Quotes from The Fourth Way

“Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“If one does not develop, one goes down. In life, in ordinary conditions everything goes down, or one capacity may develop at the expense of another.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only through the work, and first only in oneself, not externally.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!

A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings—that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Q. Surely it is easier to be objective about other people than about oneself?
A. No, it is more difficult. If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be coloured by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike. To be objective you must be free from it all. You can become objective to yourself in the state of self-consciousness: this is the first experience of coming into contact with the real object.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“There is no question of faith or belief in all this. Quite the opposite,this system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in that way can you come to something.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“With knowledge of the diagrams you will be able to interpret many of the new feelings, sensations, ideas that will come to your mind, and transfer this interpretation to the ordinary mind. Without diagrams you will not be able to do it. They are the intermediate language which will connect the language of the higher emotional centre with our ordinary centres. At the same time this language is a kind of ladder by which we can climb from ordinary thinking to the thinking of higher emotional centre.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“With the attempt to self-remember many new sensations begin to awaken in man, particularly sensations connected with his own existence and his relation to the surrounding world. And these in turn may give rise to the realization of the different influences playing upon him and to the possibility of choosing between them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Não podemos tentar ser mais emocionais; quanto mais tentarmos, menos emocionais seremos. Podemos tentar ser conscientes e, se nos tornarmos mais conscientes, nos tornaremos mais emocionais.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Depende de como você entende essa palavra, "esotérico" significa interno. O esoterismo encerra a idéia da existência de um círculo interno da humanidade. Lembra-se de como a humanidade foi descrita como constituída de quatro círculos - o esotérico, o mesotérico e o exotérico, que formam o círculo interior, e o círculo exterior no qual vivemos? A idéia de esoterismo implica a idéia de transmissão do conhecimento; presume a existência de um grupo de pessoas a quem pertence um certo conhecimento. Não se deve compreender isso de alguma forma mística, porém mais precisamente, de forma concreta. Há muitas diferenças entre os círculos interno e externo. Por exemplo, muitas coisas que queremos descobrir ou criar só podem existir no círculo interno.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Q. Why is it so difficult to control attention? A. Lack of habit. We are too accustomed to letting things happen. When we want to control attention or something else, we find it difficult, just as physical work is difficult if we are not accustomed to it.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“The most important factor in every function is: ‘Is it under our control or not?’ So when imagination is under our control we do not even call it imagination; we call it by various names—visualization, creative thinking, inventive thinking—you can find a name for each special case. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, then we call it imagination. Again, there is another side of imagination which we miss in ordinary understanding. This is that we imagine non-existent things—non-existent capacities, for instance. We ascribe to ourselves powers which we do not have; we imagine ourselves to be self-conscious although we are not. We have imaginary powers and imaginary self-consciousness and we imagine ourselves to be one, when really we are many different ‘I’s. There are many such things that we imagine about ourselves and other people. For instance, we imagine that we can ‘do’, that we have choice; we have no choice, we cannot ‘do’, things just happen to us.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“You see, all our ordinary views of things are no good, they do not lead anywhere. It is necessary to think differently, and this means to see things we do not see now, and not to see things we see now. And this last is perhaps the most difficult, because we are accustomed to see certain things: it is a great sacrifice not to see the things we are accustomed to see. We are accustomed to think that we live in a more or less comfortable world. Certainly there are unpleasant things, such as wars and revolutions, but on the whole it is a comfortable and well-meaning world. It is most difficult to get rid of this idea of a well-meaning world. And then we must understand that we do not see things themselves at all. We see like in Plato’s allegory of the cave only the reflections of things, so that what we see has lost all reality. We must realize how often we are governed and controlled not by the things themselves but by our ideas of things, our views of things, our picture of things. This is the most interesting thing. Try to think about it.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“they are generally based on some kind of weakness, because at the basis of negative emotions there generally lies a kind of self-indulgence—one allows oneself. And if one does not allow oneself fears, one allows anger, and if one does not allow anger, one allows self-pity. Negative emotions are always based on some kind of permission.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Our thought has acquired many bad habits, and one of them is thinking without purpose. Our thinking has become automatic; we are quite satisfied if we think of and develop possible side-issues without having any idea why we are doing it. From the point of view of this system such thinking is useless. All study, all thinking and investigation must have one aim, one purpose in view, and this aim must be attaining consciousness.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“There is practically no negative emotion which you cannot enjoy, and that is the most difficult thing to realize. Really some people get all their pleasures from negative emotions.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“It is a question of finding reasons, of thinking rightly, because expression of negative emotion is always based on some kind of wrong thinking.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else’s action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Our mind and our language are very clumsy instruments and we have to deal with very subtle matters and subtle problems. At the same time we do not realize that by simplifying things, by imagining ourselves in a three-dimensional world, we make this world non-existent. We put ourselves in an impossible position, because if we take, for instance, the ordinary view of the past disappearing and the future not yet existent, then nothing exists. This is the only conclusion from this idea that is logically possible: either nothing exists or everything exists— there is no third alternative, so to speak.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Q. Positive means not negative? A. Yes, and much more besides. An emotion that cannot become negative gives enormous understanding, has an enormous cognitive value. It connects things that cannot be connected in an ordinary state. To have positive emotions is advised and recommended in religions, but they do not say how to get them. They say, ‘Have faith, have love’. How? Christ says, ‘Love your enemies’. It is not for us; we cannot even love our friends. It is the same as saying to a blind man, ‘You must see!’ A blind man cannot see, otherwise he would not be a blind man. That is what positive emotion means. Q. How can we learn to love our enemies? A. Learn to love yourself first—you do not love yourself enough; you love your false personality, not yourself. It is difficult to understand the New Testament or Buddhist writings, for they are notes taken in school. One line of these writings refers to one level and another to another level.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“If we do not do something to-day, how can we expect to do it to-morrow? If we can do it to-day, we must; nobody can put it off till to-morrow, because to-morrow we could do something else. We always think we have time.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

About the author

Popular quotes

“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.”
― Alice Walker, quote from The Color Purple

“From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around in the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from Little Women

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Fellowship of the Ring

“Then he placed on my tongue the wafer, the body and blood of Jesus. At last, at last. It’s on my tongue. I draw it back. It stuck. I had God glued to the roof of my mouth. I could hear the master’s voice, Don’t let that host touch your teeth for if you bite God in two you’ll roast in hell for eternity. I tried to get God down with my tongue but the priest hissed at me, Stop that clucking and get back to your seat.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from Angela's Ashes

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.