Denial

“ I. There is the Denial of all that remains of Evil in us.
How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find, to their horror, evil in them where they least expected it; find them part stone, when they should be all flesh; find them bound to earth and the love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the love of the world; find them occupied, alas! so often with idols and heart-lusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for self-denial. ”

“ To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. ”

“ There are men to whom a peal of noes rattling about their ears never takes the sound of a true denial, and others to whom the word once pronounced, be it whispered ever so softly, comes as though it were an unchangeable verdict from the supreme judgment-seat. ”

“ Finding a denial in those it meets, it draws away in a silence that to people who rate assertion as power seems tameness, for its action is beyond them, like sights that need a telescope, or sounds out of reach of the ear. ”

“ If they would forego the pleasures of larceny and murder; if they would forego the thrill and bliss of meanness here, they would be rewarded hereafter for that self-denial. I have exactly the opposite idea. Do right, not to deny yourself, but because you love yourself and because you love others. Be generous, because it is better for you. Be just, because any other course is the suicide of the soul. Whoever does wrong plagues himself, and when he reaps that harvest, he will find that he was not practicing self-denial when he did right. ”

“ How is it you do not reflect that a spontaneous confession is greatly more worthy of credit than a compelled denial; or consider whether, when compelled to deny, a man’s denial may not be in good faith, and whether acquitted, he may not, then and there, as soon as the trial is over, laugh at your hostility, a Christian as much as ever? ”

“ If to deny personality to Him is to assimilate Him to a blind and dead rule, we cannot but repudiate such denial altogether. If to deny personality to Him is to assert His incomprehensibility, we are ready at once to acknowledge our weakness and incapacity. ”

“ That there was something great in self-denial and not in revenge had to be taught to mankind by long habit; a Godhead that sacrificed itself was the strongest, most effective symbol of this kind of greatness. As the conquest of the most difficult enemy, the sudden mastering of an affection—thus this denial appears; and so far it passes for the summit of morality. ”

“ To bear with vexations in business, with disappointments in our expectations, with interruptions in our retirement, with folly, intrusion, disturbance, in short, with whatever opposes our will and contradicts our humour—this habitual acquiescence appears to be the very essence of self-denial. ”

“ Oh, that one could tell us how far Our Lord desires this self-denial to be carried! It must certainly be like to death and annihilation, temporal, natural and spiritual, in all things that the will esteems, wherein consists all self-denial. And it is this that Our Lord meant when He said: ‘He that will save his life, the same shall lose it.’ That is to say: He that will possess anything or seek anything for himself, the same shall lose it; and he that loses his soul for My sake, the same shall gain it. ”

“ Of course, I believe in self-denial, and in the nobility of self-denial, for the good of others; but I believe that all self-denial that partakes of the character of penance, in whatever form and under whatever circumstances it may develop itself, is always a thing of mischief, and always a thing of error. ”

“ The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection. ”

“ And this denial takes place in the thought, from the will to shun evil and live according to the Lord's Word. Evil spirits rejoice and exult when they can induce man to deny the devil and the reality of evil, for then they can work where they love to work, in the dark; and flowing from the dark into man's hereditary love, lead him where they will. ”

“ If anybody asserted that they saw symptoms of mental decay, it would be easy to deny the fact, and to support the denial by ready and numerous examples of his force and sagacity in discussion, or in the transaction of business ”

“ In sensitive natures, just as the ordinary blessings of life cast an aggrandized shadow and result in supreme pleasure, so their denial becomes a matter of deep pain, equally disproportionate to the cause. ”

“ For seeing all ill tempers are increased by indulgence, and the more we yield to any, the stronger it grows, ’tis plain we must practise as many sorts of self-denial as we have ill tempers to contend with.
XXV. *When we speak of self-denial, we are apt to confine it to eating and drinking: but we ought to consider, that these are the easiest and smallest instances of it. Pride, vanity, self-love, covetousness, envy, and other inclinations of the like nature, call for a more constant and watchful self-denial, than the appetites of hunger and thirst. ”

“ What plea then shall deliver us, when with so great things set before us, and with so high a rule of self-denial laid open to us, we are not able even to do as they did, but ruin both ourselves and others besides? ”

“ If self-denial be a hard lesson, and against the grain to flesh and blood, it is no more than what our Master learned and practised before us and for us, both for our redemption and for our instruction; and the servant is not above his lord. Note, All the disciples and followers of Jesus Christ must deny themselves. ”

“ Denial of one's better self seals the lips or pollutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence. ”

“ Another pernicious misrepresentation of the fair consequences of the denial of a life hereafter is shown in the frequent declaration that then there would be no motive to any thing good and great. The incentives which animate 353men to strenuous services, perilous virtues, disinterested enterprises, spiritual culture, would cease to operate. The essential life of all moral motives would be killed. This view is to be met by a broad and indignant denial based on an appeal to human consciousness and to the reason of the thing. ”

“ One false step, one self-confident rejection of a thing which is merely too high for you to grasp, and you are darkening the Sun, casting God out of the world. And that was just what the Christians deliberately did. In many of the early Christian writings denial is a much greater element than assertion. ”

“ But to deny truth and morality means to contradict the very denial, because the denial itself as judgment demands acknowledgment of this objective truth and as action demands acknowledgment of the moral duty to speak the truth. ”

“ Our self-denial therefore must be as universal as the means of our corruption. It is to last as long as our disorder, and to extend itself to every thing that might increase it. And this for as plain a reason as a man in a dropsy is not only to abstain from drunkenness, but from every indulgence that increases his disorder. ”

“ It makes pretensions to goodness and attaches to itself a spurious value. The only remedy is self-denial, denial of existence to the world, denial of credence to the senses, denial of gratification to the passions, desires, and inclinations. ”

“ Neither let him be abashed nor daunted by the weight of adverse opinion, the contempt and denial which have been heaped upon the great American even though it be the contempt and denial of the capable, the cultivated, the recognized authorities; for such is the usual lot of the pioneer in whatever field. ”

“ To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them—
The threading in cold blood each mean detail,
And furzebrake of half-pertinent circumstance—
There lies the self-denial. ”

“ If the dissociated sufferer can deny the truth of an incident which, when recalled again, fills him with horror, then the denial by another Dissociate that he has heard of a street accident does not carry weight, even if we read a bookful of testimony to his honesty. ”

“ She, however, evidently justifies the denial to herself on the ground that, the deed being absolutely right, although regarded as most criminal by her judges, the only way to get true justice is to deny the fact, which, there being no guilt, she might consider as only a verbal lie. ”

“ There needs no more than simple denial from me to rebut the calumnies of the malevolent, the brainless, the frivolous, the fools, or the dissolute.’
There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. ”

“ I am aware that some persons will be disposed to answer all the preceding argument by a simple denial that they can find in their consciousness any such unconditional or categorical imperative as I have been trying to exhibit. ”

“ But the doctrine of self-denial is not weakened in itself by the errours of those who misinterpret or misapply it; the encroachment of the appetites upon the understanding is hourly perceived; and the state of those, whom sensuality has enslaved, is known to be in the highest degree despicable and wretched.
The dread of such shameful captivity may justly raise alarms, and wisdom will endeavour to keep danger at a distance. By timely caution and suspicious vigilance those desires may be repressed, to which indulgence would soon give absolute dominion ”

“ Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes only of a religious stock,—from consciousness of obligation and dependence upon God. ”

“ If, then, we observe in any person before us the signs of resolution we may certainly suppose that they indicate a turn in what he has said and what he is going to say. If they be observed in the accused, then he has certainly resolved to pass from denial to confession, or to stick to his denial, or to confess or keep back the names of his accomplices, the rendezvous, etc. Inasmuch as in action there is no other alternative than saying or not saying so, it might be supposed that there is nothing important in the foregoing statement ”

“ Such cases require frequent or long-continued treatments, or rather long-continued thought of the Good, mostly affirmation, for very little denial is needed to cut the chains of error from a babe. Denial is to be applied more to the parents—the denial of fear. ”

“ Imagine not that the simple denial of the fact will settle the business. I see plainly, replied he, that I shall be obliged to speak out, or some mischief must happen either to you or me. I shall therefore disclose a secret to you, though men in our profession cannot be too much on the reserve. ”

“ They seemed to enjoin an impossible self-denial that annulled life itself, as I understood it, and therefore it seemed to me that such self-denial could not be the essential requirement on which man’s salvation depended. ”

“ Self-denial surely means something far greater than some slight insignificant lessening of our self-indulgences! ”

“ We can express the significance of the psychic conflict in another way, by saying: the outer self-denial, in order to become pathological, must be supplemented by an inner self-denial. Outer denial removes one possibility of gratification, inner denial would like to exclude another possibility, and it is this second possibility which becomes the center of the ensuing conflict. I prefer this form of presentation because it possesses secret content. It implies the probability that the inner impediment found its origin in the prehistoric stage of human development in real external hindrances. ”

“ That which may, in one setting, constitute a denial of fundamental fairness, shocking to the universal sense of justice, may, in other circumstances, and in the light of other considerations, fall short of such denial. ”

“ This reason for self-denial must hold, even with regard to the angels of God in heaven: and with regard to man, innocent and holy, as he came out of the hands of his Creator. But a farther reason for it arises, from the condition wherein all men are since the fall. ”

“ But, on the other hand, if a man merely makes the denial with his lips, because, perhaps, he conceives it impossible to prove the opposite, or because he sees that what is good cannot be defined beyond dispute, or whatever other plausible reason he may have ”

“ I feel that a little economy and self-denial would relieve us very much from this embarrassment and incumbrance. I believe the good Book says, "Except a man deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple." ”

“ The principle of self-denial seems at first sight a treason done to genius, which was always privileged to be wilful. In this view literature is a fortuitous series of happy thoughts and heaven-sent findings. ”

“ And till we do thus universally deny ourselves, our lives will be a ridiculous mixture of I know not what; sober and covetous, proud and devout, temperate and vain, regular in our forms of prayer, and irregular in our passions, circumspect in little modes of behaviour, and careless of tempers the most essential to piety.
XXVI. A little attention to that great principle of reason and religion, that God is our only good, will convince us still farther of the necessity of universal self-denial. ”

“ If the denial of our Lord lay in his heart a possible thing, only prevented by his being kept in favourable circumstances for confessing him, it was a thousand times better that he should deny him, and thus know what a poor weak thing that heart of his was, trust it no more, and give it up to the Master to make it strong, and pure, and grand. ”