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
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"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) |
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“In the deity, the opposites cancel out.” Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
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"The marriage of opposites, the transcendence of duality, occurs in the realization of the Self." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy' Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.) |
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"Through all the contraries of phenomenality the Uncreate-Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell) |
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"When in the world goodness is recognized to be good, straightway there is evil. And thus, in like manner, existence and non-existence mutually originate each other; so also difficulty and ease, long and short, high and low, treble and bass, before and after." Lao Tsze (c. 604-531bc) Wisdom for Life (Lynette Evans, editor) |
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"From the unreal to the real is not from one thing to another, but from the complexity of duality and multiplicity to the simplicity of unity." The Glorious Presence (Ernest E. Wood) |
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"God is beyond opposition; in him is a reconciliation of contraries." Richard McKeon, introduction to John Scotus Eriugena Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator) |
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"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) |
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"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) |
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"'There being really no duality, pluralism is untrue'. This is certainly one of the most fundamental truths of the East." C. G. Jung, Psychological Commentary The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (W. Y. Evans-Wentz, compiler and editor) |
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"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) |
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"The Intellect (Intellectus) sees opposites unified." Modern Esoteric Spirituality (Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, editors) |
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"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) |
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"Every psychic phenomenon is compensated by its opposite, in agreement with the proverb, 'There is no misfortune so great that no good may come of it.'" Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
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"Chaos is infinitely complex order." David Bohm, physicist The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion (Wayne Teasdale) |
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"Who is God's opponent? NO ONE." What God Wants (Neale Donald Walsch) |
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"In God all opposites are abolished." Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
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"Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable." The Gospel of Philip, (3rd century Christian Gnostic sacramental catechism) The Other Bible (Willis Barnstone, editor) |
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"Two souls contend…In me and both sould strive for masterdom…Which from the other shall the other shall the scepter rend…The first soul is a lover, clasping close…to this world tentacles of corporal flame…The other seeks to rise with mighty throes…To those ancestral meadows, whence it came." Faust (Goethe) |
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"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) |
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"The darkness within the psyche must be accepted, understood, and ultimately reconciled with the light, in a state of wholeness that is neither light nor darkness but a condition that is both, and yet more than either." The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Stephan A. Hoeller) |
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"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) |
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"The emergence of the mandala in the spiritual and artistic imagination of various pioneering figures of our century anticipates a new consciousness that can contain these opposites simultaneously." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy' Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.) |
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"The self is made manifest in the opposites and in the conflict between them; it is a 'coincidentia oppositorum'." Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
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"Consistent themes in these [mythic] stories emerge quickly: opposites are balanced by a third, mediating element that reconciles a conflict, healing the split of polarity and transforming separate parts into a complete and successful whole." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider) |