Lao Tzu Quotes

We very quickly forget about the wonderful things we've got. People lose their excitement because there's too much. Basically we're experiencing nothing, because everything is available to us.

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

A bellyful is a bellyful.

My three addictions of choice are food, love and work.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.

What we are only now beginning to fully realize is that in seeking material pleasure too constantly, the capacity for enjoyment or fulfillment decreases and eventually becomes exhausted.

From abundance springs satiety.

I stuffed it like a turkey.

I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much.

Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.

But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. 'This Man Died from Living Too Much'.

Seek not happiness too greedily and be not fearful of happiness.

The root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

Pleasure and satiety live next door to each other.

Happiness today, I think, is for most people the satisfaction of the eternal suckling: to drink in more this, that, or the other.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you're miserable.

Heaven and Earth last for ever. Why do Heaven and Earth last for ever? They are unborn, so ever living. The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead. He is detached, thus at one with all. Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

Happiness is like a cake: have too much of it and you get sick of it.

I haven’t had everything from life. I’ve had too much.

He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear space for something better.

We die of too much life.

It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.

My heart's gratitude Is My life's plenitude.