It is fitting for a great nation to yield.

Don't think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania. Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Things exalted then decay. This is going against the Way. What goes against the Way meets an early end.

The Eternal generates the One. The One generates the Two. The Two generates the Three. The Three generates all things.

One who lives in accordance with nature does not go against the way of things but moves in harmony with the present moment.

Superior leaders get things done with very little motion. They impart instruction not through many words, but through a few deeds. They keep informed about everything but interfere hardly at all. They are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit. And, because they take no credit, credit never leaves them.