We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
The dream unites the grossest contradictions, permits impossibilities, sets aside the knowledge that influences us by day, and exposes us as ethically and morally obtuse.
It is unavoidable that if we learn more about a great man’s life, we shall also hear of occasions on which he has done no better than we, and has in fact come nearer to us as a human being.
A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact they are feeling the loss of the person they love.
If youth knew; if age could.
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
I think that it is a good plan to bear in mind that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis.
All that matters is love and work.
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one’s dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people’s behavior, it would all make sense.
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.