In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.

Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.

The unconscious of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the conscious.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.

The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.