“Simplicity, patience, compassion: these three are your greatest treasures”: did Laozi say it?
A loose paraphrase of chapter 67
Partly: chapter 67 of the Dao De Jing has three treasures, but they are compassion, frugality and not daring to be first; “simplicity, patience” is Stephen Mitchell's rewording.
Simplicity, patience, compassion: these three are your greatest treasures.
What the Dao De Jing says
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我有三宝，持而保之。
I have three treasures, which I hold and keep:
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一曰慈，二曰俭，
the first is compassion, the second is frugality,
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三曰不敢为天下先。
the third is not daring to be first in the world.
What the Chinese says
我有三宝: “I have three treasures”. They are named in order: 慈, compassion or a mother's kindness; 俭, frugality, holding back; and 不敢为天下先, “not daring to be first in the world”. Our translation: “I have three treasures, which I hold and keep: the first is compassion, the second is frugality, the third is not daring to be first in the world.”
What changed
Of Mitchell's three words only compassion is in the text, and he moves it from first to last. “Simplicity” stretches 俭, which is economy and restraint, a plain life rather than a simple mind. “Patience” has no counterpart: the third treasure is humility, keeping behind others, which James Legge (1891) rendered as “shrinking from taking precedence of others”. And in the Chinese the treasures are the speaker's own, “I have”, not “your” treasures.
Why the three belong together
The chapter explains each: with compassion one can be brave, with frugality one can be generous, by not daring to be first one can lead. To drop them and grab bravery, generosity and the first place directly “is death”. It is the book's usual reversal: the quality that looks like weakness is the one that gives strength.