Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
IRVIN D. YALOMAll these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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. YALOM -
Mature love is loving, not being loved.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
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The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
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.
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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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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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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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM