CHAPTER 81 – BEAUTIFUL WORDS

Chapter 81 – Beautiful Words

True words are not beautiful;
Beautiful words are not true.
A good man does not argue;
He who argues is not a good man.
A wise man has no extensive knowledge;
He who has extensive knowledge is not a wise man.
The sage does not accumulate for himself.
The more he uses for others, the more he possesses of his own.
The Way of Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure.
The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)


This final chapter of the Tao Te Ching contains several brief generalizations that are probably good to keep in mind, can be applied in a variety of circumstances and each could be discussed for pages. They do not, however, seem to add much, if anything, to what we have been told in the earlier chapters.

Tracing of an engraving of Sosibios vase by John Keats (from Wikipedia)

Tracing of an engraving of Sosibios vase by John Keats (from Wikipedia)

For my initial pass at interpretation, I would like to continue the fiction that the Tao Te Ching was composed sequentially, as a book, by a single sage named Lao Tzu. As the last chapter, this would be sort of an epilogue written to bring closure to the work. Seen in that light, Lao Tzu would be saying something like:

Back in Chapter 1 I told you that the Tao that can be expressed in words is not the true Tao. In this book I have written as well as I know how, but words are limited and only approximate the truth. I have not tried to argue with any other schools of philosophy. My own knowledge base is limited, but is focused on the things about which I have written. I wanted to share those with you, my readers. If I had kept them to myself, it would be of benefit to no one.

Perhaps I should leave it at that and spend a few paragraphs as my own epilogue concerning what I have done and learned as a result of writing about Lao Tzu’s beautiful words for well over a year and a half. However, I will leave that for another day and use this space to express a few thoughts on the first two lines of the chapter: “True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true.”

Anyone who has ever taken a college or high school class on English poetry, is certainly reminded of the last lines of John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all/Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” At first glance, Keats seems to have directly contradicted Lao Tzu. Is one of these great men right and the other wrong, or can they be reconciled? Continue reading