Denial Quotes - Page 10

• We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Wall, Sadness

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Dec 20, 2010

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• Denial is a save now, pay later scheme.

  Gavin de Becker

  Pay, Schemes

  Gavin De Becker (1998). “The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence”, Dell Publishing Company

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• Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being.

  Mircea Eliade

  Past, Reality, Men

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• Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  War, Peculiar, Needs

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• If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: search after Truth through non-violent means. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

  "Hindu Dharma".

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• The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is the phenomena of the library.

  Michel Foucault

  Book, Reality, Imagination

  Michel Foucault (1998). “Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology”, p.106, The New Press

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• A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most People live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.

  Dean Koontz

  Death, Men, People

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Husband: A Novel”, p.12, Bantam

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• I wonder why we always deny love. I remember in middle school, if you were accused of the crime of loving, you screamed denials constantly and stopped ever even looking at the boy you were accused of liking. The boys could destroy each other by yodeling, "An-drew lo-oves Jen-nie," and both Andrew and Jennie would flinch and blush. Love is this great thing that most songs and books and poems and lives are all about. So the minute we actually think there might be love around, we start laughing and pretending and hiding from it.

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Song, Book, School

  Caroline B. Cooney (2012). “The Girl Who Invented Romance”, p.58, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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• Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure. There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.

  Philip Yancey

  War, Fall, Heart

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• Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life.

  Richard Paul Evans

  Heartache, Humans, Mechanism

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• The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

  Honore de Balzac

  Art, Motherhood, Self

  "Letters of Two Brides". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1841-1842.

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• As a country, we are in a state of denial about issues of race and racism. And too many of our leaders have concluded that the way to remedy racism is to simply stop talking about race.

  Lani Guinier

  Country, Talking, Issues

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• Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place.

  David Deida

  Hurt, Pain, Heart

  David Deida (2008). “The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.10, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.

  Og Mandino

  Life, Children, Hate

  Og Mandino (2010). “A Better Way to Live: Og Mandino's Own Personal Story of Success Featuring 17 Rules to Live By”, p.117, Bantam

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• I looked at her. Sheila was my girl--the girl I wanted--and wanted for keeps. But it wasn't any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival--the quick easy glib denial. It was a child's weapon--and she'd probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila, I must accept her as she was--be at hand to prop up the weak places. We've all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila's, but they were there.

  Agatha Christie

  Girl, Children, Liars

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• Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

  Timothy Keller

  Love, Marriage, Giving

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.31, Penguin

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• People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, People, Hatred

  "Giovanni's Room". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1956.

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• Give me romance. Flash. Give me denial.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Giving, Romance, Flash

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.69, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There came to him an image of man’s whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all man’s life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all man’s grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all-engulfing night.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Heart, Night, Men

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• I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.

  David Attenborough

  Atmosphere, Growth, Balance

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• Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

  Neal Shusterman

  Drinking, People, World

  Neal Shusterman (2006). “Dread locks”

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• We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

  Lauren DeStefano

  Mean, Kind, Born

  FaceBook post by Lauren DeStefano from May 23, 2012

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• You have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its Mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its Mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you’re not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be.

  Al Franken

  Country, Children, Mean

  "Al Franken Flashback: Controversial Heeb Magazine Interview". Interview with Heather Robinson, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 8, 2011.

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• One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.

  George Sand

  Happiness, Dream, Simple

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• Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.

  Ani DiFranco

  Self, Years, Parent

  "Ani DiFranco Thrives With 20th Album". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. September 29, 2008.

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