Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

SHOW detailed search and navigation | Quotes | References | JoAnn

One | Circle | Center | Opposites | Archetypes | Good | Ethics | Living Wholeness | Random

Center
Click to randomize

1 "Every little spark of beauty's burning is but a fragment of the central fire." Sister M. Angelita, 'Lesser Fires' (20th century) The Book of Catholic Quotations (John Chapin, Editor)

2 "I think of grass – you know, every two weeks a chap comes out with a lawnmower and cuts it down. Suppose the grass were to say, 'Well, for Pete's sake, what's the use if you keep getting cut down this way?' Instead, it keeps on growing. That's the sense of the energy of the center. That's the meaning of the image of the Grail, of the inexhaustible fountain, of the source." The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell)

3 "The presence of the Incarnate Word penetrates everything, as a universal element. It shines at the common heart of things, as a centre that is infinitely intimate to them." Science and Christ (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

4 "The accentuation of the centre is a fundamental idea in alchemy. According to Michael Maier, the centre contains the 'indivisible point', which is simple, indestructible, and eternal." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

5 "That Jacob Boehme should obtain a glimpse into the center of nature by means of a sunbeam reflected in a tin platter is understandable." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

6 "Every substance is held up by a series of Substances-of-Substance that support one another, step by step, up to the Supreme Centre at which everything converges." Science and Christ (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

7 "He is to be found in the depths of our being, at the center, at the ground of our being, perceived by the searching light of faith or the knowing embrace of love….He is within. And there we are so one with Him that we are communion, union, prayer." Centering Prayer, Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form (M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.)

8 "The circular sea with no outlet, which perpetually replenishes itself by means of a spring bubbling up in its centre, is to be found in [the writings of] Nicholas of Cusa as an allegory of God." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

9 "The individual who reaches out from the seemingly separated center of being can, if he will, contact the cosmic center of life. From there he may reach out to the periphery of all reality as easily as the miracle of the radiant, expanding mind of God penetrates the universe with light." Understanding Yourself: A Spiritual Approach to Self-Discovery and Soul-Awareness (Mark L. and Elizabeth Clare Prophet)

10 "Black Elk's word, 'The center is everywhere', is matched by a statement from a hermetic, early medieval text, 'The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers': 'God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

11 "God is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and everything in Him." The Ancient Wisdom (Annie Besant)

12 "However vast the divine milieu may be, it is in reality a centre. It therefore has the properties of a centre, and above all the absolute and final power to unite (and consequently to complete) all beings within its breast." The Divine Milieu (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

13 "All of Chinese thinking – Confucianism, Taoism, as well as Buddhism – contains the idea that in the course of life, man will shape harmoniously those psychic and physical predispositions that he received as capital assets by unifying them and giving them form from within a center." Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change (Richard Wilhelm)

14 "When I began drawing mandalas, I saw that everything, all the paths I had been following, all the steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point – namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation." Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Carl Jung (edited by Aniela Jaffe))

15 "The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." As Above, So Below: Paths to Spiritual Renewal in Daily Life (Ronald S. Miller and the editors of New Age Journal)

16 "The sphere is a whole, and hence it underlies the symbolic significance of all those images which partake of this wholeness, from the idea of the mystic 'Centre' to that of the world and eternity, or , more particularly, of the world-soul. In neo-platonic philosophy, the soul is explicitly related to the shape of the sphere, and the substance of the soul is deposited as quintessence around the concentric spheres of the four Elements. The same is true of the primordial man of Plato's Timaeus….Another important association is that of perfection and felicity. The absence of corners and edges is analogous to the absence of inconveniences, difficulties, and obstacles." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

17 "The passion for the essence of Good or of Beauty is a movement toward the centre, and it entails discipline, purification, contemplation, and entry into a spiritual communion. There is, moreover, when transcending Love has been attained, a return movement of the spirit, so that signs of the Eternal are detected in people and creatures and the manifestations of nature." Men Who Have Walked With God (Sheldon Cheney)

18 "What is the work of works for man if not to establish, in and by each one of us, an absolutely original centre in which the universe reflects itself in a unique and inimitable way? And those centres are our very selves and personalities." The Phenomenon of Man (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

19 "There is a saying in China that the nature of man is found there, in the center, where emotions are not yet manifest. In this center is the potentiality of everything to come." Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change (Richard Wilhelm)

20 "The personal center of the individual is essentially the Self (atman), which is beyond the particularities of physical-psychic-mental life or of any changeable things or of change as such." The Unity of Reality (Michael vonBruck)

21 "The mystic 'Centre' [is] the non-apparent point which is the irradiating origin of every branch and shoot of the great Tree of the World." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

22 "The unconscious can be reached and expressed only by symbols, and art, myth, dream, and fantasy, with their symbolic propensities, are effective psychopomps, leading the mind to an anamnesis of the origins of psychic life. The result of this anamnesis (an 'unforgetting' or rediscovery) is, on the one hand, an accession to power and vitality resultant from this integration. On the other hand, the mind experiences a perception of something akin to essential form and divinity at the heart of the creation and begins to sense an underlying acausal pattern of continuous creation. The two aspects coalesce in spontaneous images, often taking the form of a mandala and emphasizing a unifying centrality surrounded by a symmetrical quaternary or circular structure suggesting a microcosmic-macrocosmic identity between creature and the cosmic creation." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

23 "The word goes forth from soul to form. 'Both sides are one. There is no war, no difference and no isolation. The warring forces seem to war from the point at which you stand. Move on a pace. See truly with the opened eye of inner vision and you will find, not two but one; not war but peace; not isolation but a heart which rests upon the center. Thus shall the beauty of the Lord shine forth. The hour is now.'" Esoteric Psychology II (Alice A. Bailey)

24 "Matter is immersed within the Center of Godhead." The Child Within Us Lives!, A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics (William Samuel)

25 "We never actually get away from the center and circumference where God put us." The Child Within Us Lives!, A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics (William Samuel)

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite