الكتب المصدرية

The Dao is nameless, empty and the impartial source of all. Act by not-forcing; the highest good is like water, benefiting all and contending with none.

Emptiness is what is useful. Prefer simplicity to sensory excess and cleverness; the best government is nearly invisible, and forced morality signals a lost Dao.

The Dao is the formless source of all forms. Humility prevails and self-display defeats itself; the sage saves all and discards no one.

Not-forcing accomplishes everything. The soft overcomes the hard, the Dao moves by reversal, and arms are instruments of ill omen — even victory is mourned.

The Dao is known by subtraction, not by accumulation. Contentment is enduring sufficiency, and the sage has no fixed self and is good to all alike.

The Dao nourishes all without claiming or controlling. Govern by non-action — multiplied laws breed disorder — and the one who knows does not speak.

The low place leads. Three treasures — gentleness, economy, humility; handle things while they are small, and requite injury with kindness.

Knowing one's not-knowing is highest. Soft and weak outlast firm and strong, heaven's way levels excess and lack, and the sage hoards nothing.

Free-and-easy wandering beyond great and small; the relativity of all judgments; the mirror-mind emptied of self; and death as transformation, not evil.

Civilisation as the destroyer of perfect virtue, the scheming mind that voids simplicity, and a Dao immanent even in the ant and the excrement.

Life is worth more than the kingdom. Authenticity over ritual form, guarding life by simplicity, and language that says without asserting.