The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
IRVIN D. YALOMPsychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.
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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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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
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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.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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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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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
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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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The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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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 people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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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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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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I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
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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. YALOM