I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.

Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The word "belief" is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

A "scream" is always just that - a noise and not music.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.