Tao Te Ching Chapter 81: Manifesting Simplicity

The final chapter opens by warning the reader about beautiful endings: true words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true. The good do not argue; those who argue are not good. The wise are not learned in many things; those learned in many things are not wise. Three last inversions — of eloquence, of debate, of erudition — clearing the throat of every rhetoric the book has refused to use on you.

Then the economics of the sage, stated as the classic's parting discovery: the sage does not accumulate — the more they give to others, the more they themselves have; the more they give, the more they possess. Giving, in the Tao's arithmetic, is the only form of keeping that compounds. And the last two lines fold the whole book into a farewell: the way of Heaven benefits and does not harm; the way of the sage is to act without contending. Eighty-one chapters end where the water began — nourishing everything, fighting nothing.