Top 280 Irvin D. Yalom Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Too often, we therapists neglect our personal relationships. Our work becomes our life.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

152. “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

153. “Fiecare alegere presupune o renuntare, si fiecare renuntare ne face constienti de limitare si temporalitate.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

154. “Just as the bones, flesh, intestines and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes the sight of man endurable, so the agitations and passions of the soul are enveloped in vanity; it is the skin of the soul.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

155. “It’s often pretty hard to speak to others about my cancer. I have a number of pet peeves. Many folks are overly solicitous. They can’t do enough for you. There’s that Kaiser nurse who keeps asking “Isn’t there someone who can drive you here?” And some people are too prying. I think they are voyeuristic and attempt to satisfy their morbid curiosity about having cancer. I don’t like that and have sometimes wanted to say, “Go get your own damn fatal illness.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

156. “That just seems to be the way we’re built.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

157. “I often feel caught in a dilemma: on the one hand I wish to be more natural with you and yet, on the other hand, because I feel that you’re easily wounded and that you give my comments inordinate power, I feel I must consider my wording very, very carefully.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

158. “The sentiment that one “should have done something more” reflects, it seems to me, an underlying wish to control the uncontrollable. After all, if one is guilty about not having done something that one should have done, then it follows that there is something that could have been done – a comforting thought that decoys us from our pathetic helplessness in the face of death.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

160. “Confruntarea cu moartea iminenta poate sa propulseze omul in intelepciune si la o noua profunzime a existentei.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

161. “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

162. “Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues – all are lost when image is crammed into language.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

163. “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

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

165. “All I can do in one session is to be real, to leap into the patient’s life, to offer observations in the hope that he’ll be able to open doors and explore some new parts of himself in his ongoing therapy.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

166. “If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

168. “A great many of our patients have conflicts in the realm of intimacy, and obtain help in therapy sheerly through experiencing an intimate relationship with the therapist. Some fear intimacy because they believe there is something basically unacceptable about them, something repugnant and unforgivable, Given this, the act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

176. “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

177. “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

178. “Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer. Beware of stripping a patient who can’t bear the chill of reality. And don’t exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: you’re no match for it. The thirst for religion is too strong, its roots too deep, its cultural reinforcement too powerful.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

184. “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

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

— Irvin D. Yalom

186. “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

187. “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

188. “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

189. “No matter how close each of us becomes to another, there remains a final, unbridgeable gap; each of us enters existence alone and must depart from it alone. The existential conflict is thus the tension between our awareness of our absolute isolation and our wish for contact, for protection, our wish to be part of a larger whole.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

193. “Freedom means that one is responsible for one’s own choices, actions, one’s own life situation. Though.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

194. “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

195. “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

196. “To summarize, the rationale for using the here-and-now is that human problems are largely relational and that an individual’s interpersonal problems will ultimately be manifested in the here-and-now of the therapy encounter.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

197. “Above all, the therapist must be prepared to go wherever the patient goes, do all that is necessary to continue building trust and safety in the relationship.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

198. “My friend,” he whispered, “I cannot tell you how to live differently because, if I did, you would still be living another’s design.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

199. “Life cannot be lived nor can death be faced without anxiety. Anxiety is guide as well as enemy and can point the way to authentic existence. The task of the therapist is to reduce anxiety to comfortable levels and then to use this existing anxiety to increase a patient’s awareness and vitality.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

200. “While there is no solution to existential isolation, therapists must discourage false solutions. One’s efforts to escape isolation can sabotage one’s relationships with other people. Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation.”

— Irvin D. Yalom