To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.

All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person.

Innately, children seem to have little true realistic anxiety. They will run along the brink of water, climb on the window sill, play with sharp objects and with fire, in short, do everything that is bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them, that is wholly the result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the instructive experiences themselves.