Tao Te Ching

⚖The case for it

The book refuses to argue. It states a thing, doubles back, contradicts itself, moves on, and a reader who came for reasons leaves with none. What it hands over instead are images that lodge: the hollow in the cup is the part that holds; water outlasts stone by giving way to it. Those pictures survive whichever English version you happen to pick up, because they are pictures and not sentences. Read it through in an hour, keep the lines that irritate you, and check in a month which ones are still there.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Pick ten translations and you get ten different books; the classical Chinese is so compressed that every English version is a wager, and what you read is the translator's poetry as much as Laozi's. Vagueness makes it portable, and portable means corporate retreats now quote it. Chapter 3 advises rulers to keep the people's minds empty and their bellies full; sit with that one.

— the honest librarian