Irvin D. Yalom Quotes About Awareness

Quotes about: Awareness

• In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Loss, Thinking, Numbers

• 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

• 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

• If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Ambition, People, Time On Earth

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