Life & Wisdom Quote by Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu’s pairing of “strength” and “courage” is classic Taoist judo: it flips our usual story about power. Strength, in this line, isn’t the hard, armored kind that dominates. It’s the quiet durability that comes from being held - the way safety lets a person stop performing toughness and simply endure. That kind of strength is receptive, almost yin: it arrives when you’re cared for, when you can afford softness without collapse.

Courage, meanwhile, is framed as an output, not a trait you’re born with. Loving someone deeply demands movement toward uncertainty: exposure, responsibility, the risk of loss. It’s a deliberately chosen vulnerability, which is why it reads as “courage” rather than comfort. Lao Tzu is smuggling in a moral psychology here: love isn’t just a feeling; it’s a discipline that trains the self to loosen its grip.

The subtext is that dependence and agency aren’t opposites. Western self-help often treats needing others as weakness, but Taoism mistrusts that rigid self-sufficiency. In the Tao Te Ching’s broader context, the soft overcomes the hard, water outlasts stone, the yielding wins by not competing. This quote applies that worldview to intimacy: being loved is a form of nourishment; loving is a form of risk. Together they create a loop where receiving steadies you and giving transforms you. That’s why the sentence lands: it makes love less like decoration and more like infrastructure.