A strong egoism is a protection.

When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us.

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

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

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