“There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)”

You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.

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

The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.

I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.

One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.

Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.

Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.

The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.

We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.

If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.

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.

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.

Behind us: the unknown. Before us: the secret.

The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way.

For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.

I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing.

You’re going to have to drive off the road and park behind thoses bushes,” i instructed vee. Vee leaned forward, peering into the darkness. “is that a ditch between me and the bushes ?” “it’s not very deep. Trust me, we’ll clear it.” “looks deep to me. This is a neon we’re talking about, not a hummer.

IF YOU WOULD BE FREE OF GREED, FIRST YOU HAVE TO LEAVE EGOTISM BEHIND. THE BEST MENTAL EXERCISE FOR RELINQUISHING EGOTISM IS CONTEMPLATING IMPERMANENCE.

We say that the sun is behind the clouds, but actually it is not the sun but the city from which we view it that is behind the clouds. If we realized that the sun is never behind the clouds we might have a different attitude toward the whole thing.