Quote collection
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"By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language."
"I have gradually learned to be cautious even in disbelief"
"Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie."
"Man and woman become a devil to each other when they do not separate their spiritual paths, for the nature of created beings is always the nature of differentiation."
"Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown - ignotum per ignotius - that is by the name of God."
"The reason for such an “unreasonable” attitude with me is that I am not at all sure what will happen to me after death. I have good reasons to assume that things are not finished with death. Life seems to be an interlude in a long story."
"Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination."
"Whether you call the principle of existence "God," "matter," "energy," or anything else you like, you have created nothing; you have merely changed a symbol. Eastern and Western Thinking, 1938"
"Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter."
"My work as a psychoanalyst is to help patients recover their lost wholeness and to strengthen the psyche so it can resist future dismemberment."
"Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it."
"No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream."
"Astrologers are influenced by theosophy, so they say, "That is very simple, it is just vibration!" ... But what is vibration? They say it is light energy, perhaps electricity, they are not quite informed. At all events the vibrations that could influence us have never been seen, so it remains just a word."
"Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart."
"The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly."
"When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened."
"Every human being is inherently a unique and individual form of life. He or she is made like that. But there is something which a person can do over and above the given material of her nature, and that is she can become conscious of what makes her the person she is, and he can work consciously toward relating what is himself to the world around him."
"Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and has populated it with monstrous machines."
"What happens in the life of Christ happens always and everywhere. In the Christian archetype all lives of this kind are prefigured."
"When an individual does not become conscious of their inner contradictions, the world acts out the conflict and is torn in opposite halves."