Tao Te Ching
Erik Lam
Confusion
Quotes (84)
“Danger arises when a man feels secure in his positon. Destruction threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a man has put everything in order.”
“There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.”
“they confuse what is habitual with what is proper, and what is customary with what is right.”
“Whenever you deliberate on the business of the state, you distrust and dislike men of superior intelligence and cultivate instead the most depraved of the orators who come before you; you prefer those who are witless to those who are wise, those who dole out the public money to those who perform public services at their own expense.”
“It is the nature of things to be unequal… If you rank them equally you throw the world into confusion. Suppose shoes, large and small, were the same price—who would make large ones?”
“He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; He who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion.”
“When the knowledge of bows and arrows arose, the birds above were troubled… When the knowledge of argument and disputation multiplied, the people were confused.”
“Each denying what the other affirms and affirming what the other denies brings us only confusion.”
“
* Trust not too much to that enchanting face;
Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.
”
“Does the outer world distract you with disturbing thoughts? Do fear and longing sap your strength?”
“The good looks of that reckless maiden
May be pleasant to look at,
But if you get together with her, it will be a den of corruption.”
“Grant your blessing so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.”
“Wisdom illuminates the darkness without confusion... Follow the current and paddle along, naturally unobstructed”
“Ordinary people are sunk in sound, color, wealth, and power—their true mind and pure nature become obscured.”
“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.”
“Labeling takes place in confusion, for what is nonexistent is taken to exist... Since there never has been confusion, is no confusion, and never will be confusion, conditioned existence is merely a label.”
“One of the great secrets of the day is to know how to take possession of popular prejudices and passions, in such a way as to introduce a confusion of principles”
“You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to curse.”
“One of the worst mistakes we can make is taking too much to heart, being anxious about and focusing on what doesn't concern us while neglecting what's important.”
“By looking into the essence of whatever occurs, it becomes simply the empty forms of your mind’s confusion.”
“Wine and sex distract from reality, the lure of wealth deranges our nature, emotions and desires arise in a tangle and we become lost in confusion.”
“If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.”
“Luminosity is the nature of one's mind that aeons of confusion cannot darken.”
“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”
“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”
“we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them”
“In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.”
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
“It is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers”
“men measure by false standards—the everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and admires others who attain them—while undervaluing the truly precious things in life”
“The claims our civilization makes that life is too hard for the grater part of humanity furthers aversion to reality and becomes the origin of neurosis.”
“When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.”
“Harriet there, serious-minded, thinking I was being befooled, and the agent thinking he was befooling me, and I, thinking I was befooling both of them—and all of us wrong. It was very like life wherever you find it.”
“To each one of us, clear ideas are those which have the same degree of confusion as our own.”
“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.”
“Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know everything happens for a reason.”
“Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe, to be the first to speak of the suffering of the world which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of the confusion, passion, evil—all those things which the [other philosophers] hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility.”
“Weren’t you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?”
“Those who tell of two ways and praise one are recognized as prophets or great teachers. They save men from confusion and hard choices. They offer… simple schemes, but truth is not so simple.”
“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
“It is true that we cannot conquer death; we can, however, conquer our fear of death.”
“Reality is nothing more than the chimera subjected to our desire and our suffering.”
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
“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.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
“The world of meditation is of extraordinary beauty… all concepts and confusion fall away.”
“As human knowledge deepens, things do not become clearer; this only deepens the mysteries and increases the level of confusion.”
“When we no longer confuse ourselves with the definition of ourselves that others have given us, we are at once universal and unique.”
“What you have to see is that you don't like yourself. But the self you don't like isn't your true self; the self you don't like consists of your core belief, with its accompanying thoughts and body sensations.”
“I think I'd have found out a lot sooner if we hadn't necked so damn much. My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I'm necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn't got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway.”
“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to.”
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
“He comes to believe that political power... is the result of access to the television screen... what he wants is not more liberty as a citizen but better service as a client. He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy.”
“The dilemma of civilized man: body mobilized in preparation for panic flight but danger obscure; nothing to see; nothing for body to do. Run? But where to and why? No clue.”
“The definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control.”
“Thinking that our confusion is the understanding of knowledge creates mental illness.”
“Just because you notice other people's confusion, doesn't mean you aren't confused yourself.”
“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.”
“the result of anything aimed at enriching the ego is destruction, complete confusion, perpetual confusion.”
“coemergent wisdom… refers to confusion and realization existing simultaneously, as opposed to confusion coming first and then realization taking over and cleaning out the confusion… confusion and realization are simultaneous.”
“Talking about confusion is much more helpful than talking about how to save ourselves.”
“He's as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see… Isn't he a bit like you and me?”
“I got mixed up confusion… my head’s full of questions, my temperature’s rising fast, I’m looking for some answers but I don’t know who to ask.”
“If there is no self-being there can be no dependent being either... Yet we strive to become real through the eyes of others who strive to become real through the eyes of others who strive...”
“Her 21st century rational brain wonders why sex is such a big deal to him, not understanding that to his Pleistocene emotions it's not just a big deal—it's the only deal.”
“Siddhartha’s path does not ultimately lead to happiness… it’s a release from the the straitjacket of delusion… a direct route to freedom from suffering and confusion.”
“A tourist makes a show of giving a ten-dollar tip to the doorman for pushing a revolving door, and the next minute he’s bargaining for a five-dollar T-shirt from a vendor who is trying to support her baby and family.”
“Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.”
“when we look at a thing, we change what it is. Which is exactly why we never see things as they are, only as we are.”
“Without a Just Cause, an organization starts to function like a ship without a compass.”
“Everywhere the mind goes, the opportunity for meditation exists. The idea that meditation is something that we only do sitting on a cushion in a particular way or at a particular time has created a lot of confusion… we can recognize awareness anywhere, anytime”
“The confusion that arises when we cling to our beliefs and expectations obscures the innate clarity of our awakened minds... this confused, conceptual mind simply does not have the capacity to understand mind beyond concepts.”
“Humans have a remarkable ability to know and not know at the same time. Or, more correctly, they can know something when they really think about it but most of the time they don't think about it.”
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