“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. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

— Ernest Becker , book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

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Ernest Becker 26

American anthropologist 1924–1974

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“Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. 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. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

“He exaggerates the sovereign majesty of Christ in order to make him out quite unique”
Dicturi ergo sunt: Dicis mihi quod resurrexerit Christus, et inde speras resurrectionem mortuorum; sed Christo licuit resurgere a mortuis. Et incipit iam laudare Christum, non ut illi det honorem, sed ut tibi faciat desperationem. Serpentis astuta pernicies, ut laude Christi te avertat a Christo, dolose praedicat quem vituperare non audet. Exaggerat maiestatem illius, ut singularem faciat, ne tu speres tale aliquid, quale in illo resurgente monstratum est. Et quasi religiosior apparet erga Christum, cum dicit: Ecce qui se audet comparare Christo, ut quia resurrexit Christus, et se resurrecturum putet. Noli perturbari perversa laude Imperatoris tui; hostiles insidiae te perturbant, sed Christi humilitas et humanitas te consolatur. Ille praedicat quantum erectus sit Christus a te: Christus autem dicit quantum descendit ad te.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Sermon 361 On the Resurrection of the Dead; 15 How to answer their exaggerated praise of Christ and their disparaging of Christians.
English translation from: Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century, III/10, Sermons 341-400 (on liturgical seasons), Edmund Hill, tr., John E. Rotelle, ed., New City Press, 1995, , pp. 234-235. https://books.google.ca/books?id=iE30Zob4v98C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=exaggerated&f=false
Sermons
Context: So they [the pagans] are going to say, “You tell me that Christ has risen again, and from that you hope for the resurrection of the dead; but Christ was in a position to rise from the dead.” And now he begins to praise Christ, not in order to do him honor, but to make you despair. It is the deadly cunning of the serpent, to turn you away from Christ by praising Christ, to extol deceitfully the one he doesn’t dare to disparage.
He exaggerates the sovereign majesty of Christ in order to make him out quite unique, to stop you hoping for anything like what was demonstrated in his rising again. And he seems, apparently, to be all the more religiously respectful of Christ, when he says, “Look at the person who dares compare himself to Christ, so that just because Christ rose again, he can imagine that he's going to rise again too!” Don't let this perverse praise of your emperor disturb you. The insidious tricks of the enemy may disturb you, but the humility and humanity of Christ should console you. This man emphasizes how high above you Christ has been lifted up; Christ, though, says how low he came down to you.