A Quote by Laozi

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

Laozi

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Another Away Cannot Fluid Hard Overcome Paradox Rigid Rock Rule Soft Strong Water Wear Whatever Which Will Yield

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Laozi
Chinese - Philosopher
604 BC - 531 BC

Whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. What is soft is strong.

Laozi

Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.

Laozi

When life begins we are tender and weak When life ends we are stiff and rigid All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life and dry in brittle in death So the soft and supple are the companion of life While the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind Thus by Nature's own decree the hard and strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant

Laozi

Parents walk a fine line between discipline and grace - values have to hold even when circumstances change or call for compromise or compassion. It's the ultimate challenge to be both firm and fluid, soft and strong, yielding yet rock solid.

Kristin Armstrong

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.

Laozi

Study water. Try to grab a hold of water, and it will always elude you. You just have to let yourself be in it. It's soft, and it overcomes anything that's hard. Put the hardest substance - say, titanium - out there, and let water flow over it. Eventually, patiently, peacefully, the water will just wear it away. Also, water will enter anywhere - through any opening at all. So, let yourself be like that. God is in nature, everywhere and always. And we have so much to learn.

Wayne Dyer

The living are soft and yielding; the dead are rigid and stiff. Living plants are flexible and tender; the dead are brittle and dry.

Laozi

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.

Laozi

What is strong and rigid is snapped and laid low. What is flexible and soft will always prevail.

Laozi

Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.

Margaret Atwood

What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere.

Ovid

My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest. My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth.

Juliet Marillier

She let him come further, his lips came and surging, surging, soft, oh soft, yet on, like the powerful surge of water, irresistible, till with a little blind cry, she broke away.

D. H. Lawrence

That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.

Laozi

A diamond, which is the hardest of stones, not yielding unto steel, emery or any other thing, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat.

Thomas Browne

Are soft-hearted people handicapped in business? You have heard a businessman say of someone else, He's all right, but he's too soft-hearted.... To be soft-hearted may be handicapping, in a sense. But on the whole, a soft heart is to be preferred to a hard heart. Hard-hearted, severe, dominating giants sometimes manage to get further and to amass more money. But they get less genuine joy out of life.... It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most to endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

B. C. Forbes

A Quote by Laozi

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