Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavoury as gross sensuality.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.

It had become clear to me, in a flash of illumination, that for me the only possible goal was psychiatry. Here alone the two currents of my interest could flow together and in a united stream dig their own bed. Here was the empirical field common to biological and spiritual facts, which I had everywhere sought and nowhere found. Here at last was the place where the collision of nature and spirit became a reality.

But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning — for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.

Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.

Most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.