More from Irvin D. Yalom
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom Living safely is dangerous.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin 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.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom 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.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom 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.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom 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.
Irvin D. YalomIrvin D. Yalom
Original quotes
From our community writers
Thoughts on a tapestry. Colour or black and white. A brush, a pen, A flash of light. Ideas flowing soon, about to take flight.
Gerard GleesonGerard Gleeson Like deep water, she was silent. His lips tasted of salt. He was both addicting and bitter all at once.
MoomerMoomer Always show kindness and love to others. Your words might be filling the empty places in someone else heart.
Alexander KandovAlexander Kandov And I would lie on your chest for hours and dream about the world in your arms but your thoughts were in another world.
Ani ShahverdyanAni Shahverdyan Your smile and your laughter lit my whole world.
Ranata SuzukiRanata Suzuki Often all we can do is breathe, even that can be hard sometimes.
Julia Kellogg HenryJulia Kellogg Henry I am addicted to your madness drunk on your toxic love. Infect me with your poison, lets make storms rage above.
Laura Natoli-KearneyLaura Natoli-Kearney The more you fail, recover, and improve, the better you are as a person.
Laura CleggLaura Clegg
Meet the writers
More on anxiety
Mum and dad were very much friends, and up to life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up, they just taught me to be me.
Kate WinsletKate Winslet Though poor and anxious to work, I refused to alter anything. They would take me as I looked or not at all. Eventually I profited by looking like myself and not like what was fashionable years ago with certain film technicians in Rome.
Sophia LorenSophia Loren Ghosting is an expression of extreme anxiety and fear of intimacy. As much as it hurts to be on the receiving end, please know it was never about you.
Sheleana AiyanaSheleana Aiyana Anticipation is anxiety. I have always had a very extreme anxiety thing.
Truman CapoteTruman Capote Anxiety is living with an apple on your head and you imagine that everyone you know stands watching with a bow to shoot an arrow at it.
Stephanie BriarStephanie Briar When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.
Steven WrightSteven Wright Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
Thomas MertonThomas Merton When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long.
Deepika PadukoneDeepika Padukone