Echoes

The highest good is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend. It dwells in places that all men disdain — and so is close to the Tao.

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

The drops of rain that fall upon the stone in course of time will wear their way through it.

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all Diseases and Miseries.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

Many things which nature makes difficult become easy to the man who uses his brains.

Relentless toil conquers all.

Time is a river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by, and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Plain savors bring us a pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, when all the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips.

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows: empty, yet inexhaustible. The more it is worked, the more it yields. Many words count for little — hold fast to the center.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluid; every image forms, wandering through change. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river, for neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but as wave impels wave, and as each wave comes, the one before is both impelled by the next and impels the one ahead, so time both flees and follows and is always new.

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

The earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world, because it is resistant to us.

I know of a cure for everything: salt water — sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

He who endures, conquers.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

We will either find a way through these mountains, or we will make a way through them. No barrier of nature shall stop us.