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.
IRVIN D. YALOMLive right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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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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 -
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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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.
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 -
I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us.
IRVIN D. YALOM