Tzu Quotes

1. "But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, "The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day."
Author: Alan Wilson Watts

2. "Zweifellos kommt keine demokratische Republik ohne Vertrauen in ihre gewählten Repräsentanten und in das Funktionieren ihrer Institutionen aus. Vertrauen aber wird im Selbstverständnis eines republikanischen Staatswesens stets komplementär zu Partizipation gedacht; sobald es an deren Stelle tritt, gerät die Architektur jeder Demokratie aus den Fugen. […] Macht voraussetzungslos und im Vertrauen auf die guten Absichten der Machthaber zu delegieren, lässt dem Ehrgeiz weniger auf Kosten aller freie Bahn."
Author: Bernd Greiner

3. "Neue Phaenomena zu erklären, dieses macht meine Sorgen aus, und wie froh ist der Forscher, wenn er das so fleissig Gesuche findet, eine Ergötzung wobei das Herz lacht.To explain new phenomena, that is my task; and how happy is the scientist when he finds what he so diligently sought, a pleasure that gladdens the heart."
Author: Carl Wilhelm Scheele

4. "Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon."
Author: Christopher Moore

5. "Tzu Chang asked Confucius about jen. Confucius said, "If you can practice these five things with all the people, you can be called jen."Tzu Chang asked what they were.Confucius said, "Courtesy, generosity, honesty, persistence, and kindness.If you are courteous, you will not be disrespected; if you are generous, you will gain everything. If you are honest, people will rely on you. If you are persistent you will get results. If you are kind, you can employ people."
Author: Confucius

6. "Ich habe diese Welt nicht anders vorgefunden als gehüllt in mein Bewusstsein; wie also kann ich gehen, ohne sie mitzunehmen? Und gesetzt selbst, dass sie alle, Berge, Häuser, Sonne (und ich bezweifle es) durch und für andere Wesen fortbestehen, - es werden andere sein, nicht diese Berge, diese Häuser, diese Sonne."
Author: Daniel Kehlmann

7. "The Sun Tzu School Ping-fa Directive. Be strong and continually aware. Manage your strength and that of others. When essential, engage on your terms. Be observant, adaptive, and subtle. Do not lose control. Act decisively. Conclude quickly. Don't Fight!"
Author: David G. Jones

8. "Heutzutage trifft man gewöhnlich Leute, in denen der Typus vorwiegt, dem man anmerkt, dass er nur ein Buch gelesen hat."
Author: Ernst Jünger

9. "Seit damals benutze ich das Lesen als Mittel, die Zeit zum Verschwinden zu bringen, und das Schreiben als Mittel, sie festzuhalten."
Author: Frédéric Beigbeder

10. "Vielleicht findet sich das wichtigste Heilmittel weder in Büchern, Tränen oder in der Religion, sondern in der Wertschätzung der kleinen Dinge - eine Blume, der Geruch von feuchtem Gras. Mir half die Zuneigung einer Katze, wieder Ja zum Leben zu sagen."
Author: Helen Brown

11. "Für mich besteht die Photographie im gleichzeitigen blitzschnellen Erkennen der inneren Bedeutung der Tatsache einerseits, und auf der anderen Seite des strengen und rückhaltlosen Aufbaus der optisch erfaßbaren Formenwelt, die jede Tatsache zum Ausdruck bringt. Indem wir leben, entdecken wir uns selbst und gleichzeitig die Außenwelt, die auf uns einwirkt, auf die wir aber auch unsererseits einwirken können. Zwischen dieser inneren und äußeren Welt muß ein Gleichgewicht geschaffen werden, die beiden Welten bilden in einem immerwährenden Dialog ein einziges Ganzes, und den Begriff davon müssen wir mitzuteilen suchen."
Author: Henri Cartier Bresson

12. "No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes."
Author: Henry Miller

13. "Among Chuang-tzu's many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun. "I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen. [Calvino retells this Chinese story]"
Author: Italo Calvino

14. "If it's not already written, I want to write a book called, "The Art of Raw." But instead of using my real name, I'll use the pseudonym, "Sun Tzushi."
Author: Jarod Kintz

15. "A brick is to a blanket, as the moon is to Sun Tzu. Fear my fearlessness!"
Author: Jarod Kintz

16. "Tragische Schuld verkörpert sich im permanenten Konflikt zwischen der uralten religiösen Vorstellung von der Missetat als einer Beschmutzung, die einer ganzen Rasse anhaftet und unausweichlich von einer Generation auf die nächste vererbt wird [...], und dem neuen vom Gesetz übernommenen Konzept, nach dem der Schuldige definiert wird als Privatperson, die sich aus eigenem Antrieb und unter keinem Zwang stehend entschlossen hat, ein Verbrechen zu begehen."
Author: Jean Pierre Vernant

17. "In L.A., I have more of a yard existence, and so I enjoy walking my two little dogs in New York - one's a Maltese and the other's a Shih Tzu."
Author: Jim Parsons

18. "Ocevidno je da ne postoji nikakav smisao povijesti koji bi se dao spasiti ledima okrenutim prema Auschwitzu niti postoji Bog kojemu se covjek može klanjati leda okrenutih prema Auschwitzu. Kao teološko-politicka katastrofa Auschwitz ne ostavlja poštedenima niti kršcanstvo i njegovu teologiju niti društvo i njegovu politiku."
Author: Johann Baptist Metz

19. "MaifestWie herrlich leuchtetMir die Natur!Wie glänzt die Sonne!Wie lacht die Flur!Es dringen BlütenAus jedem Zweig,Und tausend StimmenAus dem Gesträuch,Und Freud und WonneAus jeder Brust.O Erd, o Sonne!O Glück, o Lust!O Lieb', o Liebe,So golden schön,Wie MorgenwolkenAuf jenen Höhn;Du segnest herrlichDas frische Feld,Im BlütendampfeDie volle Welt.O Mädchen, Mädchen,Wie lieb' ich dich!Wie blickt dein Auge!Wie liebst du mich!So liebt die LercheGesang und Luft,Und MorgenblumenDen Himmels Duft,Wie ich dich liebeMit warmem Blut,Die du mir JugendUnd Freud und MutZu neuen LiedernUnd Tänzen gibst!Sei ewig glücklichWie du mich liebst!"
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

20. "Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

21. "Nachts ist alles anders. Die Dinge verändern sich, wenn die Welt schwarz ist. Ungewissheiten und Verletzungen, Sorgen und Ängste bekommen nachts Zähne."
Author: Kate Morton

22. "Sein Herz zu verlieren, ist die schönste Art festzustellen, dass man eines hat."
Author: Kerstin Gier

23. "As to the roaming of sages,They move in utter emptiness,Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;They run beyond conventionAnd go through where there is no gateway.They listen to the soundlessAnd look at the formless,They are not constrained by societyAnd not bound to its customs.- Lao-tzu"
Author: Lao Tzu

24. "Lao Tzu "The key to growth is the introductionof higher dimensions of consciousnessinto our awareness."
Author: Lao Tzu

25. "Ist eine Lehre zur Satzung erstarrt, hat sie geendet."
Author: Lao Tzu

26. "In the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer."
Author: Martin Van Creveld

27. "No tienes que ser el puto Sun Tzu para saber que la verdadera batalla no consiste en matar, ni siquiera en herir al otro, sino en asustarlos lo suficiente para que lo deje."
Author: Max Brooks

28. "It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone."
Author: Orson Scott Card

29. "Der Träumer braucht nur den Mond, um sich zurechtzufinden, und zur Strafe sieht er den Morgen schon vor dem Rest der Welt."
Author: Oscar Wilde

30. "Western scholars, contemptible in their pretentious and shallow scholarship, have translated Tao as Way. How foolish! Tao is Spirit, the Spirit that permeates all heaven and all earth, even those far beyond ours. Tao includes all that is not, and all that is; Lao Tzu describes it in these words.Silent, aloof, alone,It changes not, nor fails, but touches all.I do not know its name, One name for it is Tao.Pressed for designation,I call it -- Tao.Tao means Outgoing,Outgoing, Far-reaching, Far-reaching, Return."
Author: Pearl S. Buck

31. "All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, "The Art of War").Definition of deception: "The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody".Thus, all war is based in metaphor.All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry.Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction.Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war."
Author: Pola Oloixarac

32. "Libraries are sanctuaries from the world and command centers onto it: here in the quiet rooms are the lives of Crazy Horse and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Hundred Years' War and the Opium Wars and the Dirty War, the ideas of Simone Weil and Lao-Tzu, information on building your sailboat or dissolving your marriage, fictional worlds and books to equip the reader to reenter the real world. They are, ideally, places where nothing happens and where everything that has happened is stored up to be remembered and relived, the place where the world is folded up into boxes of paper. Every book is a door that opens onto another world, which might be the magic that all those children's books were alluding to, and a library is a Milky Way of worlds."
Author: Rebecca Solnit

33. "Der Elefant, der gestern im Traume Indien sah,Sprang aus der Fessel - wer hat, ihn festzuhalten, Macht?"
Author: Rumi

34. "Sun Tzu Wu was a native of the Ch`i State. His Art of War brought him to the notice of Ho Lu, King of Wu. Ho Lu said to him: "I have carefully perused your 13 chapters. May I submit your theory of managing soldiers to a slight test?"
Author: Sun Tzu

35. "The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King's favourite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: "I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?"
Author: Sun Tzu

36. "Again the girls assented. The words of command having been thus explained, he set up the halberds and battle-axes in order to begin the drill. Then, to the sound of drums, he gave the order "Right turn." But the girls only burst out laughing. Sun Tzu said: "If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame."
Author: Sun Tzu

37. "Accordingly, he had the two leaders beheaded, and straightway installed the pair next in order as leaders in their place. When this had been done, the drum was sounded for the drill once more; and the girls went through all the evolutions, turning to the right or to the left, marching ahead or wheeling back, kneeling or standing, with perfect accuracy and precision, not venturing to utter a sound. Then Sun Tzu sent a messenger to the King saying: "Your soldiers, Sire, are now properly drilled and disciplined, and ready for your majesty's inspection. They can be put to any use that their sovereign may desire; bid them go through fire and water, and they will not disobey."
Author: Sun Tzu

38. "From the ancient Chinese commentators found in the Giles edition. Of these four, Giles' 1910 edition is the most scholarly and presents the reader an incredible amount of information concerning Sun Tzu's text, much more than any other translation. The Giles' edition of the ART OF WAR, as stated above, was a scholarly work. Dr. Giles was a leading sinologue at the time and an assistant in the Department"
Author: Sun Tzu

39. "When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would "disappear into the silence". I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened."
Author: Swami Dhyan Giten

40. "Apprentices Needed, Not DisciplesFor many, the knowledge of a Jesus, a Lao-tzu, a Buddha, or a Gandhi is complete and unassailable. But we do them and their vision a disservice when we follow them rather than using what they have taught to build upon as we strive toward our goal of a better society."
Author: William Coperthwaite

41. "Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that i was a butterfly. flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu? However, there must be some sort of difference between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly!"
Author: Zhuangzi

Tzu Quotes Pictures