“Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.”
Original
Utrpení vzniká z toho, že se snažíme ovládat to, co se ovládat nedá, nebo že zanedbáváme to, co je v naší moci.
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Epictetus 175
philosopher from Ancient Greece 50–138Related quotes

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 64


Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
Context: Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the concept of natural necessity. … We are here stating no prejudiced opinion, but merely an established fact. Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events.
It is doubtless the task of the historian to trace the inner connection of historical events and to make clear their causes and effects, but he must not forget that these connections are of a sort quite different from those of natural physical events and must therefore have quite a different valuation.
Speech at the Libertopia Festival, San Diego, CA (August 30, 2013)

Letter from Naples, Italy to Otto Grautoff (1896); as quoted in A Gorgon's Mask: The Mother in Thomas Mann's Fiction (2005) by Lewis A. Lawson, p. 34
Context: I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge — is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from? From sexuality — is it going to destroy me? How I hate it, this knowledge which forces even art to join it! How I hate it, this sensuality, which claims everything fine and good is its consequence and effect. Alas, it is the poison that lurks in everything fine and good! — How am I to free myself of knowledge? By religion? How am I to free myself of sexuality? By eating rice?

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
The Power of Now (1997)

“Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.”
Source: The Emergence Of Probability, 1975, Chapter 14, Equipossibility, p. 132.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles