Refuse Quotes - Page 30

• We do not choose to be born.We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live--Courageously or in cowardice, Honorably or dishonorably, With purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial. What makes us significant is what we DO, Or REFUSE TO DO. WE DECIDE and WE CHOOSE--and so we give definition to our lives.

  Joseph Epstein

  Giving, Important, Adrift

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• I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.

  Thomas Merton

  Success, Writing, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1996). “Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk & Writer”, Harper San Francisco

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• The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

  Susan Sontag

  Jobs, Lying, Voice

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.193, Macmillan

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• If you make me your authority, you harm yourself because you will not see things for yourself, and you harm me too because you refuse to see me as I am.

  Anthony de Mello

  Authority, Harm, Ifs

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• Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, Night lie before me and behind me night, And God within far Heaven refuse to light The consolation of the dawn for me,-- Between the shadowy burns of Heaven and Hell, It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell With memory.

  Madison Cawein

  Memories, Lying, Night

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• The people become more observant of justice, and do not refuse to submit to the laws when they see them obeyed by their enactor.

  Claudius Claudianus

  Law, People, Justice

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 413-15, De Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti Panegyris, CCXCVII, 1922.

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• If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything, even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given.

  Nelson Goodman

  Understanding, Given, Clear

  Nelson Goodman (1983). “Fact, Fiction, and Forecast”, p.31, Harvard University Press

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• The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational - an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Exercise, Skills

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• Becca Gardner is wonderful as the good-hearted little Griff who refuses to be daunted by all the heart-ache and resentment on dad's ranch and this young actress proves there's another young child actress in Hollywood besides Dakota Fanning.

  Richard Roeper

  Children, Dad, Heart

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• I refuse to be in this world by myself. I want an open commitment from the rest of the people.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Commitment, People, Humanity

  Walter Hopps, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Davidson, Trisha Brown (1997). “Robert Rauschenberg, a retrospective”, Guggenheim Museum Pubns

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• The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and, in remembering, helps everyone else remember, too.

  David Whyte

  Roots, Humanity, Helping

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• Perhaps the greatest contribution that those of us who come from a Christian tradition can make is to throw out the old just-war theory, embrace the nonviolence of Jesus, refuse to kill one another, and truly follow his commandment to "love our enemies.

  Mairead Corrigan

  Christian, Jesus, Peace

  Mairead Corrigan Maguire (2010). “The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland”, p.64, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Maturity is the ability to harness your abilities and your energies and do more than is expected. The mature person refuses to settle for mediocrity. He/she would rather aim high and miss the mark than low-and make it.

  Ann Landers

  Maturity, Mature Person, Missing

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• One great mistake made by intelligent people is to refuse to believe that the world is as stupid as it is.

  Claudine Guerin de Tencin

  Mistake, Stupid, Believe

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• These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Powerful, Government, Oil

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• Don't just grab at the first thing that comes along. Know when to refuse something that won't get you anywhere

  Will Rogers

  Firsts, Knows

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• A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative; he refuses to dwell on it. Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Positive Thinking, Looks, Negative

  Norman Vincent Peale (2015). “Have a Great Day: Daily Affirmations for Positive Living”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• ...a pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion. Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Thinking, Delicate Life, Pie

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1996). “Cross Creek Cookery”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• A very real barrier to faith is this feeling of self-sufficiency, this unrealistic idea that one can accomplish everything by his or her own self. Some people have the conviction they must do it all alone. They have no faith in others. . . they are convinced that there is no one able to do the job as well as themselves. They refuse to admit that they may need the help of friends, doctor, minister, or even God.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Faith, Jobs, Real

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• If men are in a state in which they find it hard to be weaned from their own ways and choose rather to serve the pleasures of the flesh than to serve the Lord, and refuse to accept the Gospel life, there is no common ground between me and them.

  Saint Basil

  Men, Flesh, Way

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• Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.

  Kenneth Kaunda

  Power, Elephants, Issues

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• What we, the Christian community, have to do is to refuse men the right to ravish our land, just as we refuse them the right to ravish our women; to insist that somebody accepts a little less profit by not exploiting nature.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Men, Land

  Francis August Schaeffer (1982). “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west”

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• Humility is the situation of the earth. It's there silent and accepting everything and in a miraculous way making out of all the refuse new richness...transforming corruption itself into a power of life and a new possibility of creativeness, open to the sunshine, open to the rain, ready to receive any seed we sow and capable of bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed.

  Anthony of Sourozh

  Rain, Humility, Sunshine

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• ...contemporary physicists come in two varieties. Type 1 physicists are bothered by EPR and Bell's Theorem. Type 2 (the majority) are not, but one has to distinguish two subvarieties. Type 2a physicists explain why they are not bothered. Their explanations tend either to miss the point entirely (like Born's to Einstein) or to contain physical assertions that can be shown to be false. Type 2b are not bothered and refuse to explain why.

  David Mermin

  Science, Two, Missing

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• I refuse to let adversity allow me to be average.

  Mike Tyson

  Adversity, Average, Mma

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