A Quote by Teresa of Avila

There is more security in self-denial, mortification, and other like virtues, than in an abundance of tears. — © Teresa of Avila
There is more security in self-denial, mortification, and other like virtues, than in an abundance of tears.
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. 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.
To be resigned means to find satisfaction in self-denial (Self-denial is the denial of one's lower self).
I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.
When it comes to immigration, I have actually put more money, under my administration, into border security than any other administration previously. We've got more security resources at the border - more National Guard, more border guards, you name it - than the previous administration. So we've ramped up significantly the issue of border security.
The state of marriage is one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other; it is a perpetual exercise in mortification.
It is easier to make money than to save it. One is exertion, the other, self-denial.
There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.
Loyalty saves us from the self-advantaging compromising of important relations - such as friendship, marital and professional commitments, group memberships, and so on. But as the Aristotelians would put it, its expression requires phronesis - wisdom not to allow it to compromise other important virtues ,there is something to the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues. I believe that is true of all virtues, but especially of the executive virtues - such as industriousness, sincerity, conscientiousness, and courage - which may become detached from substantive goods.
Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.
Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.
Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and largely less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
No repentance, obedience, self-denial, prayers, tears, reformation or ordinances, without the new creation, avail any thing to the salvation of thy soul.
As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.
Someone may ask, 'How is justice greater than all the other virtues?' The other virtues gratify the one who possesses them; justice does not give pleasure to the one possessing it, but instead pleases others.
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.
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.
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