Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.

Man needs difficulties they are necessary for health.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

I have always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. 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.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.

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

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

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.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Religion is a defense against the experience of God.

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.