"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
"In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am."
"I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life."
"Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health."
"The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it."
"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."
"Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?"
"Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off."
"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves."
"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."
"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more."
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
"Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness."
"Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose."
"The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown."
"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."
"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious."
"Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble."
"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."
"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."
