Carl Jung

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Everyone knows nowadays that people 'have complexes'. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

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.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

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.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

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.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

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.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

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.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

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.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha.