A Quote by James Burgh

If a favour is asked of you, grant it if you can. If not, refuse it in such a manner as that one denial may be sufficient.

James Burgh

Quote Topics

Asked Denial Favour Grant Manner May Refuse Sufficient

Quote Author

James Burgh
British - Politician
1714 - 1775

One cannot always bestow all manner of things upon everybody. To refuse a request for just cause is as praiseworthy as to grant a request that is worthy. It is for this reason that the "no" of some people pleases more than the "yes" of others. A refusal accompanied by sweet words and a civil manner gives more satisfaction to a true heart than a favor given with bad grace.

Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

However often you may have done them a favour, if you once refuse they forget everything except your refusal.

Pliny the Younger

For however often a man may receive an obligation from you, if you refuse a request, all former favors are effaced by this one denial.

Pliny the Younger

Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.

C. S. Lewis

He who will not grant a favour has no right to ask one.

Publilius Syrus

If you grant asylum to so many refugees, your house may be sacked sooner by the soldiers; I see that clearly. The question is, however, whether, because of this danger, you should refuse to practice such a beautiful virtue as charity.

Vincent de Paul

I'm in favour of a sensible development of response units and their deployment in any circumstance where there may be a risk to the officers themselves or the neighbourhood they're in. I'm not in favour of a blanket arming of the police.

David Blunkett

She may have had enough time to deal with things. What if she does come back? What will you do?" Grant asked me. What would I do? I'd beg.

Abbi Glines

Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.

Max Weber

We Christians forget (if we ever learned) that attempts to redress real or imagined injustice by violent means are merely another exercise in denial - denial of God and her nonviolence towards us, denial of love of neighbor, denial of laws essential to our being.

Philip Berrigan

And God grant that His fire be not quenched! God save us from any smoothing over of these questions in the interests of a hollow pleasantness; God grant that great questions of principle may never rest until they are stettled right! It is out of such times of questioning that great revivals come. God grant that it may be so today! Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy, as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the salvation of souls.

John Gresham Machen

A Prayer Refuse to fall down If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven, and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven only you. It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good came of this, is not yet listening.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave - caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition - cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner.

Saint Teresa of Avila

When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again.

Confucius

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.