Lao Tzu Quotes

Integration is a basic law of life; when we resist it, disintegration is the natural result, both inside and outside of us. Thus we come to the concept of harmony through integration.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

I try not to think of my life in terms of separation.

The direction of life is from duality to unity.

The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.

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

Our religion keeps reminding us that we aren't just will and thoughts. We're also sand and wind and thunder. Rain. The seasons. All those things. You learn to respect everything because you are everything. If you respect yourself, you respect all things.

The fundamental thing is to drop the split, to become one. Be one, and then all else is possible; even the impossible is possible.

A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies there is no end to the air. However the fish and the bird have never left their elements. Thus each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm... Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish... practice, enlightenment and people are like this.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

I am two with nature.

We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.

There exists everywhere a medium in things, determined by equilibrium.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

Unification or Death

Everything is together—spiritual and political.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

You are a piece of creation. If you go against any other piece of creation, you are unknowingly going against yourself.

Carrying body and soul and embracing the one, Can you avoid separation?

But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.

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