Irvin D. Yalom Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Men, Choices, Spirit

  40 Copy quote

• Mature love is loving, not being loved.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Love Is, Mature Love, Mature

  37 Copy quote

• To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Responsible

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, p.357, Basic Books

  8 Copy quote

• What? 'Borderline patients play games'? That what you said? Ernest, you'll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That's exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis. 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)

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Real, Thinking, Games

  25 Copy quote

• Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it's like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Long, Needs, Sides

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  49 Copy quote

• The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Pain, Doors, Somewhere Else

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.53, John Wiley & Sons

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Dream, Two, People

  21 Copy quote

• Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Ideas, May, Physicality

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.15, Basic Books

  17 Copy quote

• The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Dream, Disappointment, People

  40 Copy quote

• A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Meaning Of Life, Derivatives, Forgotten

  Irvin D. Yalom, Molyn Leszcz (2008). “The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy”, p.31, Basic Books

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  46 Copy quote

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

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Marriage, Spirit, Entourage

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  14 Copy quote

• If I'm among men who don't agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself. 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. Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it's absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Men, Ignorant, Way

  7 Copy quote

• 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!

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Children, Loneliness, Needs

  14 Copy quote

• Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Doe, Find Me, Universe

  37 Copy quote

• Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Have Faith, Flow, Good Things

  8 Copy quote

• I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Cheer, War, Believe

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

  8 Copy quote

• The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Decision, Anxiety, Path

  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.110, Hachette UK

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Hunting, Robins, Would Be

  13 Copy quote

• One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control--to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic. The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient's control over every interaction.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Powerful, Thinking, Might

  Irvin D. Yalom (1983). “Inpatient Group Psychotherapy”, Basic Books

  12 Copy quote

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