Tao te Ching

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.