Quotes from P.D. Ouspensky

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

To remember oneself means the same thing as to be aware of oneself - I am. It is not a function, not thinking, not feeling; it is a different state of consciousness.

A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.

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.

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.

Possibly the most interesting first impression of my life came from the world of dreams.

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.

Love is the eternally burning fire in which humanity & all the world are being purified.

When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.

Most people can accept the truth only in the form of a lie.

Truths that become old become decrepit and unreliable; sometimes they may be kept going artificially for a certain time, but there is no life in them.

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

I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another

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.

It is by overcoming obstacles that man develops those qualities he needs.

Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.

a man can be given only what he can use; and he can use only that for which he has sacrificed something

Art is the communication of ecstasy.