Stillness is paired with trust, shifting attention away from frantic control and toward a larger frame of confidence and perspective.
Psalm 46:10 in the King James Version; the verse places stillness and trust inside a psalm about turmoil and refuge.
“The excellence of the mind is in abysmal stillness.”
The water analogy extends inward: excellence of mind is associated with depth and stillness rather than constant display, rivalry, or restless reaction.
Tao Teh King, chapter 8, James Legge translation; the line is one element in a broader comparison between highest excellence and water.
“Purity and stillness give the correct law to all under heaven.”
The line gives stillness a governing role: clarity and quiet are treated as conditions from which more ordered action can emerge.
Tao Teh King, chapter 45, James Legge translation; the sentence follows the claim that being still overcomes heat.
“The state of vacancy should be brought to the utmost degree, and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigour.”
Stillness is not presented as passivity without effort; it is something to be guarded deliberately while the changing processes of life continue around it.
Tao Teh King, chapter 16, James Legge translation; the following lines connect stillness with the recurring return of things to their root.
“If a man's thoughts are not dissipated, if his mind is not perplexed, if he has ceased to think of good or evil, then there is no fear for him while he is watchful.”
The verse connects watchfulness with freedom from mental scattering and fear, describing a mind that is not constantly pulled apart by confused or reactive thought.
Dhammapada 39, Max Müller translation; its religious vocabulary belongs to the text’s discipline of watchful thought and should not be reduced to a clinical claim about anxiety.
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow.”
The teaching redirects attention from imagined future trouble toward responsibilities that actually belong to today.
Matthew 6:34 in the King James Version; the opening sentence is quoted here.
“Say nothing more to thyself than what the first appearances report.”
The instruction separates observation from added interpretation, helping prevent an initial event from becoming a larger story of injury or fear.
Meditations, Book VIII, section 49, George Long translation.
