Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The monuments, the ideas left behind by beings like me are my greatest pleasure in life. Without books I would long ago… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“How shall we live? How to face our mortality? How to live with the knowledge that we are simply life forms, thrown… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I've always regarded therapy more as a calling than a profession, a way of life for people who care about others.” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Should we not create—should we not become—before we reproduce? Our responsibility to life is to create the higher, not to reproduce the… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“But you, like me, have good eyes. You looked too far into life. You saw that it was futile to reach wrong… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
One thing I feel clear about is that it's important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Friendship between therapist and patients is a necessary condition in the process of therapy - necessary, but not, however, sufficient. Psychotherapy is… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
I think all kinds of meanings in life transcend your self. They're linked to other generations of people around us, to our… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. Fusion eradicates anxiety in a radical fashion—by eliminating self-awareness. The… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Every breath we draw wards off the death that constantly impinges on us…. Ultimately death must triumph, for by birth it has… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“In the first place a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“We humans appear to be meaning-seeking creatures who have had the misfortune of being thrown into a world devoid of intrinsic meaning.… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Work, worry, toil and trouble are certainly the lot of almost all throughout their lives. But if all desires were fulfilled as… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The power and omnipresence of the sexual drive: Next to the love of life it shows itself here as the strongest and… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“When, on a sea voyage, the ship is brought to anchor, you go out to fetch water and gather a few roots… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living! — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“think of sex as the vital antagonist to death—isn’t the orgasm the primal spark of life? I” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“How much of life have I missed, he wondered, simply by failing to look? Or by looking and not seeing?” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I often urge patients to project themselves into the future and to consider how they can live now so that five years… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one’s mid-life crisis, to the… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Heidegger spoke of two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“ALAS, IF ALL HUMANS WERE WISE AND HAD MORE GOOD WILL THE WORLD WOULD BE A PARADISE NOW IT IS MOSTLY A HELL” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
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… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Beginning therapists must learn that there are times to sit in silence, sometimes in silent communion, sometimes simply while waiting for patients' thoughts to… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living! — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms. The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Exactly. We know that the great Goethe carried a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics in his pocket for a year. Imagine that—an entire year! And… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession. Though the public may believe that therapists guide patients systematically and sure-handedly… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
