Top 280 Irvin D. Yalom Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tasted it?”

— Irvin D. Yalom

252. “Do I in any way profit from this misery?” Nietzsche finally responded. “I have reflected on that very question for many years. Perhaps I do profit. In two ways. You suggest that the attacks are caused by stress, but sometimes the opposite is true – that the attacks dissipate stress. My work is stressful. It requires me to face the dark side of existence, and the migraine attack, awful as it is, may be a cleansing convulsion that permits me to continue.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

253. “Analiza regretlor duce mereu discutia intr-o zona mai profunda.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

254. “I’ve always regarded therapy more as a calling than a profession, a way of life for people who care about others.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

255. “Penny’s fear of her own death, while not explicitly emerging in our therapy, manifested itself indirectly. For example, she was greatly concerned about “time running out” – too little time left to get an education, to take a vacation, to leave behind some tangible legacy; and too little time for us to finish our work together.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

256. “I always say toward the end of the hour: “Let’s take a minute to look at how you and I are doing today.” Or, “Any feelings about the way we are working and relating?” Or, “Before we stop, shall we take a look at what’s going on in this space between us?” Or if I perceive difficulties, I might say something like: “Before we stop, let’s check into our relationship today. You’ve talked.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

257. “There is something comforting about a stone marked, presumably for eternity, with the name of your loved one. I.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

258. “Psychiatric cure is the “expanding of the self to such final effect that the patient as known to himself is much the same person as the patient behaving to others.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

259. “Better for me, much better, if you had been direct, if you had sent some message from your heart to mine. Nothing monumental, maybe just some simple inquiry into my situation or state of mind, or, Christ, you might have simply said, ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re dying.’ How hard would that have been?”

— Irvin D. Yalom

260. “Iata ce-am invatat despre cancer: iti arata ce inseamna o boala incurabila si apoi te azvarle inapoi in lume, in propria ta viata, cu toata placerea si dulceata ei, pe care le simti acum mai mult ca niciodata. Si stii ca ti s-a dat ceva si ti s-a luat ceva.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

261. “Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

262. “I try always to keep in mind that we are all sentenced to an existence filled with inescapable misery – an existence which none of us would choose if we knew the facts ahead of time. In that sense we are all, as Schopenhauer put it, fellow sufferers, and we stand in need of tolerance and love from our neighbors in life.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

263. “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

264. “The wish-blocked individual has enormous social difficulties. Others, too, wish to shout at such persons. They have no opinions, no inclinations, no desires of their own. They become parasitic on the wishes of others, and finally others become bored, drained, or fatigued at having to supply wish and imagination for them.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

265. “Sometimes I gaze so far into life that I suddenly look around and see that no one has accompanied me, and that my sole companion is time.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

266. “Hard to think of others when you’re feeling trapped, feeling you’re spinning in a vicious circle.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

267. “Now I can read and get a good night’s rest which is what I really wanted all along.” In that remarkable phrase-“which is what I really wanted all along”-lies the crux of Bernard’s problem. The obvious question is, “Why, Bernard, if this is what you really want, did you not simply do that directly?”

— Irvin D. Yalom

268. “Each individual has a different internal world and the stimulus has a different meaning to each.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

269. “My work is to live before I die.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

270. “If, as Kundera says, death’s terror stems from the idea of the past vanishing, then reexperiencing the past is vital reassurance. Transiency is stayed – if only for a while.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

271. “Children deprived of a maternal love bond fail to develop the basic trust necessary to love themselves, to believe that others will love them, or to love being alive. In adulthood they become estranged, withdraw into themselves, and often live in an adversarial relationship with others.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

272. “I only meant that a feeling is merely a feeling. A subjective state can never substantiate an objective truth.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

273. “Each of us has a taste of death when slipping into sleep every night or when losing consciousness under anesthesia. Death and sleep, Thanatos and Hypnos in the Greek vocabulary, were twins. The Czech existential novelist Milan Kundera suggests that we also have a foretaste of death through the act of forgetting: “What terrifies most about death is not the loss of the future but the loss of the past. In fact, the act of forgetting is a form of death always present within life.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

274. “People fear contact with the afflicted because they wish not to be confronted with the death that awaits each of them.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

275. “Better, Josef, far better, to have the courage to change your convictions. Duty and faithfulness are shams, curtains to hide behind. Self-liberation means a sacred no, even to duty.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

276. “We need art, Nietzsche said, lest we perish from the truth.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

277. “What have your scholarly investigations shown you?” No.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

278. “In choosing to enter fully into each patient’s life, I, the therapist, not only am exposed to the same existential issues as are my patients but must be prepared to examine them with the same rules of inquiry. I must assume that knowing is better than not knowing, venturing than not venturing; and that magic and illusion, however rich, however alluring, ultimately weaken the human spirit.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

279. “It is far preferable to employ terms like “distanced,” “shut out,” or “disconnected”; they give voice to your wish to be closer, more connected, and more engaged, and it is difficult for our clients to take umbrage at that.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

280. “Do not pander, patronize, scheme, or strategize,” his instincts told him. “Simply go about your business in your usual professional manner.” “But.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

281. “Irv, of course you’re upset by the review. Thank God for it! If you weren’t so sensitive, you wouldn’t be such a good writer.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

282. “Third, after each meeting I dictated and mailed to the members a weekly summary which was not only a narrative of the content of each session but also self-revealing. I described my experience in the group – my puzzlement, my pleasure with certain of my contributions, my chagrin at errors I had made, or issues I had overlooked, or members I felt I had neglected.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

283. “Mass consumerism requires that a product be attractive, well packaged, and, most important of all, easily and quickly consumed. Unfortunately these requirements are generally incompatible with the effort and the thoughtfulness that are needed if one is truly to examine and alter one’s life and world perspective.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

284. “His visitor must have sensed her misstep, Breuer thought, noticing how she rushed to continue her narrative.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

285. “It was she who taught me that embracing death honestly permits one to experience life in a richer, more satisfying manner.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

286. “To help someone, I believe you have to enter into that person’s world.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

287. “In unele zile, cand merg pe Kirstentsrasse si vad douazeci, treizeci de curve aliniate, sunt foarte tentat. Niciuna nu este mai draguta ca Rachel, multe au gonoree si sifilis, si totusi sunt tentat. Daca as sti sigur ca nu m-ar recunoaste nimeni, cine stie? Poate! Toti ne saturam sa mancam acelasi lucru. Stii, Josef, pentru fiecare femeie frumoasa exista cate un biet barbat care a obosit s-o mai reguleze.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

288. “A few weeks ago, he had invited a young physician friend, Sigmund Freud, to accompany him for an entire day. A mistake perhaps! The young man had been attempting to decide on his choice of medical specialty, and that day may have frightened him away from the practice of general internal medicine. For, according to Freud’s calculations, Breuer had spent six hours in his fiacre!”

— Irvin D. Yalom

289. “Everything, every fact, bar none, has a cause, and we must understand that everything necessarily occurs.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

290. “I often urge patients to project themselves into the future and to consider how they can live now so that five years hence they will be able to look back upon life without regret sweeping over them anew.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

291. “Oamenii se iubesc pe ei insisi daca vad o imagine iubitoare a lor reflectata in ochii cuiva de care le pasa cu adevarat.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

292. “I admire how you avoid superficiality – how willing you are to share your thoughts so honestly and unself-consciously.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

293. “One who does not feel is not sought out by others, but exists in a state of loneliness, cut off not only from one’s feelings but from those of others.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

294. “But surely,” Breuer.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

295. “Julius rode the crest of a robust protest vote. In addition, to his great surprise, he immediately was embraced vigorously by virtually all the Jewish students, about 30 percent of the student body, who had heretofore kept a low, apolitical profile. They loved him, the love of the timid, hesitant, make-no-waves Mason-Dixon Yid for the gutsy, brash New York Jew.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

296. “How shall we live? How to face our mortality? How to live with the knowledge that we are simply life forms, thrown into an indifferent universe, with no preordained purpose?”

— Irvin D. Yalom

297. “Sometimes death anxiety is dismissed as trivial in its universality. Who, after all, does not know and fear death? Yet it is one thing to know about death in general, to grit one’s own teeth and stoke up a shudder or two; it is quite another to apprehend one’s own death and to experience it in the bones and sockets of one’s being. Such death awareness is a terror that comes rarely, sometimes only once or twice in a lifetime-a terror that Marvin now experienced night after night.”

— Irvin D. Yalom