Denying Yourself Quotes

Why Is It So Important to Remember?

When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren't happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn't real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn't trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others' denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue.

You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn't just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn't as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself. ~ Beverly Engel

[L]iving simply isn't about becoming an ascetic; it's not about denying yourself pleasure and joy. It's not about austerity. Instead, it's about building a life steeped in the only precious gifts that can bring lasting happiness: time, freedom, and community. The focus is on life, not stuff. ~ Tammy Strobel

In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

It seems crazy to live in a place like Los Angeles with hot guys everywhere and go without. It was just like working in a chocolate factory and denying yourself candy. ~ Marshall Thornton

You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others. ~ Miguel Ruiz

Denying yourself a life of personal freedom is denying yourself of a life worth living. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

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

Following Jesus means denying yourself, saying 'no' to the things that you imagine make up your 'self', and finding to your astonishment that the 'self' you get back is more glorious, more joyful than you could have imagined. ~ N. T. Wright

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip. ~ Dean Karnazes

Every time you make a decision to be less than what God wants for you, you're denying yourself some of God's blessings. It's up to you. You can live a life with God's blessings, or just exist with all the consequences of choosing wrong. ~ Terri Blackstock

Praise and worship is not about how talented you are or what a wonderful and beautiful voice you have. It's all about denying yourself, let God to be God in your life and praise Him with all your heart and soul. ~ Euginia Herlihy

I never knew it could be that intense."
"It's all about reading what your body wants." His eyes were growing dark with lust, and I held the sheet tighter around my body, trying to control the fire that was seeping through my veins. "For instance," he continued, taking my hand and making me stand, "right now, I can tell you want me to touch you."
"H…how can you tell?"
"Your breathing is deeper." Smirking, he moved my hand that was holding onto the sheet. "You keep swallowing, trying to control what you're denying yourself," he whispered, undoing the thin material and letting it drop to the floor so I was standing naked before him. "And now I see the evidence." He chuckled, running his thumbs over my hard nipples before dipping his hand lower into my dripping wet sex. "Oh Jade, I can read you so well already," Oliver smoldered, leaning down to attack one of my nipples with his mouth while his fingers moved in and out of me. I braced myself, using the table to try and stay upright while attempting to adjust to his sudden attack. He had me yelling out his name within minutes. ~ B.L. Wilde

To display one's talents is not an objectionable subject. However, denial of other's talents is, tantamount to denying yourself. ~ Ehsan Sehgal

The more you care for others, while denying yourself, the more pleasure life supplies you. ~ Sunday Adelaja

I'm speaking to you man to man," he said, "not doctor to patient. How much longer can you continue denying yourself? You can't live without warmth." "Warmth?" I said, sending him a 'shut up' message. "Yes. Sexual expression. David, you don't even masturbate." We were silent for at least a minute. My intrigues huddled within me like guerilla warriors, hiding behind other thoughts. Finally, I thought of something to say: "If we're going to talk man to man and not doctor to patient, then I don't think you should charge me for this hour. ~ Scott Spencer

Life is about making mistakes. If you don't take chances, blindfolded and frightened as you are, you're not really living, are you? Heartache makes you stronger. Misery is the stuff of good poetry. You're denying yourself much more than the bad things in life by listening to Zita's fortunes. ~ Kimberly Karalius

The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have formed ... literary taste ... your life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place. ~ Arnold Bennett

There is no shame in ignorance, only in denying it. By knowing what we do not know, we can take steps to remedy our lack of knowledge ~ Graham McNeill

Xinxin Ming or Trust in the Heart


The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and heaven and earth are set apart.

If you want the truth [of nonduality] to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.
When the Way is not understood, the mind chatters endlessly to no avail.

The Perfect Way is vastness without holiness.
Like infinite space it contains all and lacks nothing.
Because you pick and choose, cling and reject, you can't see its Suchness.

Neither be entangled in the world, nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes of its own accord.

Craving the passivity of Oneness you are filled with activity.
As long as you tarry in dualism,
You will never know Oneness.

If you don't trust in the Heart, you fall into assertion or denial.
In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To be in accord with the Way, let go of all self-centered striving.

Denying the world [of duality] is the asserting of it;
Asserting emptiness [oneness] is the denying of it.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you go.

To return to the root [the One] is to ~ Sengcan

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

Every religion holds forth the promise of either defeating time, escaping time, overcoming time, reissuing time, or denying time altogether. We use our religions as vehicles to enter the state of nirvana, the heavenly kingdom, or the promised land. We come to believe in reincarnation, rebirth, and resurrection as ways of avoiding the inevitability of biological death. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Pride is the switch that turns off priesthood power. Humility is a switch that turns it on ... Some suppose that humility is about beating ourselves up. Humility does not mean convincing ourselves that we are worthless, meaningless, or of little value. Nor does it mean denying or withholding the talents God has given us. We don't discover humility by thinking less of ourselves; we discover humility by thinking less about ourselves. It comes as we go about our work with an attitude of serving God and our fellowman. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

If it's okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn't we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don't think that's a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don't think it's a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born. ~ Steven E. Landsburg

To the truly benevolent mind, indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether. ~ James Payn

Van Gogh on his brother's upcoming marriage: "It's because he's in Holland, where he's getting married one of these days. Now, while not denying the advantages of a marriage in the very least, once it has been done and one is quietly set up in one's home, the funereal pomp of the reception &c., the lamentable congratulations of two families (even civilized) at the same time, not to mention the fortuitous appearances in those pharmacist's jars where antediluvian civil or religious magistrates sit – my word – isn't there good reason to pity the poor unfortunate obliged to present himself armed with the requisite papers in the places where, with a ferocity unequalled by the cruellest cannibals, you're married alive on the low heat of the aforementioned funereal receptions. ~ Liesbeth Heenk

Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class. ~ George Will

He didn't like violence, no matter what he'd told Jessica before. He was good at it, no denying that, but he did not like it. Yes, violence was the closest modern man came to his true primitive self, the closest he came to the intended state of nature, to the Lockean ideal, if you will. And yes, violence was the ultimate test of man, a test of both physical strength and animalistic cunning. But it was still sickening. Man had - in theory anyway - evolved for a reason. In the final analysis, violence was indeed a rush. But so was skydiving without a parachute. ~ Harlan Coben

Alan Schwarz of the New York Times calls up the NFL to get a response, and what he gets from Greg Aiello, the league spokesman, is more denials. They are now denying their own study. ~ Steve Fainaru

Sometimes I almost go hours without crying,
Then I feel if I don't, I'll go insane.
It can seem her whole life was her dying.

She tried so hard, then she tired of trying;
Now I'm tired, too, of trying to explain.
Sometimes I almost go hours without crying.

The anxiety, the rage, the denying;
Though I never blamed her for my pain,
It can seem her whole life was her dying.

And mine was struggling to save her; prying,
Conniving: it was the chemistry in her brain.
Sometimes I almost go hours without crying.

If I said she was easy, I'd be lying;
The lens between her and the world was stained:
It can seem her whole life was her dying.

But the fact, the fact, is stupefying:
Her absence tears at me like a chain.
Sometimes I almost go hours without crying.
It can seem her whole life was her dying.

- Villanelle for a Suicide's Mother ~ C.K. Williams

But when you only speak using generalizations, you run the danger of denying the specific. In recent decades, millions of people have come to us from cultural groups within which women have absolutely no rights. They do not have a voice of their own and they are totally dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands. That applies to North Africa and that applies to large parts of the Middle East. It isn't always linked to Islam. ~ Alice Schwarzer

Discipline is denying ourselves in the present so as to prepare better for the future. ~ Sunday Adelaja

They mock Him by denying His very existence, but instead of feeling free, they just feel angry because suddenly life doesn't make sense anymore. They want to be rid of God, and they want life to have meaning anyway, and it just doesn't work and it makes them angry. And anger kills. I've lived long enough to know, and I can see it coming. Anger is going to be right at the heart of the demise of this country. America is going to fall, and when we do, we're not getting back up again. ~ Ann Tatlock

Anytime I was denying my inner self, I knew absolutely nothing. ~ A.D. Posey

In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it. ~ Joseph Stalin

Love is when there is no denying "it" ... that magical, elusive feeling that really seizes us and takes us from the inside. ~ Stephanie Ellis

And thus ever works the pallid academic mind, denying the real, exalting the fictitious and the false, incapable of adjusting itself to the flow of living things, to the reality and the pathos of man's follies, to the valiant hope that ever causes him to aspire, and again to aspire; that never lifts a hand in aid because it cannot . . . when what the world needs is courage, common sense and human sympathy, and a moral standard that is plain, valid and livable. ~ Sarah Vowell

Music is mere beauty; it is beauty in the abstract, beauty in isolation. It is a shapeless and liquid element of beauty, in which a man may really float, not indeed affirming the truth, but not denying it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said, "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! ~ Jason Reynolds

Black women were beautifully created at birth. We were blessed with melanin in our skin, which makes us Exquisitely Beautiful. From the lightest to the darkest skin tone, our melanin is Fiercely Poppin' on Purpose. There's no denying it, a Black woman's beauty is elegant! We are Black Queens... Uniquely perfect, flaws and all! ~ Stephanie Lahart

It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility ... The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role? ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

That's good; don't deny it. Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar. In this profession, you can be one- sometimes the other. But never both. ~ Ally Carter

Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor's credibility. ~ Jonathan Dimbleby

There was no denying the fact that there was a certain excitement in the air. ~ William Goldman

And all of this then enables Webb to say that Paul's appeal to the creation of Adam prior to Eve is not proof of a transcultural ethical standard. But if a theological argument has to deny significant portions of Scripture for its support, it should surely be rejected by evangelicals who are subject to the authority of the entire Bible as the Word of God. Webb's three ways of denying the historicity of Adam's creation before Eve in Genesis 2 are three steps on the path toward liberalism. ~ Wayne A. Grudem

There is no denying that downsizing can happen when a company receives private equity funding. It is unfortunate and hard on everyone who is affected. ~ N. Robert Hammer

despair evaporates when we stop denying who we really are and attempt to uncover and accept our true nature. ~ Nigel Benson

I'm sorry about our honeymoon," Marlboro Man said when we woke up the next morning. It was 4:30, still dark outside, and we were wired, our internal clocks in a state of utter confusion. He caressed my side as I stretched and sighed. Our bed was so warm and cozy and dreamy.
"It's okay," I said, smiling. "I'm so glad we came home…I love it here." Our bedroom was tiny, about nine feet by nine feet. It cradled us like a protective cocoon.
"I love you here," he replied.
We stayed in bed the entire morning, purposely denying that a world beyond our cocoon even existed. ~ Ree Drummond

I know what love feels like, but this, this man ... fuck me. Steals my breath. Knots me up. Torches me."
"No, this is what denying love feels like, man. Why you denying your heart? ~ Adrian Phoenix

There's no denying that candy is comfort food and it's affordable. ~ Dylan Lauren

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it! ~ Terry Pratchett

If I am all the time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I am denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. When I have understood that comparison in any form leads only to greater illusion and greater misery, just as when I analyse myself, add to my knowledge of myself bit by bit, or identify myself with something outside myself, whether it be the State, a saviour or an ideology - when I understand that all such processes lead only to greater conformity and therefore greater conflict - when I see all this I put it completely away. Then my mind is no longer seeking. It is very important to understand this. Then my mind is no longer groping, searching, questioning. This does not mean that my mind is satisfied with things as they are, but such a mind has no illusion. Such a mind can then move in a totally different dimension. The dimension in which we usually live, the life of every day which is pain, pleasure and fear, has conditioned the mind, limited the nature of the mind, and when that pain, pleasure and fear have gone (which does not mean that you no longer have joy: joy is something entirely different from pleasure) - then the mind functions in a different dimension in which there is no conflict, no sense of `otherness'. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

But selfishness can take on many disguises. It can also be about defending and trying to prove your own belief system while denying there could be value in the beliefs of others. ~ Karlyle Tomms

My final advice for young people is to not wait for leadership from adult politicians. Step forward today, because our current leaders are denying the dire reality we are facing. Leadership can come form anywhere. ~ Kumi Naidoo

I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. ~ John Green

Sounds like a pretty miserable existence to me, to have to keep denying who you are every second of your life. ~ Jessica Verdi

Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. ~ Adrienne Rich

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

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness. ~ John Searle

Joan of Arc speaks of her "contemptible estate" as a shepherd's daughter, and afterward, denying her father, calls him "Decrepit miser! base, ignoble wretch!" (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 2, and Act 5, Sc. 4.) It is hard to believe that Shakespeare would have so frequently allowed his characters to express their contempt for members of the lower orders of society if he had not had some sympathy with their opinions. ~ William Shakespeare

Eating when you're hungry helps maintain your setpoint and keep you at the weight that's right for you, and denying your hunger leads to compensatory mechanisms that trigger fat storage and weight gain. ~ Linda Bacon

I curated our love into poems
and all the pains became less
all the anger left, eventually
but, there is no denying
here on the tip of my soul
with scars still healing,
that once I loved a man. ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

There was no denying it; he was staring right at her, and the exuberance in his face, shining in his eyes, caused her throat to tighten. No, she thought quietly. Please don't direct anything like that my way. I won't be able to defend against it. ~ Lauren Gilley

Is there discrimination against women? Yes. There's no denying that the old boys' network is alive and well. But there's also discrimination against men. ~ Warren Farrell

There was no point saying, You mustn't feel responsible. Of course she felt responsible. Denying her regret would be like denying her loss. ~ Liane Moriarty