Carl Jung Quotes

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away — an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

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.

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

Thereforeonyourjourneybesuretotakegoldencupsfull of the sweet drink oflife, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back The dead matter will change into black serpents. Do not be frightened, the serpents will immediately put out the sun of your days, and a night with wonderful will-o'-the-wisps will come over YOU. 140
Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell.
. What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you must thinlc and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your havingtoisalsoawantingto,andthatyouyourselfareresponsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine
is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.
But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.
That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicityandleadstodeath.141Butambiguityisthewayoflife.142 If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this.143
You say: the Christian God is unequivocal, he is 10ve.l44 But what is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life, but your love is only on the way oflife ifyou have a left and a right.
Nothing is easier than to play at ambiguity and nothing is more difficult than living ambiguity. He who plays is a child; his God is old and dies. He who lives

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

My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.

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

In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.

"‎"...the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

"Every concept in our conscious mind, in short, has its own psychic associations. While such associations may vary in intensity (according to relative importance of the concept to our whole personality, or according to the other ideas and even complexes to which it is associated in our unconscious), they are capable of changing the "normal" character of that concept. It may even become something quite different as it drifts below the level of consciousness.

These subliminal aspects of everything that happens to us may seem to play very little part in our daily lives. But in dream analysis, where the psychologist is dealing with expressions of the unconscious, they are very relevant, for they are the almost invisible roots of our conscious thoughts. That is why commonplace objects or ideas can assume such powerful psychic significance in a dream that we may awake seriously disturbed, in spite of having dreamed of nothing worse than a locked room or a missed train.

The images produced in dreams are much more picturesque and vivid than the concepts and experiences that are their waking counterparts. One of the reasons for this is that, in a dream, such concepts can express their unconscious meaning. In our conscious thoughts, we restrain ourselves within the limits of rational statements-statements that are much less colorful because we have stripped them of most of their psychic associations."

Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

Although my belief in the world returned to me, I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.

...the mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection.

"what is illusion? By what criterion do we judge something to be an illusion? Does there exist for the psyche anything which we may call "illusion"? What we are pleased to call such may be for the psyche a most important factor of life — something as indispensable as oxygen for the organism — a psychic actuality of prime importance. Presumably the psyche does not trouble itself about our categories of reality, and it would therefore be the better part of wisdom for us to say: everything that acts is actual."

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing with which I am not linked. Here everything has its history, and mine; here is space for the spaceless kingdom of the world's and the psyche's hinterland.