“True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true”: did Laozi say it?
Genuine: chapter 81
Yes: “True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true” is the first line of chapter 81 of the Dao De Jing, 信言不美，美言不信, translated word for word.
True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true.
What the Dao De Jing says
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信言不美，美言不信。
True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true.
What the Chinese says
Eight characters in two halves that mirror each other. 信言不美: “true words, not beautiful”. 美言不信: “beautiful words, not true”. Our translation is the same: “True words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not true.”
How translations differ
信 is trust, good faith: words that can be relied on, rather than words that match the facts. James Legge (1891) wrote “Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere”, and Stanislas Julien in French (1842) chose the same pair, sincere and elegant. 美 is beauty, here the beauty of polished speech. The line is the first of three mirrored pairs: the good do not argue, those who know are not learned in everything.
The last chapter
This is the opening of the book's last chapter, and it reads as a comment on the book itself, which is plain, short and full of reversals. The same idea comes earlier: chapter 78 ends “True words seem contrary”, and chapter 56 opens with “Those who know do not speak”.