Top 180 Irvin D. Yalom Quotes (2023 Update)
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151. “Confruntarea cu moartea iminenta poate sa propulseze omul in intelepciune si la o noua profunzime a existentei.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

152. “He was persuaded of the reality and significance of human choice; he believed that experiential learning was a far more powerful approach to personal understanding and change than an endeavor resting upon intellectual understanding; he believed that individuals have within themselves an actualizing tendency, an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

153. “The most common secret is a deep conviction of basic inadequacy – a feeling that one is basically incompetent, that one bluffs one’s way through life. Next in frequency is a deep sense of interpersonal alienation – that, despite appearances, one really does not, or cannot care for or love another person. The third most frequent category is some variety of sexual secret.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

154. “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.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

155. “Oamenii ii plac pe cei carora le pasa de ei.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

156. “But you, like me, have good eyes. You looked too far into life. You saw that it was futile to reach wrong goals and futile to set new wrong goals. Multiplications of zero are always zero!” Breuer.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

157. “When you meet someone, you know all about him. On subsequent meetings, you blind yourself to your own wisdom.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

158. “You say that imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. Tell me about this ‘elsewhere.’” “I only know that it does not lie in perishable objects. It lies not outside but within. It is the mind that determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind, that must be altered.” “What.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

159. “Absolutely, bring any kind of carrot cake you wish.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

160. “Partea intunecata a admiratiei este invidia combinata cu nemultumirea fata de modestia propriei conditii.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

161. “Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said that if he had eight hours to cut down a tree, he’d spend several of these hours sharpening his ax.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

162. “People say strange, incoherent things in such a state.” “Her words do not strike me as incoherent or random. You suggested, Doctor Breuer, that I should simply interject any comments that occur to me. Let me make an observation: I find it remarkable that you are responsible for all of your thoughts and all of your deeds, whereas she” – Nietzsche’s voice was stern, and he shook his finger at Breuer – “she, by virtue of her illness, is exonerated from everything.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

163. “They are part of the slave mentality artfully engineered by priestly propaganda. Dissect your motives deeper! You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

164. “Were you really, truly, helpful to your patients? Maybe you’ve just learned to pick patients who were going to improve on their own anyway.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

165. “He was saying, fulfill yourself, realize your potential, live boldly and fully. Then, and only then, die without regret.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

166. “One thing he resolved was not to make that one good year a bad year by grieving that it was not more than a year.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

167. “The search for meaning, much like the search for pleasure, must be conducted obliquely.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

168. “That was the first important discovery I made about Betty: she was desperately isolated, and she survived this isolation only by virtue of the sustaining myth that her intimate life was being lived elsewhere. Her friends, her circle of acquaintances, were not here, but elsewhere, in New York, in Texas, in the past. In fact, everything of importance was elsewhere. It was at this time that I first began to suspect that for Betty there was no “here” there.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

169. “Some people are wish-blocked, knowing neither what they feel nor what they want. Without opinions, without impulses, without inclinations, they become parasites on the desires of others.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

170. “Your task is to accept yourself – not to find ways to gain my acceptance.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

171. “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. Though.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

172. “Nonetheless, the past is part of your present consciousness – it forms the spectacles through which you experience the present.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

173. “Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes over flow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

174. “In the first, a tornado approached and I led her and others up a fire escape that ultimately dead-ended against a brick wall. In the second dream she and I were taking an examination and neither of us knew the answers. I welcomed these dreams because they informed the patient of my limits, my humanness, my having to grapple with the same fundamental problems of life that she did.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

175. “Lucretius’ maxim: ‘Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

176. “Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

177. “Why does the same book elicit such a range of responses? There must be something in the particular reader that leaps out to embrace the book. His life, his psychology, his image of himself. There must be something lurking deep in the mind – or, as this Freud says, the unconscious – that causes a particular reader to fall in love with a particular writer.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

178. “In general, e mai bine sa nu ataci un mecanism de aparare, decat daca acesta creeaza mai multe probleme decat solutii si daca ai ceva mai bun de pus in loc.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

179. “What has been given is a new perspective on living life, and what has been taken away is the illusion of limitless life and the belief in a personal specialness exempting us from natural law.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

180. “Ar trebui sa punem o limita dorintelor noastre, sa ne infranam poftele si sa ne stapanim furia, intotdeauna avand in minte faptul ca individul poate dobandi doar o parte infinit de mica din acele lucruri care merita posedate...”

— Irvin D. Yalom

181. “Yes, Bento had one weak spot, and Simon had discovered it. Bento was in love with books – not only the reading of books but the possession of them.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

182. “From both my personal and my professional experience, I had come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life fully.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

183. “The monuments, the ideas left behind by beings like me are my greatest pleasure in life. Without books I would long ago have been in despair.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

184. “Nu experientele in sine, ci felul in care le interpretam determina calitatea vietii noastre.”

— Irvin D. Yalom