To attain knowledge, add things every day To attain wisdom, remove things every day

The truest sayings are paradoxical.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

In the highest antiquity, the people did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved them and praised them. In the next they feared them; in the next they despised them.

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

Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death, he is rigid and hard. Thus, suppleness and tenderness accompany life, but rigidity and hardness accompany death.

When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish.