Customer Rating: 
Summary: always keep this one handy
Comment: There's not much to be added to all the other positive reviews. This book never fails to calm and center me. It has been an old faithful friend for more years than I care to admit. To echo other reviewers, it is a poetic, lovely translation. It may not be scholarly, as it was not translated from the original Chinese, but it produces a stillness inside that I believe is the intent of Taoism. No other translation produces this inner peace.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The only hope for the Human Species
Comment: While the same wisdom has been expressed by many others,from Einstein to Jesus, this translation by Witter Bynner appears to me to describe, in the most concise manner possible, the nature of existence.
It provides about everything one could know, and tells us about that which is beyond knowing.
I would like to suggest that the book be required reading for all. I am tempted to add that there should be no other required reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This translation will change your life for the better.
Comment: I found this book (or it found me) at the right time a hundred years ago and reading it has made all the difference in the world -- my life wouldn't have been a fraction of what it has been if I had not opened this translation one morning many years ago.
"From wonder into wonder
Existence opens."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best for Daily Use
Comment: While perhaps not the most scholarly accurate translation, this is far and away (IMHO) the best for daily reading and meditation. Bynner's foreward notes that the Chinese sparkles with rhythm and rhyme -- not a surprise, since most people could not read at the time and had to remember things verbatim. Language has power because of rhyme and rhythm as well as the meaning of the words, and thus Bynner's translation is the best one to have in your pocket at the beach, sitting on the porch with a beer or glass of wine, or reading to (or with) someone you love. I have spent 30 years repeating "Let life ripen and then fall, force is not the way at all, deny the way of life and you are dead." I have and sometimes read other versions (Chinese cannot really be translated to English), but this is the one I read for pleasure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: occasionaly clumsy verse
Comment: .. and yet this is part of its trancendant charm. we are human and small, not great or divine; we must strive on regardless of failure or success. in this way we may still succeed, as this writer's attempt ultimately does.it's not a translation so much as a version, a celebration and acceptance of an ancient's cry for Virtue, reflected in the heart of the American quest.
no collection of english interpretations of the tao te ching is complete without this one.
