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"One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary."
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"Tragedy descends, and in the carnage our enraged cynicism screams 'If there was a God, He would not have allowed this!' And somehow we've conveniently forgotten that once upon a time He allowed us to tell Him to go away, and once upon that time we allowed ourselves to take Him up on that offer."
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Personal Development

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Oddly, the burned hand didn't seem to hurt much anymore; it was only numb. It would have been better if there had been pain. Pain was at least real."
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Personal Development

"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Discharge [disposal of karma] is in nature's hands. That's why there is restlessness. That is why these are the pains of dependency [association]. There are such times man has to face that it becomes difficult for him to pass even one hour."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives but on balance life is suffering and only the very sound or the very foolish imagine otherwise."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Someone may have a broken heart or someone may have a broken ego. Such people will have to suffer tremendously because of that."
Author Name
Personal Development

"One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Only I don't close my eyes these days, because it hurts too much when I open them."
Author Name
Personal Development

"She has vivid pictures of Hell. It is as hot as Rajputana in June and everyone is made to learn seven foreign languages . . ."
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Personal Development
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"In real life there is no such person as the average man. There are only particular men, women and children, each with his or her inborn idiosyncrasies of mind and body, and all trying (or becoming compelled) to squeeze their biological diversities into the uniformity of some cultural mold."
Individuality

"Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities."
Habit

"One is always alone in suffering; the fact is depressing when one happens to be the sufferer, but it makes pleasure possible for the rest of the world."
Emotion

"To associate with other like-minded people in small purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction."
Social

"Choiceless awareness - at every moment and in all the circumstances of life - is the only effective meditation."
Mindfulness

"Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for a moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves, all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are."
Awareness

"The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know one must be an actor as well as a spectator."
Insight

"They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are."
Work

"Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered."
Society

"God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment."
Spiritual
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