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		"Stay at the centre of the circle and let all things take their course." Lao-Tzu Revelations: The Wisdom of the Ages (Paul Roland)

2		"In a twelfth-century hermetic text known as 'The Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers' there is a statement that has been quoted, through the centuries, by a number of Christian thinkers – among others, Alan of Lille (1128-1202), Nicholas Cusanus (1401-1464), Rabelais (1490?-1553), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), and Pascal (1632-1662), as well as Voltaire (1694-1778); to wit: 'God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.'" Joseph Campbell Tarot Revelations (Joseph Campbell & Richard Roberts)

3		"Mandalas have been used by many cultures to represent the creation of the universe. Carl Jung has theorized that mandalas represent centering, the unification of parts of the psyche." Seeing With the Mind's Eye (Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels)

4		"The Point within a Circle…is the Divine Spirit indwelling creation and abiding in the nature of man." A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (Arthur Edward Waite)

5		"To be integrated, to be made whole, means to be able to maintain contact with one's center." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

6		"Like ripples in a pond, each awareness-moment expands out from its own center, containing in its form-pattern the configuration of all phenomena in the universe, material and immaterial." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

7		"The centre is omnipresent; everything is contained in it; it is connected with the release of the whole process of creation." The Secret of the Golden Flower (Richard Wilhelm, translator)

8		"The centre of a circle is regarded as the indivisible source of all the radii extending from it;…pre-existing in God are all the inner essences of created things." St. Maximos the Confessor, 'Second Century on Theology' The Philokalia, volume 2 (various authors, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain)

9		"The inter-personal contains the hopes of higher union on which evolution lives. It is the milieu of the monads' mutual attraction and confluence that sustains their final centre of coalescence." Writings in Time of War (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

10		"The centre is that microcosmic point in which the macrocosm is concentrated." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

11		"The mandala is, above all, a map of the cosmos. It is the whole universe in its essential plan, in its process of emanation and of reabsorption…..the universe not only in its inert spatial expanse, but as temporal revolution and both as a vital process which develops from an essential principle and rotates round a central axis." G. Tucci Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

12		"A great many ritual acts have the sole purpose of finding out the spiritual 'Centre' of a locality, which then becomes the site, either in itself or by virtue of the temple built upon it, an 'image of the world'." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

13		"All things proceed from God, who is at once the centre and the circumference from which all existing lines proceed and at which all end up." Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), Mexican nun, poet and scholar The Lion Christian Quotation Collection (Hannah Ward & Jennifer Wild, compilers)

14		Always in the centre shall come a new Word." Mexican aphorism From Bethlehem to Calvary (Alice A. Bailey)

15		"Traditionally, the center is the most honorable place, known to the Greeks as 'the keep of Zeus.' Protector of hearths and boundaries (centers and circumferences) and the source of moral order, Zeus dispensed judgment from the center." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

16		"Go to the center and know the Whole. Follow this path." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

17		"Joy is the still point at the center of the dance." Finding Deep Joy (Robert Ellwood)

18		"Spirit may be defined as that which has its center in itself." Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher A Treasury of Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Dagobert D. Runes, editor)

19		"The psyche of humanity contains…the divine Monad at the center." Tarot Revelations (Joseph Campbell & Richard Roberts)

20		"Though the principle of the center is One, the patterns, the swirls and eddies of form and process which are generated by and through the center are infinite; and though infinite in number, the centers are essentially one, for each is the same irreducible point, the primary syllable, the word, the Logos, through which all is uttered." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

21		"No unit can finally find happiness except by reunion with the whole and the transcendent centre required to move that whole." The Vision of the Past (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

22		"All of Chinese thinking – Confucianism, Taoism, as well as Buddhism – contains the idea that in the course of life, man will shape harmoniously those psychic and physical predispositions that he received as capital assets by unifying them and giving them form from within a center." Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change (Richard Wilhelm)

23		"There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began….Venerable and articulate and complete." Wallace Stevens, American poet Origins of the Sacred (Dudley Young)

24		"One: Symbolic of being and of the revelation of the spiritual essence. It is the active principle which, broken into fragments, gives rise to multiplicity, and is to be equated with the mystic Centre, the Irradiating Point and the Supreme Power. It also stands for spiritual unity – the common basis between all beings." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

25		"Point: The point signifies unity, the Origin and the Centre. It also represents the principles of manifestation and emanation….There are two kinds of point to be considered: that which has no magnitude and is symbolic of creative virtue, and that which – as suggested by Ramon Lull in his 'Nova Geometria' – has the smallest conceivable or practicable magnitude and is a symbol of the principle of manifestation. Moses deLeon defined the nature of the original Point as follows: 'This degree is the sum total of all subsequent mirrors, that is, of all external aspects related to this one degree. They proceed therefrom because of the mystery of the point, which is in itself an occult degree emanating from the mystery of the pure and awe-inspiring ether.'" A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)