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.
ZHUANGZIThe little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers – because it lives with those who know how to speak.
More Zhuangzi Quotes
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Do not let the artificial obliterate the natural; do not let will obliterate destiny; do not let virtue be sacrificed to fame.
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The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point-the time before anything existed. This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it.
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Those who realise their folly are not true fools.
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The creature born is the creature dying.
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A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.
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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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When an archer shoots for enjoyment, he has all his skill; when he shoots for a brass buckle, he gets nervous; when he shoots for a prize of gold, he begins to see two targets.
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Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!
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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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Are you and I perchance caught up in a dream from which we have not yet awakened?
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Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.
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He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; He who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion.
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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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The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.
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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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To 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.
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Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
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The Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what i dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts.
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People value that part of knowledge which is known. They do not know how to avail themselves of the Unknown in order to reach knowledge. Is this not misguided?
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There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning. There is something. There is nothing.
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Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly.
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Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free.
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Sound intelligence promises victory in every battle.
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The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.
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Tao is the source of both fullness and emptiness. But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.
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Men of this world all rejoice in others being like themselves, and object to others not being like themselves.
ZHUANGZI