Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
IRVIN D. YALOMIf you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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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.
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It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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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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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
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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.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
IRVIN D. YALOM