Lao Tzu Quotes

Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where a wheel isn't is where it's useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pots not is where it's useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn't, there's room for you. So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn't.

Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.

Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful.

Cut out doors and windows for the house. The holes make it useful.

Space has no "existence." "To exist" literally means "to stand out." You cannot understand space because it doesn't stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the unmanifested.

when a gourd is hollowed out it becomes empty and is of great use to the world because of its emptiness.

The usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness.

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.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

All things in their beeing are good for something.

We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?

If you don't love something, it's not functional, in my opinion.

The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.

The majority of the world is empty space. Empty space, empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people - it's all empty space. That's amazing!

The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords.

Even in empty space, time and space still exist.

Our life is full of empty space.

We are not. We never were; we never shall be. We return to the void we never, for mehay is the center of all, and all is the center of nothing.

Usefulness depends on tractability.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.

To use is necessary. And if you can't be used, then you're useless.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.