Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

SHOW detailed search and navigation | Quotes | References | JoAnn

1		"Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all." A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Diane K. Osbon, editor)

2		"Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows like harmony in music; there is a dark inscrutable workmanship that reconciles discordant elements." William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet, 'The Prelude' The Great Thoughts (George Seldes, compiler)

3		"Light presupposes darkness. Darkness fosters vision, obscurity demands clarification, diversity calls for unity and discord for harmony." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

4		"If history reveals anything it is that dissolution and growth have been aspects of the same phenomenon. Growth has not occurred anywhere without involving dissolution. Every major cultural change throughout history has involved this two-fold process of death and emergence." Bernard Eugene Meland (b. 1899), American philosopher and professor of religion, from an article in 'The Personalist' The Choice Is Always Ours (Dorothy B. Phillips, Chief Editor)

5		"It is only be recognizing and healing the dualities that exist in ourselves that we can come to a true sense of interdependence with the rest of creation." Dancing in the Flames, The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness (Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson)

6		"Our individual natures are manifestations of the unfolding movement of the yin and yang principles, which in turn encompass and represent every opposite that exists. Yang represents light; yin dark. Yang represents male; yin female. Each opposite produces the other, and in their entirety they encompass the Tao, or the Way." The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion (Wayne Teasdale)

7		"Non-dual knowledge is the abolition of all particular view points which restrict and distort reality." T. R. V. Murti, 'Central Philosophy of Buddhism' Spectrum of Consciousness (Ken Wilber)

8		"Behind the opposites and in the opposites is true reality, which sees and comprehends the whole." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

9		"Old Heraclitus, who was indeed a very great sage, discovered the most marvelous of all psychological laws: the regulative function of opposites. He called it 'enantiodromia', a running contrariwise, by which he meant that sooner or later everything runs into its opposite." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

10		"The illusion of duality is the trick of maya. 'Thou art that' (tat tvam asi) is the proper thought for the first step to wisdom." The Masks of God (Joseph Campbell)

11		"The pair of opposites is always there until one can find the center. Then in the center one can move and then go freely." Jean Erdman, Joseph Campbell's wife The Hero's Journey (Phil Cousineau, editor)

12		"Once you have brought bondage to the dyad into subjection to the dignity and nature of the One, you will have subjected the whole of creation to God; for you will have brought into unity what was divided and will have reconciled all things." Nikitas Stithatos, 'On Spiritual Knowledge' The Philokalia, volume 4 (various authors, compiled by St. Nikodimos and St. Makarios)

13		"When we view reality from the perspective of the Universal Mind, all the usually experienced polarities are transcended. This applies to such categories as spirit-matter, stability-motion, good-evil, male-female, beauty-ugliness, or agony-ecstasy. In the last analysis, there is no absolute difference between subject and object, observer and the observed, experiencer and the experienced, creator and creation. All the roles in the cosmic drama have ultimately only one protagonist, Absolute Consciousness." The Cosmic Game, Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (Stanislav Grof)

14		"From the living comes death, and from the dead, life; from the young, old age; and from the old, youth; from waking, sleep; and from sleep, waking; the stream of creation and decay never stands still….Construction and destruction, destruction and construction – this is the norm which rules in every circle of natural life from the smallest to the greatest. Just as the cosmos itself emerged from the primal, so must it return once more into the same – a double process running its measured course through vast periods, a drama eternally re-enacted." Heraclitus Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning (Ira Progoff, Ph.D.)

15		"Every moment of this strange and lovely life from dawn to dusk, is a miracle. Somewhere, always, a rose is opening its petals to the dawn. Somewhere, always, a flower is fading in the dusk. The incense that rises with the sun, and the scents that die in the dark, are all gathered, sooner or later, into the solitary fragrance that is God. Faintly, elusively, that fragrance lingers over all of us." Beverly Nichols, 'The Fool Hath Said' Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations (Frank S Mead, editor)

16		"The primal Self contains all the archetypal potential and all the dynamic oppositions necessary to achieve the goal of individuation." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

17		"When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion." A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Diane K. Osbon, editor)

18		"There is strong shadow where there is much light." Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe (1749-1832), 'Gotz von Berlichingen', act 1 Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (John Bartlett)

19		"The self is a union of opposites par excellence." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

20		"God appeared to me as the highest unity of all contrasts." Letter of Nicholas of Cusa to Cardinal Julianus Mystics after Modernism (Rudolf Steiner)

21		"There is no balance, no system of self-regulation, without opposition. The psyche is just such a self-regulating system." 'On the Psychology of the Unconscious' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

22		"The all-containing Divine Essence…comprises all dichotomies. The Absolute becomes differentiated in polarized manifestations, and through these the vital tensions of the world-process are brought into existence and maintained." Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Heinrich Zimmer, edited by Joseph Campbell)

23		"The tension of opposites that makes energy possible is a universal law, fittingly expressed in the yang and yin of Chinese philosophy." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

24		"Good and evil are the light and shade of the same thing." Duncton Found (William Horwood)

25		"Opposites are fundamentally of the one essence, two aspects of the one Vishnu." Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Heinrich Zimmer, edited by Joseph Campbell)