In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between superior and inferior to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity.
BENJAMIN HOFFA way of life that keeps saying ‘Around the next corner, above the next step,’ works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.
More Benjamin Hoff Quotes
-
-
When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
It means that Tao doesn’t force or interfere with things, but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere over the rainbow ‘burn their toast a lot,’ said Pooh
BENJAMIN HOFF -
When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Well, it takes all kinds to make a mess.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford . . . Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Modern man’s difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That’s why I remember things so well.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
While Eeyore frets … … and Piglet hesitates … and Rabbit calculates … and Owl pontificates …Pooh just is.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
But isn’t the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn’t? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around – walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Cleverness, after all, has its limitations. Its mechanical judgments and clever remarks tend to prove inaccurate with passing time, because it doesn’t look very deeply into things to begin with.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
As any old Taoist walking out of the woods can tell you, simple-minded does not necessarily mean stupid.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.
BENJAMIN HOFF -
Reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has.
BENJAMIN HOFF