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.
IRVIN D. YALOMMarriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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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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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.
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Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
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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.
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
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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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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
IRVIN D. YALOM






