Refuse Quotes - Page 37

• Southern Baptist Convention's EC president Frank Page tells me: "If I'm told I have to marry same sex couples I will refuse."

  Todd Starnes

  Sex, Couple, Ifs

  toddstarnes @toddstarne, twitter.com. June 26, 2013.

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• It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

  Karl Hess

  Military, People, Support

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• People may resist our advice, spurn our appeals, reject our suggestions, refuse our help, but they are powerless against our prayers.

  Jill Briscoe

  Inspirational, Prayer, Helping Others

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• Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Evil, Combat, Ifs

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Samuel Wells (2015). “Life Together”, p.70, SCM Press

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• The big win is when you refuse to settle for average or mediocre.

  Seth Godin

  Winning, Average, Settling

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• Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Animal, Men, Desire

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• Since you went the sun refuses to shine The sky joins me in weeping for your absence All our pleasure is gone with you ... Silence reigns everywhere ... Oh come back! Already the shepherds and their flocks call for you! Come back soon, or it will be winter in May.

  Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

  Broken Heart, Winter, Sky

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• Any fear associated with giving to God's kingdom is irrational. It's on par with a farmer who, out of fear of losing his seed, refuses to plant his fields.

  Andy Stanley

  Fear, Giving, Kingdoms

  Andy Stanley (2015). “Fields of Gold”, p.9, NavPress

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• Why are there organized beings? Why is there something rather than nothing? Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He is welcome to tell me that the question does not make sense. Scientifically speaking, it does not. Metaphysically speaking, however, it does. Science can account for many things in the world; it may some day account for all that which the world of phenomena actually is. But why anything at all is, or exists, science knows not, precisely because it cannot even ask the question.

  Etienne Gilson

  Science, Understanding, Doe

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• Long gone is the time when we opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and to demand conformity to that norm... [However], I assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.

  Clarence Thomas

  Thinking, Ideas, Long

  Clarence Thomas' Speech to the National Bar Association in Memphis, Tennessee, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 28, 1998.

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• We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation

  Thomas Merton

  Imagination, Kind, Obscure

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In every Christian's Heart, there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross, he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among Gospel believers today. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of man's soul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Spiritual, Kings

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• A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.

  Tobsha Learner

  Past, Men, Blind

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• I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Men

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• A mind that is charmed by false appearances refuses better things.
  [Lat., Acclinis falsis animus meliora recusat.]

  Horace

  Mind, Appearance, Animus

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• They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Black, Poverty

  Henry Ward Beecher (1887). “Patriotic Addresses in America and England from 1850 to 1885, on Slavery, the Civil War and the Development of Civil Liberty in the United States”

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• Making verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to all their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a pinch.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Reading, People, Pockets

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1825). “The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Including Her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays, Form Her Genuine Papers”, p.262

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• If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Jesus, Eye, Heart

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• We must suit the flattery to the mind and taste of the recipient. We do not put essences into hogsheads, nor porter into phials. Delicate minds may be disgusted by compliments that would please a grosser intellect; as some fine ladies who would be shocked at the idea of a dram will not refuse a liqueur.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Essence, Ideas, Mind

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.190

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• In Heaven's happy bowers
  There blossom two flowers,
  One with fiery glow
  And one as white as snow;
  While lo! before them stands,
  With pale and trembling hands,
  A spirit who must choose
  One, and one refuse.

  Richard Watson Gilder

  Flower, Hands, Two

  Richard Watson Gilder (1885). “Lyrics”

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• Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Forgiveness, Forgiving, Thrones

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”, p.385

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• How can we be such fools as to go on senselessly taking human life in this way? Why the women in every nation do not rise up and refuse to bring children into a world of this kind is beyond my understanding.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Children, Understanding, Goes On

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• Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mean, Men, Doe

  Thomas Carlyle (1866). “On the Choice of Books. The inaugural address of Thomas Carlyle, Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh. Reprinted from “the Times,” with additional articles, a memoir of the author, etc”, p.30

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• Let this serve as an axiom to every lover: A woman who refuses lunch refuses everything.

  Enid Bagnold

  Lunch, Dating, Lovers

  Enid Bagnold (1935). “A diary without dates”

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• I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.

  George Washington

  Office, Politician, Asks

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