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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

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Irvin D. Yalom
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: June 13
Author
Existential Therapist
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
University Teacher
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Irvin David Yalom
Thinking
Comfort
Quarry
Magic
Cheers
Though
Weakens
War
Comforts
Often
Invariably
Spirit
Cheer
Believe
Ultimately
Think
Illusion

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche's message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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.
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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future. Some have expressed the very opposite feeling--the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
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Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
Irvin D. Yalom
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door. Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
Irvin D. Yalom
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If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect
Irvin D. Yalom
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom
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When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
Irvin D. Yalom