The Zhuangzi (369BCE–286BCE) is an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period which contains stories and anecdotes that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage. Named for its traditional author, “Master Zhuang”, the Zhuangzi is one of the two foundational texts of Daoism—along with the Dao De Jing—and is generally considered the most important of all Daoist writings.
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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.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Opinion
I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river.
—Zhuang Zhou
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Education
Easy is right. Begin right, and you will be 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.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Perfection
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Awareness, Self-Knowledge
The torch of doubt and chaos is what the sage steers by.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Doubt
Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Acceptance, Difficulty
Luck implies an absolute absence of any principle.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Luck
He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Fame
The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.
—Zhuang Zhou
Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Happiness, Absence
A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Speech, Communication
Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Satisfaction
The sound of water says what I think.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: One liners
By ethical argument and moral principle the greatest crimes are eventually shown to have been necessary, and, in fact, a signal benefit to mankind.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Ethics
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.
—Zhuang Zhou
My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it.
—Zhuang Zhou
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.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Horses
All that is limited by form, semblance, sound, color is called object. Among them all, man alone is more than an object. Though, like objects, he has form and semblance, He is not limited to form. He is more. He can attain to formlessness. When he is beyond form and semblance, beyond this and that, where is the comparison with another object? Where is the conflict? What can stand in his way? He will rest in his eternal place which is no-place. He will be hidden in his own unfathomable secret. His nature sinks to its root in the One. His vitality, his power hide in secret Tao.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: Man
Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful, but n o one knows the usefulness of the useless.
—Zhuang Zhou
Topics: The Past
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