As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.
It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.
Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.
The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
The word "belief" is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.
Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.
We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.
When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
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