The best people are like water, which benefits all things and does not compete with them. It stays in lowly places that others reject. This is why it is so similar to the Way.

Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings; this is the method of Tao.

Those who praise victory relish manslaughter. Those who relish manslaughter cannot reach their goals in the world.

Excellent leaders of people lower themselves.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

The wise man, after learning something new, is afraid to learn anything more until he has put his first lesson into practice.

Is not the action of nature like the stretching of a bow? The high, it pulls down; the low, it lifts up; It takes from what is in excess In order to make good of what is deficient. Who can take what they have in excess and offer it to others?