Tao Te Ching
Virtue
We translate the Te in Tao Te Ching as "The Power of Goodness" but "virtue" is closer to the literal meaning. Ursula Le Guin talks about this kind of virtue in it's old, classical sense of the "inherent quality and strength of a thing or person" but cautions that because this word is obsessively applied to women's virginity and monogamy. The word has lost this original sense and "the word lost its own virtue." Will Durant traces how definitions for virtue and vice have changed through the ages based on needs of the time and radically changed from the ages hunting to agriculture, to industry and is now struggling for new definition in our new, information age. Evolutionary psychology describes how natural selection and survival of the species genetically influence our sense of ethics and virtue. For this theme, we look to the more universal meaning deeper than any age or relative advantage.
Quotes (86)
“A man brings about real increase by producing in himself the conditions for it that is, through receptivity to and love of the good. Thus the thing for which he strives comes of itself, with the inevitability of natural law.”
“Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor,
We will not change our virtue for their store:
Virtue's a thing that none can take away;
But money changes owners all the day.”
“Man’s duty is three-fold: To make him who is an enemy a friend, to make him who is wicked righteous; and to make him who is ignorant learned.”
“When people lose sight of how to live, they create codes of virtue that give rise to great hypocrisy.”
“The whole of my teaching is simply making people recognize that what they mistake for conditions of health are really conditions of disease, that their virtues are really vices, that what they prize is really worthless.”
“Do not overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel. Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain.”
“Nothing pleases them, nothing pains them, nothing delights them, nothing angers them... When you have no likes or dislikes, this is the consummation of evenness... When you neither grieve nor delight, this is the consummation of virtue.”
“If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation.”
“The wise take Heaven as their ancestor, virtue as their home, and the Tao as their door and escape change.”
“To act without needing a reason… to ride the current of what is – this is the primal virtue.”
“The ancients ruled the world by doing nothing. This is the Virtue of Heaven — Heaven moves without moving.”
“Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice. Virtue is its own reward.”
“Those who honor the Way and Virtue… are angered by nothing. They use kindness among neighbors and virtue among strangers. They conquer their enemies without fighting and command through humility.”
“Dark Virtue are so deep they can’t be fathomed, so distant they can’t be reached, and always do the opposite of others. They give to others, while others think only of themselves.”
“There are 3 dangers in the world: To have many privileges but few virtues… To be high in rank but low on ability… To receive a large salary without personally accomplishing much… So ‘people may gain by loss and may lose by gain.”
“It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, justly and honorably; without making friends and without being philanthropic.”
“Virtue is the parent and preserver of friendship. Without virtue, friendship cannot exist at all.”
“The virtuous life depends—first and foremost—on reason. If you safeguard your reason, it will safeguard you.”
“The Way is what things follow. Virtue is what they attain. ‘Dark Virtue’ means virtue is present but no one knows who controls it.”
“They are satisfied with their food because they taste the Tao. They are pleased with their clothing because they are adorned with virtue. They are content with their homes because they are content wherever they are.”
“When the Sage's wealth accumulates, he gives it away. When his Virtue accumulates, he acts.”
“The merit of the colorful meadow magnetizes the rain without invitation. The merit of the irrigation ditches in the field magnetizes the southern clouds without invitation.”
“The reason the Tao is esteemed by the world is because it cannot be known or perceived. If it could be known or perceived, why should it be esteemed?... Thus sages wear an embarrassed, foolish expression and seldom show anyone their great and noble virtue.”
“It is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue.”
“Outside, we govern others. Inside, we care for Heaven. In both, nothing surpasses the gardening of spirit… Only if we are still does virtue have a place to collect.”
“Like the aroma of sandalwood spread on the wind, virtue spreads far and wide through place and time.”
“Like a firebrand pointing downward but continuing to blaze up, the wise keep their integrity even when impoverished and maligned.”
“The ten thousand creatures respect the Tao as their father and honor Virtue as their mother… the Way becomes Virtue… Virtue becomes the Way.”
“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
“1. Be dutiful to your parents.
2. Be respectful to your elders.
3. Live in harmony with your neighbors.
4. Instruct your children and grandchildren.
5. Be content with your calling.
6. Do no evil.”
“And since you may not justly love deny, then take it as a virtue of the mind… For love at last must all constrain and bind… therefore pray take heed to follow love that best can guide and lead.”
“It is harder to die to our virtues than to our vices… our attachments are the stronger as they are more spiritual.”
“It is one of the superstitions of mankind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”
“Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head.”
“Virtues are qualities of will... What distinguishes a moral virtue from a moral vice is whether the basic feeling towards others behind it is one of envy or one of pity”
“The more he saw, the more he doubted… courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.”
“innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking and sure of final success.”
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
“sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”
“The Christian virtues inculcated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are nowhere exemplified in the Christian world... Meanwhile the vices which coarse-mouthed slanderers have attributed to Paganism, are current everywhere among Christian Fathers and Christian Churches.”
“Those men are best who are not remarkable either for vice or virtue... the most that can be truly said for virtue is that there is a considerable balance in its favor... but there is much pseudo-virtue going about, which is apt to let people in very badly before they find it out.”
“To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”
“Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.”
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”
“The bad man is the man who—no matter how good he has been—begins to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the one who—no matter how morally unworthy he has been—is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself, and humane in judging others.”
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
“Our virtues are not something free and independent that we can always call upon... if a new situation arises, it takes us off our guard and we haven't the slightest idea that those same virtues could be called into play.”
“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues… are created, strengthened and maintained.”
“If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.”
“Man at his best, like water… loves living close to the earth, living clear down in his heart.”
“The minor virtues, I reflected, are much more dangerous than the minor vices. If these two did not sing and play so well, they would not be invited to pafties, would not get drunk, would not fritter away their time, and they might be saved. As it was, singing beautifully, playing the guitar beautifully, they had started along the downgrade.”
“Die every day. Be born again every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom.”
“Though in your winter you deny your spring... you are also as strong as your strongest link.”
“it is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages”
“Probably every vice was once a virtue — i.e. a quality making for the survival of the individual, family or the group. Man's sins may be the relics of his rise rather than the stigmata of his fall.”
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
“Technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials. The illumination of a city, for example, was once a rare event, reserved for victories and national holidays, for the canonization of saints and the crowning of kings. Now it occurs nightly and celebrates the virtues of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste.”
“The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it's a different kind of life.”
“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”
“The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.”
“If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.”
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”
“Wisdom is a virtue of old age, and it seems to come only to those who, when young, were neither wise nor prudent.”
“Virtue is the manifestation of the Way. The way is what Virtue contains. Without the Way, Virtue would have no power. Without Virtue, the Way would have no appearance.”
“The essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.”
“The only unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one’s understanding of the ultimate nature of things.”
“I consistently render the character te as ‘power.’ ‘Virtue’ (virtus, vertu) in its old sense of the inherent quality and strength of a thing or person is far closer to the mark, but that sense is pretty well lost. Applied obsessively to the virginity or monogamy of women, the word lost its own virtue.”
“Lao Tzu sees rightful power as earned and wrongful power as usurped. He does not see power as virtue, but as the result of virtue. The democracies are founded on that view.”
“According to the Taoist master, Liu Yiming, the Way comes to the best people before virtue, whereas virtue is needed by middling and lesser people before they can understand the Way.”
Comments (0)
Log in to comment.