The Denial of Death
As one writer puts it, “The fact of death is the great human repression, the universal ‘complex.’ . . . Death is muffled up in illusions.”38 To insist that death is nothing to be frightened of is simply another illusion muffling the obscenity of death. We live in denial of it, but like all repressed facts, it keeps disturbing us, haunting us, and q
... See moreTimothy Keller • Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World
"Kierkegaard gives us some portrait sketches of the styles of denying possibility, or the lies of character-which is the same thing. He is intent on describing what we today call "inauthentic" men, men who avoid developing their own uniqueness; they follow out the styles of automatic and uncritical living in which they were conditioned as children.... See more
goodreads.com • Search Results for "Mark Twain"
Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create. Philosophers have proclaimed this for thousands of years just as vehemently as we
... See moreCaitlin Doughty • Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
even such a seemingly trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong — defending the mental position with which you have identified — is due to the fear of death.