Self-reflection, or - what comes to the same thing - the urge to individuation, gathers together what is scattered and multifarious and exalts it to the original of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way our existence as separate beings, our former ego nature, is abolished, the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up.

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you.

Protection and security are only valuable if they do not cramp life excessively.

There is, how­ever, a strong empir­i­cal rea­son why we should cul­ti­vate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be use­ful. Man pos­i­tively needs gen­eral ideas & con­vic­tions that will give a mean­ing to his life & enable him to find a place for him­self in the uni­verse. He can stand the most incred­i­ble hard­ships when he is con­vinced that they make sense; he is crushed when on top of all his mis­for­tunes, he has to admit that he is tak­ing part in a ‘tale told by an idiot.’

The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.

A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and a symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight. Therefore we stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates; but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals.