Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if sadness did not balance it. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Psychotherapy has taught us that in the final reckoning it is not knowledge, not technical skill, that has a curative effect, but the personality of the doctor.

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

If meaninglessness were absolutely preponderant, the meaningless ends of life would vanish to an increasing degree with each step in our development. But that is— or seems to me— not the case. Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is- or has-meaning and meaninglessness.

The man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Man cannot stand a meaninless life.

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.

In actual life, it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire.