“Block the passages, shut the doors,
And till the end your strength shall not fail.
Open up the passages, increase your doings,
And till your last day no help shall come to you.”

—  Laozi , book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 52 as translated by Arthur Waley (1934)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Block the passages, shut the doors, And till the end your strength shall not fail. Open up the passages, increase you…" by Laozi?
Laozi photo
Laozi 79
semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th centur… -604

Related quotes

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 116.
1870s
Context: My fourth principle is—that you should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration of the country. You may say that an Englishman may now hold up his head among the nations. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

John F. Kennedy photo
James Allen photo

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals
Context: To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

Cesar Chavez photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind”

Variant: Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
Source: Four Quartets

Charles Spurgeon photo

“Mind your till, and till your mind.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Salt-Cellars (1885)

Peter Greenaway photo
Joel Osteen photo

“You have to come to your closed doors before you’ll ever get to your open doors.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life

John Wallis photo

Related topics