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Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.

P.D. Ouspensky

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P.D. Ouspensky
Desire

More quotes by P.D. Ouspensky

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Art is the communication of ecstasy.
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There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.
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The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity.
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Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.
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There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge, people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hierolgyphics of deeper ideas.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.
P.D. Ouspensky
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If a man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle in him, no 'friction,' no fire. But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with desires that hinder him, he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole.
P.D. Ouspensky
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When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.
P.D. Ouspensky
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People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
P.D. Ouspensky
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A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.
P.D. Ouspensky
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One cannot keep all old views and opinions and acquire new ones.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Can one alter one´s chief feature? asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
P.D. Ouspensky
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It is by overcoming obstacles that man develops those qualities he needs.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Possibly the most interesting first impression of my life came from the world of dreams.
P.D. Ouspensky
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I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation says I. And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Our ancestors were very rich and eminent people, and they left us an enormous inheritance, which we have completely forgotten, especially since the time when we began to consider ourselves the descendants of a monkey.
P.D. Ouspensky
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A symbol may serve to transfer our intuitions and to suggest new ones only so long as its meaning is not defined.
P.D. Ouspensky