Negation Quotes - Page 2

• The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation. … The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning.

  John Cowper Powys

  Spiritual, Mistake, Past

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• Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.

  Pope Julius II

  Self, Soul, Abuse

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• It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice.

  Liam O'Flaherty

  Artist, Creative, Impossible

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• There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Creative, Deities, Spirit

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.263, JHU Press

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• The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians - and Christian conservatives most significantly -unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive resist.

  James Davison Hunter

  Christian, Names, Tragedy

  "To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World". Book by James Davison Hunter, 2010.

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• When affirmation and negation came into being, Tao faded. After Tao faded, then came one-sided attachments.

  Zhuangzi

  Attachment, Tao, Affirmation

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• Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Inspire, Infidelity, World

  "Ranke's History of the Popes" by Thomas B. Macaulay, "Edinburgh Review", October, 1840.

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• Far too many girls' and women's romantic relationships are formed around a negation of their own worth and attributes rather than a confirmation of them.

  Mariella Frostrup

  Girl, Confirmation, Attributes

  "I enjoy the freedom of being single - but should I be looking for a partner?" by Mariella Frostrup, www.theguardian.com. December 22, 2013.

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• In the cross of Christ God is taking man dead-seriously so that he may open up for him the happy freedom of Easter. God takes upon himself the pain of negation and the God forsakenness of judgement to reconcile himself with his enemies and to give the godless fellowship with himself.

  Jürgen Moltmann

  Easter, Pain, Men

  Jürgen Moltmann, Robert E. Neale, Sam Keen, David LeRoy Miller (1972). “Theology of play”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.

  Lord Kelvin

  Sound, Needs, Maintenance

  "The Life of Lord Kelvin" by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (p. 866), 2005.

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• The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.

  Theodor Adorno

  War, Ideas, Culture

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.46, Stanford University Press

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• When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.

  Frantz Fanon

  Men, Europe, Style

  The Wretched of the Earth conclusion (1961) (translation by Constance Farrington)

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• I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit's safety was in negation, but he has never given the world one minute's joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit became a prisoner.

  Robert Henri

  Beautiful, Sorry, Order

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• Disease may also be thought of as the negation of the normal.

  William Thomas Councilman

  May, Disease, Normal

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• What has actually to be said about the Cause of everything is this. Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since It surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion.

  Pope Dionysius

  Christian, Opposites, Denial

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• We make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America -- as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and we're rather like Jonahs running away from the place we belong.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Running, Mistake, Moving

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2000). “The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.237, Cambridge University Press

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• Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Attachment, Becoming, Virtue

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• At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, 'at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed. They grow up in ideas of negation in everything - in other words, utter savages.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Atheist, Growing Up, Men

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• It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Atheist, Believe, Atheism

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Part IV, Chapter 7, p. 626, 1869.

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• Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in—when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.

  Erich Schiffmann

  Skills, Energy, Movement

  Erich Schiffmann (2013). “Yoga The Spirit And Practice Of Moving Into Stilln”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.

  Richard Livingstone

  Education, Growing Up, Creative

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• The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Live Life, Reality, Two

  Charlotte Bronte (2016). “Villette”, p.76, Xist Publishing

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• The student should bear in mind that the very essence of consciousness is constantly to identify itself with the Not-Self, and as constantly to re-assert itself by rejecting the Not-Self. Consciousness, in fact, consists of this alternating assertion and negation - "I am this" - "I am not this." Hence consciousness is, and causes in matter, the attracting and repelling that we call a vibration.

  Arthur E. Powell

  Spiritual, Self, Essence

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• Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Common Sense, Sound, Christianity

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• Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.

  James A. Garfield

  Reality, Liberty, Tangible

  Garfield, James A. (1882). “The works of James Abram Garfield. Volume 1”, p.108, Best Books on

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