About this edition

This is a bilingual edition of the Tao Te Ching: the Chinese text with a reading above every character, James Legge’s 1891 English translation set beside it, and the traditional Chinese commentary at the end of each chapter. Nothing on the page needs a login — open a chapter and read.

The Chinese text

Eighty-one chapters in the received order, taken from the Chinese edition published on the main site. The chapter titles are the traditional descriptive ones (天地之始 and so on), which are not part of the book itself but are how Chinese editions have marked the chapters for centuries.

The English translation

James Legge (1815–1897), a Scottish missionary and the first professor of Chinese at Oxford, published this translation in 1891 in The Sacred Books of the East. It was the first complete English Tao Te Ching by a scholar who had read the Chinese commentaries, and it is still the version most often quoted.

The pinyin

Readings are given for every character, in modern standard Mandarin with tone marks. Classical Chinese has readings that no dictionary settles, so where a character carries two senses the reading follows the sense the chapter is usually read in.

The commentary

The notes at the end of each chapter are the Chinese explanations printed with the text in the Chinese edition: short glosses on the hard words of that chapter, kept in Chinese, for readers who want to see how the text is explained to Chinese students.

How the two texts are paired

Legge broke each chapter into the paragraphs his own reading of the Chinese produced, and the Chinese is divided to match. Where Chinese editions punctuate a passage into more sentences than Legge did, the extra sentences stay with the paragraph they belong to rather than being forced onto a line of English.

The chapters

1. The Tao That Cannot Be Told · 2. When One Thing Is Called Beautiful · 3. The Rule That Keeps the People Quiet · 4. The Tao Is an Empty Vessel · 5. Heaven and Earth Are Not Kind · 6. The Valley Spirit · 7. Longer Than Heaven and Earth · 8. The Highest Good Is Like Water · 9. Leave the Cup Unfilled · 10. Holding Body and Soul Together · 11. The Use of What Is Not There · 12. The Five Colours Blind the Eye · 13. Favour and Disgrace · 14. What Has No Shape · 15. The Masters of Old · 16. Returning to the Root · 17. The Best Ruler · 18. When the Great Tao Is Lost · 19. Return to the Uncarved · 20. Alone Among Men · 21. The Power That Follows the Tao · 22. The Crooked Becomes Whole · 23. Few Words, and the Wind Drops · 24. The One Who Stands on Tiptoe · 25. Something Before Heaven and Earth · 26. The Heavy Is the Root of the Light · 27. The Skilful Traveller · 28. Knowing the Male, Keeping the Female · 29. The World Cannot Be Coerced · 30. A General Who Will Not Use Force · 31. Weapons Are Ill-Omened · 32. The Tao Has No Name · 33. Knowing Others and Knowing Yourself · 34. The Great Tao Overflows · 35. The Great Image · 36. What Must First Be Weakened · 37. Nothing Done, Nothing Left Undone · 38. The Highest Virtue Does Not Claim Virtue · 39. The Things That Got the One · 40. Turning Back · 41. Scholars and the Tao · 42. One, Two, Three · 43. The Softest Thing · 44. Fame or Life · 45. Ready, Yet Always Unfinished · 46. When the Tao Prevails · 47. Without Leaving the Door · 48. Less Every Day · 49. The Sage Has No Fixed Mind · 50. Out of Life, Into Death · 51. The Tao Gives Birth · 52. The Mother of All Things · 53. The Great Road · 54. What Is Planted by the Tao · 55. The Infant's Grip · 56. Those Who Know Do Not Speak · 57. Ruling by Correction · 58. Misfortune Waits Inside Fortune · 59. Ruling People and Serving Heaven · 60. Cooking a Small Fish · 61. The Great State Is a Low River · 62. The Treasure of the World · 63. Act Without Acting · 64. Careful at the End · 65. The Ancients Who Practised the Tao · 66. The Sea Is Below the Rivers · 67. Three Treasures · 68. The Good Soldier · 69. Daring to Be the Guest · 70. My Words Are Easy · 71. Knowing That One Does Not Know · 72. When the People Do Not Fear · 73. Heaven's Net · 74. The People Do Not Fear Death · 75. Why the People Starve · 76. Soft at Birth · 77. The Way of Heaven Is a Bow · 78. Nothing Is Softer Than Water · 79. After the Quarrel · 80. A Small State, Few People · 81. True Words Are Not Beautiful

The text on this site

Every Chinese character in the chapters links through to its entry at the character dictionary — stroke order, readings, and the senses it carries.

Reuse

Both the Chinese text and the English translation by James Legge (1891) are in the public domain. The arrangement, the pinyin, and the notes we wrote on the text are our own; if you reproduce them, a link back is appreciated.