Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
IRVIN D. YALOMNever take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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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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There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
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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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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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?
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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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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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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.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
IRVIN D. YALOM






