The sage wears coarse clothes, concealing jade.

Your name or your body, what is dearer? Your body or your wealth, what is worthier?

Stop leaving and you will arrive, Stop searching and you will see, Stop running away and you will be found.

What is strong and rigid is snapped and laid low. What is flexible and soft will always prevail.

We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.

The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish, too much handling will spoil it.