We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious.

If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman; she will be all ears.

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.

Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.

I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives with memories of their accident. Perhaps they are more concerned with not thinking of it.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.