Denying Self Quotes

Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place. ~ J.I. Packer

This invitation [to deny oneself] is less about depriving the self, and more about disowning, or renouncing a relationship with the part of ourself that is not what God created us to be. ~ Marilyn Vancil

True listening is never self-effacement. We bring the whole self to the process, rather than denying self. When we truly listen, we aren't just waiting for someone else to decide something so we can get on with things, or so we don't have to decide for ourselves. We aren't giving away our own powers to be seen and heard. When we listen, first we listen to the parts of ourselves that are curious, in avoidance, afraid, angry, or proud. Then we can take a breath and sink, allowing those parts some space alongside the spaciousness of not knowing. ~ T. Thorn Coyle

Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes. ~ Criss Jami

But then, maybe loneliness didn't have anything to do with how many people we had in our lives. Maybe it was really about how we felt on the inside.

And maybe I should go ahead and let myself feel these things, instead of always trying to push down and deny every negative emotion. Maybe they were just a part of me, and maybe it was okay to not always feel happy and positive. I was forever trying to silence that other part of myself, but maybe I'd feel more whole if I stopped doing that. ~ Alexa Land

I think the greater danger is that those who think they understand the process [of overcoming our attachments] are likely to try to make it happen on their own by engaging in false austerities and love-denying self-deprivations. They will not wait for God's timing; they will rush ahead of grace. I have seen it happen when ascetic practices have become overinstitutionalized, and I have engaged in it myself when I thought I could engineer my own salvation. It does not work. ~ Gerald G. May

If you are ready to trade the hollow self-made beauty of this world for the glorious Christ-built beauty of a set-apart young woman, this is where it all begins. Denying self, taking up your cross, and following the Lamb wherever He leads. In other words, letting go of all preoccupation with self: our comfort, our pleasure, our agenda, our popularity, our ability to gain the world's approval, even our own dreams and desires. And, as Paul did, treating all those things as rubbish for the excellence of the knowledge of Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3:7-9). ~ Leslie Ludy

Sometimes, oftentimes, people hold on to someone they love for self – because it's what they want; in rare cases, a person, who sincerely knows the meaning of love, which is sacrifice, loves enough to say goodbye and to walk away. They do it because they love someone enough to allow them to move on without them or to not be torn in multiple directions, which causes confusion, or because they feel that is their only choice.

Loving like that is doing for another and denying self. It is sacrifice.

It takes tremendous strength and the cost is loss and heart-ache but it's a price the rare are willing to pay because they truly love that much. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Thousands of Christians compromise their faith in Jesus Christ by denying Him. Even some clergymen neglect or deliberately refuse to close a public prayer in the name of Jesus for fear of offending an unbeliever. They cannot endure the persecution that may follow an acknowledgment of Jesus Christ. ~ Billy Graham

Individuality, conceived as a temporal development involves uncertainty, indeterminacy, or contingency. Individuality is the source of whatever is unpredictable in the world....genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before....surrender of individuality by the many to someone who is taken to be a superindividual explains the retrograde movement of society. Dictatorships and totalitarian states, and belief in the inevitability of this or that result coming to pass are, strange as it may sound, ways of denying the reality of time and the creativeness of the individual....the artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does vi ~ John Dewey

People often think faith consists of forcing oneself to accept something that one does not and cannot understand. Often we call people believers if they just accept what others tell them. Some seek faith by denying reason and forcing themselves into something that has not yet become a personal experience. God requires a different faith, though. He is content if you believe what you can experience. Be faithful and hold on to what you have, not to what you do not have. ~ Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

Real humility is not about denying the gifts you are offered; it is accepting them. ~ Alan Cohen

I'm not denying Christ by not being Christian. I'm a theist, which involves expanding on the Christ narrative. ~ Kevin Sessums

During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power. ~ Edward Alsworth Ross

Truth has a power only the courageous can handle. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

And we may ask the scornful themselves: If our hope is a dream, when will you build up your edifice and order things justly by your intellect alone, without Christ? If they declare that it is they who are advancing towards unity, only the most simple-hearted among them believe it, so that one may positively marvel at such simplicity. Of a truth, they have more fantastic dreams than we. They aim at justice, but, denying Christ, they will end by flooding the earth with blood, for blood cries out for blood, and he that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. And if it were not for Christ's covenant, they would slaughter one another down to the last two men on earth. And those two last men would not be able to restrain each other in their pride, and the one would slay the other and then himself. And that would come to pass, were it not for the promise of Christ that for the sake of the humble and meek the days shall be shortened. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Say no when you want to say no, and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you. You can only be you when you do your best. When you don't do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you. That's a seed that you should really nurture in your mind. You don't need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You don't need the acceptance of others. You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others. It is an expression of God to say, Hey, I love you. ~ Miguel Ruiz

When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary, either, or that there are no universal laws. ~ Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

I must say, you aren't being very mature or very consistent!"
His dark brows snapped together as their truce began to disintegrate. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Elizabeth bridled, looking at him like the haughty, disdainful young aristocrat she was born to be. "It means," she informed him, making a monumental effort to speak clearly and coolly, "that you have no right to act as if I did something evil, when in truth you yourself regarded it as nothing but a-a meaningless dalliance. You said as much, so there's no point in denying it!"
He finished loading the gun before he spoke. In contrast to his grim expression, his voice was perfectly bland. "My memory apparently isn't as good as yours. To whom did I say that?"
"My brother, for one," she said, impatient with his pretense.
"Ah, yes, the honorable Robert," he replied, putting sarcastic emphasis on the word "honorable." He turned to the target and fired, but the shot was wide of the mark.
"You didn't even hit the right tree," Elizabeth said in surprise. "I thought you said you were going to clean the guns," she added when he began methodically sliding them into leather cases, his expression preoccupied.
He looked up at her, but she had the feeling he'd almost forgotten she was there. "I've decided to do it tomorrow instead." Ian went into the house, automatically putting the guns back on the mantel; then he wandered over to the table, frowning thoughtfully as he reached for the ~ Judith McNaught

The U.S. Government hasn't maintained secrecy regarding UFOs. It's been leaking out all over the place. But the way it's been handled is by denial, by denying the truth of the documents that have leaked. By attempting to show them as fraudulent, as bogus of some sort. There has been a very large disinformation and misinformation effort around this whole area. And one must wonder, how better to hide something out in the open than just to say, 'It isn't there. You're deceiving yourself if you think this is true.' And yet, there it is right in front of you. ~ Edgar Mitchell

It is in this sense that Nietzsche is driven, against many explicit resolutions to the contrary, to be a No-sayer. For what the décadents who surround him are doing is to say No where they should be saying Yes, where they should be Dionysian; and what is leading them to this life-denying perversity, mostly of course unconsciously, is that they subscribe to a set of values that puts the central features of *this* world at a discount. Where they find suffering, they immediately look for someone to blame, and end up hating themselves, or generalize that into a hatred of "human nature". They look for "peace of mind", using it as a blanket term and failing to see the diversity of states, some of them desirable and some of them the reverse, which that term covers. They confuse cause and effect, thinking that the connection between virtue and happiness is that the former leads to the latter, whereas in fact the reverse is the case. They have, in Nietzsche's cruelly accurate phrase, "the vulgar ambition to possess generous feelings" ("Expeditions of an Untimely Man, number 6). They confuse breeding fine men with taming them. Throughout the major part of Twilight this devastating list of our vulgarities continues. ~ Michael Tanner

She knew she couldn't escape unscathed, and the trauma would take her a long time to get past. And she might never fully heal mentally.
There was no denying the fact, though, that everything had changed for her. To know what to expect wasn't the same as actually living it. ~ Cheyenne McCray

What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the "enemy of promises" as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball? What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness project the Baconian slogan Scientia est potentia? Didn't I read that somewhere in Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency? Has Discipline and Punish become the bedtime reading of Mr. Ridge? ~ Bruno Latour

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them ~ Harold J. Smith

Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things ... and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!? ~ Edward Albee

John Quincy Adams, denying his sons permission to come home for college holidays for under-performance: "I would feel nothing but sorrow and shame at your presence. ~ Paul C. Nagel

Initially the snow had been beautiful, but not so much now. The softness and sparkle still charmed, but the storm occluded the sky, denying us the stars. At the moment, I needed to see a firmament of stars, needed to gaze past the moon and through the constellations, needed to see what can't be seen
infinity. ~ Dean Koontz

Feminists do the best Photoshop because they leave the meat on your bones. They don't change your size or your skin color. They leave in your disgusting knuckles, but they may take out some armpit stubble. Not because they're denying its existence, but because they understand that it's okay to make a photo look as if you were caught on your best day in the best light. ~ Tina Fey

We celebrate the differences among us, even that which we cannot reconcile, not in denial of the absolute, but in the gift of humility that those differences require of us. Without denying our differences, we no longer allow them to categorize or divide us. It is in the diversity that the image of God is most fully reflected in and through us. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

A very big problem we have, as a human race, is our repeated failure to identify and to acknowledge all of the parts within us and we collectively and individually spend time and energy on denying so many inner natures, in a hot pursuit of moral codes and annoying virtues, that we have shrunken away within ourselves and left on top merely a malnourished container which feeds on static energy (knee jerk emotions, responses to stimuli, etc.). We are afraid of the creatures that roam the woodlands within us and we are afraid of the abandoned castles, eerie lakes, old songs, forgotten gazebos, all of which are established on the inside of the mind. There is maybe an old chair in a corner of a diner inside of your mind and you push it away and away and further away instead of going back to it, to sit down on it, to have a milkshake at that table. We have forged a worldwide culture wherein we are constantly struggling towards a moral good and it is supposed to be a daily attainment, and yet, nobody ever is good enough at the end of the day. And so we have cut off pieces of ourselves–arms and legs–because everything is nothing, or is wrong, in our bids to be worthy. No wonder we are all so lonely. We have amputated ourselves, and one another, in a bid to run away from the souls which take residence inside of us. Then we blame this loneliness on the world, or on other people's cowardice, or on the stupidity of the human race... we have failed to embrace the monsters within us long en ~ C. JoyBell C.

Most people live out ordinary lives by denying death. Others live more completely because they're aware of it. I choose the second group. ~ Alan Joshua

It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society. ~ David Hume

Colonization of the world, more often than not by robbery and warfare, spread Christianity into the Americas and other corners of the earth, just as Islam was spread throughout Asia and Africa. lt is not a coincidence that the two most widespread religions in the world today are the most warlike and intolerant religions in history. Before the rise of Christianity, religious tolerance, including a large degree of religious freedom, was not only custom but in many ways law under the Roman and Persian empires. They conquered for greed and power, rarely for any declared religious reasons, and actually sought to integrate foreign religions into their civilization, rather than seeking to destroy them. People were generally not killed because they practiced a different religion. Indeed, the Christians were persecuted for denying that the popular gods existed - not for following a different religion. In other words, Christians were persecuted for being intolerant. ~ Richard Carrier

I don't trust anyone who hides
in the light denying darkness exists. ~ Melody Lee

I am quite a romantic person, really, and I should have put that into my music earlier, but I was probably denying it ... I didn't want to be soft because I felt I had to be so hard to get people to believe in me. ~ Billy Idol

And when we come to refute them, we shall show in its fitting place that this class of men [i.e., the gnostics] has been instigated by satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a denial of the whole faith [by denying all physical aspects of spirituality, including the incarnatian and bodily resurrection of Jesus]. ~ Irenaeus Of Lyons

Remember that you are much different now than you were an hour ago, Ceony. Before you merely read about magic; now you have it. Denying it won't make you return to ordinary. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

Alive. That was the first thing.
A daughter. That was the second.
They knew this without being told, without searching the newborn's features for some telltale sign. If the child had been a boy, the Mothers would have emerged empty-handed. They would have filed quietly from the house, leaving the family to their disappointment.
A boy was simply another mouth to feed, another body to keep warm during the winter. A boy might wield an axe or trap a bird. He might mend a roof or skin a rabbit.
Such things were useful; there was no denying it. But a daughter? A daughter could do those too, and much more besides. ~ Meg McKinlay

I'm not denying that sometimes all of us may have fed the wrong wolf. I know I certainly have. But we were never mean or ill-tempered or small-minded. We just made a mistake and fed the wrong wolf.

The difference is that whatever mischief we got up to was just that …. mischief. We'd run away crying with laughter instead of swaggering away after feeding our hatred.

And that's the difference. ~ Karl Wiggins

Government is best which is closest to the people. Yet that belief is betrayed by those State and local officials who engage in denying the right of citizens to vote. Their actions serve
only to assure that their State governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people's will and least responsive to the people's wishes. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The usual heresy consists in denying the existence of a god who has created us. It is a much more interesting heresy to imagine that possibly a god has created us and then to say that there isn't the least reason for us to be impressed by that fact. And certainly not to be thankful for it. ~ Lars Gustafsson

Nothing human was worth denying. Even if it was unspeakably ugly, we could learn from it, couldn't we? Or could we? I never questioned that at all. ~ Erica Jong