“Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 13; Unsourced variant: Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Context: Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
“Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet
Source: http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=157&cat=4 On Hearing of Love
Collected Poems (1992)
“I prefer nothing but that they act like themselves, and I like myself.”
Nihil enim malo quam et me mei similem esse et illos sui.
Julius Caesar (-100–-44 BC) Roman politician and general
Reported by Marcus Tullius Cicero in a letter to Atticus.
Variant translations:
There is nothing I like better than that I should be true to myself and they to themselves.
Disputed
“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”
Jane Austen book Emma
Emma (1815)
Works, Emma
“4163. Silent Men, like still Waters, are deep and dangerous.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer
Diamond Rings and Old Barstools
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)