This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
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. In actual fact, there is no foundation whatever for this assumption. Man’s every thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract as a concept.
We have two tyrannous physical passions: concupiscence and chastity. We become mad in pursuit of sex: we become equally mad in the persecution of that pursuit. Unless we gratify our desire the race is lost; unless we restrain it we destroy ourselves.
Friends must desire to live as much as possible together and to share their work, thoughts, and pleasures. Good-fellowship and sensuous affinity are indispensable to give spiritual communion a personal accent; otherwise men would be indifferent vehicles for such thoughts and powers as emanated from them, and attention would not be in any way arrested or refracted by the human medium through which it beheld the good.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything.
There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
Desire | Forbearance | Gentleness | Patience | Praise |
Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one’s condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.
Ambition | Capacity | Desire | Destroy | Effort | Human nature | Man | Nature | Slavery |
A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.
The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman. That she is a human being is of no concern to him.
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.
Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire uttered and expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God are near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, prayer, the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
The serene decision of the tombs is beautiful, their uncompromising architecture and the little squares with the coolness of a patio and the isolation and eternal individuation; each contemplated his own death, unique and personal like a memory. The quietude pleases us, we confuse such peace in life with dying and while we believe we desire not to be , we are praying for a peaceful life.
Death | Decision | Desire | Eternal | Isolation | Life | Life | Little | Memory | Peace | Unique |
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects the alchemist ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man's mind, body or fortune, it makes him easy under them.
Body | Contentment | Desire | Fortune | Man | Mind | Riches |