Lao Tzu Quotes

From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow.

I have put duality away. I have seen the two worlds are one.

The ocean is a large drop; a drop is a small ocean.

The point is to unify the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground which transcends and encompasses both.

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.

The Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what i dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts.

One's not half two. It's two are halves of one.

Only the intelligent knows how to identify all things as one. . . . When one is at ease with himself, one is near Tao. This is to let Nature take its own course.

Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.

At first we raced through space, like shadows and light; her rants, my raves; her dark hair, my blonde; black dresses, white. She's a purple-black African-violet-dark butterfly and I a white moth. We were two wild ponies, Dawn and Midnight, the wind electrifying our manes and our hooves quaking the city; we were photo negatives of each other, together making the perfect image of a girl.

Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.

The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.

The man and the woman are not really two separate entities, but the personality of the man needs the supporting qualities of the woman. If those supporting qualities are not there, the man will fall apart. And the same will happen to the woman. She cannot exist only on female qualities, she needs male supporting qualities. So each human being is a composite whole of two polarities which appear opposed to each other but are not really opposed; they are basically, absolutely essential components of each other.

I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall.

All the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity.

And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens, Are singing the selfsame strain.

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. Petals are bone marrow; pearls come from oysters. The dragon lives in the sky, ocean, marshes, and mountains; and the mountains are also its cranium. Its voice thunders and jingles like copper pans. It breathes fire and water; and sometimes the dragon is one, sometimes many.

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

That we can be e pluribus Unum - out of one, many

If a union is to take place between opposites like spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, bright and dark, and so on, it will happen in a third thing, which represents not a compromise but something new.

The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. All things have their backs to the female and stand facing the male. When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony. Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

Oh, grant me my prayer, that I may never lose the touch of the one in the play of the many.

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