Top 200 Zhuangzi Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Zhuangzi

52. “The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate amongst them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say; those who discriminate, fail to see.”

— Zhuangzi

53. “When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed.”

— Zhuangzi

54. “All the fish needs is to get lost in the water. All man needs is to get lost in Tao.”

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

56. “Each one’s destiny cannot be altered.”

— Zhuangzi

57. “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?”

— Zhuangzi

58. “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?”

— Zhuangzi

59. “The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.”

— Zhuangzi

60. “Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.”

— Zhuangzi

61. “The little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers – because it lives with those who know how to speak.”

— Zhuangzi

62. “Heaven is in everything: follow the light, hide in the cloudiness and begin in what is. Do this and your understanding will be like not understanding and your wisdom will be like not being wise. By not being wise you will become wise later.”

— Zhuangzi

63. “He who knows the activities of Nature lives according to Nature.”

— Zhuangzi

64. “Verily God does not reward man for what he does, but for what he is.”

— Zhuangzi

65. “Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.”

— Zhuangzi

66. “The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty to the ear, or to the mind.”

— Zhuangzi

67. “He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.”

— Zhuangzi

68. “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.”

— Zhuangzi

69. “Never admire a man by his strength; judge him in how he uses it- A way is made by walking it.”

— Zhuangzi

70. “To be constant is to be useful. To be useful is to realize one’s true nature. Realization of one’s true nature is happiness. When one reaches happiness, one is close to perfection.”

— Zhuangzi

71. “The eyes envy the mind.”

— Zhuangzi

72. “Study is to study what cannot be studied. Undertaking means undertaking what cannot be undertaken. Philosophizing is to philosophize about what cannot be philosophized about. Knowing that knowing is unknowable is true perfection.”

— Zhuangzi

73. “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.”

— Zhuangzi

74. “Great knowledge sees all in one. Small knowledge breaks down into the many.”

— Zhuangzi

75. “The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by.”

— Zhuangzi

76. “To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge.”

— Zhuangzi

77. “The Way is to man as rivers and lakes are to fish, the natural condition of life.”

— Zhuangzi

78. “Words are for meaning: when you’ve got the meaning, you can forget the words.”

— Zhuangzi

79. “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?”

— Zhuangzi

80. “Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone.”

— Zhuangzi

81. “When affirmation and negation came into being, Tao faded. After Tao faded, then came one-sided attachments.”

— Zhuangzi

82. “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.”

— Zhuangzi

83. “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.”

— Zhuangzi

84. “Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.”

— Zhuangzi

85. “Compare birth with death, compare death with life; compare what is possible with what is not possible and compare what is not possible with what is possible; because there is, there is not, and because there is not, there is.”

— Zhuangzi

86. “Forget about life, forget about worrying about right and wrong. Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there!”

— Zhuangzi

87. “Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything.”

— Zhuangzi

88. “All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.”

— Zhuangzi

89. “Calculate what man knows and it cannot compare to what he doesn’t know. Calculate the time he is alive and it cannot compare to the time before he was born. Yet man takes something so small and tries to exhaust the dimensions of something so large!”

— Zhuangzi

90. “Luck implies an absolute absence of any principle.”

— Zhuangzi

91. “Look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light.”

— Zhuangzi

92. “I am going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen recklessly.”

— Zhuangzi

93. “He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; He who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion.”

— Zhuangzi

94. “The fact is that those who do not see themselves but who see others, who fail to grasp of themselves but who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves. they are attracted to what others enjoy but fail to find enjoyment in themselves.”

— Zhuangzi

95. “A sage steers by the bright light of confusion and doubt.”

— Zhuangzi

96. “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.”

— Zhuangzi

97. “When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.”

— Zhuangzi

98. “The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered Heaven.”

— Zhuangzi

99. “Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.”

— Zhuangzi

100. “If one is true to one’s inner self, and follows its wisdom, who is without a teacher?”

— Zhuangzi