All existing things are really one. We regard those that are beautiful and rare as valuable, and those that are ugly as foul and rotten. The foul and rotten may come to be transformed into what is rare and valuable, and the rare and valuable into what is foul and rotten.
ZHUANGZIThe perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.
More Zhuangzi Quotes
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Life is finite, While knowledge is infinite.
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Great knowledge sees all in one. Small knowledge breaks down into the many.
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A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation.
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All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him?
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To have attained to the human form is a source of joy. What an incomparable bliss it is to undergo these countless transitions.
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Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, so I can have a few words with him?
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The man who has some respect for his person keeps his carcass out of sight, hides himself as perfectly as he can.
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If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.
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The World is Large – Its beauty indescrible.
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Are you and I perchance caught up in a dream from which we have not yet awakened?
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The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.
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To be constant is to be useful. To be useful is to realize one’s true nature. Realization of one’s true nature is happiness. When one reaches happiness, one is close to perfection.
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The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.
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Being is thoughtless-beyond and beneath all categories of thought. Expression is the realization of creative thought. Being is still; expression, moving. But then if I do not strive, who will?
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To go outside what your charge was, and to try to solve everything yourself, is dangerous.
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But you now, you wear your soul on your sleeve, exhausting your energy, propping yourself up on a tree, mumbling, or bent over your desk, asleep. Heaven gives you a form and you wear it out by pointless argument.
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Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.
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All the fish needs is to get lost in the water. All man needs is to get lost in Tao.
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To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge.
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Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!
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So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar.
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Horses have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow; hair, to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their heels. Such is the real nature of horses.
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Can a man cling to the positive without any negative in contrast to which it is seen to be positive? If he claims to do so he is a rouge or a madman.
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If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind.
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Study is to study what cannot be studied. Undertaking means undertaking what cannot be undertaken. Philosophizing is to philosophize about what cannot be philosophized about. Knowing that knowing is unknowable is true perfection.
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The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.
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