[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-Six When the Tao prevails in the world, they send back their swift horses to draw the dung-carts. When the Tao is disregarded in the world, the war-horses breed in the border lands. There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one’s lot; no [...]
[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-Five Who thinks his great achievements poor Shall find his vigor long endure. Of greatest fullness, deemed a void, Exhaustion ne’er shall stem the tide. Do thou what’s straight still crooked deem; Thy greatest art still stupid seem, And eloquence a stammering scream. Constant action overcomes cold; being still overcomes heat. Purity and [...]
[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-Four Or fame or life, Which do you hold more dear? Or life or wealth, To which would you adhere? Keep life and lose those other things; Keep them and lose your life:–which brings Sorrow and pain more near? Thus we may see, Who cleaves to fame Rejects what is more great; Who [...]
[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-Three The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that which has no substantial existence enters where there is no crevice. I know hereby what advantage belongs to doing nothing with a purpose. There are few in the world who attain to the teaching without words, and the advantage [...]
[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-Two The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity out of which they have come, and go forward to embrace the Brightness into which they have emerged, while they are harmonized by the Breath of Vacancy. What men dislike is [...]
[display_podcast] Chapter Forty-One Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars of the middle class, when they have heard about it, seem now to keep it and now to lose it. Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh greatly at it. [...]
