What does this quote mean?

“Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear.”

The muddy-water image makes stillness a condition for clarity: agitation can keep disturbance suspended, while enough quiet allows what is clouding perception to settle without force.

Source note: Tao Teh King, Chapter 15, James Legge translation, Project Gutenberg #216. The next sentence asks how the condition of rest is secured and answers through the gradual relation between movement and rest; the passage belongs to Taoist philosophy, not a clinical relaxation technique.

“As you succeed in overcoming self you will begin to see things in their right relations.”

For Allen, clearer perception follows disciplined work on one’s own impulses and biases; self-mastery changes not only conduct but the proportions in which problems are seen.

Source note: The Way of Peace; Allen links self-mastery with clearer perception and a less distorted relationship to circumstances and other people.

“Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”

Peace is sought by aligning desire with reality rather than requiring reality to obey preference, a central Stoic distinction between response and circumstance.

Source note: Enchiridion, section 8; Epictetus applies Stoic acceptance to events outside personal control.

“To be in the world and yet not of the world is the highest perfection, the most blessed peace, is to achieve the greatest victory.”

Allen defines peace as freedom from being inwardly ruled by surrounding pressures, presenting self-command and spiritual detachment as a deeper victory than external conquest.

Source note: The Way of Peace; Allen contrasts inward spiritual independence with being carried along by the impulses and conflicts of the surrounding world.

“Holiness alone is undying peace.”

Allen contrasts lasting peace with temporary comfort or outward victory, then immediately connects the durable state he describes with self-control and an increasing orientation toward wisdom.

Source note: The Way of Peace, “The Realization of Perfect Peace,” Project Gutenberg #10740. The sentence follows Allen’s contrast between temporary peace from comfort or worldly victory and what he calls the enduring “Peace of Heaven”; the theological framework is retained rather than recast as clinical advice.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Stillness is paired with trust, shifting attention away from frantic control and toward a larger frame of confidence and perspective.

Source note: Psalm 46:10 in the King James Version; the verse places stillness and trust inside a psalm about turmoil and refuge.