Liz Greene Quotes

“A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. The fate of humanity is in his hands.”

“A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”

“As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to go towards the accomplishment of its true destinies.”

“Astrology's roots lie in an ancient world-view which perceived the universe as a single living organism, animated by divine order and intelligence.”

“Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. Under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.”

“Once Ptolemy and Plato, yesterday Newton, today Einstein, and tomorrow new faiths, new beliefs, and new dimensions.”

“Plato is my friend, but truth is a better friend.”

“The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't.

If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”

“If you identify very strongly with a particular set of qualities in your own nature, then when the opposite surfaces or appears in someone else, then the result is often repugnance. It's frequently a deep moral repugnance, a real distaste of what that other person stands for.

It isn't just a casual disinterest or dislike. The shadow arouses anger far out of proportion to the situation. You don't just ignore the fanatic with the leaflets on the street corner. You want to beat in his head.

Why should there be this kind of anger and repulsion? If you penetrate at all deeply into the feelings around a confrontation with the shadow, you will see that the shadow is experienced as a terrible threat.

It is a kind of death to allow the shadow any recognition or acceptance. If you are prepared to permit even an inch of tolerance or compassion or value, then the whole edifice of the ego is threatened.

Of course the more rigid and entrenched you are in particular attitudes and a particular self-image, the more threatening the shadow becomes.”

“Individuals blind to the sexual opposite within them, be they men or women, never realise that the partner they choose is chosen because he or she bears some resemblance to the anima or animus.

The anger and hurt felt at the 'true discovery' of the partner's failings is really anger and hurt directed at oneself; and this would become apparent, were one to see the dark figure within one's own unconscious impelling one into a particular relationship.

Like always attracts like; rather than railing at the partner, one should take a long, close look at one's own psychic makeup. But it is easier to complain bitterly – to analysts, marriage counsellors, and also astrologers – that yet another relationship has collapsed and yet another partner has proved to be a bad choice.

It is also fashionable to blame this on the failures of the parent of the opposite sex; but the past continues to live within a person not only because in some way it is part of his own substance, but also because he permits it to do so.”

“When a disastrous relationship occurs once, we may fool ourselves into believing it is chance; when it occurs twice, it has become a pattern, and a pattern is an unmistakable indication that the anima or animus is at work in the unconscious, propelling the helpless ego into relationships or situations which are baffling, painful, and frighteningly repetitive.

Again, it is much wiser to look within oneself for the source of the pattern, rather than at the inherent failure of the opposite sex. For these destructive patterns are the psyche's way of making itself known, although great effort is often required to fulfil its demand for transformation.

And great sacrifices also are required – of such precious commodities as one's pride, one's self-image, one's self-righteousness.”

“A relationship can push us into having to confront certain areas of life, even if natally we are neither predisposed nor well equipped to cope in that area.”

“Every sign secretly contains its opposite.”

“If a pattern of triangles keeps repeating, then it is a very strong message, and we need to listen to what it is trying to tell us.”

“The 8th is also the gateway into the underworld, the transitional place where we discover that we are not masters of our lives, but must bow to more archaic, primal needs and patterns that are larger and older than any individual.”

“This composite placement is not saying that the relationship is good or bad, nor that it is in pain. It is merely stating a fact: the full potential of the relationship can never be reached because something was irrevocably damaged long before the two individuals were born.”

“I have found that fate is as liquid and elusive a word as love. Plato thought they were the same. Novalis wrote that fate and soul are two names for the same principle.”

“I stood at a crossroads and fate came to meet me.”

“People with the Moon in hard aspect to Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto may still harbour a deep fear that they will destroy or lose those they love. They may have — way in the back of their minds — the idea that if they love something they will destroy it.

It could be that as children they felt angry towards the mother and then the next day she fell ill or had to go away for some reason, and the children are left thinking that they have caused that. Or sometimes this pattern is there for children who have been breast fed and then for some reason they lose the breast — the milk dries up or the mother becomes ill.

These children may be left feeling that their greed exhausted the breast. Later in life, they still have a nebulous fear that those they love will die, or leave them, or be driven away.”

“Sometimes 'inner work' requires an act of loyalty rather than an effort at transformation. Knowing what makes us happy (Venus), expressing this to others (Mercury), and standing firm in the face of opposition (Mars) may seem very petty against the more profound concerns of the outer world.

Yet in their own way, these things are equally profound, for it is these small acts of self-affirmation that define the ego and ultimately the capacity to mediate the heavy planets with their destructive and transformative potentials.”