The best charioteers do not rush ahead; The best fighters do not make displays of wrath. The greatest conqueror wins without joining issue; The best user of men acts as though he were their inferior. This is called the power that comes of not contending, Is called the capacity to use men, The secret of…

A large kingdom must be like the low ground towards which all streams flows down. It must be a point towards which all things under heaven converge. Its part must be that of the female in its dealings with all things under heaven. The female by quiescence conquers the male; by quiescence gets underneath. If…

Heaven is eternal, the Earth everlasting. How come they to be so? It is because they do not foster their own lives; That is why they live so long. Therefore the Sage Puts himself in the background; but is always to the fore. Remains outside; but is always there. Is it not just because he…

Nothing under heaven is softer or more yielding than water; But when it attacks things hard and resistant there is not one of them that can prevail. For they can find no way of altering it. That the yielding conquers the resistant And the soft conquers the hard is a fact known by all men,…

When he is born, man is soft and weak; In death he becomes stiff and hard. The ten thousand creatures and all plants And trees while they are alive are supple and soft, But when and dead they become brittle and dry. Truly, what is stiff and hard is a “companion of death”; What is…

“He who knows the males, yet cleaves to what is female Because like a ravine, receiving all things under heaven,” And being such a ravine He knows all the time a power that he never calls upon in vain. This is returning to the state of infancy. He who knows the white, [yet cleaves to…