Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

The line encapsulates a broadly Freudian idea: feelings and wishes that are repressed rather than acknowledged do not simply disappear. Instead, they persist unconsciously and may return indirectly—as symptoms, compulsions, displaced anger, or other forms of “return of the repressed.” Read this way, the quote warns against mistaking silence or suppression for resolution. Its enduring popularity reflects a common therapeutic intuition: naming and working through emotion can reduce its power, whereas denial can intensify it and distort how it later emerges. Even so, the aphoristic phrasing is more modern self-help in tone than Freud’s typical clinical prose.