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.

The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches.

The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced and contrasted and compared to sadness. In comparing how an experience could have been worse we develop gratitude and happiness, while if we compare it how it could have been better we develop bitterness and sadness.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

One cannot free oneself by bowing to the yoke, but by breaking it.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

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.