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.
IRVIN D. YALOMAbsolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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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.
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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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There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
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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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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
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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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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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You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.
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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.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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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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What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
IRVIN D. YALOM