Quote from a speech of Ferdinand Hodler: 'The artist's mission' (held in Freibourg in 1897), first published in 1923 in Zurich; as cited by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925
“Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.”
Lionel Giles translation
Source: The Art of War, Chapter VI · Weaknesses and Strengths
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Sun Tzu 68
ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosophe… -543–-495 BCRelated quotes
Dore Ashton, "Fritz Glarner," Art International, vol. 7, no. 1, January 1963, p.51; Republished in: National Gallery of Australia, Michael Lloyd, Michael Desmond (1992). European and American Paintings and Sculpturee 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery, p. 246
“Such fire was not by water to be drowned,
Nor he his nature changed by changing ground.”
Né spegner può, per starne l'acqua, il fuoco,
Né può stato mutar, per mutar loco.
Canto XXVIII, stanza 89 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
II, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies?—
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
"Natural History: The Forgotten Science" [1938]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 63-64.
1930s
Interview with KHAS-TV, Hastings, Nebraska, February 19, 2009. As transcribed verbatim...jt from MSNBC: Keith Olberman's "Countdown" February 20,09.
2009
“He saw the beauties of his shape and face,
His female sweetness, and his manly grace”
Book I, lines 109-110
Davideis (1656)