black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

Irvin D. Yalom

Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Endlessm Still Greatest Instrument Learn Understanding Work
A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Death Deep Dissatisfaction Focus Overcome Point Strat
This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Awareness Began Brought Come Confrontation Death Due Existential Experience Increase Preciousness Think
The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Allow Each Emphasize Group InterAction Limit Patient Safer Set Therapist
In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Back Bereavement Found Gone Impressive Number Old Rather Simply Study Widow Windower
This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Blossom Costly Diminish Existence Forever Knowledge Price Shadow Some Wound
The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Both Decision Domain Finiteness Groundlessness Hard Lead Path Soak Territory
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Another Crave Dream Love More People Possess
Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anything Away Better never Nothing Offer Take
There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
IRVIN D. YALOM

Behind Borderline Label People Treat Violence
Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Away Concern Cure Dear Death Interpersonal Meet Neurotic Psychoneurious Rejection Seem Sense
Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
IRVIN D. YALOM

Heal Healer Only Truly Wound
Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Die Fullest Life Live Only Then
One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Clear Feel Important Lety Live One Thing
To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Extent Life Alone One Responsible
Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Consciousness Necessarily Ourselves Pass Pieces Place Some

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes