Zhuangzi Quotes

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold? The tree says to the leaf: "That’s the cycle of life. You may think you’re going to die, but you live on in me. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive, because I can breathe. It’s also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing.

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

When one's dead, one's dead... This squirrel will become earth all in his time. And still later on, there'll grow new trees from him, with new squirrels skipping about in them. Do you think that's so very sad?

A beginning is the end of something, always.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

Life and death. They are somehow sweetly and beautifully mixed, but I don't know how.

There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.

Life is one long decay, no? There's a lot of beauty in it. Like the patina in an old city.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

I always figure I have this tree and there's always some green fruit that's not ready to pick or blossoms that are ready to flower; there are always some ready to drop off too.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

There is nothing you can see that is not a Bashoflower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.

Nature obliges everything to change about. One thing crumbles and falls in the weakness of age; Another grows in its place from a negligible start. So time alters the whole nature of the world And earth passes from one state to another.

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.

Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.

Tao is the source of both fullness and emptiness. But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.

We are not the same. But we are, somehow, one.

Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.