Tao Te Ching
Success
The qualities that make someone a wise sage counterpoint what makes someone a modern day success. Much of the success in our materialistic world is based on getting people to like us. Part of what makes a sage wise is not caring if people like them or not—at least not letting approval-seeking change behavior. Sages steep in authentic presence, humility, and compassion. Materialistic success often relies on deception, arrogance, and greed. Deceiving ourselves and others has obvious, short-term advantages. The “success” of self-deception however has serious downsides and easily becomes a selling of our souls to the devils of materialism. It pads us in a cocoon of illusion that blinds to any kind of authentic, truly meaningful life. Changing attitudes about success may change culture, politics, religion and philosophy more than any of the external influences. A common theme in the Mahasiddha stories is one of them recognizing their teacher, a great sage, or Bodhisattva in a common or totally not “successful” person—a fisherman, a bar-tender, a homeless beggar, a latrine cleaner…
Quotes (113)
“The receptive brings about sublime success… If the wise undertake something and try to lead, they go astray; but if they follow, they find guidance.”
“When you succeed, be one with success. When you fail, be one with failure.
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“The vanity of success only brings to harvest a crop of calamities.”
“A person fully unified with heaven and spontaneously one with the creation of all will never be harmed, however difficult life’s situations may be.”
“I am no one's servant. With what I have gained I wander freely in all the world, without being subservient to anyone. Therefore, if you'd like, rain O sky!”
“Those who win success, think deeply before doing anything. Those who suffer failure, avoid contemplation and make few calculations beforehand.”
“Until he is dead, keep the word ‘happy’ in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky.”
“Success has a great tendency to conceal and throw a veil over the evil deeds of men.”
“Fame destroys virtue and easily becomes an evil weapon, only something to beat people down with—not anything that can bring true success.”
“The sage is full of anxiety and indecision in undertaking anything, and so he is always successful.”
“Achievement is the beginning of failure. Fame is the beginning of disgrace.”
“The Master achieves success, yet he never does a thing… People don’t see him as a leader since he lets them find their own way”
“Have regard for your name since it will remain for you longer than a great store of gold.”
“Since nothing is permanent, why become so attached to success and failure?”
“We believe that success is the key to happiness but in truth happiness is the key to success.”
“After I am dead, I would rather have men ask why Cato has no monument that why he had one.”
“Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.”
“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”
“People who are favored are honored. And because they are honored, they act proud. And because they act proud, they are hated… Hence sages consider success as well as failure to be a warning.”
“Sages create but do not possess what they create. They succeed but do not claim success. Because they do not lose themselves, they do not lose others.”
“No self is the Way. Success. Failure. I don’t see how they differ.”
“Only those who refuse to trade themselves for something external are fit to receive the kingdom.”
“The tongue is very small and light but it can take you to the greatest heights and it can put you in the lowest depths.”
“When you forget about merit, your position is fulfilled… transmitting is merit but having transmitted, is not your own merit.”
“Struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children.”
“For us there can be no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this ever been right, however successful we may have been.”
“You should never play to win but so as not to lose. Think what moves will be quickest beaten, avoid making them, and make whatever move will take most time to beat. In learning any accomplishment, in controlling one's own conduct, and in governing a nation, the same rule applies.”
“To experience constant success, it's necessary to change habits and attitudes, to recreate yourself according to the changing times.”
“Natural means free from success and therefore free from failure… If the wise do succeed or fail,there minds are not affected.”
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.”
“I have touched the highest point of all my greatness. And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting.”
“Never start anything new if you have doubts... decisions made with certainty often turn out badly, how much more often if you start without confidence?”
“Be more careful not to miss once than to hit a hundred times… Evil news carries farther than any applause… All the exploits of a person taken together are not enough to wipe out a single small blemish.”
“Better to be first in something small than second in something great because the first move has a big advantage. Those who follow look like parrots.(#63)”
“Think of the profit of all as being the real profit and the mind of the whole country as being the real mind.”
“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears… Success comes from within, not from without.”
“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
“Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
“It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often grow rich and famous, becoming powerful in their parish or in parliament. Their portraits simper from shop windows; and they live and die respected. This success is theirs; yet it is not the success which a noble soul will envy.”
“You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy.”
“what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
“When you get to my age, there is nothing more to look forward to. Each day brings its tribulations and each day difficulties arise.. .So I'm giving up the struggle once and for all, abandoning all hope of success.”
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS... is our national disease.”
“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
“Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labor, always inspired by the ideal.”
“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”
“Success is a constant sense of discontent broken by brief periods of satisfaction from a challenging accomplishment.”
“The line between failure and success is so fine. . . that we are often on the line and do not know it.”
“The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much.”
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
“How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.”
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
“No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not your birthright. Those who succeed owe their liberation to perseverance.”
“When a person no longer confuses a personal body with self and recognizes all people as members of their own body, neither failure or success can bother them and they become safe to guide and guard others.”
“You should not ask if you will succeed or not. That isn't what matters. The only thing that matters is your struggle to carry it further.”
“Morals are the memory of success that no longer succeeds.”
“Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.”
“Success—'the bitch-goddess, Success' in William James's phrase—demands strange sacrifices from those who worship her.”
“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.”
“Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there.”
“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… you have to let it happen by not caring about it—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
“[The Tintin success] is like a flowing stream, but what is its nature?… That’s something I am still asking myself without finding an answer.”
“Lifelong dissent has more than acclimated me cheerfully to defeat. It has made me suspicious of victory. I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line. (1969)”
“There is no one so great as the one who does not try to accomplish anything more”
“The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.”
“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
“A lot of success stories in our country are based on a core belief that says, I'm nothing. I'm incapable. So, I'll spend my life proving I'm capable.' That can be a very outwardly successful yet lifeless way to live.”
“there is very evidently one rather terrible hallmark common to all persons who look for God, and apparently with enormous success, in the queerest imaginable places—e.g.investigating loaded ashtrays with an index finger—he very frequently behaves like a fool, even an imbecile.”
“When you do things, then obstacles will come and you can go through them. Obstacles are a sign of success.”
“Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success at work… I.Q. is a threshold competence. You need it, but it doesn’t make you a star. Emotional intelligence can.”
“Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time… but it isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”
“Success and failure are greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about.
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“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
“Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.”
“In many if not most cases, the more success, the less integrity. The cost of most success is our integrity.”
“80 percent of success is showing up — my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.”
“As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.”
“He feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.”
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
“There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”
“The fastest way to become successful is to make lots of mistakes.”
“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.”
“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.”
“Our ideas about success are based on unexamined assumptions. Fixation on these subverts our best efforts leading either to counterfeit success or true frustration.”
“Success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives”
“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice... it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.”
“So winners are the real losers because they learn nothing?… If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”
“The true value of an organization is measured by the desire others have to contribute to that organization's ability to keep succeeding, not just during the time they are there, but well beyond their own tenure.”
“People who have invested a sincere effort in exploring their inner wealth naturally tend to develop a certain kind of fame, respect, and credibility... Their success in the world has nothing to do with personal ambition... It stems, rather, from a spacious and relaxed state of well-being, which allows them to see people and situations more clearly, but also to maintain a basic sense of happiness regardless of their personal circumstances.”
“a dramatic increase in the collective power and ostensible success of our species went hand in hand with much individual suffering... This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution.”
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