Herbert Allen Giles > Quotes

“The flowers and the birds do not toil, they simply live. That is TAO. And for man a state of indifference and calm, the ἀταραξία not of the sceptic but of the mystic, a passive reflecting of the Eternal, is the ideal end. “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep. And thus he can triumph over matter without injury to himself”.”
― Herbert A Giles, The Book of Chuang Tzu

“Put yourself behind, and the world will put you in front; put yourself in front, and the world will put you behind.”
― Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Chinese

“To the good I would be good; to the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good.”
― Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Chinese

“confront”
― Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Chinese

“The mystic’s utterances will not bear translation into the language of the world, and to take them au pied de la lettre can hardly fail to produce disastrous results.”
― Herbert A Giles, The Book of Chuang Tzu

“From his earliest school days the Chinese boy is taught that men without education are but horses or cows in coats and trousers, and that success at the public examinations is the greatest prize this world has to offer.”
― Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Chinese

“Time, then, is relative too. And though men wonder at him who could “ride upon the wind and travel for many days,” he is but a child to one who “roams through the realms of For-Ever.”
― Herbert A Giles, The Book of Chuang Tzu

“From the standpoint of Tao” all things are one. People “guided by the criteria of their own mind,” see only the contradiction, the manifoldness, the difference; the sage sees the many disappearing in the One, in which subjective and objective, positive and negative, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, meet and blend. For him, “a beam and a pillar are identical. So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction: construction is the same as destruction” (pp. 33-33). The sage “blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the comparison of this and that. Rank and precedence, which the vulgar prize, the sage stolidly ignores. The universe itself may pass away, but he will flourish still” (p. 39). “Were the ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the milky way frozen hard he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not tremble” (pp. 38-38).”
― Herbert A Giles, The Book of Chuang Tzu

“endowment.”
― Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Chinese