What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.

At first the analysing physician could do no more than discover the unconscious material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psychoanalysis was then first and foremost an art of interpreting. Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim quickly came in view: to oblige the patient to confirm the analyst's construction from his own memory.

Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love

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.

One becomes gradually accustomed to a new realization of the nature of 'happiness': one has to assume happiness when Fate does not carry out all its threats simultaneously.

Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.