Quotes About Balance

Favor and disgrace make one fearful The greatest misfortune is the self

When taking care of a horse, what one must do is remove everything that is harmful to the horse in order to bring out the horse's own natural vitality. The way to rule the empire is similar.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining—conversely, the silver lining frames a dark cloud. Or as chapter 58 of Tao Te Ching expresses it: Misfortune is what fortune depends upon Fortune is where misfortune hides beneath Yin contains yang; yang contains yin. Every failure harbors the hidden seed of future success; every triumph contains the covert cause of future defeat. Thus, Sai Ong's father isn't mortified by bad news—but neither is he overelated

Use the art of reduction in every aspect of life. The Tao is all about simplicity, so the Tao process is about subtraction rather than addition. Remove obstacles and complexity to unleash the power of your natural capabilities and to fully express your vast potential.

Thus, if you look for the Tao in books, you won't find it anywhere . . . but if you look for the Tao in life, you will find it everywhere.

The Tao does not accumulate or increase complexity—it reduces, simplifies, and streamlines. It's not about learning more techniques—it's about discarding the harmful elements.

Facing the Changes in Life and Mastering Them While alive, the body is soft and pliant When dead, it is hard and rigid All living things, grass and trees, While alive, are soft and supple When dead, become dry and brittle Thus that which is hard and stiff Is the follower of death That which is soft and pliant Is the follower of life The Tao

In life, we see evidence of leaky containers all the time. They are the hard-charging, aggressive personalities who keep pushing themselves for the bigger paycheck at the expense of health, family, relationships and peace of mind. By the time they realize the frantic rush does not work, their container of life is already broken into pieces. By then, it is too late.

To live with meaning is to have the right focus in life. That focus cannot be obsessions, attachments, or hobbies. It must be people, because the love you put into your personal relationships comes back to you many times over. This is the real message of the story. Never allow yourself to become the horse lover. Follow the Tao to become who you really want to be—the people lover.

Use hands-on experience to find the optimal balance in everything. Whatever you need to do, there will be the right speed and the right amount of force to give you the best possible results. Keep in mind that this is something you can only learn from life itself—not from books.

The more I see of unmechanized places and people the more conviced I become that machines have done incalculable damage by unbalancing the relationship between Man and Nature.

Life would be just a neutral wasteland if one always ran away from the joys of love merely because one knew that pain and grief might be involved too.

Keeping one's patience is really a question of remembering one's place in the universe.

One should never love anyone so greatly that you allow them to take control of your destiny

The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

It is small comfort to a mouse, if an elephant is standing on its tail, to say 'I am impartial.' In this instance, you are really supporting the elephant in its cruelty.

The rubric of proportionality had to be observed—that the means were proportional to the objective.

To be impartial... is indeed to have taken sides already... with the status quo.

You cannot hold on to two things. If you use two hands to hold two things, the strength would be half. So it is best to let go of one and hold on tightly to the other.

For this cake, I want to mingle the womanly and masculine foods- sugars and meats in particular. The walls must come down. Must temper, must balance. Add the leeks to the chocolate, vanilla to the turnip. Tear away the sacred walls between the sweet and savory worlds.

Sirine buys sweet, dense Mexican candies, pastel-colored Korean candies, crackling layers of tea leaves, lemongrass, kaffir leaves, Chinese medicinal herbs and powders, Japanese ointments and pastes. She tastes everything edible, studies the new flavors, tests the shock of them; and she learns, every time she tastes, about balance and composition, addition and subtraction.

There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, and when both and neither surround you.

For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest. His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

Those small spaces of time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, when both and neither surround you.