Gurdjieff on Ceremony

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

-- Gurdjieff

Work ideas vs. sleep ideas

All ideas of the work begin with the idea of sleep and the possibility of waking. All other ideas may be clever or elaborate but they are all ideas of sleeping people produced for other sleeping people.

-- Ouspensky, from Conscience: The Search for Truth

Limited chances

Everybody has a limited number of chances. If people live an ordinary life and do not accumulate right influences, and do not form a magnetic center, after some time they lose even the possibility of forming one.

-- Ouspensky, from The Fourth Way

Ouspensky on entropy

If one does not develop, one goes down. In life, in ordinary conditions, everything goes down, or one capacity may develop at the expense of another. All capacities cannot develop without the help of a school, for system and method are necessary.

-- Ouspensky, from The Fourth Way