The larger the island of wisdom, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

In accounting terms, we can say that if Philosophical Taoists work at increasing net profits by cutting costs, Religious Taoists try it by increasing gross income.

That in China the scholar ranked at the top of the social scale may have been Confucius’ doing, but Taoism is fully as responsible for placing the soldier at that bottom.

Confucius stresses social responsibility, Lao Tzu praises spontaneity and naturalness… Confucius roams within society, Lao Tzu wanders beyond.

'Civilization' is seductive where not imperious

Of all the non-Western religions, Islam stands closest to the west—closest geographically, and also closest ideologically; for religiously it stands in the Abrahamic family of religions while philosophically it builds on the Greeks. Yet Islam is the most difficult religion for the West to understand... Common borders have given rise to border disputes... for a good part of the last 1400 years, Islam and Europe have been at war, and people seldom have a fair picture of their enemies.

Bertrand Russell, a scientific humanist, found it difficult to see why people should take unhappily to news that the universe is running down, inasmuch as 'I do not see how an unpleasant process can be made less so by being indefinitely repeated.'

It was under the rubric of magic that the Taoist church—dividing the territory with freelance wizards, exorcists, and shamans—divided ways to harness higher powers for humane ends.

There are books whose first reading casts a spell that is never quite undone, the reason being that they speak to the deepest 'me' in the reader... the Tao Te Ching is such a book.

When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th' immortals for'd on earth
Of many-languaged men: they lived of old
When Saturn reign'd in heaven, an age of gold.

For a man can win nothing better than a good wife, and nothing more painful than a bad one.

Do not let any sweet-talking woman beguile your good sense with the fascination of her shape. It's your barn she's after.

That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.

He does mischief to himself who does mischief to another, and evil planned harms the plotter most.

A man who works evil against another works it really against himself, he's only harming himself who's bent upon harming another

No gossip ever dies away entirely, if many people voice it: it too is a kind of divinity.

Fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.

The road to virtue is long and goes steep up hill, hard climbing at first, but the last of it, when you get to the summit (if you get there) is easy going after the hard part.

It is best to work, at whatever you have a talent for doing, without turning your greedy thought toward what some other man possesses, but take care of your own livelihood… it is from work that men are rich, a working man is much dearer to the immortals.

Badness can be got easily and in shoals; the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows