Carl Jung Life Quotations

The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

Life is a luminous pause between two mysteries that are yet one.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen machtwillen, und wo die macht den vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine ist der Schatten des andern. Translation: Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.

There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the forms of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action.

The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of awareness of darkness... as the contrast between what we have and how it could be worse is vital to appreciate anything, including our life, and so be happy and grateful

Life is crazy and meaningful at once.

Life is something that has to be lived and not talked about.

I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.

The afternoon of a human life must have a significance of its own, and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going.

The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything.

You must live life in such a spirit that you make in every moment the best of possibilities.

As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted...

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house.

An old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as the young man who is unable to embrace it.

But the meaning of life is not . . . explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Meaninglessnes s inhibits fullness of life and is therefore the equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable--perh aps everything.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a 'continent,' a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Explaining that I'm faced with a choice between being with the love of my life, or saving four lives that were never meant to end.

Where there is life, there is hope.

Life is not meant to be an open-book test.

Music is one of the highest art forms there is. It can define a life, change a life, or even safe a life, in just three short minutes.