I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.

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.

What happens in the life of Christ happens always and everywhere. In the Christian archetype all lives of this kind are prefigured.

Science has destroyed even the refuge of the inner life. What was once a sheltering haven has become a place of terror

During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself— that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved— what then?