Irvin Quotes & Sayings

For one can never really be helped by another; one must find the strength to help oneself. — Irvin D. Yalom

I think all kinds of meanings in life transcend your self. They're linked to other generations of people around us, to our children and our family. We're passing on something of ourselves to others. I feel that's what makes our life full of meaning. — Irvin D. Yalom

I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably, it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person; he doesn't relate to the person. — Irvin D. Yalom

A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot. — Irvin D. Yalom

I understand people have doubts, but I'm totally clean. — Michael Irvin

I feel your words on my lips
and feel your mood in my hips — Maquita Donyel Irvin

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

Reading these books. Oh, the endless labor of the intellectual - pouring all this knowledge into the brain through a three-millimeter aperture in the iris. — Irvin D. Yalom

Why, you may ask, take on this unpleasant, frightening subject? Why stare into the sun? Why not follow the advice of the venerable dean of American psychiatry, Adolph Meyer, who, a century ago, cautioned psychiatrists, 'Don't scratch where it doesn't itch'? Why grapple with the most terrible, the darkest and most unchangeable aspect of life? ... Death, however, DOES itch. It itches all the time; it is always with us, scratching at some inner door, whirring softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. — Irvin D. Yalom

Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish. — Irvin D. Yalom

Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms. The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One's own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one's sphere of control. There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety. — Irvin D. Yalom

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

Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. 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. — Irvin D. Yalom

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic. — Irvin D. Yalom

One must learn to live with the living before one can learn to live with the dead. — Irvin D. Yalom

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand. — Irvin D. Yalom

The more the therapist is able to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, the less need there is for the therapist to embrace orthodoxy. — Irvin D. Yalom

Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death. — Irvin D. Yalom

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control. — Monte Irvin

Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us. — Irvin D. Yalom

I didn't always know, but I always wanted to. I always wanted to be the very best receiver the Cowboys ever had. That was my goal coming in as a rookie and my goal throughout my career: being the best they ever had, going up in the Ring of Honor. — Michael Irvin

My work is to love my body, all of it. Whole and entire. The whole aging mortal troublesome failing miraculous intricate breathing doomed cancerous warm mortifying unreliable hard-working imperfect beautiful appalling living struggling tender frightened frightening living dying living breathing temporary wondrous mystifying afflicted mortally-ill assemblage of the atoms of the universe that is my self, is me, for this space of time. — Irvin D. Yalom

The reason we had an all-black outfield in '51 is Don Mueller got hurt, so Hank Thompson was a legitimate replacement. So what? People talk about, 'You're the first to do this. You're the first to do that.' Don't dwell on race all the time. — Monte Irvin

He was saying, fulfill yourself, realize your potential, live boldly and fully. Then, and only then, die without regret. — Irvin D. Yalom

will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed. — Irvin D. Yalom

I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of all, I hate that at the end of my life I feel compelled to ask, "How'd I do, Mama?". — Irvin D. Yalom

We looked at each other standing on the podium, and I think we all were tearing up. But we had to keep it cool. I think we did. Then we let out a breath. — Michael Irvin

Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it. — Irvin D. Yalom

Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer — Irvin D. Yalom

The thing that you learn in directing is that when you're on the floor, no matter how complex the shooting is ... you have to remain absolutely sensitive to every nuance of the behavior of the people around you. Because, ultimately, if you don't keep in mind the overall humanity, then the machine takes over and suddenly all you have are technically fine shots, technically good performances. The story's being told, but something's lacking, something mysterious, indefinable. — Irvin Kershner

I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial. — Irvin S. Cobb

I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron. They were tremendous players, but they were no Josh Gibson. — Monte Irvin

Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all of the professional patriots with all their cheap words. — Monte Irvin

Freedom means that one is responsible for one's own choices, actions, one's own life situation. Though — Irvin D. Yalom

Like you, I have often wondered why fears reign at night. After twenty years of such wondering, I now believe that fears are not born of darkness; rather, fears are like the stars - always there, but obscured by the glare of daylight. "And — Irvin D. Yalom

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

He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107) — Irvin D. Yalom

Keep in mind that therapy is a deep and comprehensive exploration into the course and meaning of one's life; given the centrality of death in our existence, given that life and death are interdependent, how can we possibly ignore it? — Irvin D. Yalom

Hair and hole, horn and teeth - hedgehog, walrus, ape, Josef Breuer. He — Irvin D. Yalom

Nobody can be happy. You could have moments of happiness, moments of joy. But life is very difficult. Unless you're a total idiot. Then you can be happy. — Irvin Kershner

I wrote my first textbook in 1970. It was called 'The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy,' and over the years, many students told me that they enjoyed reading it because there were so many stories in there; often just a paragraph or a page of something that happened in a group session. — Irvin D. Yalom

Four major existential concerns - death, meaning in life, isolation, and freedom - play a crucial role in the inner life of every human being and — Irvin D. Yalom

In the country, a good he-snowstorm makes a lovely design for putting on a holiday greetings card. In the city it just makes an infernal mess for the street-cleaning department to wrestle with. ... By midday of next day it would be licked to a custard - molten into puddles of foggy slush where cellar furnaces exhaled their hot breath up out of sidewalk gratings, roiled and fouled and crunched down beneath the heels and the tires of the town, flung up in crumply billows by the conscripted shovel crews, and under the park trees and on the park meadows would show a stark and grayish cast like the face of a grimy pauper whose corpse the undertaker scanted. And the longer it stayed there the sootier and the dirtier and the deader-looking it would get to be. You may worry the city with your winter weathers; you cannot keep her licked for any great length of time. — Irvin S. Cobb

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on. — Irvin D. Yalom

I'm not ready for a committed relationship with anyone and that I have a ton of work to do on myself. — Irvin D. Yalom

Do not mistake awkwardness for callousness. Remember, I am a solitary person, as I warned you. I'm not accustomed to easy and warm social exchange. — Irvin D. Yalom

I'm thinking about the cat dying, Dulcie and her knife against my throat, Mrs Irvin and her St Thomas bone ... But never my sister. A brother rarely thinks about his sister. — Louis Nowra

Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! — Irvin D. Yalom

One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control
to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic. The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient's control over every interaction. — Irvin D. Yalom

To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another. — Irvin D. Yalom

If Epicurus were speaking to you at this moment, he would urge you to simplify life. Here's how he might put it if he were standing here today : Lads,your needs are few, they are easily attained, and any necessary suffering can be easily tolerated. Don't complicate your life with such trivial goals as riches and fame: they are the enemy of ATARAXIA. Fame,for example,consist of the opinions of
others and requires that we must live our life as other wish. To achieve and maintain fame, we must like what others like and shun whatever it is that they shun. Hence, a life of fame or a life in politics? Flee from it. And wealth? Avoid it! It is a trap. The more we acquire the more we crave, and the deeper our sadness when our yearning is not satisfied. Lads, listen to me: If you crave happiness, do not waste your life struggling for that which you really do not need. — Irvin D. Yalom

Perhaps," said Nietzsche, "only by being a man does a man release the woman in woman. — Irvin D. Yalom

Everyone says we have our first African American president. Has there ever been a Jewish president? An Italian president? They don't say a damn thing about that. You think we're still fighting the Civil War or something. If you want to mention it in passing, OK. But don't dwell on it. — Monte Irvin

Love obsession often serves as a distraction, keeping the individual's gaze from more painful thoughts. — Irvin D. Yalom

I'm gonna pray for him. — Bruce Irvin

Absolutely, bring any kind of carrot cake you wish. — Irvin D. Yalom

The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street. — Irvin D. Yalom

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living! — Irvin D. Yalom

I dream of a love in which two people share a passion to search together for some higher truth. Perhaps I should not call it love. Perhaps it's real name is friendship. — Irvin D. Yalom

Leo Durocher was our manager and he brought Willie up to me and said, 'This is Willie Mays and he's your new roommate.' You could see right away that this young man was a natural. He had those real big hands, great power and speed and would catch everything hit in his direction. He's the best center fielder that ever lived, no question. — Monte Irvin

Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold the Derby, you ain't never been nowhere and you ain't seen nothin'! — Irvin S. Cobb

We all want to thank Emmitt for allowing us to enjoy every yard. — Michael Irvin

their breasts swelling into powerful, magical globes - when he was overcome by an extraordinary craving to merge with their bodies, to suckle at their nipples, to slip into their warmth and wetness. — Irvin D. Yalom

As I understand it, sport is hard work for which you do not get paid. — Irvin S. Cobb

The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived. — Irvin D. Yalom

From the very early days of seeing patients, I noticed that many of them seemed to be concerned with issues of their mortality, and so the philosophy training I had taken began to seem rather important to me. — Irvin D. Yalom

With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels. — Irvin D. Yalom

To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible. — Irvin D. Yalom

Have you ever noticed that the air you breathe in is always cooler than the air you breathe out? — Irvin D. Yalom

After 'The Empire Strikes Back,' I got to make big films that I didn't care about, 'Never Say Never Again' and 'RoboCop 2,' and then I got too old. — Irvin Kershner

At the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and in possession of his faculties, would ever wish to go though it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete nonexistence. — Irvin D. Yalom

I believe that a different therapy must be constructed for each patient because each has a unique story. — Irvin D. Yalom

From the beginning, of course, I had known that the pure forcefulness of my argument would not penetrate deep enough to effect any change. It almost never does. It's never worked for me when I've been in therapy. Only when one feels an insight in one's bones does one own it. Only then can one act on it and change. Pop psychologists forever talk about "responsibility assumption," but it's all words: it is extraordinarily hard, even terrifying, to own the insight that you and only you construct your own life design. Thus, the problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. It is only when therapy enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change. And powerlessness was — Irvin D. Yalom

You made it something special. Most of all, I want to thank the fans for your support not through the great times that we shared on the football field, but for the last 17 years of my life. You have supported me through all times. — Michael Irvin

Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning. — Irvin D. Yalom

Sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past. — Irvin D. Yalom

The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness - domains soaked in anxiety. — Irvin D. Yalom

He who would be everything cannot be anything.) — Irvin D. Yalom

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time. — Nell Irvin Painter

Surely this sense of betrayal is what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote: "Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." io — Irvin D. Yalom

Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can never die at the right time. — Irvin D. Yalom

If I wanted to go crazy I would do it in Washington because it would not be noticed — Irvin S. Cobb

[T]he act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help. — Irvin D. Yalom

Many of the greatest black athletes of all time played baseball for no money and no recognition. I'm just sorry many major league fans never got to see them play, because many of them were awesome. — Monte Irvin

Making art for me is not fun in the sense of la, la, la, la, but it's something that I find very absorbing and very satisfying. — Nell Irvin Painter

Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's wish - and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy - though Darwin himself had not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him. — Irvin D. Yalom

Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind. — Irvin D. Yalom

two Florida Highway Patrol cars and a third, black car pulled up in front of the house, and several white men emerged, among them the deputies Campbell and Yates. "Where is the guy that was with you last night?" Yates asked Shepherd, and what began with that question led to the beatings he and Irvin endured on the deserted clay road outside of Groveland. "They must have beat us about a half hour," Shepherd told the lawyers, who were at once riveted and appalled by his testimony. After the beating, he and Irvin were shoved back into the patrol car. Irvin's shirt was drenched in blood, and when he reached his hand up to his head he felt "a big chunk knocked out of it." A patrolman told them to scoot up to the edge of the seat so their blood wouldn't drip onto the upholstery. — Gilbert King

And that Michael Irvin would care more about his wardrobe than I would? — Lisa Guerrero

Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance. — Irvin S. Cobb

To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise, you'll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It's to produce a creator. — Irvin D. Yalom

During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies. — Irvin D. Yalom

Film is a window to the real world but a lie that makes you believe the unbelievable. — Irvin Kershner

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner. — Irvin D. Yalom

Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostling between science and religion over the truth and this is why Darwin was so controversial. — Nell Irvin Painter

Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra — Irvin D. Yalom

You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there. — Irvin D. Yalom

Empathy: Looking Out the Patient's Window — Irvin D. Yalom

At other times Betty expressed anger at my forcing her to think about morbid topics. "Why think about death? We can't do anything about it!" I tried to help her understand that, though the fact of death destroys us, the idea of death can save us. In other words, our awareness of death can throw a different perspective on life and incite us to rearrange our priorities. — Irvin D. Yalom

I have not been a follower of how many millions my films made or did not make. — Irvin Kershner