Lao Tzu Quotes

Weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

A man is born gentle and weak. At death, he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At death, they are withered and dry. Therefore, the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death, and the gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

When life begins we are tender and weak When life ends we are stiff and rigid All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life and dry in brittle in death So the soft and supple are the companion of life While the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind Thus by Nature's own decree the hard and strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

Virtuous persons and fruit-laden trees bow, but fools and dry sticks break because they do not bend.

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

Fixation is the way to death. Fluidity is the way to life.

Caught between glass and wood, that which breaks and that which bends, that which sings and that which survive. So our lives go.

The stubbornest of wills Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, O'er-heated in the fire to brittleness,Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.

Whatever is flexible and living will tend to grow; whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die.

What doesn't bend, breaks.

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

Do not be too hard, lest you be broken; do not be too soft, lest you be squeezed.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

A diplomat should be yielding and supple as a liana that can be bent but not broken

The most important thing is not to be dogmatic but flexible and consistent.

The man who is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail.

Obstinacy alone is not a virtue.

Unadaptability is often a virtue.

Flexibility, openness and softness are consorting with life. When you are rigid and you know the answer and don't listen to other people's point of view, you are consorting with death. Everything that is old and close to death is brittle and breaks apart including our thinking. So always stay flexible and soft and listen to others with caring. And truthfully, all of the verses hit me - especially when you think about them for days, and then write on them.

That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.