Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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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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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If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
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It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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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 -
The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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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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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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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
IRVIN D. YALOM






