Top 362 Refusal Quotes & Sayings

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

Who timidly requests invites refusal.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings...Fear [False Evidence Appearing Real] grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.

Frivolity is the species' refusal to suffer.

When I came to the last line of 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' I read it as a pitiless statement of indifference: a refusal to warn the family of their impending collision, a refusal to help when miraculously spared, a refusal to act on the empathy hiding behind the story's language.

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.

Refusal to accept the flow of the world is the root of all misery.

Our refusal to fear reminds the devil that he is finished!

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.

The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.

The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference can in fact never be neutral.

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

Elegance is refusal.

There is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts.

It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.

Show enough regret, and your refusal will inspire gratitude.

The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure.

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth.

These are the four abuses: desire to succeed in order to make oneself famous; taking credit for the labors of others; refusal to correct one's errors despite advice; refusal to change one's ideas despite warnings.

In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks.

There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation--the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered--is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.

Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

You are already that which you want to be, and your refusal to believe this is the only reason you do not see it.

Faith is the refusal to panic.

He who begs timidly courts a refusal.

Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

The prompter the refusal, the less the disappointment.

The unforgivable sin is the refusal to pardon.

The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.

America's greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.

There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

Suffering is basically the mind's refusal to accept reality as it is.

All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically

What else is death but the refusal any longer to grow and suffer change?

Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

There is the refusal of style and the refusal of sentimentalism, there is this desire for clarity.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed.

Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

Faith is a refusal to panic, come what may.

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit.

Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.

REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.

As a writer I have always fought for the right to write. For writing is a time-honored means of communication. Lack of communication, the refusal of some to understand, or outright refusal to learn about other human beings is based on fear. Fear is what keeps people apart.

The beginning of suffering is often a refusal to look at the situation as it really is.

He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.