Run the country by doing what’s expected. Win the war by doing the unexpected. Control the world by doing nothing.

Ursula K Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Le Guin Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching run country doing expected win war unexpected control world nothing

Consider also:

  1. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority.
  2. Tao Te Ching
  3. “From the time I was bedridden I had awakened into a strange and unbelievable world in which I had no need for the world of the rabble—a world that was within me, a world full of unknowns, and it was as if I was forced to examine and inspect all its cracks and crevices.”