I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.

The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

I prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is cruel. But to be merciless is the privilege of civilized humans.

Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill.

To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

A father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life.

There is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and ... if that procedure is employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning and which can be inserted at an assignable point in the mental activities of waking life.

Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact they are feeling the loss of the person they love.

I had the greatest respect for the authorities of my day--until I studied things for myself, and came to my own conclusions.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.