Without the tao, Kindness and compassion are replaced by law and justice; Faith and trust are supplanted by ritual and ceremony.
The farther you go, the less you know.
By not claiming to be first in the world one can rule.
To bear and not to own; to act and not lay claim; to do the work and let it go: for just letting it go is what makes it stay.
A man is born gentle and weak. At death he is hard and stiff.
In this world, there is nothing softer or thinner than water. But to compel the hard and unyielding, it has no equal. That the weak overcomes the strong, that the hard gives way to the gentle - this everyone knows. Yet no one asks accordingly.