Other people are occupied, I alone am unwilling, like the outcast.

Those who of old were good practicers of Tao did not use it to make people bright, but rather used it to make them simple.

He does not praise himself - yet he is respectable.

The way to use life is to do nothing through acting, The way to use life is to do everything through being.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools. He uses them only when he has no choice.

As long as we have hope, we have direction, the energy to move, and the map to move by. We have a hundred alternatives, a thousand paths and an infinity of dreams. Hopeful, we are halfway to where we want to go; hopeless, we are lost forever.

The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could venter themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace.