Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

This line is widely circulated as a summary of Freud’s view that a mature life is organized around two fundamental capacities: to form loving attachments and to engage in productive work. In psychoanalytic terms, both domains require the ego to negotiate instinctual drives, reality constraints, and internalized ideals—transforming raw desire into stable relationships and socially meaningful activity. The aphorism also implies a yardstick for psychological health: not happiness as constant pleasure, but the ability to sustain intimacy and purpose despite conflict, loss, and limitation. Even if the exact wording is doubtful, the idea aligns with Freud’s broader emphasis on sublimation, attachment, and the demands of civilization.