Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted 

as biography, history, or science, 

it is killed.

Mythologies are in fact the public dreams 

that move and shape societies, 

and conversely 

one’s own dreams are the little myths 

of the private gods, antigods, and guardian powers 

that are moving and shaping oneself: 

revelations of the actual fears, desires, aims and values 

by which one’s life is subliminally ordered.

The courage to face the trials 

and to bring a whole new body of possibilities 

into the field of interpreted experience 

for other people to experience

 - that is the hero's deed.

The privilege of a lifetime

is being who you are.

'All life,' said the Buddha, 'is sorrowful'; 

and so, indeed, it is. 

Life consuming life: 

that is the essence of its being, 

which is forever a becoming. 

'The world,' said the Buddha, 'is an ever-burning fire.' 

And so it is. 

And that is what one has to affirm, 

with a yea! a dance! 

a knowing, solemn, stately dance 

of the mystic bliss beyond pain 

that is at the heart of every mythic rite.

I am tomorrow, 

or some future day, 

what I establish today. 

I am today 

what I established yesterday 

or some previous day.

The secret of dreams is that 

subject and object are the same. 

The object is self-luminous, 

fluent in form, 

multivalent in its meanings. 

It’s your dream, 

the manifestation of your will.

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, 

without understanding what is the interest of the individual.

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. 

And that's what it is. 

The nature is your nature, 

and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology 

are referring to something in you. 

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there 

so that you never make the reference to yourself, 

you have misread the image.

Experience is not what happens to you; 

it's what you do with what happens to you.

The way is not in the sky. 

The way is in the heart.

I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, 

with epistemological signposts. 

No, 

we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, 

building our road behind us as we proceed.

A great pleasure in life 

is doing what people say 

you cannot do.

When God says, 

"I'm no metaphor. I'm a fact," 

you're in trouble.

The observer, 

when he seems to himself
to be observing a stone, 

is really, 

if physics is to be believed, 

observing the effects
of the stone upon himself.

Information is not knowledge.

Philosophy is questions 

that may never be answered. 

Religion is answers 

that may never be questioned.

The effort to understand the universe 

is one of the very few things 

that lifts human life 

a little above the level of farce, 

and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

My goal is simple. 

It is a complete understanding of the universe, 

why it is as it is 

and why it exists at all.

Man is slightly nearer to the atom than the stars. 

From his central position 

he can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, 

or the minutest works with the physicist.

True works of art contain their own theory 

and give us the measurement 

according to which we should judge them.

The important thing in science 

is not so much 

to obtain new facts 

as to discover new ways 

of thinking about them.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. 

 It prevents moderation from acquiring 

the deadening effect of a habit.

The recognition of cultural cycles is the recognition 

that there is in the history of a culture a beginning, a middle, and an end ... 

That is the pattern for all organic forms. 

Recognising cultural cycles means one sees 

cultures as an organism 

and cultural history as an organic history.

Philosophy is a battle 

against the bewitchment of our intelligence 

by means of language.

Science may set limits to knowledge, 

but should not set limits to imagination.

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Nature holds the key 

to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive 

and even spiritual satisfaction.

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

A man is his own easiest dupe, 

for what he wishes to be true.

When I was still a rather precocious young man, 

I already realised most vividly 

the futility of the hopes and aspirations 

that most men pursue throughout their lives.

Go to the end of the path until you get to the gate.

Go through the gate and head straight out towards the horizon.

Keep going towards the horizon.

Sit down and have a rest every now and again,

But keep on going, just keep on with it.

Keep on going as far as you can.

That’s how you get there.

Idea is the object of thinking.

Cynical realism 

is the intelligent man's best excuse 

for doing nothing 

in an intolerable situation.

The robbed that smiles 

steals something from the thief.

Mythologies are in fact the public dreams 

that move and shape societies, 

and conversely one’s own dreams are the little myths 

of the private gods, antigods, and guardian powers 

that are moving and shaping oneself: 

revelations of the actual fears, desires, aims and values 

by which one’s life is subliminally ordered.

It is the function of art
to carry us beyond speech
to experience.

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper 

but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. 

Now we have some hope of making progress.

I am too rich already, 

for my eyes mint gold.

The ego that sees a "thou" 

is not the same ego that sees an "it."

If only I had the time. 

To tell you how I climbed

Out of the darkness. 

Out of my mind.

And I come sliding 

where I've been hiding

Out of the heart of a child.

We are all born as animals 

and live the life that animals live: 

we sleep, eat, reproduce, and fight. 

There is, however, another order of living, 

which the animals do not know, 

that of awe before the mystery of being, 

the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans,' 

that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days. 

That is the birth – the Virgin Birth – 

in the heart of a properly human, spiritual life.

Love as passion; love as com-passion… 

in both the individual is torn out of himself 

and opened to an experience of rediscovered identity 

in a larger, more abiding format.

If you do follow your bliss, 

you put yourself on a kind of track 

that has been there all the while 

waiting for you, 

and the life you ought to be living 

is the one you are living

The hero's journey is a symbol that binds 

in the original sense of the word, 

two distant ideas: 

the spiritual quest of the ancients; 

with the modern search for identity.

God is a metaphor 

for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. 

It's as simple as that.

There are some things so serious 

you have to laugh at them.

Freedom is what you do 

with what's been done to you. 

Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it. 

The intellect is not the fount of poetry, 

may hinder its production, 

and cannot even be trusted to recognise poetry when it is produced. 

Art is not, like science, a logic of references 

but a release from references and rendition of immediate experience: 

a presentation of forms, images, or ideas
in such a way that they will communicate,
not primarily a thought or even a feeling, 

but an impact.