Anyone who wants to know the human mind will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.

There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul.

Carl Jung, New Paths in Psychology

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

It seems we have made pain some kind of mistake, like having it is somehow wrong.

Don’t let them fool you—pain is a part of things.

But remember, dear Ellie, the compost down in the field: if the rank and dank and dark

are handled well, not merely discarded, but turned and known and honored, they one day come to beds of rich earth home even to the most delicate rose.

Teddy Macker from Poem for my Daughter

One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. 

Carl Jung

Religions promise that death is not the end of “myself.” Tribal identification with race and nationality (and nowadays gender) creates an imaginary“myself.” Both faith and tribal identification are used to deny or distract from one undeniable, observable fact: each of us was born alone and will die alone.

Robert Saltzman

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

Tennessee Williams

There is no part of life any more special than any other. Every moment of being counts equally. Our wholeness relies upon the inclusion of the good, the bad and the ugly.

To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life.

Vincent Van Gogh

The wise man accepts his pain, endures it but does not add to it.

Marcus Aurelius

One must not avoid unhappiness. One must accept suffering; it is a great teacher. There, that’s the error, one must not seek happiness. The happiness that one seeks is a usurped one. Organic happiness, the bliss that comes from the center of the earth, that alone is fruitful and that simply comes. Sometimes happiness surges from the deepest suffering.

Carl Jung

Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness.

Carl Jung