“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”: did Laozi say it?
Not in the Dao De Jing
No: “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings” is not in the Dao De Jing; the nearest line is chapter 58, “Misfortune is what fortune leans on”.
New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.
The nearest lines in the Dao De Jing
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祸兮福之所倚，
Misfortune is what fortune leans on;
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福兮祸之所伏。
fortune is where misfortune hides.
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万物并作，吾以观复。
The myriad things act in concert, I therefore watch their return.
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夫物芸芸，各复归其根。
Of all things diverse and varied, each returns to its root.
Where it comes from
We found no source. The sentence is in no chapter of the Dao De Jing, and Wikiquote's Laozi page does not list it. Stefan Stenudd, who keeps a list of sayings wrongly credited to Laozi, could not trace it either: the earliest copy he found is a blog post of March 2008 that names Laozi without a reference, and he found it in no book. He notes a looser cousin, about endings that become beginnings, in Wayne Dyer's free version of chapter 16 (2008), far from the Chinese.
What the Dao De Jing says instead
Chapter 58 says that good and bad fortune turn into each other: 祸兮福之所倚, “Misfortune is what fortune leans on; fortune is where misfortune hides.” It does not promise that a painful end hides a good start. It goes on: “Who knows where it ends? There is no fixed rule.” Chapter 16 watches the myriad things rise and sees that each “returns to its root”: a return, not a new beginning, and nothing in it is painful.