Self Mortification Quotes

#1. Let a man neither give himself over to pleasures ... nor yet let him give himself over to self-mortification ... To the exclusion of both these extremes, the Truth-Finder has discovered a middle course.

Gautama Buddha

#2. Well-meant techniques such as arbitrary self-mortification, are useless.

Idries Shah

#3. It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification.

Bruce McCall

#4. Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.

Idries Shah

#5. The Buddha's message was simple but profound. Neither a life of self-indulgence nor one of self-mortification can bring happiness. Only a middle path, avoiding these two extremes, leads to peace of mind, wisdom, & complete liberation from the dissatisfactions of life.

Henepola Gunaratana

#6. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

Mother Teresa

#7. Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through the good providence of God, live to see thy lust dead at thy feet.

John Owen

#8. Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in.

John Owen

#9. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. Fat

Neil Gaiman

#10. Internal and external purification, contentment, mortification, study, and worship of God are the Niyamas.

Swami Vivekananda

#11. Sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet.

John Owen

#12. Hugo could cheerfully have died of mortification - if such a mass of contradictions had been possible.

Mary Balogh

#13. All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.

John Owen

#14. When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone.

John Owen

#15. Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.

Raoul Vaneigem

#16. I felt my mouth go dry, my throat constrict. What possible interpretation could Peter place on those words, other than that they were about him? - that the entire song was about him?

Jennifer Paynter

#17. Many a heart is caught in the rebound ... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

#18. There are two things that we should avoid, oh disciple! A life of pleasures, that is low and vain. A life of mortification, that is useless and vain.

Gautama Buddha

#19. My brave fellows, let no sensation of satisfaction for the triumphs you have gained induce you to insult your fallen enemy. Let no shouting, no clamorous huzzaing increase their mortification. It is sufficient for us that we witness their humiliation. Posterity will huzza for us.

George Washington

#20. Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

Sir Fulke Greville

#21. It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the "race is for the strong" and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.

Charles Darwin

#22. It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit.

Roger L'Estrange

#23. Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#24. There is more security in self-denial, mortification, and other like virtues, than in an abundance of tears.

Teresa Of Avila

#25. Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.

John Owen

#26. Christ has come into the world to lay out a garden wherein, amid splendor and abundance, there should thrive the violet of humanity, the myrtle of mortification, the rose of love, the lily of virginal souls, the laurel of confessors and the palm of martyrs.

Fr James Groenings

#27. It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future.

Mary Wortley Montagu

#28. I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

Jane Austen

#29. Mortification is basic to the act of photographing. The person is mobile, ... then I freeze one moment in his movement, a mere five-hundredth of a second of that person's life-time. That's a very meager or small extract from a life.

August Sander

#30. The Holy Spirit is promised of God to be given to us, to do this work (of mortification). The taking away of the stony heart, that is, the stubborn, proud, rebellious, unbelieving heart, is, in general, the work of mortification that we treat of.

John Owen

#31. He who wishes to find Jesus should seek Him, not in the delights and pleasures of the world, but in mortification of the senses.

Alphonsus Liguori

#32. I will do nothing to superinduce sleep by putting myself at ease, or making myself more comfortable; if, however, in spite of my resistance I yield to my infirmity, then I deserve to be laughed at, and accept as punishment the mortification I feel."19

S.C. Gwynne

#33. A sense of the love of Christ in the cross; lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification

John Owen

#34. The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.

John Owen

#35. Mortification of the flesh has been held all the world over as a condition of spiritual progress.

Mahatma Gandhi

#36. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.

Edgar Allan Poe

#37. I say, then, that mortification is the work of believers, and believers only. To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live. 2.

John Owen

#38. Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.

John Calvin

#39. How many spanks have you had, Julia?" Damien asked.
"Two, Sir."
"What colour are you on?"
"Mortification," she mumbled.

Sierra Cartwright

#40. Sanctification has a double aspect. Its positive side is vivification, the growing and maturing of the new man; its negative side is mortification, the weakening and killing of the old man.

J.I. Packer

#41. All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless, it must be done by the Spirit.

John Owen

#42. That the mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh is the constant duty of believers.

John Owen

#43. 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.

John Owen

#44. Without a sincere and diligent effort in every area of obedience, there will be no sucessful mortification of any one besetting sin.

John Owen

#45. He who wholly renounces himself, and relies not on mere human reason, will make good progress in the Scriptures; but the world comprehends them not, from ignorance of that mortification which is the gift of God's word.

Martin Luther

#46. Of all my failures to offset the mortification of wanting, expecting, or caring too much, the most humiliating was having no real answer for the love of a good man. It humbled me.

Michelle Orange