When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
IRVIN D. YALOMI 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.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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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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Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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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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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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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.
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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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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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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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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
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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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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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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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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!
IRVIN D. YALOM