“The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body and our feelings are so constituted that they don’t care a jot about anything so long as they are happy.”

All and Everything: Views from the Real World (1973)
Context: The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body and our feelings are so constituted that they don’t care a jot about anything so long as they are happy. They live for the moment and their memory is short. The mind alone lives for tomorrow. Each has its own merits. The merit of the mind is that it looks ahead. But it is only the other two that can "do."

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 14, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body …" by G. I. Gurdjieff?
G. I. Gurdjieff photo
G. I. Gurdjieff 62
influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, compos… 1866–1949

Related quotes

Leo Buscaglia photo
Sallust photo

“All our power lies in both mind and body; we employ the mind to rule, the body rather to serve; the one we have in common with the Gods, the other with the brutes.”
Sed nostra omnis vis in animo et corpore sita est; animi imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur; alterum nobis cum dis, alterum cum beluis commune est.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter I

Teal Swan photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Audre Lorde photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.”

Ibid., p. 68
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Assim como lavamos o corpo devíamos lavar o destino, mudar de vida como mudamos de roupa.

Marcel Proust photo

“Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

Le bonheur est salutaire pour le corps, mais c'est le chagrin qui développe les forces de l'esprit.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"

Michel Henry photo

“Because our flesh is nothing but what, feeling itself, suffering itself, sustaining itself and bearing itself and so enjoying from itself according to always reborning impressions, is able, for this reason, to feel the body which is exterior to it, to touch it as well as being touched by it. What the exterior body, the lifeless body of the material universe, is by principle incapable.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, éd. du Seuil, 2000, p. 8
Books on Religion and Christianity, Incarnation: A philosophy of Flesh (2000)
Original: (fr) Car notre chair n'est rien d'autre que cela qui, s'éprouvant, se souffrant, se subissant et se supportant soi-même et ainsi jouissant de soi selon des impressions toujours renaissantes, se trouve, pour cette raison, susceptible de sentir le corps qui lui est extérieur, de le toucher aussi bien que d'être touché par lui. Cela donc dont le corps extérieur, le corps inerte de l'univers matériel, est par principe incapable.

Related topics