If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D. YALOMIn 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.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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 -
To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
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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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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
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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.
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As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOM