Renunciation Quotes - Page 5

• States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.

  Roger Scruton

  People, Diversity, Joy

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• The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

  A. J. Muste

  Mean, Evil, Survival

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• Both renunciation of action and the performance of action lead to Nirvana (Liberation); but these performance of action is superior to renunciation of action. The action of today becomes the destiny of tomorrow.

  Chinmayananda Saraswati

  Destiny, Today, Action

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• In any activity, we have to know what to expect, how to reach our objectives and what capacity we possess for the proposed task. The only people who can say they have renounced the fruit are those who, thus equipped, feel no desire for the results of the conquest, and remain absorbed in combat. You can renounce the fruit, but this renunciation does not mean indifference toward the result.

  Paulo Coelho

  Letting Go, Mean, Passion

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• That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, People, Giving

  Adolf Hitler (1943). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Attachment brings misery, unattachment brings blissfulness. So use things, but don't be used by them. Live life but don't be lived by it. Possess things, but don't be possessed by them. Have things - that's not a problem. I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free.

  Rajneesh

  Live Life, Attachment, Giving

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• Some of our newspapers and magazines are more concerned with the welfare of their advertisers than they are with the dissemination of news and the discussion of matters of lasting importance. ...Radio, television, motion pictures, popular books - all contribute...to...the stifling of dissent on all but the most banal levels. ...a renunciation of the most basic and precious of democratic principles.

  J. Paul Getty

  Book, Dark, Age

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• A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive.

  Cyril Connolly

  Real, Passion, Two

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• A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.

  Rose Macaulay

  Freedom, Hot, Austerity

  Rose Macaulay (2011). “Personal Pleasures”, p.101, A&C Black

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• Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.

  Eric Hoffer

  Humility, Pride, Substitution

  Eric Hoffer (1955). “The passionate state of mind, and other aphorisms”

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• It would not be going too far to assert that ... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is ... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity.

  Karen Horney

  Women, Careers, Venture

  Karen Horney (1967). “Feminine Psychology”

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• The way to liberation lies through this realization of the Self, by God-communion and by remaining in this God-aware state of the soul while performing dutiful actions. Any individual can reach this supreme actionless state by the renunciation of all fruits of actions: performing all dutiful acts without harbouring in his heart any likes and dislikes, possessing no material desires, and feeling God, not the ego, as the Doer of all actions.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Lying, Heart, Likes And Dislikes

  Paramahansa Yogananda (2007). “God Talks With Arjuna”, p.1070, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.

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• People who are involved in self-discovery lead different types of lives. The lives they lead are not necessarily the lives of renunciation. Rather, it is a structuring of the elements in your life in a particular way.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Success, Buddhism

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• Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.

  Eric Hoffer

  Giving Up, Commitment, Generosity

  "Reflections on the Human Condition". Book by Eric Hoffer, Section 44, 1973.

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• O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Sports, Children, Self

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 536, 1895.

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• Nietzsche inveighs against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks.

  Georg Brandes

  Believe, Optimism, Greek

  "An Essay on the Aristocratic Radicalism of Friedrich Nietzsche". Essay by Georg Brandes (1889), as translated in "Friedrich Nietzsche" by A.G. Chater (p. 21), 1914.

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• The very act of faith by which we receive Christ is an act of the utter renunciation of self, and all its works, as a ground of salvation. It is really a denial of self, and a grounding of its arms in the last citadel into which it can be driven, and is, in its principle, inclusive of every subsequent act of self-denial by which sin is forsaken or overcome.

  Mark Hopkins

  Self, Overcoming, Principles

  MARK HOPKINS (1862). “BACCALAUREATE SERMONS, AND OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES”, p.89

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• The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside,once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation.

  William Stanley Jevons

  School, Forever, Fool

  William Stanley Jevons (1879). “Political Economy”

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• There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Selfish, Passion, Exercise

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Security can be found in renunciation of ownership over people, money, and real assets; to gain, keep or protect that which others need for periods of legitimate access. A lending library enables people to help themselves to information; a locked-up book collection is useful only to the person who owns it.

  Bill Mollison

  Real, Book, People

  "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual". Book by Bill Mollison, 1988.

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• Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Taken, Dark, Would Be

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• The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

  Jack Kornfield

  Practice, Quality, Levels

  Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield (2001). “Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation”, p.57, Shambhala Publications

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• Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Forgiveness, Coward, Weakness

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.417, Manonmani Publishers

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• That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?

  Jennifer Haigh

  Mother, Sacrifice, Men

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• Once renunciation and the awakened mind have been fully realized, the way to Buddhahood is clear. Liberation is complete and such liberated beings are then Bodhisattvas and Buddhas: "enlightened ones," or "empty dwellers." Their usefulness to others both before and after their physical death, is impossible to conceive. They are nothing but useful energy leading to liberation for all beings still caught in conditioned existence.

  Maura O'Halloran

  Mind, Awakening, Way

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