“All women’s dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unedited desire to undress.”

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“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

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“This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.”

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“Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.”

Chapters: 53. Shameless Thieves

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“People who don’t read become imprisoned in their immediate world and their lives fall into a limited and set routine. A good book though, puts us in communion with different ages, different cultures, dead spirits from long ago that discuss aspects of life we know nothing about.”

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“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”

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“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

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“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”

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“There is so much to love and admire in this life—it’s an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content”

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“Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.”

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“Anyone who wishes to learn to enjoy life must find friends of the same type of temperament, and take as much trouble to gain and keep their friendship as wives take to keep their husbands.”

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“Only one thing is right, and that is the Truth, but nobody knows what it is. It is a thing that changes all the time, and then comes back to the same thing.”

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“Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.”

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“When a civilization loses simplicity, it becomes increasingly full of troubles and degenerates. People become slaves of external ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems.”

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“A good traveler does not know where he is going to, a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.”

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“Regard life with passion to see its manifest forms, do away with passion to see the Secret of Life.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

Chapters: 1. The Unnamed

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“The principal teaching of Lao Tzu is humility... gentleness, resignation, the futility of contention, the strength of weakness.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“Above all, the one important message of Taoism is the oneness and spirituality of the material universe.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“Chuang Tzu scoffed a the glitter of success, lambasted the great... What was philosophy in Lao Tzu became poetry in Chuang Tzu.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“I would characterize the Confucian political ideal as strictly anarchism, in which moral culture of the people making government unnecessary become the ideal. If it is asked why the people of Chinatown in New York never have any use for the the police, the answer is Confucianism. There never were any police in China for 4000 years.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“People need to learn how to regulate their lives socially and not just rely upon the law. The law should be the resort of the scoundrel... for 4000 years, China had no police.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“when we speak of democracy as a way of life and talk of the spirit of democracy, we can talk about 'Chinese democracy'—the idea of government for the people and by the consent of the people, but not government by the people and of the people. While parliamentary government is based on distrust of the ruler, Confucian ideals emphasized moral harmony as the basis of political harmony, laissez faire as the key policy and only one that has ever worked; the Great Chinese empire was always ruled without police depending—not on government or soldiers—but on the self-government of the people.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“The principle of leveling of all opposites, and the theory of cycles and universal reversion to opposites are basic for the understanding of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu philosophy and its practical teachings. All Lao Tzu's paradoxes arise from this point of view.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

Chapters: 2. The Wordless Teachings

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“This chapter seems to be the summing up of Lao Tzu's teachings in a nutshell. Most basic of all is the statement of the principle of reversion... each ending becoming a new beginning. The life of things passes by like a rushing, galloping horse, changing at every turn, at every hour.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

Chapters: 40. Returning

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“Chuang Tzu felt the sorrow of man's short life on this earth and was fascinated by the mystery of dearth. He constantly expressed this feeling with the gifted pen of a poet... What was philosophy in Lao Tzu often became poetry in the younger Taoist disciple.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“Confucians worship culture and reason; Taoists reject them in favor of nature and intuition, and the one who rejects anything always seems to stand on a higher level and therefore always seems more attractive than the one who accepts it... Lao Tzu's aphorisms communicate an excitement which Confucian humdrum good sense cannot. Confucian philosophy is a philosophy of social order, and order is seldom exciting.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“The first reaction of anyone scanning the Tao Te Ching is laughter; the second reaction, laughter at one's own laughter; and the third, a feeling that this sort of teaching is very much needed today.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“While Lao Tzu spoke in aphorisms, Chuang Tzu wrote long, discursive philosophical essays. While Lao Tzu was all intuition, Chuang Tzu was all intellect. Lao Tzu smiled; Chuang Tzu laughed. Lao Tzu taught; Chuang Tzu scoffed. Lao Tzu spoke to the heart; Chuang Tzu spoke to the mind. Lao Tzu was like Whitman; Chuang Tzu was like Thoreau. Lao Tzu was like Rousseau; Chuang Tzu was like Voltaire.”

from Wisdom of Laotse

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“that politics must be subordinated to morals, that government is a makeshift of temporization, law a superficial instrument of order, and police force a foolish invention for morally immature individuals”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“Only a robust mind like that of Walt Whitman who was not inflicted with the scientific spirit and who was in close touch with life itself and with the great humanity could retain that enormous love and enormous faith in the common man.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“If there is one book in the whole of Oriental literature which one should read above all others, it is, in my opinion, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. If there is one book that can claim to interpret for us the spirit of the Orient, or that is necessary to understanding of characteristic Chinese behavior, including literally 'the ways that are dark,' it is the Tao Te Ching.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“Does the West have a philosophy? The answer is clearly, 'No'. We need a philosophy of living and we clearly haven't got it... There are professors of philosophy, but there are no philosophers... philosophy itself has become a brance of physics or biology or mathematics.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India or hope to share the freedom and equality... we are trying to create out of this morally and politically chaotic world... India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy that inspired Goethe, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“There had to be one Su Tungpo (Su Shi), but there could not be two... The mention of Su Tungpo always elicits an affectionate and warm admiring smile in China.”

from The Gay Genius (1947)

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“One of the most biting satirists of Chinese culture... Lusin is God to the leftist writers of China today... [he] represents the Literature of Revolt. But this is in itself a sign of life... China needed a man like Lusin to wake the millions up from the self-complacency and lethargy and the accumulated inertia of 4000 years.”

from Wisdom of China and India

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“Confucianism stood for a rationalized social order through the ethical approach, based on personal cultivation. It aimed at political order by laying the basis for it in a moral order, and it sought political harmony by trying to achieve the moral harmony in man himself. Thus its most curious characteristic was the abolition of the distinction between politics and ethics.”

from Wisdom of Confucius (1938)

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“The human desire to see only one phase of the truth which we happen to perceive, and to develop and elevate it into a perfect logical system is one reason why our philosophy is bound to grow stranger to life.”

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“He who talks about truth injures it; he who tries to prove it thereby maims and distorts it; he who gives it a label and a school of thought kills it; and he who declares himself a believer buries it.”

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“The human habit of seeing only one phase of the truth, which happens to lie before our eyes and raising the developing it into a perfect system of logic is the reason our philosophy necessarily becomes more and more estranged from life.”

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“It is so hard to describe Franklin... Above all, he had a clear mind, and it was from that clear, equitable temper of mind that the warm glow of humor and serenity flowed through his writings... he always knew what he wanted and was happy about it... Above all, his was always a searching mind. If anything, he was original.”

from On the Wisdom of America (1950)

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“Whitman became really entertaining, when he tried to connect democracy with sex... In a mental daze, he thought of the words 'love' and 'friendship' and 'brotherhood,' which should be the strong bond of a democracy... Here the words 'love' and friendship' became confused or rather fused with the 'fierce affection' of sex.”

from On the Wisdom of America (1950)

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“Why did Emerson endorse Leaves of Grass... Emerson, the symbol of American idealism and intellectual and moral probity? Whitman himself knew that the book was 'an incongruous hash of mud and gold.'”

from On the Wisdom of America (1950)

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“The great thing about laughter is laughter itself. Let's not try to explain it.”

from On the Wisdom of America (1950)

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“There is nothing so intimate in a man's life, or in a woman's, as marriage, nothing that goes so far toward leaving an imprint on the texture of life and on man's soul itself.”

from On the Wisdom of America (1950)

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