Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
IRVIN D. YALOMIn a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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 -
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 -
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.
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 -
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 -
When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
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 -
Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
IRVIN D. YALOM