I think this kind of thing is partially what drew me to Daoism. The daodejing, as religious/philosophical texts go, has 2 major things going for it. 1) very quotable but almost no outright bad or evil advice, and 2) it’s short!

Ah but every religion has negative and positive aspects, every text even, and can be cherry-picked from (and kind of has to be). That’s what any quotation is, though I would agree that a well-chosen quote should represent the overall text. With a book as varied and long as the Bible, I think people who even have read it probably construct a throughline that appeals to their existing views and then dismiss the rest as outdated, irrelevant, or perhaps they just allow it to slip past their minds.

For daoism, there’s the cult-like immortality stuff, along with a fair bit of mystical healing woo in general. I personally dismiss a lot of latter stuff as not getting it, and focus on just the daodejing.

Ah but then there’s the yijing (I-Ching) which is older and has lots to say about lot’s of things, haha. And so many people have so many interpretations of it. I suppose it doesn’t carry the same fervent degree of “this book is infallible because God wrote it” that the Bible does though, which makes selective reading less of a material issue.

Well, that’s enough rambling for now. Tldr, uhhh, I don’t think I really had a point to make!