The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

I'd rather be whole than good.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

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

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

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

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

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

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

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

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.

In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.

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

Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.

My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you—are you there? I have returned, I am here again.

If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.

I have learned that beyond the surface, there is another world; and beyond our daylight lies a profound darkness of the stars.

The spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.

The soul demands your folly; not your wisdom.

To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation.

Find out what you fear most; that is where you will find your next growth.

What we do not make conscious emerges in our lives as destiny.

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

They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a spark may cross and set fire to his own house.

Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.

Dreams open into that primordial cosmic night that had its being long before there was any ego consciousness.

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.

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 to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

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.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

To live what you think is good and not what other people think is good is the highest form of courage.

Every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and every mother extends backward into her mother and forward into her daughter.

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

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

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. I know. I don't need to believe.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, ultimate, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it and liberate its creative energy.

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.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

Outgrowing requires a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient's horizon, and through this broadening of his outlook, the insoluble problem lost its urgency.

The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.

That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy—these are undoubtedly great virtues. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, is within me?

What if I should discover that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness—that I myself am the enemy who must be loved?

What is necessary is to give space to the quiet, subtle processes of the soul that happen when we cease to force our will.

The self is not only the center, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious.

The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self.

Through the creation of mandalas, the soul heals itself and restores its inner balance.

Bizarre as it may sound, there are times when it is better to be unfaithful to one's principles than to one's soul.

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.

Every life is a story, whether it is written down or not.

We should not pretend that we understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling.

Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth.

A healthy person does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The greatest danger to mankind is not nature, but man himself, because we are the origin of all coming evil.

We need more psychology, we need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.

Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.

The therapist must at all times be prepared to admit that the patient may be right.

Faith, Hope, Love, and Insight: these are the four great healing powers.

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries.

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing happens, it signifies that he must now descend into his own depth.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

The highest, most decisive moments of life are often accompanied by fear.

Fear is an indicator that you are approaching something genuinely important.

The soul is the living relationship with the unconscious.

Your heart will never find rest until you find your home within yourself.

The seat of the soul is where the inner and the outer worlds meet.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

He who has not found the silence within will be battered by the noise without.

To be normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful.

Do not compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday.

The most vital need of the modern soul is for a sense of meaning.

Without meaning, the life of man is an unendurable torment.

Meaning makes a great many things endurable—perhaps everything.

We must be able to stand alone before we can truly stand together.

A relationship between two whole persons is infinitely richer than a fusion between two halves.

The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow.

The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well.

But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.

The treasure you seek is hidden in the cave you fear to enter.

Do not hold on to someone who is leaving, for you will not meet the one who is arriving.

Your soul has its own timing. Be patient with its ripening.

The serious problems in life are never fully solved. If ever they should seem to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed.

As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process.

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

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

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

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.