Echoes

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

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

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

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors — walking, leaping, climbing, dancing.

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavors dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind. Precious things lead one astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees. He lets go of that and chooses this.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

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

I felt before I thought: this is the common lot of humanity.

In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit, for lack of a better name.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

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.

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

One should not eat unless one is hungry, nor drink unless one is thirsty.

What speaks to the soul escapes our measurements.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Example is the best lesson there is.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.

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.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

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