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.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
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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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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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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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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.
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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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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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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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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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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.
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All these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.
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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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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.
IRVIN D. YALOM