When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.
Everything is already perfect. And if you can accept that everything is already perfect, the imperfection is a part of the perfection. What's to worry about?
We don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate-right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.
How often have I not heard a perfectly intelligent female says, in the tone of one clinching an argument, 'Edgar says -- ' And all the time you are perfectly aware that Edgar is a perfect fool.
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.
If a thing happens once, it can happen again. If any human being has ever realised perfection, we too can do so. If we cannot become perfect here and now, we never can in any state or heaven or condition we may imagine.
Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it.
The Way of Tao is this: It strives not, but conquers; It speaks not, but all is made clear; It summons not, but its house is crowded; It contrives not, but the design is perfect.