Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

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

  Irvin D. Yalom

  May, Helping, Accepted

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• Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Persons

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• If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Pain, Growth, Want

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• Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other. We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Growth, Wish, Needs

  Irvin D. Yalom (2011). “The Gift Of Therapy (Revised And Updated Edition): An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients”, p.179, Hachette UK

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• Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Live Your Life, Live Your Life To The Fullest, Behinds

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• If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Tragedy, Looks, Height

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• To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Mean, Growth, Love Means

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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. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Memories, Years, People

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• Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Heal, Healer, Wounded

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• Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. 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

  Self, Forever, Treasure

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.14, John Wiley & Sons

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• Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. Rather, love is a way of being, a "giving to," not a 'falling for"; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Falling In Love, Passion, Love Is

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.20, Basic Books

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• Living safely is dangerous.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Dangerous

  "Fictional character: Friedrich Nietzsche". "When Nietzsche Wept", www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• 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. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Thinking, Comfort, Pieces

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• When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  People, Curiosity

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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. 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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Death, Children, Trying

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.17, John Wiley & Sons

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• 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. Yalom

  Regret, Feelings, Important

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• If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Way, Admire, Behave

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Self, Despair, Looks

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• Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Two, Darkness, Sparks

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• Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Self, Medicine, Understanding

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “The Spinoza Problem: A Novel”, p.167, Basic Books

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• ... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Giving Up, Past, Giving

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.92, John Wiley & Sons

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• The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Men, Choices, Spirit

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• Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Offers, Ifs

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.151, Basic Books

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• Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Thinking, Life Is, Miserable

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• Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Life, Important, Therapeutic

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.36, Basic Books

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