Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
IRVIN D. YALOMLife is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.
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Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.
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Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM