Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Ernest BeckerRead
When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem
Interpretation
What this quote means
Confusing personal love with grand heroic ideals can lead to failure in both areas.
Ernest Becker suggests that when individuals mix up the intimate nature of personal love with the lofty expectations of heroism, it ultimately devastates both their romantic relationships and their sense of purpose. The unrealistic pursuit of being a hero can distort genuine love, leading to despair and disillusionment in modern life, where both love and heroism become unattainable ideals.
Themes
LoveHeroismDespairRelationshipsModern Man
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the pressures of modern relationships.
More from Ernest Becker
All quotes →The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.
Ernest BeckerRead
All power is in essence power to deny mortality.
Ernest BeckerRead
If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it... All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.
Ernest BeckerRead
Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
Ernest BeckerRead
We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.
Ernest BeckerRead
Similar quotes
There is more to sex appeal than just measurements
Audrey HepburnRead
Love is what you've been through with somebody.
James ThurberRead
In Hawaii, we greet friends, loved ones or strangers with Aloha, which means love. Aloha is the key word to the universal spirit of real hospitality, which makes Hawaii renowned as the world's center of understanding and fellowship. Try meeting or leaving people with Aloha. You'll be surprised by their reaction. I believe it and it is my creed. Aloha to you.
Duke KahanamokuRead
No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.
Francois MauriacRead
The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
Roland BarthesRead
Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningRead