If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
freequotes
From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of victors at Olympia.
For instance, I remember someone asking Sophocles, the poet, whether he was still capable of enjoying a woman. “Don’t talk in that way,” he answered; “I am only too glad to be free of all that; it is like escaping from bondage to a raging madman.”
It sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister.
He was free, free for everything, free to act like an animal or like a machine.
People are like dice, a certain Frenchman said that. You throw yourself in the direction of your own choosing. People are free because they can do that.
Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of dream investigation.
She is dearer to me than life. But her suffering comes from within, and only she can rid herself of it. For she is free.
No man is free who cannot control himself.
No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. No man is free who cannot command himself.
