A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.
George GurdjieffRead
A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.
Interpretation
People may abandon various pleasures, but they struggle to let go of their suffering.
This quote suggests that while individuals may be willing to forsake external joys and pleasures, they often cling to their internal suffering and pain. It highlights the complex relationship people have with their emotions, where suffering becomes a part of their identity and can be harder to relinquish than material or sensory pleasures.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health, one might quote this to emphasize how people often hold onto their pain.
A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.
A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.
I maintain that to tell a person they are born again, while they are living in carelessness or sin, is a dangerous delusion.
One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.
I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and funisheth a fairfield to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.
I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.
If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.