Quote

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

Irvin D. Yalom

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Requires
Meaning
Universe
Doe
Find

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Live your life to the fullest and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom