“Great straightness seems bent; great skill seems clumsy; great eloquence seems halting.” The sentence appears in chapter 45 of the received Laozi. It follows “great completion seems incomplete” and “great fullness seems empty”, continuing the repeated word “seems”: integrity, skill and persuasive speech may not look smooth, dazzling or effortlessly fluent. Bentness, clumsiness and reticence describe appearances; the text does not make frustration, incompetence or silence virtues in themselves. A restrained modern reflection is that ability should not be judged only by immediate performance, but by whether it continues to work in complex conditions. The reverse mistake also matters: not everything unclear is therefore profound.
Source: https://ctext.org/text.pl?if=gb&node=11636&show=parallel
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