《憲問》 Passage 14.39

Legge Translation (1861)

The Master was playing, one day, on a musical stone in Wei, when a man, carrying a straw basket, passed the door of the house where Confucius was, and said: "His heart is full who so beats the musical stone."

A little while after, he added: "How contemptible is the one-ideaed obstinacy those sounds display! When one is taken no notice of, he has simply at once to give over his wish for public employment. 'If the water be deep, he must cross with his clothes on; if it be shallow, he must cross with them tucked up.'"

The Master said: "How determined is he! It is not difficult to be so."