Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.

Irvin D. Yalom

Categorized in : Ideas Government Childhood

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

Irvin D. Yalom

accepted may helping

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.

Irvin D. Yalom

persons

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

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

Irvin D. Yalom

growth pain want

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-to-the-fullest live-your-life behinds

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

Irvin D. Yalom

height tragedy looks

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

Irvin D. Yalom

love-means growth mean

Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)

Irvin D. Yalom

healer wounded heal

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 people years

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

pieces comfort thinking

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

Living safely is dangerous.

Irvin D. Yalom

dangerous

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

treasure self forever

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

Irvin D. Yalom

curiosity people

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

trying death children

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 important feelings

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

medicine understanding self

One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.

Irvin D. Yalom

oneself order

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

Irvin D. Yalom

despair self looks

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

Irvin D. Yalom

sparks darkness two