Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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
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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.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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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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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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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.
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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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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOM