When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
IRVIN D. YALOMSome piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
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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 never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Living safely is dangerous.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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.
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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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 -
Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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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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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