29 Quotes Tagged: denial

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

It looks like freedom but it feels like death, it's something in between I guess. It's closing time.

Whatever your problems are, the concept is the same: solve problems; be happy. Unfortunately,
for many people, life doesn’t feel that simple. That’s because they fuck things up in at least one of two
ways:
1. Denial. Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place. And because they deny
reality, they must constantly delude or distract themselves from reality. This may make them feel
good in the short term, but it leads to a life of insecurity, neuroticism, and emotional repression.
2. Victim Mentality. Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their
problems, even when they in fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame
outside circumstances. This may make them feel better in the short term, but it leads to a life of
anger, helplessness, and despair.

It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this was what you wanted.

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth — and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up — that we will begin to live each day to the fullest.

"It's not my fault! It can't make any difference, can it?"

"You understand nothing. You are a destroyer, a black spiteful destroyer. You are the sort of person who goes around in a dream smashing things . . . You aren't really here at all."

you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.

"I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying."

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.

"Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then: "I wonder why."
...
Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road — and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright — and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden.
... Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another type of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of the pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.

Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me.

I never did anything in life to anyone's imagination.