Rejection

“ It has been said that when a proposition is presented to us for our acceptance or rejection we treat it as we would treat an article of furniture presented to us for our apartments. We try it. If it fits in character and complexion, we accept it, and it becomes a part of our paraphernalia. If it does not fit, we reject it. ”

“ Well, it does this for one thing, it turns unconscious worldliness into conscious worldliness. If the offer has been clearly before your minds, 'Christ or the world?' and you have said 'I take the world!' you know that you have made the choice, and the act will tell on your character.
Rejection strengthens all the evil motives for rejection, and adds to the insensibility of the man who has rejected. The ice on our pavements in the winter time, that melts on the surface in the day and freezes again at night, becomes dense and slippery beyond all other. ”

“ The cause of the acceptance or rejection is the nature of the reform itself, its congruity or incongruity with the natures of the persons accepting or rejecting it. "When the new ideal is definitely established, those who do not obey it are bad, those who do are good." ”

“ REPROBATION is equivalent to rejection. Rejection always implies a cause: “Reprobate silver shall men call them, insomuch that the Lord hath rejected them,” Jer. vi, 30; that is, they are base metal, which will not bear the proof. Conditional reprobation, or rejecting men from the divine mercy, because of their impenitence or refusal of salvation, is a Scriptural doctrine ”

“ By reason of its circumstances, resistance to temptation is either prolonged, as when the act by which the will resists is of considerable duration or is renewed at frequent intervals, or is brief, as when the act of rejection is momentary and is not repeated. ”

“ And thou shalt win thy will and Rest from rejection and from estrangement's stress estrangement stress, And eke rejection's pains And joy thy wish and will shall shall be at rest and free. choicely bless. The asylum of His grace is wide His court wide open for the enough for all That seek ”

“ large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood. ”

“ On the gentleman's part, a decided refusal should be received as calmly as possible, and his resolve should be in no way to annoy the cause of all his pain. If mere indifference be or seem to be the origin of the refusal, he may, after a suitable length of time, press his suit-125- once more; but if an avowed or evident preference for another be the reason, it becomes imperative that he should at once withdraw from the field. Any reason that the lady may, in her compassion, see fit to give him as cause for her refusal, should ever remain his inviolable secret. ”

“ For when a request is made which we cannot grant with honour or without loss to ourselves, for instance, if a man were to ask us to appear in a suit against a friend, a refusal must be given in a gentlemanly way: you must point out to him that your hands are tied, must shew that you are exceedingly sorry, must convince him that you will make up for it in other ways. ”

“ If we ever choose against choosing, it will be found merely that choice which is volition, placed against that choice which is desire.” And this is nothing more than to say that volitions and desires may conflict with each other, which we know to be the fact in numerous instances. ”

“ The first small vestige of a feeling of obligation in a superior to acknowledge any right in inferiors, began when he had been induced, for convenience, to make some promise to them. Though these promises, even when sanctioned by the most solemn oaths, were for many ages revoked or violated on the most trifling provocation or temptation, it is probable that this, except by persons of still worse than the average morality, was seldom done without some twinges of conscience. ”

“ Tranquillity, giving time for thought, and the security that leaves the judgment clear, have both gone, and may never return. The ears are haunted with the laughter of vulgarity, and the judicious discouragement of prudence. Is there not as much to be said for taking one line as another? If there is talk of conflict, were it not better to leave the issue in the discriminating hands of One whose judgment is indisputable? Yet in the very midst of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. ”

“ But since you suggest it, I consent that we call our engagement broken for the present. I agree to it only because you want to feel perfectly free, and I do so in good faith; you are free. Whatever the end, I shall never blame you; my faith in your sincerity and true nobility stands undiminished. In my own mind I consider our engagement as merely suspended. Doubtless time will show you what mere trifles—nothings, we might say—are dividing us. ”

“ Yet since I could not give thee this, we have given thee a certain portion of ourself, this faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion, or, in a word, the faculty which makes use of external impressions; if thou care for this and place all that thou hast therein, thou shalt never be thwarted, never hampered, shalt not groan, shalt not blame, shalt not flatter any man. ”

“ Why should this young woman have taken such deliberate pains to declare, and to place as it were on record, a history of her motives,-her entire exemption from persuasion, authority, or even advice, in what she was about to do in obedience to affection and a sense of duty? ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ I know too well how men of your form of belief regard men of mine! I am not here either to combat a prejudice, or assert a right. I tell you, therefore, calmly and dispassionately, that no demand is made upon you. ”

“ It frequently happens that I am obliged to condemn the aspirations of youthful minds, who up to that time have fondly imagined that they are perfectly suited to each other. But I have fearlessly passed an adverse judgment upon thousands of such cases, and in no case have I had cause to regret my decision. But in many cases, when parties have married in defiance of nature’s laws, as explained by me, have they had cause to regret it. ”

“ At any rate, you can have no objection to my taking my chance, and speaking to her.'
'Of course, if you won't be convinced otherwise, I can have no objection. But if you'll take my advice, you will spare yourself the pain of a refusal. ”

“ You addressed yourself to my friends: your proposals were approved of by them—approved of without consulting me; as if my choice and happiness were of the least signification. Those who had a right to all reasonable obedience from me, insisted upon it without reserve. ”

“ The letters addressed yesterday by our friends to the champions of the legitimacy have been supported to-day by overtures made by several of them to those gentlemen to induce them to take definite action and not to prolong a situation which hitherto has been neither an acceptance nor a formal refusal. It now appears that equivocation is at an end. They do not accept the challenge. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ Well, my good fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that there are two sorts of discretion—the active and the negative. Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence, negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors—mere impotence! ”

“ Obstacles to Consent.—The obstacles to consent are all those factors that take away or lessen the voluntariness of an act. (a) Thus, the actual obstacles that affect the intellect are reduced to ignorance, spoken of above; those that affect the will are passion and fear, and that which affects the external powers is coercion. ”

“ For if you do, you will despise each other's counsels and reproofs. They that slight, or loathe, or are weary of each other, will disdain reproofs, and scorn advice from one another; when entire affection greatly disposeth to the right entertainment of instruction. ”

“ The whole world have a claim upon the fortitude, the active fortitude of those who are placed as you are, between the alternative of confirming a wrong by your consent, or preventing it by your resistance. ”

“ What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without foresight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of sentiment. ”

“ But whatever objection may be made to some of the expressions, none, in our opinion, can be made to the demands themselves. As a question of justice, the case seems to us too clear for dispute. As one of expediency, the more thoroughly it is examined, the stronger it will appear. ”

“ Upon your refusal, he will, perhaps, leave you for a time, but is sure to return and renew his request with the greatest pertinacity, never ceasing his solicitations till, by his vexatious importunity, he has succeeded in getting the object of his desire—a line of policy the success of which he seems fully to understand. ”

“ There are times when people have to choose definitely whom they will serve, and discover to their horror that judgment follows swiftly upon base and cowardly choice. And God is faithful in making the recusants feel the urgency of moral choice and the grip He has of them. ”

“ In reply to their solicitation, he made this ominous reply:—"It is a received opinion by many, that engagements, acts, or promises of a restrained person, are neither valid nor obligating; how true or false this is I will not now dispute, but I am sure if I be not free, I am not fit to answer your or any propositions." ”

“ One of the complaints against disloyal suitors, and one which strikes a singularly modern note, is that they make protests of love, and false promises, which must be either paid for dearly, or rejected with scorn. ”

“ She believed that he was seeking her opinion of his choice, that the decision, if there was to be a decision, rested with her. One must do her the justice to admit that she did not give a thought to any possible alteration in her own position. ”

“ If I deliberately set to work to seduce you—if, by art and treachery, I wiled you away from the paths of duty—if, by false promises, I allured you from a prosperous and happy sphere,—then might you talk to me of justice. ”

“ The tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires; ... the force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. ”

“ Why should a stern, condemning voice declare in recesses of my soul, 'You could and should resist'? For years I have been daily yielding to temptation, and conscience as often pronounces sentence against me. ”

“ This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised immediately about things, is called judgment ; when about truths delivered in words, is most commonly called assent or dissent : which being the most usual way, wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall, under these terms, treat of it, as least liable in our language to equivocation. ”

“ The next is the false judges, that incline more 33 to one side than another through gifts or through promises or through entreaties, or for love or for anger or for dread, and unbind suits wrongfully; and have great costs made, and take great gifts, sometimes from the one, sometimes from the other, sometimes from both, and sell their judgments, or let them come to nothing; and do poor men great harm, which they cannot amend. ”

“ Let your decision be calm and unprejudiced—not given in deference to well-meaning and respectable men—not from any uneasy sensation of annoyance or ill-will, but such as will be in accordance with the light you have. ”

“ What, then, is the only thing that they shun? That in which is bred falsehood and deceit,—that is, opining, and haste in giving consent,—which is a yielding through weakness to that which appears, and has not any true utility. ”

“ A common conviction that change in the established order of some particular codes of conduct would be impossible, because of the shock that the idea of doing so gives to our present ideas, bears some resemblance to the conviction of lovers that their present sentiments will endure for ever. ”

“ But the fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large emolument,—and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he recognized the value of the discovery. ”

“ Under other circumstances I should have been more appreciated; but it is when one can be rejected and when one is no longer essentially necessary that one is permitted to fall back upon one’s own reflections. ”

“ He holds that what he calls 'reasoning' deals only with abstractions, and is not the faculty on which we rely in forming 'judgments.' These judgments, to which we give our 'assent,' and by which we regulate our conduct, are affirmations of the basal personality. ”

“ You either request of him what is just and right, in which case he ought to do it, and it will be actually done without any solicitation, which in fact, shows distrust of his rectitude; or what you request is unjust, and then you insult him. You are either worthy or unworthy of the favour you implore; if worthy, he knows it better than you do yourself; if unworthy, you commit an additional crime in requesting that which you do not merit. ”