Stefan Zweig quote: “Supreme achievement and outstanding capacity are only rendered possible by mental concentration, by a sublime monomania…”

“The obstacles to soul cognition are bodily disability, mental inertia, wrong questioning, carelessness, laziness, lack of dispassion, erroneous perception, inability to achieve concentration, failure to hold the meditative attitude when achieved.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

“The obstacles to soul cognition are bodily disability, mental inertia, wrong questioning, carelessness, laziness, lack of dispassion, erroneous perception, inability to achieve concentration, failure to hold the meditative attitude when achieved.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

“Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Three Times Three (1936)

“Mental attitude is more important than mental capacity”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Attributed to Walter Dill Scott in: ‎Sterling W. Sill Benson (1974). That ye might have life. p. 274

“It is important to become more and more clearly convinced that the only thing worth achieving is supreme enlightenment.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

The Heart of Compassion (2006)

“Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude even than by mental capacity.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: Increasing Human Efficiency in Business, 1911, p. 134

“Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

...in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht.
The Wisdom of Life. Chapter II. Personality, or What a Man Is: Footnote 19
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Not yet placed by volume, chapter or section