If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind.

Your mind must become one, do not try to understand with your ears but with your heart. Indeed, not with your heart but with your soul.

The man who has some respect for his person keeps his carcass out of sight, hides himself as perfectly as he can.

Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship... Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition.

When the heart is right, "for" and "against" are forgotten.

To go outside what your charge was, and to try to solve everything yourself, is dangerous.

The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.