Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Themes

Thoughts about the world's most influential thoughts

Enlightened insights become words of wisdom that grow meaningfulness and evolve the universe of collective consciousness. These words and sentences with the power to spark deep insight and life-changing epiphanies come down to us through the ages from every place, culture, religion, and philosophy.

George Seldes described how, "The biographies of many notable men tell us that one great thought in one paragraph, or on one page, or, in an amazing case, one great phase, was enough to change the career of its reader, a great man."

Let us guard them well and as Samuel Coleridge said in the late 18th century,
“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”

And as A.A. Milne says,
“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business."
But a quote (like this one) can also inspire a deeper level of thinking, a slight mind-stopping long enough for a subversive idea to slip through, for a status-quo threatening tiny doubt to emerge and spark an innovating whiff of creativity.


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Aggression
(81 quotes)

Agriculture
(76 quotes)

Aloneness / Solitude
(82 quotes)

Ambition
(80 quotes)

Anger
(80 quotes)

Anonymity
(76 quotes)

Appreciation
(84 quotes)

Arrogance and Pride
(90 quotes)

Art
(78 quotes)

Authentic Presence
(87 quotes)

Awakened Awareness
(112 quotes)

Basic Goodness
(87 quotes)

Beauty
(115 quotes)

Belief
(130 quotes)

Blame and Scapegoating
(78 quotes)

Books
(90 quotes)

Buddhism
(79 quotes)

Business
(80 quotes)

Butterfly
(67 quotes)

Capitalism
(79 quotes)

Carpe diem
(99 quotes)

Cause and Effect
(138 quotes)

Change
(110 quotes)

Christianity
(113 quotes)

Citizens of the World
(109 quotes)

Civilization
(77 quotes)

Compassion
(95 quotes)

Competition
(87 quotes)

Complaint
(71 quotes)

Confidence
(95 quotes)

Conflict
(85 quotes)

Conformity
(118 quotes)

Confucianism
(64 quotes)

Confusion
(85 quotes)

Consumerism
(83 quotes)

Contemplation
(77 quotes)

Continuity
(81 quotes)

Control
(83 quotes)

Courage
(76 quotes)

Crazy Wisdom
(137 quotes)

Creativity
(93 quotes)

Crime
(75 quotes)

Culture
(77 quotes)

Curiosity
(77 quotes)

Death and Dying
(160 quotes)

Deception
(128 quotes)

Delusion
(87 quotes)

Democracy
(97 quotes)

Desire
(110 quotes)

Discipline
(64 quotes)

Doubt
(78 quotes)

Dream
(128 quotes)

Duality and Non-duality
(116 quotes)

Economics
(80 quotes)

Education
(172 quotes)

Egolessness
(120 quotes)

Emptiness
(98 quotes)

Enemy
(84 quotes)

Enlightenment
(78 quotes)

Entertainment
(79 quotes)

Equality
(82 quotes)

Equanimity
(77 quotes)

Evil
(100 quotes)

Evolution
(79 quotes)

Failure
(88 quotes)

Fame
(84 quotes)

Family
(83 quotes)

Fanaticism
(87 quotes)

Fate / Destiny
(82 quotes)

Fear
(120 quotes)

Feminine Principle
(126 quotes)

Forget
(78 quotes)

Free Will
(73 quotes)

Freedom
(119 quotes)

Friendship
(98 quotes)

Gardening
(80 quotes)

God
(122 quotes)

Golden Chains
(95 quotes)

Golden Rule
(81 quotes)

Government
(96 quotes)

Greed
(82 quotes)

Habitual Patterns
(95 quotes)

Happiness
(136 quotes)

Hate
(74 quotes)

Health
(125 quotes)

Here and Now
(84 quotes)

Hinduism
(61 quotes)

History
(105 quotes)

Hope
(72 quotes)

Humility
(78 quotes)

Idiot Compassion
(79 quotes)

Ignorance
(90 quotes)

Illusion
(95 quotes)

Imagination
(82 quotes)

Immortality
(90 quotes)

Impermanence
(80 quotes)

Indra's Net
(75 quotes)

Inscrutable
(97 quotes)

Inspiration
(100 quotes)

Integrity
(128 quotes)

Islam الإسلام
(69 quotes)

Joining Heaven/Earth/Man
(37 quotes)

Journey Without Goal
(94 quotes)

Judaism
(79 quotes)

Justice
(78 quotes)

Karma
(95 quotes)

Kindness
(76 quotes)

Know Yourself
(108 quotes)

Laughter and Humor
(81 quotes)

Law and Order
(110 quotes)

Leadership
(91 quotes)

Less is More
(151 quotes)

Letting Go
(81 quotes)

Lies
(93 quotes)

Livelihood
(127 quotes)

Longevity
(76 quotes)

Love
(121 quotes)

Magic
(75 quotes)

Mandala Principle
(79 quotes)

Marriage
(132 quotes)

Masculine Principle
(83 quotes)

Materialism
(94 quotes)

Meaningfulness
(133 quotes)

Medicine
(83 quotes)

Meditation
(84 quotes)

Memory
(86 quotes)

Middle Way
(78 quotes)

Mind
(80 quotes)

Mistakes
(90 quotes)

Money
(85 quotes)

Moon
(81 quotes)

Moral Freedom
(112 quotes)

Music
(84 quotes)

Nationalism
(82 quotes)

Natural Hierarchy
(81 quotes)

Nature, Environment
(85 quotes)

No Trace
(74 quotes)

Non-Thought
(73 quotes)

Obstacles
(76 quotes)

Old Age
(105 quotes)

One Taste
(78 quotes)

Oneness
(96 quotes)

Openness
(85 quotes)

Opinion
(84 quotes)

Ordinary Mind
(77 quotes)

Paradox
(144 quotes)

Patience
(78 quotes)

Peace
(72 quotes)

Perennial Philosophy
(85 quotes)

Perseverance
(83 quotes)

Philosophy
(77 quotes)

Pleasure
(84 quotes)

Pluralism
(79 quotes)

Poetry
(80 quotes)

Politics and Politicians
(137 quotes)

Poverty
(79 quotes)

Power
(124 quotes)

Problems
(116 quotes)

Progress
(95 quotes)

Projection
(85 quotes)

Prostitution
(56 quotes)

Punishment
(78 quotes)

Reality
(99 quotes)

Reason
(110 quotes)

Religion
(168 quotes)

Revolution
(78 quotes)

Rising Sun World
(81 quotes)

Sacred World
(115 quotes)

Science
(100 quotes)

Setting Sun World
(129 quotes)

Sex
(121 quotes)

Shambhala
(77 quotes)

Silence and Stillness
(84 quotes)

Simplicity
(79 quotes)

Skillful Means
(93 quotes)

Slavery
(99 quotes)

Socialism
(77 quotes)

Soul-Selling, Corruption
(90 quotes)

Spiritual Materialism
(78 quotes)

Strategy
(93 quotes)

Success
(114 quotes)

Suffering
(102 quotes)

Symbols and Myths
(88 quotes)

Taoism
(61 quotes)

Teachers
(74 quotes)

Technology
(84 quotes)

Time
(89 quotes)

Transmutation
(57 quotes)

Travel
(116 quotes)

True Self
(94 quotes)

Truth
(150 quotes)

Victory
(75 quotes)

Virtue
(87 quotes)

War
(134 quotes)

Warriors
(74 quotes)

Water
(81 quotes)

Wealth
(135 quotes)

Wisdom
(114 quotes)

Words or the sense?
(198 quotes)

Wu Wei
(109 quotes)

Comments (6)

  1. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 5 years ago
    It is only the very great and good who have any living faith in the simplest axioms; and there are few who are so holy as to feel that 19 and 13 make 32 as certainly as 2 and 2 make 4."—Samuel Butler, Erewhon
  2. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 4 years ago
    "A good sentence is a stake to which a donkey can be tethered for ten thousand aeons."--the Boat Monk, Huating Decheng (820-858)
  3. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 3 years ago
    "What the chained-to-appearances droning world will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs... proverbs—like the sacred books of each nation which are always the literature of reason—are the statements of an absolute truth without qualification."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation
  4. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 3 years ago
    “Life itself is a quotation.”--Jorge Luis Borges
  5. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 3 years ago
    "sometimes an isolated phrase or paragraph will work on the reader's imagination more forcefully that it might when buried in a possibly difficult text."— George Seldes
  6. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 10 months ago
    “To repeat words, even our own, is to contain them in their own sound.”—James P. Carse
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