Tao Te Ching 4 - The Tao is hidden but always present

title: Tao Te Ching 4 - The Tao is hidden but always present — Book - Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Stephen Mitchell Translation

The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present. I don’t know who gave birth to it. It is older than God. - Stephen Mitchell

Other Translations I like

Tao is empty- its use never exhausted. Bottomless - the origin of all things. It blunts sharp edges, Unties knots, Softens glare, Becomes one with the dusty world. Deeply subsistent - I don’t know whose child it is. It is older than the Ancestor.

Tao is empty but inexhaustible, bottomless, the ancestor of it all.

It blunts rough edges, untangles the knots, diffuses the glare, at one with the dust of the world.

In depthless depths it is whose child— born before antiquity? - Sam Hamill