Sigmund Freud was so fond of smoking that he was somewhat irritated when men around him did not smoke. Consequently nearly all who formed the inner circle became more or less passionate cigar smokers.
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.
A man who is “ill-adjusted to the world” is always on the point of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.
I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.
After all, it is better to be a good bourgeois like the others than a bad bohemian, a false aristocrat, or a second-rate intellectual.
Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.
The real lost souls don’t wear their hair long and play guitars. They have crew cuts and trained minds, sign on for research in biological warfare, and don’t give their parents a moment’s worry.
It’s terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It’s particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.
I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
To be out of harmony with one’s surroundings is of course a misfortune, but it is not always a misfortune to be avoided at all costs. Where the environment is stupid or prejudiced or cruel, it is a sign of merit to be out of harmony with it.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.
Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?
Originality and a feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
No.
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
