Andrei Tarkovsky Quotes

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

Caught between glass and wood, that which breaks and that which bends, that which sings and that which survive. So our lives go.

Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death.

That which yields is not always weak.

A tree that is unbending, is easily broken.

A man is born gentle and weak. At death, he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At death, they are withered and dry. Therefore, the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death, and the gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

When life begins we are tender and weak When life ends we are stiff and rigid All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life and dry in brittle in death So the soft and supple are the companion of life While the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind Thus by Nature's own decree the hard and strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant

Do not be too hard, lest you be broken; do not be too soft, lest you be squeezed.

People, they don't know how to bend; they just break.

I think when things get tough, I'm just a little bit soft.

Sometimes you are strong, sometimes you are weak.

What is strong and rigid is snapped and laid low. What is flexible and soft will always prevail.

I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.

I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The softest in the world surpasses the hardest in the world.

Maybe weakness is a strength of a kind.

The stubbornest of wills Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, O'er-heated in the fire to brittleness,Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.

Those that yield are not always weak

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.