“I can understand modern works of art only as idols from the underworld, and they become accessible to me only through a knowledge of the psychology of the unconscious. They do not affect me aesthetically. It may very well be that my attitude is that of a Philistine, but God knows I can’t find them beautiful. Perhaps other centuries will, in which case I am thankful to the Creator that man doesn’t live for 200 years, otherwise he would suddenly find himself in an age in which he would choke to death.”
“Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. – Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, – a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:– and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon”
“The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.”
“The psychologist cannot avoid coming to grips with contemporary history, even if his soul shrinks from the political uproar, the lying propaganda and the jarring speeches of demagogues. We need not mention his duties as a citizen, which confront him with a similar task.”
“With more foreboding than real knowledge, most people feel afraid of the menacing power that lies fettered in each of us, only waiting for the magic word to release it from the spell. This magic word, which always ends in ‘ism,’ works most successfully with those who have the least access to their interior selves and have strayed the furthest from their instinctual roots into the truly chaotic world of collective consciousness.”
Vlado Šolc
