We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.
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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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.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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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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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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Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.
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What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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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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Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
IRVIN D. YALOM