Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.

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