Top 200 Zhuangzi Quotes (2025 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. “When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed.”

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

54. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

56. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

59. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

61. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

64. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

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

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

72. “The eyes envy the mind.”

— Zhuangzi

73. “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

74. “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

75. “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

76. “We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.”

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

80. “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

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

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

— Zhuangzi

84. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

90. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

92. “Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!”

— Zhuangzi

93. “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

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

— Zhuangzi

95. “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

96. “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

97. “The space under the sky is occupied by all things in their unity.”

— Zhuangzi

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

— Zhuangzi

99. “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

100. “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