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.
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Living safely is dangerous.
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There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us.
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
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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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Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
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Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.
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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
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A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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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.
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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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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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 thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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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.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
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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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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM