Irvin D. Yalom

“Why, you may ask, take on this unpleasant, frightening subject? Why stare into the sun? Why not follow the advice of the venerable dean of American psychiatry, Adolph Meyer, who, a century ago, cautioned psychiatrists, 'Don't scratch where it doesn't itch'? Why grapple with the most terrible, the darkest and most unchangeable aspect of life? ... Death, however, DOES itch. It itches all the time; it is always with us, scratching at some inner door, whirring softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.”

“...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.”

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

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

“Mature love is loving, not being loved.”

“To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.”

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

“... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.”

“You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.”

“Mormintele mă linişteau cumva, îmi permiteau să banalizez banalul din viaţa mea.”

“Visele sunt ca un mister incantator, care implora sa fie inteles[...]Visele sunt doar deseuri intamplatoare, excretii nocturne ale mintii”

“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.”

“Tanrıyı öldürürseniz, onun tapınağına sığınmaktan da vazgeçmek, orayı terk etmek zorundasınız!”

“Herkes aynı yemeği yemekten bıkar. Her güzel kadının olduğu yerde, bir de onu düzmekten bıkmış zavallı bir erkek vardır!”

“Ubijeđen sam da su, u tim zanosima prvih susreta, Dan i žena pogrešno tumačili ono što u vidjeli jedno u drugom. Svako od njih je vidjeo odraz sopstvenog preklinjanja, ranjen pogled i pogrešno ga protumačio kao želju i ispunjenost. Oboje su bill ptići sa slomljenim krilima, koji su tražili da lete privijeni uz drugu pticu sa slomljenim krilima. Ljudi koje se osjećaju isprazno nikada se ne izliječe stapanjem sa drugom nepotpunom osobom. Naprotiv, dvije ptice sa slomljenim krilima spojene u jednu će letjeti nespretno. Nikakva količina strpljenja im neće pomoći da lete; i, konačno, svaki mora biti poduprt različitim stvarima, a rane se stavljaju u odvojene udlage.”

“(...) Arthur ne aminteşte adesea (şi lui însuşi) că emoţia are puterea de a ascunde şi de a falsifica cunoaşterea; că lumea întreagă capătă un aspect senin atunci când avem motive să ne bucurăm şi unul întunecat şi posomorât atunci când ne copleşeşte părerea de rău”

“İnsan dostunu düşmanından daha zor affediyor.”

“İnsanlar vedalaşırken genellikle olayın sürekliliğini inkar eden sözler dile getirmeyi severler. Birbirlerinden ayrılırken ‘Auf Wiedersehen’, yani tekrar görüşene kadar, derler. Yeni bir araya gelme planları yapmakta çok aceleci davranırlar, ama bunu unutmakta daha acelecidirler. Ben bu tür insanlardan değilim. Gerçeği söylemeyi tercih ederim ki gerçek de büyük bir ihtimalle bir daha karşılaşmayacak olduğumuzdur.”

“Ölümün son iyiliği, bir daha ölümün olmamasıdır.”

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

“Sterven is echter de eenzaamste gebeurtenis van het leven. We worden er niet alleen door van anderen afgescheiden, maar daarnaast stelt het ons ook bloot aan een nog angstaanjagender vorm van eenzaamheid: het is een scheiding van de wereld zelf.”

“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.”

“Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.”

“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”

“Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.”

“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!”

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

“The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.”

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

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

“Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.”

“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”

“من نیز با پیروی از فروید اغلب رؤیاپرداز را کوتوله ی فربه و سرحالی تصور می کنم که در دل جنگل دندریت ها و اکسون ها، زندگی خوبی برای خود دست و پا کرده است. روزها می خوابد ولی شب ها، با وزوز و همهمه ی سیناپس ها سر از نازبالشش برمی دارد، نوشابه ی عسلی اش را می نوشد و با تنبلی، رشته ی رؤیاهای میزبانش را درهم می تند... به قصه های مضحک پریان شبیه است. درست همان انسان انگاری رایج قرن نوزدهم. همان خطای متداول فروید در عینی نمایاندن ساختارهای انتزاعی ذهن و مبدل ساختنشان به جن و پری هایی مستقل و مختار. فقط کاش من هم باورش نداشتم! ”

“Obwohl uns die Physikalität des Todes zerstört, rettet uns die Idee des Todes.”

“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)”

“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)”

“Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)”

“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.”

“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?”

“The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.”