Laozi · Complete work
Chapter 59
Chapter 59 of 81. Read it here for reference, or continue through the entire work without leaving the reader.
Open the complete readerOriginal Classical Chinese
治人事天莫若嗇。夫唯嗇，是謂早服；早服謂之重積德；重積德則無不克；無不克則莫知其極；莫知其極，可以有國；有國之母，可以長久；是謂深根固柢，長生久視之道。
Mouseia
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the original source for fidelity, modern clarity, beauty, symbolism, and structure.
In governing people and serving Heaven, nothing compares with husbanding.Only husbanding is called early accord;Early accord is called redoubling the store of virtue;With virtue stored redoubled, nothing cannot be overcome;When nothing cannot be overcome, no one knows its limit;When no one knows its limit, one can possess the state;Possessing the mother of the state, one can long endure;This is called the Way of deep roots and a firm base, of long life and enduring vision.
OpenTao
Complete CC BY 4.0 translation made directly from the received Chinese text; source line structure preserved.
For governing people and serving heaven, nothing equals holding something in reserve.Such reserve alone is called an early return;early return means storing up integrity, layer upon layer;with integrity stored layer upon layer, there is nothing one cannot overcome;when there is nothing one cannot overcome, no one can know where the limit lies;when the limit cannot be known, one can hold a state;possessing the mother of the state, one can endure for a long time;this is called the way of deep roots and a firm taproot, of long life and sight that endures.
James Legge (1891)
Complete public-domain translation made directly from the original source text.
1. For regulating the human (in our constitution) and rendering the (proper) service to the heavenly, there is nothing like moderation.
2. It is only by this moderation that there is effected an early return (to man's normal state). That early return is what I call the repeated accumulation of the attributes (of the Tao). With that repeated accumulation of those attributes, there comes the subjugation (of every obstacle to such return). Of this subjugation we know not what shall be the limit; and when one knows not what the limit shall be, he may be the ruler of a state.
3. He who possesses the mother of the state may continue long. His case is like that (of the plant) of which we say that its roots are deep and its flower stalks firm:--this is the way to secure that its enduring life shall long be seen.