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

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1		"It is a fact that symbols, by their very nature, can so unite the opposites that these no longer diverge or clash, but mutually supplement one another and give meaningful shape to life." Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Carl Jung (edited by Aniela Jaffe))

2		"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order, in all caprice a fixed law, for everything that works is grounded on its opposite." 'Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious', CW 9, 1 Basic Writings of C G Jung (V S DeLasslo, editor)

3		"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)

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

5		"What would the rainbow be were it not limned against the lowering cloud?" Collected Works (Carl Jung)

6		"Just as the coal and diamond are both carbon – that basic substance of life – so does the Goddess of Wisdom manifest her power through seemingly opposing appearances. The Goddess of Wisdom is seeded within all." Caitlin Matthews, 'Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom' The Inner West, An Introduction to the Hidden Wisdom of the West (Jay Kinney, editor)

7		"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)

8		"Most opposites, when stretched far enough apart, paradoxically come full circle only to be rejoined at some point of confluence, some moment or area of tenseless harmony." Breaking the Mind Barrier (Todd Siler)

9		"When dualistic opposites are allowed to fuse in the mind, the psyche saves itself." Great Cosmic Mother, Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor)

10		"The truth is not black or white; it is both. The pairs of opposites of the lower levels merge on the highest level." Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On The Mechanics of Consciousness (Itzhak Bentov)

11		"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)

12		"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)

13		"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)

14		“God precontains all opposites in one single, universal cause.” Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works (John Farina, Editor-in-Chief)

15		"In the view of Nicolas of Cusa, the mystery of God's infinity is best expressed by affirming that in God all contradictions are somehow reconciled." The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon, vol. 1 (Mortimer J. Adler, editor)

16		"The urge to reconcile all duality and to create synthesis out of polarization is at the core of much of our individual and collective self-development." Soul Centered Astrology, A Key to Your Expanding Self (Alan Oken)

17		"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)

18		"Alchemical symbols have the function of uniting the opposites." Aurora Consurgens (Marie Louise vonFranz)

19		"The authentic selfhood of the human being is…alchemically integrated from the opposites of light and dark, good and evil, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious. It is not by simple extension or a lineal path of growth, but by the oppositional conflict and eventual reconciliation of the opposites that the fullness of being is restored within the individual soul." The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Stephan A. Hoeller)

20		"The self is a unit, consisting however of two, i.e., of opposites, otherwise it would not be a totality." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

21		"Life, being an energic process, needs the opposites, for without opposition there is, as we know, no energy. Good and evil are simply the moral aspects of this natural polarity." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

22		"God is the simultaneous mutual implication of all things, even the contradictory ones." Nicholas Cusanus (1401-1464) 'Apologia doctae ignorantiae' The Masks of God (Joseph Campbell)

23		"Life is about light and darkness, joy and emptiness, pain and praise." Matthew Fox Sheer Joy, Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox)

24		"Our mind divides the world into heaven and earth, day and night, light and darkness, right and left, man and woman, I and you – and the more strongly we sense the separation between these poles, whatever they may be, the more powerfully do we also sense their unity." Karl Menninger (1892-1990), American psychiatrist A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

25		"Chaos is infinitely complex order." David Bohm, physicist The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion (Wayne Teasdale)