The ego will endure the worst agonies of neurotic misery rather than consent to one minute of diminishment of its sense of importance.

The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long and painful return to that which has always been.

The true light never hides the darkness but is born out of the very center of it, transforming and redeeming. So to the darkness we must return, each of us individually accepting his ignorance and loneliness, his sin and weakness, and, most difficult of all, consenting to wait in the dark and even to love the waiting

The inner story, though the same in essence for all, is always single and unique in each human being, never before lived and never to be repeated.

Wisdom consists in doing the next thing that you have to do, doing it with your whole heart and finding delight in it — and the delight is the sense of the sacred.

We hurry through the so-called boring things in order to attend to that which we deem more important, interesting. Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that every thing in every moment is 'essential' and that nothing at all is 'important.'

The only valid cure for any kind of depression is the acceptance of real suffering. To climb out of it any other way is simply laying the foundation for the next depression.