The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

A patient doesn't select his physical ailments. They happen to him. You could just as well ask when you are eaten by a crocodile, 'How did you select that crocodile?'. Nonsense. He has selected you. The patient doesn't even select the symptoms unconsciously. That is an extraordinary exaggeration of the subject to say he was choosing such things. They get him.

Every victory contains the germ of future defeat.

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts... the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.