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

Gnosticism was stamped out completely and its remnants are so badly mangled that special study is needed to get any insight at all into its inner meaning.

The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose... Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal... For, enlightenment or no enlightenment, consciousness or no consciousness, nature prepares itself for death.

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.

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 flame may dart out 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.

Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul

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