When all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness.
When all the world recognizes good as good, this in itself is evil.
Indeed, the hidden and the manifest give birth to each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short exhibit each other.
High and low set measure to each other.
Voice and sound harmonize each other.
Back and front follow each other.

Therefore, the Sage manages his affairs without ado,
And spreads his teaching without talking.

He denies nothing to the teeming things.
He rears them, but lays no claim to them.

He does his work, but sets no store by it.
He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it.

And yet it is just because he does not dwell on it
That nobody can ever take it away from him.

Lao Tzu

Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –

Emily Dickinson

Some people are always bragging of their conduct:
“Confucious or the Duke of Chou could not match my talents!”
Yet look at their heads, stubborn and stony!
See their bodies, ungainly and stiff!
Pull them by a rope and they refuse to move,
poke them with an awl and they won’t budge.
There they stand, like Mr. Yang’s stork,
born, I’m afraid, to be as dull as clods!

Han-Shan

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

Sylvia Plath