“Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.”

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.

… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.

It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!

If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.

If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.

When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.

Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.

When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?

The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.

You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.

Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.

Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.

We are the beggars of the world, financing our lavish lifestyle by selling our family heirlooms and by enslaving our progeny with the need to service the debt.

Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.

Planning other people’s actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them.

Pleasure admitted in undue degree, enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral.

Divine love does not weigh down, nor carry his servant captive and enslaved to the lowest depths, but raises him, supports him and magnifies him above all liberty whatsoever.

Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!