“If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”

—  Bruce Lee

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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mir…" by Bruce Lee?
Bruce Lee photo
Bruce Lee 193
Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and f… 1940–1973

Related quotes

Bruce Lee photo

“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
Bruce Lee photo
Dinah Craik photo

“Nothing but a speck we seem
In the waste of waters round,
Floating, floating like a dream, —
Outward bound.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"Outward Bound"; Poems Since 1860
Poems (1866)

Pat Cadigan photo
Constantine P. Cavafy photo

“On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete.
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you’ve been,
remember how much your imagination created for you.”

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)

Julius Caesar photo

“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

Jane Austen photo

“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

Emma (1815)
Works, Emma

Cassandra Clare photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“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 photo

“It ain't like midnight and cigarette smoke.
It ain't like watered down whiskey and coke.
I guess some things just don't mix like you hope.
Like me and you.
And diamond rings and old barstools.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Diamond Rings and Old Barstools
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

Related topics