Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

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.

There are no mistakes.

Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.