will be.

The real key to health and happiness and success is self knowledge

Not knowing of the eternal leads to unfortunate errors.

In ancient times, those who followed the Way did not try to give people knowledge thereof, but kept them ignorant.