Denial Of Death Quotes

Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals. ~ Ernest Becker

Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. ~ Ernest Becker

An artistic image is one that ensures its own development, its historical viability. An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. It is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential for the affirmation of life.
Whatever it expresses - even destruction and ruin - the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith.
Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is
optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic.
And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. ~ Ernest Becker

It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you'll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

With actors, all our ages are out there for all to see - you can't hide anything, really. And it's kind of a relief. This is my age, this is what I look like without makeup on - who cares? That youth culture - that lying about your age - it's all denial of death anyway. ~ Julianne Moore

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. ~ Ernest Becker

The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking
but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. ~ Ernest Becker

The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed. ~ Ernest Becker

The denial of death is openly acknowledged as a significant trait of our culture. The tears of the bereaved have become comparable to the excretions of the diseased ~ Philippe Aries

The denial of death is self-hatred. ~ Simon Critchley

But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle. ~ Chapman Cohen

Some of the best moments in life are ones where the reality has been twisted out, and for those few beautiful tainted hours, reality has no place. The past, present, and future don't matter because you're in this black hole; escaping the death grip of reality and all the consequences it brings, and sometimes it only takes a small thing to pull you back to reality. ~ Simone Elise

These friends - and he laid his hand on some of the books - have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. ~ Bram Stoker

My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, Do not fear my dear, I am here! ~ Mo Yan

To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori ... ~ Edward Abbey

Evolution has just been dealt its death blow. After reading Origins of Life with my background in chemistry and physics, it is clear that biological evolution could not have occurred. ~ Richard Smalley

Every cataclysm is welcomed by somebody; there is always someone to rejoice at disaster and see in it the prospect of a new beginning and a better world. ~ Iain Pears

USA Today reports that the number of death row executions this year has hit a 35-year low. They attribute that to DNA evidence clearing more people and the fact that Rick Perry has been on the road campaigning. ~ Jay Leno

The question of Heaven, the question of what happens after death, is one which a lot of people in our culture try to put off as long as they can, but sooner or later it suddenly swings round and looks them in the eye. ~ N. T. Wright

I cursed myself. For once, heaven had sent me "Beauty" in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down ... How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death? ~ Roman Payne

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. ~ Wendell Berry

A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her? ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

Rosa wasn't far from wrong. In her naked loveliness, she appeared to be an angel.
But Jared was mortal, and he wanted her as he had never wanted a woman before. He carefully lowered his head and kissed the pulse in her throat. Then his lips traveled with a blissful laziness over her breasts, nibbling and licking lightly so she wouldn't ever know that he had worshiped at this temple of her body. She was forbidden to him. It was a self-imposed denial, but that made it even more binding. ~ Sandra Brown

Okay," I confessed. "You got me. I don't want to die. I'm terrified of death. I fear there's nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I'll ever possess. That's why I'm here."
He patted my leg to give me reassurance. "That's why they're all here. Even the ones that believe in heaven and seventy-two virgins and every other good thing supposedly waiting for them in the afterlife. ~ Drew Magary

It's much harder to say "I'm going to kill three of the biggest characters in your universe in a gruesome bloodbath." There can be a lot of differing opinions in a mainstream comic book, you know? "Rogue would never do this!" But I can say, "No, Rogue suffered the death of Charles Xavier and it broke her down and she stumbled into a dark place and she started fixating on the Scarlet Witch as the cause of it all" - which, there is a logical chain of events that lead to the Scarlet Witch. And in the confusion, she thought Wanda was up to doing it again and she did what she thought was best. ~ Rick Remender

I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know. ~ Paul McCartney

They who get off on tangents and ride hobby horses to death are they who become fanatic. Let them understand that they must be tolerant of others faults but never accept as justifiable their own. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society. ~ Adam Smith

Tell the image makers and magazine sellers and the plastic surgeons that you are not afraid. That what you fear the most is the death of imagination and originality and metaphor and passion. Then be bold and LOVE YOUR BODY. STOP FIXING IT. It was never broken. ~ Marion Woodman

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ~ Jennifer Birkett

It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death penalty are the products of careful deliberation and that our specific moral acts, such as deciding to give to charity or visit a friend in the hospital - or for that matter, deciding to shoplift or shout a racist insult out
of a car window - are grounded in conscious decision-making. But this is said to be mistaken. As Jonathan Haidt argues, we are not judges; we are lawyers, making up explanations after the deeds have been done. Reason is impotent. "We celebrate rationality," agrees de Waal, "but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight. ~ Paul Bloom

The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible. ~ Virginia Henderson

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero's grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast. ~ John D. MacDonald

I was at a point in my life that was really between life or death, and I sort of intuitively and instinctively knew, I have to listen. ~ Brad Willis

We passed through forests of
fire, forded rivers of light and forged dark seas and mountains of snow and ice.
Each crossing took us thousands of years, though it seemed no more than the
blink of an eye. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Money that may never be spent is nothing but a miser's toy. Saving as an exercise in self-denial is an invalid goal, a sick use of money. ~ Catherine Crook De Camp

This was the man, this Balaam, I say, was the man, who desired to die the death of the righteous, and that his last end might be like his; and this was the state of his mind when he pronounced these words. ~ Joseph Butler

YOU TRIED TO WARN HIM, he said, removing Binky's nose-bag.

"Yes, sir. Sorry."

YOU CANNOT INTERFERE WITH FATE. WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE WHO SHOULD LIVE AND WHO SHOULD DIE?

Death watched Mort's expression carefully.

ONLY THE GODS ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT, he added. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF EVEN ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Mort nodded miserably.

"Are you going to send me home?" he said.

Death reached down and swung him up behind the saddle.

BECAUSE YOU SHOWED COMPASSION? NO. I MIGHT HAVE DONE IF YOU HAD SHOWN PLEASURE. BUT YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE.

"What's that?"

A SHARP EDGE. ~ Terry Pratchett

To be alive means to live in a world that proceeded one's own arrival and will survive one's own departure. On this level of sheer being alive, appearance and disappearance, as they follow upon each other, are the primordial events, which as such mark out time, the time span between birth and death. ~ Hannah

Well, you can take your cellar of death where you keep all the bodies of the women you've slaughtered over the years and go to hell. Because this target, which you probably refer to as *it' in your head to keep me as merely an object, is not going down without a fight! ~ Shelly Laurenston

Human life is fragile: we live in the space between one breath and the next. We often try to maintain an illusion of permanence, through what we do, say, wear, buy, and how we enjoy ourselves and who and how we love. Yet it is an illusion that is constantly being undermined by change and death. We can use diamonds in whatever way we like. They are empty things, pretty as water, yet within them - if we want to see it - there is blood, dust, love, curses, and suffering. There is desire to make someone happy, there is admiration, there is ostentation ... and there is a company's profit curve. ~ Victoria Finlay

The primary reason Jesus came to earth was to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Often, we hear that the reason Jesus came to the earth was to die on the Cross. Jesus did come to die on the Cross, but that death on the Cross was for the purpose of establishing the Kingdom of God. ~ John Eckhardt

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. ~ William Shakespeare

Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches ... The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people - Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas. ~ Dagobert D. Runes

The dead no longer existed.
Except in story.
Some stories were modest in scale, existing in a single family or a small community of believers who whispered among themselves so their loved ones would not be forgotten.
Others were so powerful they would transform the very fabric of the world. ~ Traci Chee

I often think about this, that is, I imagine to myself that here is Vera, dead, totally motionless, lying on the table, in a coffin... and I too, of course can no longer live. But for some reason this gives me pleasure, a terrible amount of pleasure to imagine so the one I love: earlier I imagined grandmother and then my fiance in this manner, even my favorite animals, Sparky our cat with the fiery bursts of red on his gray-black fur.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") ~ Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

Writing when you are already very old means you have lived through the endings of so many things, you are more aware of the shape life takes. You begin to know Death, you've been close to it. But youth can barely imagine the end of this journey. ~ Gore Vidal

There is no good or evil. We classify things into good and evil because we are currently unable to solve the two problems of the world: death and dearth. If there ever comes a time when we can solve these problems, we won't be required to do this anymore. ~ Andreas Laurencius