Tao Te Ching Chapter 34: The Task of Achievement

The great Tao flows everywhere — to the left and to the right. The chapter's opening is deliberately directionless: the source of order has no headquarters, no preferred side, no throne room. All things depend on it for life, and it refuses none of them; it accomplishes its work and claims no merit; it clothes and nourishes all things and does not act as their master.

Then the paradox of scale: always without desire, it may be called small; yet all things return to it without its claiming mastery — it may be called great. The Tao registers as insignificant precisely because it wants nothing and demands no recognition; it is great precisely because everything comes home to it anyway. The closing draws the human conclusion in the book's favourite grammar: because the sage never makes himself great, he is able to achieve his greatness. Greatness pursued shrinks in the pursuing; greatness forgotten, in a life of unclaimed nourishing work, quietly accumulates.