Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
IRVIN D. YALOMI must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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 -
There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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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