What is at rest is easy to hold. What is rooted is easy to nourish. What is recent is easy to correct. What is brittle is easy to break. What is small is easy to scatter. Prevent trouble before it arises. Put things in order before they exist. Cultivate peace and order before confusion and disorder have set in. The giant tree grows from a tiny sprout. A great project begins with a simple idea. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. Fussing over anything, you spoil it. Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore take action by letting things take their course. Remain as calm and careful at the end as at the beginning. Starting with nothing, you have nothing to lose. Desire to not desire. Learn to unlearn, to be without learning. Simply remind people of who they have always naturally been. Care about nothing and the TAO. Thus you can care for all things. Subtly direct all heads to find their TAO's. Act against things before they become visible; attend to order before disorder arises. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A stitch in time saves nine. Thoughts become things. Heaps of earth become cities. Stitches become tapestries. Once a thing has started, one should let it develop naturally -- to interfere in its natural process is to ruin it, to nip the bud. Refrain from acting on things in the intermediary and final stages as well as in the beginning stage.