The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

by C.G. Jung

The world and society in 1913 looked like this: life is completely confined and shackled. A kind of economic fatalism prevails; each individual, whether he resists it or not, is assigned a specific role and with it his interests and his character. The church is regarded as a “redemption factory” of little importance, literature as a safety valve . . . The most burning question day and night is: is there anywhere a force that is strong enough to put an end to this state of affairs? And if not, how can one escape it?5

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light.

The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.

“The highest truth is one and the same with the absurd.”

Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near-Eastern God who was nailed to the wood like a chicken marten. The courageous were overcome by a certain contempt for themselves. But their life force bade them to go on living, and they betrayed their beautiful wild Gods, their holy trees and their awe of the German forests.

A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head.

If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest.

he whose heart has not been broken over the Lord Jesus Christ drags a pagan around in himself, who holds him back from the best.”

Only Christianity with its mournful escape from the world can make people 3/4 so ponderous and sullen.”

Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed 7/8 contains the wisdom that you seek.

if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy.

“The evil one cannot make a sacrifice, he cannot sacrifice his eye, victory is with the one who can sacrifice.” 143

you must bleed for the goal of humanity. Practice solitude assiduously without grumbling so that everything will in time become ready.