Weaving the Way

Trustworthy speech is not beautiful,
  beautified speech is not trustworthy.

Knowing is not expansive,
  expansiveness is not-knowing. 

A small state with few people.

If 1,000 people were to have tools,
  and yet make no use of them;
If the people feared death
  and moved away;
There would be chariots,
  and nowhere to ride them;
There would be soldiers,
  and no place to form ranks.

In resolving Great Resentments,
there will be leftover resentment.
How can that be good?

Under Heaven, nothing is
  more yielding than water,
And in handling the unyielding,
  There is nothing that can surpass it.

The Way of Creation is like
  Drawing a Bow.

Raise it by pressing it,
  Lower it by pulling it,
Having overdrawn,
  reduce it.
If underdrawn,
  add to it. 

A person’s generative force:
  Soft, pliant.
Their stillness:
  Persisting, enduring, able, strong.

A person’s hunger,
  Is because the taxes on food are high.
This is how there is hunger.

Common people’s disorder,
  Is because their superior is too active.
This is how the superior doesn’t regulate them.

How can you scare people with murder
  if they’re always unafraid of death?

Make people constantly afraid of death,
  And they’ll become non-conforming.

Resolve with certainty is the point,
Resolve without certainty is the nock.
  Each of these brings benefit and harm.

People’s irreverence
  leads to the greatest reverence.

They do not grow too familiar with
  their abiding.
They do not tire of
  their arising.