Theodor Reik Quotes

Anybody possessing analytical knowledge recognizes the fact that the world is full of actions performed by people exclusively to their detriment and without perceptible advantage, although their eyes were open

Even the wisest men make fools of themselves about women, and even the most foolish women are wise about men

He who licks his wounds cannot be affectionate

Romance fails us and so do friendships, but the relationship of parent and child, less noisy than all the others, remains indelible and indestructible, the strongest relationship on earth

…if you cannot hate you cannot love. If you cannot bite you can not kiss. If you cannot curse you cannot bless. Who cannot be a good hater will be a poor lover.

The fear to love reaches sometimes the depth of a panic, resembles sometimes the fear to die.

He [Freud] often said three things were impossible to fulfill completely; healing, education, governing. He limited his goals in analytic treatment to brining the patient to the point where he could work for a living and learn to love.

Women in general want to be loved for what they are and men for what they accomplish.

The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-forgetting.

There is need of variety in sex, but not in love.

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.

We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death.

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.

The original restrictive meaning of sexual aberration which derives satisfaction from a passive relation to the partner has been retained. Masochism, however, has come to mean also a particular attitude toward life or a definite type of social behavior: of enjoying one's own suffering or one's own helplessness. The word has outgrown its narrower, sexual meaning and become desexualized.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.

Women see through each other, but they rarely look into themselves.

In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.

Work and love; these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis.