Quotes from The Portable Jung, by Carl Jung


- ‘It is just man’s turning away from instinct – his appeasing himself to instinct – that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.’ (7)
- ‘Whoever protects himself against what is new an strange and regresses to the past falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is the one has estranged himself from the past and the other from the future. In principle both are doing the same thing: they are reinforcing their narrow range of consciousness instead of shattering it in the tension of opposites and building up a state of wider and higher consciousness.’ (10)
- ‘When we see how stubbornly childish illusions and assumptions are still clung to in later years we can gain some idea of the energies that were needed to form them.’ (12)
- ‘The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behavior. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of the diminution of personality. Many – far too many – aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes.’ (12)
- ‘If these persons had filled up the beaker of life earlier and emptied it to the lees, they would feel quite differently about everything now; they would have kept nothing back, everything that wanted to catch fire would have been consumed, and the quiet of old age would be very welcome to them… for many people all too much unlived life remains over.’ (19)
- ‘I have observed that a life directed to an aim is in general better, richer, and healthier than an aimless one, and that it is better to go forwards with the stream of time than backwards against it.’ (20)
- ‘Before the nineteenth century the thyroid was regarded as a meaningless organ merely because it was not understood. It would be equally shortsighted of us today to call the primordial images [unconscious, universal belief in life after death, etc.] senseless.’ (21)
- ‘We must distinguish three psychic levels: (1) consciousness, (2) the personal unconscious, and (3) the collective unconscious… The collective unconscious, however, as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all men, and perhaps even to all animals, and is the true basis of the individual psyche. This whole psychic organism corresponds exactly to the body, which, though individually varied, is in all essential features the specifically human body which all men have. In its development and structure, it still preserves elements that connect it with the invertebrates and ultimately with the protozoa. Theoretically it should be possible to ‘peel’ the collective unconscious, layer by layer, until we came to the psychology of the worm, and even of the amoeba.’ (38)
- ‘The whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious.’ (38)
the deposit of mankind’s whole ancestral experience – so rich in emotional imagery – of father, mother, child, husband and wife, of the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic power.’ (43)
- ‘The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual.’ (44)
- ‘All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us.’ (44-45)
- ‘We should never forget that what we call complicated or even wonderful is not at all wonderful for Nature, but quite ordinary. We always tend to project into things our own difficulties of understanding and to call the complicated, when in reality they area very simple and know noting of our intellectual problems.’ (51)
- ‘Above all, we should always remember that in discussing human instincts we are speaking of ourselves and, therefore, are doubtless prejudiced.’ (53)
- ‘Instinct has been domesticated, but the basic motive still remains intact. There is no doubt that we have succeeded in enveloping a large number of instincts in rational explanations to the point where we no longer recognize the original motive behind so many veils… Why is it that a man does not do or say, give or take, just as much as is needed, or reasonable, or justifiable in a given situation, but frequently so much more or less? Precisely because an unconscious process is released in him that runs its course without the aid of reason and therefore falls short of, or exceeds, the degree of rational motivation. This phenomenon is so uniform, so regular that we can only call it instinctive, though no one in this situation likes to admit the instinctive nature of his behavior. I am therefore inclined to believe that human behavior is influenced by instinct to a far higher degree than is generally supposed, and that we are prone to a great many falsifications of judgment in this respect, again as a result of an instinctive exaggeration of the rationalistic standpoint.’ (53)
- ‘Instincts are typical modes of action, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of action and reaction we are dealing with instinct, no matter whether it is associated with a conscious motive or not.’ (54)
- ‘These images are autochthonous and occur with great regularity; everywhere we find the idea of a magic power of substance, of spirits and their doings, of heroes and gods and their legends. In the great religions of the world we see the perfection of those images and at the same time their progressive incrustation with rational forms.’ (57)
- ‘The idea of a second birth is found at all times and in all places. In the earliest beginnings of medicine it was a magical means of healing; in many religions it is the central mystical experience; it is the key idea in medieval, occult philosophy, and, last but not least, it is an infantile fantasy occurring in numberless children.’ (63)
- the dual mother motif, (63)
- ‘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 form 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. When a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.’ (66)
- ‘I have found that the existence of unrealized, unconscious fantasies increases the frequency and intensity of dreams, and that when these fantasies are made conscious the dreams change their character and became weaker and less frequent. From this I have drawn the conclusion that dreams often contain fantasies which ‘want’ to become conscious. The sources of dreams are often repressed instincts which have a natural tendency to influence the conscious mind.’ (67)
- ‘… the gnostic demiurge who in his vanity deems himself perfect and then in the blindness of his limitations creates something lamentably imperfect.’ (76)
- ‘Moral inferiority does not come from a collision with the generally accepted and, in a sense, arbitrary moral law, but from the conflict with one’s own self… Whenever a sense of moral inferiority appears, it indicates not only a need to assimilate an unconscious component, but also the possibility of such assimilation… Whoever progresses down this road of self-realization must inevitably bring into consciousness the contents of the personal unconscious, thus enlarging the scope of his personality.’ (81)
- ‘Every analysand starts by unconsciously misusing his newly won knowledge in the interests of his abnormal, neurotic attitude… ‘Aha! so that is what other people are like!’ He will therefore feel it is his duty, according to his nature, tolerant or otherwise, to enlighten the world.’ (84)
- ‘In this way he is liable to become arrogant; it may be well meant, but it is nonetheless annoying to other people. He feels as though he possesses a key that opens many, perhaps even all, doors. Psychoanalysis itself has the same bland unconsciousness of its limitations, as can clearly be seen from the way it meddles with works of art.’ (86)
- ‘His uncertainty forces the enthusiast to puff up his truths, of which he feels none too sure, and to win proselytes to his side in order that his followers may prove to himself the value and trustworthiness of his own convictions. Nor is he altogether so happy in his fund of knowledge as to be able to hold out alone; at bottom he feels isolated by it, and the secret fear of being left alone with it induces him to trot out his opinions and interpretations in and out of season, because only when convincing someone else does he feel safe from gnawing doubts.’ (87)
- ‘Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representations, puts a premium on mediocrity on everything that settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible war… it is true that the greatest infamy on the part of this group will not disturb him, so long as the majority of his fellows steadfastly believe in the exalted morality of their social organization.’ (101)
- ‘Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and mental contagion.’ (103)
- ‘To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.’ (103)
- ‘Since the individual is not only a single entity, but also, by very existence, presupposes a collective relationship, the process of individuation does not lead to isolation, but to an intenser and more universal collective solidarity.’ (103)
- ‘Far too much of our common humanity has to be sacrificed in the interests of an ideal image into which one tries to mould oneself. Hence these purely ‘personal’ people are always very sensitive, for something may easily happen that will bring into consciousness an unwelcome part of their real (‘individual’) character.’ (105)
- ‘Let us take as an example a businessman who takes too great a risk and consequently becomes bankrupt. If he does not allow himself to be discouraged by this depressing experience, but, undismayed, keeps his former daring, perhaps he will be healed without permanent injury. But if, on the other hand, he goes to pieces, abjures all further risks, and laboriously tries to patch up his social reputation within the confines of a much more limited personality, doing inferior work with the mentality of a scared child, in a post far below him, then, technically speaking, he will have restored his persona in a regressive way.’ (113)
- ‘There is of course nothing to stop him from taking a two-room cottage in the country, or from pottering about in a garden and eating raw turnips. But his soul laughs at the deception. Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.’ (117)
- ‘The unconscious processes are constantly supplying us with content which, if constantly recognized, would extend the rage of consciousness. Looked at it this way, the unconscious appears as a field of experience of unlimited extent.’ (135)
- ‘The importance that modern psychology attaches to the ‘parental complex’ is a direct continuation of primitive man’s experience of the dangerous power of the ancestral spirits.’ (137)
- ‘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. Not consciously, of course, - for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance.’ (147)
- ‘His Eros is passive like a child’; he hopes to be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured… But he makes no more than a series of fitful starts, for his initiative as well as his staying power are crippled by the secret memory that the world and happiness may be had as a gift from the mother. The fragment of world which he, like every man, must encounter again and again is never quite the right one, since it does not fall into his lap, does not meet him half way, but remains resistant, has to be conquered, and submits only to force.’ (148)
- ‘She is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life.’ (150)
- ‘Just as the mother seems to be the first carrier of the projection – making factor for the son, so is the father for the daughter.’ (152)
- ‘As the daughter who alone understands her father (that is, is eternally right in everything) she is translated to the land of sheep, where she is put to graze by the shepherd of her soul, the animus [male].’ (154)
- ‘In the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s unconsciousness, the animus gives to woman’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self-knowledge.’ (154)
- ‘They [these ideas] are unpopular precisely because they seem unfamiliar, the consequence is that they mobilize prejudice and become taboo like everything else that is unexpected.’ (156)
- ‘Up till now everybody has been convinced that the idea ‘my father’, ‘my mother’, etc., is nothing but a faithful reflection of the real parent, corresponding in every detail to the original.’ (156)
- ‘Recapitulating, I should like to emphasize that the integration of the shadow [evil], or the realization of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in the analytic process, and that without it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible.’ (161)
- ‘The self, on the other hand, is a God-image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one.’ (162)
- ‘[Love] is described as one of complete harmony, and is extolled as a great happiness (‘one heart and one soul’) – not without good reason, since the return to that original condition of unconscious oneness is a return to childhood. Hence the childish gestures of all lovers.’ (167)
- ‘Midlife is the moment of greatest unfolding, when man still gives himself to his work with his whole mind and his whole will. But in this very moment evening is born, and the second half of life begins. Passion now changes her face and is called duty: ‘I want’ becomes the inexorable ‘I must’.’
- On the quintessential anima: ‘The so-called ‘sphinx-like’ character is an indispensable part of their equipment, also an equivocalness, an intriguing elusiveness – not an indefinite blur that offers nothing, but an indefiniteness that seems full of promises, like the speaking silence of a Mona Lisa. A woman of this kind is both old and young, mother and daughter, of more than doubtful chastity, childlike, and yet endowed with a naïve cunning that is extremely disarming to men.’ (174)
- On the quintessential anima: ‘Not every man of real intellectual power can be an animus, for the animus must be a master so much of fine ideas as of fine words – words seemingly full of meaning which purport to leave a great deal unsaid. He must also belong to the ‘misunderstood’ class, or be in some way at odds with his environment, so that the idea of self-sacrifice can insinuate itself. He must be a rater questionable hero, a man with possibilities, which is not to say that an animus projection may not discover a real hero long before he has become perceptible to the sluggish wits of the man of ‘average intelligence’.’ (174-175)
- ‘As is well known, one understands nothing psychological unless one has experienced it oneself.’ (176)
- Biological basis for two personalities (introvert/extrovert): ‘The one consists in a high rate of fertility, with lower powers of defense and short duration of life for the single individual; the other consists in equipping the individual with numerous means of self-preservation plus a low fertility rate.’ (180)
- ‘The moral laws governing [the extrovert’s] actions coincide with the demands of society, that is with the prevailing moral standpoint.’ (183)
-‘This is the extrovert’s danger: he gets sucked into objects and completely loses himself in them.’ (185)
- An error: ‘one of our ‘cultural ideals’, which says that any enterprising person has to concentrate everything on the one aim in view.’ (189)
- ‘Doubtless there are exceptional people who are able to sacrifice their entire life to a particular formula, but for most of us such exclusiveness is impossible in the long run. Sooner or later, depending on outer circumstances or inner disposition, the potentialities repressed by the intellectual attitude will make themselves indirectly felt by disturbing the conscious conduct of life. When the disturbance reaches a definite pitch, we speak of a neurosis. In most cases it does not go far, because the individual instinctively allows himself extenuating modifications of his formula in a suitably rationalistic guise, thus creating a safety valve.’ (199)
- ‘No function can be entirely eliminated – it can only be greatly distorted.’ (200)
- ‘Their desire to save others leads them to employ means which are calculated to bring about the very thing they wished to avoid.’ (201)
- ‘The psychological tendencies it has repressed build up a counter-position in the unconscious and give rise to paroxysms of doubt. The more it tries to fend off the doubt, the more fanatical the conscious attitude becomes, for fanaticism is nothing but over-compensated doubt.’ (203)
- ‘[The introvert’s] ideal is a lonely island where nothing moves except what he permits to move.’ (236)
- ‘Introverted thinking is primarily oriented by the subjective factor. At the very least the subjective factor expresses itself as a feeling of judgment which ultimately determines judgment.’ (237)
- ‘He usually has bad experiences with rivals in his own field because he never understands how to curry to their favor; as a rule he only succeeds in showing them how entirely superfluous they are to him. In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, headstrong, and quite unamenable to influence… His style is cluttered with all sorts of adjuncts, accessories, qualifications, retractions, saving clauses, doubts, etc., which all come from his scrupulosity. His work goes slowly and with difficulty.’ (242)
- ‘In his personal relations he is taciturn or else throws himself on people who cannot understand him, and for him this is one more proof of the abysmal stupidity of man. If for once he is understood, he easily succumbs to credulous overestimation of his prowess. Ambitious women have only to know how to take advantage of his cluelessness in practical matters to make an easy prey of him; or he may develop into a misanthropic bachelor with a childlike heart. Often he is gauche in his behavior, painfully anxious to escape notice, or else remarkably unconcerned and childishly naïve. In his own special field of work he provokes the most violent opposition, which he has no notion how to deal with, unless he happens to be seduced by his primitive affects into acrimonious and fruitless polemics. But the better one knows him, the more favorable one’s judgment becomes, and his closest friends value his intimacy very highly. To outsides he seems prickly, unapproachable, and arrogant, and sometimes soured as a result of his anti-social prejudices. As a personal teacher he has little influence, since the mentality of his students is strange to him.’ (243)
- ‘He begins to confuse his subjective truth with his own personality. Although he will not try to press his convictions on anyone personally. Although he will not try to press his convictions on anyone personally, he will burst out with vicious, personal retorts against every criticism, however just. Thus his isolation gradually increases. His originally fertilizing ideas become destructive, poisoned by the sediment of bitterness.’ (244)
- ‘[The introvert] glides unheedingly over all objects that do not fit in with his aim.’ (245)
- ‘Introverted thinking is counterbalanced by a primitive feeling, to which objects attach themselves with magical force.’ (246)
- ‘A judgment that is truly rational will appeal to the objective and subjective factor equally and do justice to both.’ (250)
- ‘The definitiveness and directedness of the conscious mind are extremely important acquisitions which humanity has bought at a very heavy sacrifice, and which in turn have rendered humanity the highest service. Without them science, technology, and civilization would be impossible, for they all presuppose the reliable continuity and directedness of the conscious process.’ (274)
- ‘Analysis is no once-and-for-all ‘cure’; it is no more, at first, than a more or less thorough readjustment… there is absolutely no collective norm that could replace an individual solution without loss.’ (278)
- ‘The answer obviously consists in getting rid of the separation between conscious and unconscious. This cannot be done by condemning the contents of the unconscious in a one-sided way, but rather by recognizing their significance in compensating the one-sidedness of consciousness and by taking this significance into account.’ (279)
- Admonishing against a literal interpretation of childhood sexual fantasies: ‘The understanding of the transference is to be sought not in its historical antecedents but in its purpose.’ (280)
- ‘The sense of boredom which then appears in the analysis is simply an expression of the monotony and poverty of ideas – not of the unconscious, as is sometimes supposed, but of the analyst, who does not understand that these fantasies should not be taken merely in a concretistic-reductive sense, but rather in a constructive one. When this is realized, the standstill is often overcome at a single stroke.’ (280)
- ‘The most readily accessible expression of unconscious processes is undoubtedly dreams.’ (283)
- ‘But mere self-observation and intellectual self-analysis are entirely inadequate as a means to establishing contact with the unconscious… In order, therefore, to gain possession of the energy that is in the wrong place, he must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure. He must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and nothing down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come up.. patients who possess some talent for drawing or painting can give expression to their mood by means of a picture.’ (288-289)
- ‘But the confrontation with the unconscious must be a many-sided one, for the transcendent function is not a partial process running a conditional course; it is a total and integral event in which all aspects are, or should be, included.’ (296)
- ‘It is technically very simple to note down the ‘other’ voice in writing and to answer its statements from the standpoint of the ego. It is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings with equal rights.’ (297)
- ‘Such a rapprochement could just as well take place between patient and analyst, the role of the devil’s advocate easily falling to the latter.’ (297)
- ‘The transcendent function not only forums a valuable addition to psychotherapeutic treatment, but gives the patient the inestimable advantage of assisting the analyst on his own resources, and of breaking a dependence which is often felt as humiliating. It is a way of attaining liberation by one’s own efforts and of finding the courage to be oneself.’ (300)
- ‘Only that aspect of art which consists in the process of artistic creation can be a subject for psychological study, but not that which constitutes its essential nature. The question of what art is in itself can never be answered by the psychologist, but must be approached from the side of aesthetics. A similar distinction must be made in the realm of religion.’ (302)
- ‘The golden gleam of artistic creation – the original object of discussion – is extinguished as soon as we apply it to the same corrosive method which we use in analyzing the fantasies of hysteria.’ (306)
- ‘Like every other science, psychology has only a modest contribution to make towards a deeper understanding of the phenomena of life, and is no nearer than its sister sciences to absolute knowledge.’ (316)
- ‘An honest admission of modernity means voluntarily declaring oneself bankrupt, taking the vows of poverty and chastity in a new sense, and – what is still more painful – renouncing the halo of sanctity which history bestows.’ (458)
- ‘Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing good can come into the world without at once producing a corresponding evil.’ (459)
- ‘While man still lives as a herd-animal he has no psyche of his own, nor does he need any, except the usual belief in the immortality of the soul. But as soon as he has outgrown whatever local form of religion he was born to – as soon as this religion can no longer embrace his life in all its fullness – then the psyche becomes a factor in its own right which cannot be dealt with by the customary measures.’ (462)
- ‘With increasing insight we combat evil at its source in ourselves.’ (466)\
- ‘No psychic process can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity. This is a fundamental rule which is repeatedly verified in the daily practice of the psychotherapist and never fails.’ (470)
- ‘The gods whom we are called upon to dethrone are the idealized values of our conscious world.’ (472)
- ‘The East is not a Tibetan monastery full of Mahatmas, but lies essentially within us.’ (476)
- ‘The mysterious truth [is] that the spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit – the two being really one.’ (479)
- ‘The development of Western philosophy during the last two centuries has succeeded in isolating the mind it its own sphere and in severing it from its primordial oneness with the universe.’ (481)
- ‘Jesus is the perfect example of a man who preached something different from the religion of his forefathers.’ (482)
- ‘If our new attitude is to be genuine, i.e., grounded in our own history, it must be acquired with full consciousness of the Christian values and of the conflict between them and the introverted attitude of the East. We must get at the Eastern values from within and not from without, seeking them in ourselves, in the unconscious. We shall then discover how great is our fear of the unconscious.’ (490)
- ‘Our concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ would be the European equivalent of buddhi, the enlightened mind.’ (492)
- ‘Usually – i.e., in the West – the conscious standpoint arbitrarily decides against the unconscious, since anything coming from inside suffers from the prejudice of being regarded as inferior or something wrong.’ (496)
- ‘The one underrates the world of consciousness, the other the world of the One mind. the result is that, in their extremism, both lose one half of the universe; their life is shut off from total reality, and is apt to become artificial and inhuman… No wonder that one-sidedness produces very similar forms of monasticism in both cases, guaranteeting to the hermit, the holy man, the monk of the scientist unswerving singleness of purpose.’ (501)
- ‘Nature is the mistress, the soul is the disciple.’ Tertullian (524)
- ‘God has no need of this circumspection, for nowhere does he come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force him to hesitate and hence make him reflect on himself.’ (538)
- ‘Yahweh had let himself be bamboozled by Satan. This weakness of his does not reach full consciousness, since Satan is treated with remarkable tolerance and consideration… at Job’s expense.’ (542)
- ‘Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God.’ (542)
- ‘Yahweh projects on to Job a skeptic’s face which is hateful to him because it is his own, and which gazes at him with an uncanny and critical eye. He is afraid of it, for only in face of something frightening does one let off a cannonade of references to one’s power, cleverness, courage, invincibility, etc.’ (543-544)
- ‘An unusual scandal was blowing up in the realm of metaphysics, with supposedly devastating consequences, and nobody was ready with a saving formula which would rescue the monotheist concept of God from disaster.’ (550)
- ‘The divine drama was enacted between God and his people, who were betrothed to him, the masculine dynamic, like a woman, and over whose faithfulness he watched jealously… His readiness to deliver Job into Satan’s murderous hands proves that he doubts Job precisely because he projects his own tendency to unfaithfulness upon a scapegoat.’ (555)
- ‘Instead of following his original program of letting man appear on the last day as the most intelligent being and lord of all creatures, he created the serpent who proved to be much more intelligent and more conscious than Adam, and, in addition, had been created before him.’ (558)
- ‘It must be admitted that a fit of rage or a sulk has its secret attractions. Were that not so, most people would long since have acquired a little wisdom.’ (559)
- ‘One would like to say that Christ had to appear in order to deliver mankind from evil. But when one considers that evil was originally slipped into the scheme of things by Satan, and still is, then it would seem much simpler if Yahweh would, for once, call this ‘practical joker’ severely to account, get rid of his pernicious influence, and thus eliminate the root of all evil.’ (568)
- ‘The immediate use of the Incarnation in Job’s elevation, and its purpose is the differentiation of Yahweh’s consciousness.’ (573)
- ‘What sort of conclusion are we bound to arrive at if a statement like ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me’ (John 14:6) is reduced to personal psychology?’ (577)
- ‘Just as man must suffer from God, so God must suffer from man. Otherwise there can be no reconciliation.’ (583)
- ‘To believe that God is the Summum Bonum is impossible for a reflecting conscious.’ (589)
- ‘The God of goodness is so unforgiving that the can only be appeased by a human sacrifice! This is an insufferable incongruity which modern man can no longer swallow, for he must be blind if he does not see the glaring light it throws on the divine character, giving the lie to all talk about love and Summum Bonum.’ (602)
- As is authoritatively stated in scripture, the Holy Ghost is not subject to any control. I the interests of continuity and the Church the uniqueness of the incarnation of and Christ’s work of redemption has to be strongly emphasized, and for the same reason the continuing indwelling of the Holy Ghost is discouraged and ignored as much as possible. No further individualistic digressions can be tolerated. Anyone who is inclined by the Holy Ghost towards dissident opinions necessarily becomes a heretic, whose persecution and elimination take a turn very much to Satan’s liking.’ (606)
- ‘Irritability, bad moods, and outbursts of affect are the classic symptoms of chronic virtuousness.’ (625)
- ‘I myself have reached the age of seventy-six before venturing to catechize myself as to the nature of those ‘ruling ideas’ which decide our ethical behavior and have such an important influence on our practical life. They are in the last resort the principles which, spoken or unspoken, determine the moral decisions upon which our existence depends, for weal or woe.’ (631)
- ‘Inspired by the workings of the Holy Ghost, the Pope has recently announced the dogma of the Assumptio marie… This dogma is in every respect timely. In the first place it is a symbolic fulfillment of John’s vision. Secondly, it contains an allusion to the marriage of the Lamb at the end of time, and, thirdly, it repeats the Old Testament anamnesis of Sophia. These three references foretell the Incarnation of God.’ (636)
- ‘The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. But he can make no progress with himself unless he becomes very much better acquainted with his own nature.’ (638)
- ‘God is an obvious psychic and non-physical fact, i.e., a fact that can be established psychically but not physically.’ (642)

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