TaoismChapter 71HOLYMAP · SACRED TEXTS
Tao Te ChingChapter 71

Tao Te Ching

Chapter 71

71
English · James Legge

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease. It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.

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Chinese text from Chinese Wikisource (zh.wikisource.org), transcribed by Wikisource volunteers. Public domain. · Source ↗

Translated by James Legge, The Texts of Tâoism, Part I, Sacred Books of the East vol. 39 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891). Public domain. E-text from Project Gutenberg (#216), checked word by word against scans of the 1891 printing (Internet Archive). · Source ↗

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