Echoes

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Do the duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.

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.

Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; ’Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

In pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man. Study cannot be helpful unless you take pains to live simply; and living simply is voluntary poverty.

Assert your right to your own time, and gather together and save the time which up till lately has been either taken from you or filched away or has simply passed by unused.

To account nothing of one’s self, and to think always kindly and highly of others, this is great and perfect wisdom.

Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

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.

I eat only what is enough to sustain my life. My food is bread, soup, an egg, and a little meat. And the amount I eat is no more than my body can easily digest.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

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

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

Prize that which is best in the universe; and this is that which useth everything and ordereth everything.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of the gods.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.