Irvin D. Yalom Quote

In the first place a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal and, when he does it is only to be disappointed: he is mostly shipwrecked in the end and comes into the harbour with masts and riggings gone. And then it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment, always vanishing; and now it is over….We are like lambs playing in the field, while the butcher eyes them and selects first one then the other; for in our good days we do not know what calamity fate at this very moment has in store for us, sickness persecution, impoverishment, mutilation, loss of site, madness, and death.

Irvin D. Yalom

In the first place a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal and, when he does it is only to be disappointed: he is mostly shipwrecked in the end and comes into the harbour with masts and riggings gone. And then it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment, always vanishing; and now it is over….We are like lambs playing in the field, while the butcher eyes them and selects first one then the other; for in our good days we do not know what calamity fate at this very moment has in store for us, sickness persecution, impoverishment, mutilation, loss of site, madness, and death.

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About Irvin D. Yalom

Irvin David Yalom (; born June 13, 1931) is an American existential psychiatrist who is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction.