self-denial Quotes

“Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas; he learned many ways of losing the Self. He traveled along the path of self-denial through pain, through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger, thirst and fatigue. He traveled the way of self-denial through meditation, through the emptying of the mind through all images. Along these and other paths did he learn to travel. He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it.”

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: ‘He leads the way, keep close to him.’”

“Please, God let me learn how to stop being a warrior. Sometimes I just need to be a girl.”

“But many, so many, seek to avoid the pain of their problems by saying to themselves: ‘This problem was caused me by other people, or by social circumstances beyond my control, and therefore it is up to other people or society to solve this problem for me. It is not really my personal problem.’ The extent to which people will go psychologically to avoid assuming responsibility for personal problems, while always sad, is sometimes almost ludicrous.”

“Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance that all women have but most women hide, unconsciously denying its existence.”

“I wasn’t ready to admit the truth: It wasn’t just the world that changed with the coming of the Others. We changed. I changed.”

“Her hood looks had never interested her; any effort she had made on her own behalf had been directed toward the simple matter of existing.”

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”

“Combine my celibacy, with my Arctic experiment and you’ve got a potent cocktail of pent-up aggression and self-denial.”

“But myself is not listening. She refuses to listen. She’s picking up another letter and another and another, frantically looking for a different answer.”