Lao Tzu Quotes

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.

The One, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of Being, because they surpass all the limits of essences and are coextensive with Being.

Everything we see, everything that exists, is part of God.

The Self of everyone, the Atma of everyone, the transcendental field of reality of everyone, is the same in everyone. Whether the body calls itself an American, German, Indian or Chinese, it doesn't matter.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth.

Someone should tell the fundamentalists that even Advaita philosophy in Hinduism talks of oneness in all existence.

What canst thou see elsewhere which thou canst not see here? Behold the heaven and the earth and all the elements; for of these are all things created.

God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God's intention: It's exactly what is in every moment.

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

The Way is ever nameless.

The Tao which you know is not the eternal Tao

Why are things as they are and not otherwise?

The one awakened liberated sees all things as one unseparated.

You are before being and not being, awake and dream take place in time. You have no time.

All things of the world are born of being; being is born of nonbeing.

if it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comes this thusness.

Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

There is a small area of land in Asia Minor that is called Armenia, but it is not so. It is not Armenia. It is a place. There are only Armenians, and they inhabit the earth, not Armenia, since there is no Armenia. There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth.

Love is all there is. That I know to be absolutely true.

Love is who we are, and when we deviate from that love we're deviating from our ultimate, essential, eternal reality.

Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now - always and, indeed then most truly, when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.

Talking to a peasant one day, I suggested to him the hypothesis that there might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a Consciousness or Conscience of the Universe, but that even so it would not be sufficient reason to assume that the soul of every man was immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. And he replied, "Then what good is God?