They can see their neighbors. Roosters and dogs can be heard from there. Still, they will age and die without visiting one another.

Yielding is the manner of the Way.

Abandon cleverness, discard profit, and thieves and robbers will disappear.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

Live simply and virtuously, true to your nature, drawing no line between what is spiritual and what is not.

How can one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.

The superior leader keeps informed about everything but interferes hardly at all.