Top 500 Laozi Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others.”

— Laozi

152. “Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?”

— Laozi

153. “The highest truth cannot be put into words.”

— Laozi

154. “He who knows enough is enough will always have enough.”

— Laozi

155. “Watch your thoughts, they become words...”

— Laozi

156. “Those who are highly evolved, maintain an undiscriminating perception. Seeing everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of the Great Oneness. Thus they are supported by it.”

— Laozi

157. “No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things from within and unconsciously, and at last become one with heaven and earth.”

— Laozi

158. “Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.”

— Laozi

159. “Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear.”

— Laozi

160. “Use the light to return to clarity.”

— Laozi

161. “The best soldier does not attack. The superior fighter succeeds without violence. The greatest conqueror wins without struggle. The most successful manager leads without dictating. This is intelligent non aggressiveness.”

— Laozi

162. “Softness triumphs over hardness, feebleness over strength. What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immoveable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.”

— Laozi

163. “Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where a wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pots not is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn’t.”

— Laozi

164. “The best people are like water, which benefits all things and does not compete with them. It stays in lowly places that others reject. This is why it is so similar to the Way.”

— Laozi

165. “The living are soft and yielding; the dead are rigid and stiff. Living plants are flexible and tender; the dead are brittle and dry.”

— Laozi

166. “There is a time to go ahead and a time to stay behind. There is a time to breathe easy and time to breathe hard. There is a time to be vigorous and a time to be gentle. There is a time to gather and a time to release. Can you see things as they are And let them be all on their own?”

— Laozi

167. “Use your light, but dim your brightness.”

— Laozi

168. “Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.”

— Laozi

169. “If one desires to receive one must first give. This is called profound understanding.”

— Laozi

170. “When the ancient Masters said, “If you want to be given everything, give everything up,” they weren’t using empty phrases. Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.”

— Laozi

171. “Mask your brightness. Be at one with the dust of the earth. This is primal union.”

— Laozi

172. “Take time to listen to what is said without words, to obey the law too subtle to be written, to worship the unnameable and to embrace the unformed.”

— Laozi

173. “ALL things in Nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their functions and make no claim.”

— Laozi

174. “Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken.”

— Laozi

175. “In the Universe the difficult things are done as if they were easy.”

— Laozi

176. “Without the tao, Kindness and compassion are replaced by law and justice; Faith and trust are supplanted by ritual and ceremony.”

— Laozi

177. “A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.”

— Laozi

178. “The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao.”

— Laozi

179. “Find a teacher who is an integral being, a beacon who extends his light and virtue with equal ease to those who appreciate him and those who don’t. Shape yourself in his mold, bathe in his nourishing radiance, and reflect it out to the rest of the world.”

— Laozi

180. “Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death, he is rigid and hard. Thus, suppleness and tenderness accompany life, but rigidity and hardness accompany death.”

— Laozi

181. “Nature’s way is simple and easy, but men prefer the intricate and artificial.”

— Laozi

182. “If you go searching for the Great Creator, you will come back empty-handed. The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things.”

— Laozi

183. “He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love.”

— Laozi

184. “The Tao never acts with force, yet there is nothing that it can not do.”

— Laozi

185. “Just as the value of a house lies in its location, The value of a mind lies in its depth, The value of giving lies in the presence of a generous spirit, The value of words lies in their reliability.”

— Laozi

186. “Nurture the spontaneous peaceful life.”

— Laozi

187. “If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.”

— Laozi

188. “The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer the people become.”

— Laozi

189. “Behave simply and hold on to purity.”

— Laozi

190. “Battles are followed by years of famine.”

— Laozi

191. “Who can rest until the moment of action?”

— Laozi

192. “First and last follow each other.”

— Laozi

193. “There is no greater sin than desire, No greater curse than discontent, No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”

— Laozi

194. “Those who seek knowledge, collect something every day. Those who seek the Way, let go of something every day.”

— Laozi

195. “Going back to the origin is called peace; it means reversion to destiny. Reversion to destiny is called eternity. Those who know eternity are called enlightened.”

— Laozi

196. “Sometimes gain comes from losing, and sometimes loss comes from gaining.”

— Laozi

197. “Supreme good is like water. Water greatly benefits all things, without conflict. It flows through places that people loathe. Thereby it is close to the Way.”

— Laozi

198. “There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed.”

— Laozi

199. “The value of teaching without words and accomplishing without action is understood by few in the world.”

— Laozi

200. “Those who do not trust enough should not be trusted.”

— Laozi