Echoes

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well.'

I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.

What speaks to the soul escapes our measurements.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.