Zhuangzi Quotes

#1. So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.

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#2. To a mind that is still, the entire universe surrenders.

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#3. The living all find death unpleasant; men mourn over it. And yet, what is death, but the unbending of the bow and its return to its case?

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#4. Take care of your body, then the rest will automatically become stronger.

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#5. And how do I know that the hate of death is not like a man who has lost his home when young and does not know where his home is to return to?

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#6. Eyes that are blind have no way to tell the loveliness of faces and features; eyes with no pupils have no way to tell the beauty of colored and embroidered silks.

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#7. A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.

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#8. Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way, and forget that the going is easy.

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#9. You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.

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#10. Life is finite, While knowledge is infinite.

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#11. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.

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#12. Things joined by profit, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cast each other aside.

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#13. The Portal of God is nonexistence. All things sprang from nonexistence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from nonexistence, and nonexistence and nothing are one. Herein is the abiding place of the sage.

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#14. When men do not forget what can be forgotten but forget what cannot be forgotten - that may be called true forgetting.

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#15. The hundred parts of the body are all complete in their places. Which should one prefer? Do you like them all equally? Are they all servants? Are they unable to control one another and need a ruler? Or do they become rulers and servants in turn? Is there any true ruler other than themselves?

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#16. The World is Large - Its beauty indescrible.

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#17. The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by.

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#18. Fish live in water. Men die in it.Nature is diverse, and not all tastes are the same.

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#19. Moreover, I have heard that those who are fond of praising men to their faces are also fond of damning them behind their backs.

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#20. So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar.

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#21. Ah," said Lien Shu, "it is true that a blind person cannot appreciate beautiful patterns and forms, and the deaf cannot appreciate the music of bells and drums. Yet blindness and deafness do not only afflict people physically, they also exist in the minds and attitudes of people.

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#22. There is the globe,
The foundation of my bodily existence.
It wears me out with work and duties,
It gives me rest in old age,
It gives me peace in death.
For the on who supplied me with what I needed in life
Will also give me what I need in death.

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#23. Do not seek fame. Do not make plans. Do not be absorbed by activities. Do not think that you know. Be aware of all that is and dwell in the infinite. Wander where there is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all.

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#24. True men ... are strong willed, have dignity in their demeanor, serenity in their expression. They are cool like autumn, warm like spring. Their passions arise like the four seasons, in harmony with the ten thousand creatures, and no one knows their limits.

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#25. Man may rest in the eternal fitness; he may abide in the everlasting; and roam from the beginning to the end of all creation. He may bring his nature to a condition of ONE, he may nourish his strength; he may harmonise his virtue, and so put himself into partnership with God.

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#26. When a hideous man becomes a father
And a son is born to him
In the middle of the night
He trembles and lights a lamp
And runs to look in anguish
On that child's face
To see who he resembles.

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#27. The saying goes, 'The sage rests, truly rests and is at ease.' This manifests itself in calmness and detachment, so that worries and distress cannot affect him, nothing unpleasant can disturb him, his Virtue is complete and his spirit is not stirred up.

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#28. It is only when the formed learns from the unformed that there is understanding.

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#29. He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.

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#30. When you're dreaming, you don't know it's a dream. You might even interpret a dream in your dream - and then wake up and realize it was all a dream. Perhaps a great awakening will reveal this to be a dream as well.

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#31. Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I am not sure whether the happiness is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop.

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#32. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down.

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#33. The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.

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#34. Those who follow the Tao are of clear mind. They do not load their mind with anxieties and are flexible in their adjustment to external conditions.

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#35. We can't expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone - the understanding has them, too.

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#36. You should find the same joy in one condition as in the other and thereby be free of care, that is all. But now, when the things that happened along take their leave, you cease to be joyful. From this point of view, though you have joy, it will always be fated for destruction.

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#37. Today, I went to sleep under a plum tree. There, I dreamed I was a butterfly, flying so pleasently. Then, I fell asleep, and the dream ended. Now- I have to ask myself - am I Zhuang Zi who dreamed of a butterfly? Or am I that butterfly, dreaming I am Zhuang Zi?

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#38. Thus, those who say they would have right without its correlate, wrong; or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation.

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#39. One whose inner being is fixed upon such greatness emits a Heavenly glow. Even though he has this Heavenly glow, others will see him as just a man. Someone who has reached this point will begin to be consistent.

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#40. Men all pay homage to what understanding understands, but no one understands enough to rely upon what understanding does not understand and thereby come to understand.

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#41. Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.

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#42. Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.

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#43. By ethical argument and moral principle the greatest crimes are eventually shown to have been necessary, and, in fact, a signal benefit to mankind.

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#44. There is danger for the eye in seeing too clearly, danger for the ear in hearing too sharply and danger to the heart from caring too greatly.

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#45. For we can only know that we know nothing, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

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#46. Tao is beyond words and beyond things. It is not expressed either in word or in silence. Where there is no longer word or silence Tao is apprehended.

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#47. True depth of understanding is wide and steady,
Shallow understanding is lazy and wandering,
Words of wisdom are precise and clear

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#48. I was given life because it was my time, and now I take leave of it according to the same law. Content with the natural sequence of these events, I am touched neither by joy nor by grief. I am simply hanging in the air ... incapable of freeing myself, tied by the threads of things.

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#49. To regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent - herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients.

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#50. When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.

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#51. Horses have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow; hair, to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their heels ... Such is the real nature of horses.

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#52. The man who has some respect for his person keeps his carcass out of sight, hides himself as perfectly as he can.

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#53. You are still guided by your expectations.

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#54. Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting point.

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#55. I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

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#56. When there is no more separation between 'this' and 'that,' it is called the still-point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.

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#57. There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning ... There is something. There is nothing.

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#58. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.

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#59. Cherish that which is in you and shut out that which is without, for much knowledge is a curse.

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#60. Big? Sure. But, he can't catch mice! So for your big tree. No use? Then plant it in the wasteland - in emptiness. Walk idly around it and rest under it's shadow. No axe or saw prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down. Useless? You should worry!.

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#61. To have attained to the human form is a source of joy ... What an incomparable bliss it is to undergo these countless transitions.

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#62. Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

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#63. The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.

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#64. The ten thousand things belong to one storehouse and life and death share the same body.

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#65. Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.

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#66. Water becomes clear and transparent when in a quiescent stage. How much the more wonderful will be the mind of a sage when poised in quiescence! It is the mirror of heaven and earth, reflecting the ten thousand things.

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#67. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way ...

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#68. All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!

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#69. A path is made by walking on it.

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#70. To examine oneself makes good use of sight.

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#71. Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens.

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#72. Being is thoughtless-beyond and beneath all categories of thought. Expression is the realization of creative thought. Being is still; expression, moving. But then if I do not strive, who will?

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#73. Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.

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#74. Heaven does without doing through its purity, Earth does without doing through its calmness.

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#75. Are you and I perchance caught up in a dream from which we have not yet awakened?

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#76. A battering ram can knock down a city wall, but it cannot stop a hole. Different things have different uses.

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#77. Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views - then the world will be governed.

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#78. Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?

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#79. To forget the whole world is easy; to make the whole world forget you is hard.

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#80. Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone

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#81. The one-legged creature is envious of the millipede; the millipede is envious of the snake; the snake is envious of the wind; the wind is envious of the eye; the eye is envious of the heart.

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#82. My description of wisdom has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is to do with being wise in one's own virtue, nothing more. My description of being has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is that one should be led by one's innate nature, nothing more.

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#83. Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied.

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#84. Everything has what is innate,everything has what is necessary.

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#85. My most interesting memory is of my first real dream. I was a caterpillar, wriggling around in the earth, just the way a caterpillar would. Following my caterpillar whims, completely unaware of anyone.

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#86. For all people strive to grasp what they do not know, while none strive to grasp what they already know; and all strive to discredit what they do not excel in, while none strive to discredit what they do excel in. This is why there is chaos.

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#87. If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.

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#88. The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words, so that I can talk to him?

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#89. The men of old breathed clear down to their heels.

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#90. If you have grasped the purpose of life there is no point in trying to make life into something it is not or cannot be.

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#91. In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn; in the midst of the soundless, he alone hears harmony.

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#92. The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become obsessed with what we are not.

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#93. Those who realise their folly are not true fools.

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#94. When an archer shoots for enjoyment, he has all his skill; when he shoots for a brass buckle, he gets nervous; when he shoots for a prize of gold, he begins to see two targets.

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#95. There is no bandit so powerful as Nature.
The interaction of the positive and the negative principles, which produces the visible universe.
In the whole universe there is no escape from it.

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#96. Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious.

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#97. The sage has the sun and moon by his side and the universe under his arm. He blends everything into a harmonious whole ... He blends the disparities of ten thousand years into one complete purity. All things are blended like this and mutually involve each other.

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#98. People who excuse their faults and claim they didn't deserved to be punished - there are lots of them. But those who don't excuse their faults and admit they didn't deserve to be spared - they are few.

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#99. That knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the highest knowledge.

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#100. Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!

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