Life Truly Begins at 40, Up until then, you are just...

We were born at a given moment in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and season in which we are born. The healthy man does not torture others; generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

People grow like plants some in light, others in shade. Many need shade, not light. If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's. Where your fear is, there is your task. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Thinking is difficult; that's why most people judge.

Children learn by an adult's example, not by their words. We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate; it oppresses. Man cannot stand a meaningless life. Woe to those who live by example there is no life in them. If you live by example, you live the life of that example, but who will live your life if not yourself? So live your own life.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal, which robs the second half of life of its purpose. The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable; they can only be outgrown. Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking—the one is the shadow of the other. You are what you do, not what you say you'll do. The shoe that fits one person pinches another there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits. For better to come, the good must stand aside. You are not what happened to you; you are what you chose to become. The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents. To ask the right question is already half the solution to a problem. The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Man can endure the hardest trials if he sees meaning in them; the whole difficulty lies in creating that meaning. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. What we walk away from, shy away from, and ostensibly forget, is dangerously close to us and will eventually return with redoubled force. In each of us, there is another whom we do not know. Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away; invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest, and listen to what she wants to say. Knowledge rests not upon truth alone but upon error also. Every human life contains a potential. If that potential is not fulfilled, then that life is wasted.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself or from holding certain views that others find inadmissible. The soul needs your recklessness and natural wisdom. He who is afraid needs dependence, as a weakened man needs support. If you are a gifted person, it doesn't mean you have something; it means you can give something away. Life really does begin at 40; up until then, you are just doing research.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. If an attractive woman is single, it’s because she’s smarter than everyone else. The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Don’t rush to help those who haven’t asked you to because not everyone who is drowning needs a hand some want to drown. Don’t hold on to anyone who’s leaving; otherwise, you won’t meet the one who’s coming.

Most people consider themselves very knowledgeable in psychology for one simple reason: psychology, for them, comes down to what they know about themselves. The least of things with meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will undergo it and carry it through. The change must begin with one individual. It might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and wait for somebody else to do what he has to do himself.

Shame is a soul-eating emotion. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic is alcohol, morphine, or idealism. Life is the time to let go of an over dominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being but by integration of the contraries.

I have chosen these quotes from Carl Jung, which we hope will help you understand yourself better. He was one of the first psychologists who introduced the idea of analytical psychology and popularized it to the world.