The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.
ZHUANGZITo regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent – herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients.
More Zhuangzi Quotes
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The true man breathes with his heels.
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The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.
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Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.
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Your mind must become one, do not try to understand with your ears but with your heart. Indeed, not with your heart but with your soul.
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Men do not mirror themselves in running water – they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.
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Verily God does not reward man for what he does, but for what he is.
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We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
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During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.
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The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.
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A battering ram can knock down a city wall, but it cannot stop a hole. Different things have different uses.
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You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.
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The ultimate happiness is doing nothing.
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Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
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The creature born is the creature dying.
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The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become obsessed with what we are not.
ZHUANGZI