Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.

The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

Taboo restrictions are distinct from religious or moral prohibitions. They are not based upon any divine ordinance, but may be said to impose themselves on their own account. They differ from moral prohibitions in that they fall into no system that declares quite generally that certain abstinences must be observed and gives reasons for that necessity.

One is very crazy when in love.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

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 goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.