“I have heard that your majesty has a liking for the play of the sword, so I have come to meet with you on the strength of my swordplay. . . . This is a swordplay that displays false appearances to the opponent, leading him on with the lure of gain, thrusting forth only after he does, but preceding him in landing the blow.”

— Zhuangzi

“Anyone who can be regulated with promises of profit and admonished with slick words is what I would call a stupid, ignorant, ordinary sort of person.”

— Robber Zhi
Zhuangzi

Well, if you can’t help it, then just go with it; do not hate the imponderable spirit in you! If you cannot control your longings, but then you force yourself not to obey them, this is called a double injury.

— Zhuangzi

These spillover-goblet words give forth new meanings constantly, so that all are harmonized through their Heavenly Transitions. They extend on and on without break and thus can remain in force to the end of one’s years.

— Zhuangzi

It is only when you know uselessness that you can know anything about the useful.

— Zhaungzi

It is only someone who transforms every day together with all things who can remain always one and unchanging.

— Zhuangzi

Thus do they comply and align themselves with whatever is brought by every passing year, instead of letting change be their very thing-hood! Thus do they drive their bodies and inborn natures about, sinking beneath the ten thousand things, never turning back for their entire lives. How sad!

— Zhuangzi

“Walk without knowing where you are going, stop without knowing what you are doing, slither along with all things, joining in their undulations. . . . This is what is called melting the ice and breaking through the freeze—but are you capable of it?”

— Zhuangzi

“You and I are nowhere near it, because we know it.”

— Zhuangzi

“He is the kind of person who is genuine: . . . How could I, Choiceless, be worthy even to mention such a person?”

— Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi was traveling in the mountains when he came upon a huge tree, luxuriantly overgrown with branches and leaves. A woodcutter stopped beside it, but in the end chose not to fell it. Asked the reason, he said, There is nothing it can be used for.”

— Zhuangzi

Duke Huan burst out laughing and said, “That is what I saw!” . . . Before the end of the day, without his even realizing it, his illness was gone.

— Zhuangzi

I don’t know: is there anything that is really good, or isn’t there?

Nor do I know whether what the ordinary people nowadays do, what they find their happiness in, is really happiness or not.

— Zhuangzi

The becoming of things is like a galloping horse, transforming with each movement, altering at each moment. What should you do? What should you not do? No matter what, you will be spontaneously transforming!

— Zhuangzi

When the correctness belonging to another is applied to oneself, it only beclouds one’s intrinsic virtuosities.

— Zhuangzi

When conscious understanding and tranquility can come together and nourish one another in this way, a harmonious coherence of the two emerges from the inborn. Inherent virtuosity is just this harmony, and the Course is just this coherence.

— Zhuangzi

To be lofty though without any carved-in-stone intentions, cultivated though without humankindness and responsible conduct, governing though without merit and fame, at leisure though without confinement to the rivers and seas, long-lived without manipulating the vital energies . . . this is the Course of heaven and earth, the intrinsic virtuosity of the sages.

— Zhuangzi

If a person is not a person as a form of participation with transformation, how can he transform others?

— Zhuangzi

In the ancestral temple, we honor our relatives. In the royal court, we honor rank. In the villages and towns, we honor age. In working at tasks, we honor ability. These are the sequential orderings of the Great Course. To speak of the Course and yet to critique its sequential orderings is to negate the Course itself.

— Zhuangzi

For he is the kind of leader who produces disorder through his very governing—a calamity to those who serve him and a thief to those who rule him.”

— Zhuangzi