Quote collection
822 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and a symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight. Therefore we stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates; but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals."
"Plants were bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only beauty but also the thoughts of God's world, with an intent of their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason, the woods were the places where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings."
"The person who looks outward dreams, the person who looks inward awakens."
"And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand."
"Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands."
"Insight that dawns slowly seems to me to have more lasting effects than a fitful idealism, which is unlikely to hold out for long."
"Because the European does not know his own unconscious, he does not understand the East and projects it into everything he fears and despises in himself."
"We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods"
"The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to nature - of which spirit is a part - need fear no premature decline."
"Dream the dream onward."
"We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws."
"The symbols of the self arise from the depths of the body."
"What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life."
"The secret of artistic creation and the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of 'participation mystique' - to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual."
"We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee."
"In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted."
"Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself."
"I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the tower, the house I built for myself at Bollingen."
"Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference."
"But India did not pass me by without a trace: it left tracks which lead me from one infinity to another infinity."