Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.
Irvin D. YalomIf I'm among men who don't agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself. A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively. Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it's absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
Irvin D. YalomThe act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
Irvin D. YalomSome 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. YalomLife 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 effectโthe salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
Irvin D. Yalom