Top 80 Self Renunciation Quotes
#1. Therefore by the example of Abram, entire self-renunciation is enjoined, that we may live and die to God alone.
John Calvin
#2. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.
Eric Hoffer
#3. Faith implies four things: self-renunciation, reliance with utter confidence on Christ, obedience, and a changed life.
Billy Graham
#5. There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer
#6. O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.
Thomas A Kempis
#7. His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community.
C. G. Jung
#8. Faith itself has no merit; in fact, by its nature it is self-emptying. It involves our complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness and a relying entirely on the perfect righteousness and death of Christ.
Jerry Bridges
#9. Hours before the Georgian invasion, Russia had been working to secure a United Nations Security Council statement calling for a renunciation of force by both Georgia and South Ossetians. The statement that could have averted bloodshed was blocked by western countries.
Sergei Lavrov
#10. Asceticism is giving up selfish activities, as poets know, and the wise declare renunciation is giving up fruits of action. - Krishna.
Anonymous
#11. Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations.
Andrew Bernstein
#12. Without parlaying with the renunciation of the world, a person must establish a means to live in harmony with the uncertainties of a chaotic world.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#13. Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. Don't love too blindly: blindly you will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine. Cultivate the art of renunciation.
Thomas Hardy
#15. For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more.
Oscar Wilde
#16. Renunciation is not about pushing something away, it is about letting go. It's facing the fact that certain things cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. Renunciation is a commitment to let go of things that create suffering. It is the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others.
Noah Levine
#17. Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation.
Swami Vivekananda
#18. There is a great force in renunciation of power that those who are blinded by the lust for domination cannot understand because those who truly love do not desire power.
Alison Croggon
#19. The desert Arab found no joy like the joy of voluntarily holding back. He found luxury in abnegation, renunciation, self restraint. He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body. He saved his own soul, perhaps, and without danger, but in a hard selfishness.
T.E. Lawrence
#20. I wanted to be a sadhu. But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A real test of faith would be to go back to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping countries on earth [America] and be a sadhu there.
Daniel Suelo
#21. An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes.
Mahatma Gandhi
#22. Both renunciation of action and the performance of action lead to Nirvana (Liberation); but these performance of action is superior to renunciation of action. The action of today becomes the destiny of tomorrow.
Chinmayananda Saraswati
#23. Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try.
Mahatma Gandhi
#24. Renunciation of thinking is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
Albert Schweitzer
#26. If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.
William Law
#28. That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.
Mahatma Gandhi
#29. Love is the fruit of prayer ... Patiently abiding in prayer signifies a man's renunciation of himself. Therefore the self-denial of the soul turns into love for God.
Isaac Of Nineveh
#30. Giving up alcohol or cigarettes is a lead-pipe cinch compared to the renunciation of complacence by a former (self-appointed) elite.
Margaret Halsey
#31. involve self-denial or giving-up of something. Relinquishment or tyag is the real content of renunciation
J.M. Mehta
#32. Only by renunciation of the desire to manipulate and control will the ego melt into the Universal Self of Infinite, Eternal Love.
Maharishi Sadasiva Isham
#33. A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.
Victor Hugo
#34. As the spiritual leader of six million people, the Dalai Lama can be credited with a significant renunciation of the authority of tradition - of the conventional politics of national self-interest as well as of religion.
Pankaj Mishra
#35. 2.27 THE ULTIMATE
With compassion and renunciation walking,
With wants and desires ever shedding,
With love within one's heart flowing,
Peace and Divinity shall never be wanting.
[158] - 2
Munindra Misra
#36. The renunciation of doing harm is the perfection of discipline
Shantideva
#37. In a truly global world, the renunciation of violent reprisal is bound to become, in a more and more obvious way, the indispensable condition of our survival.
Rene Girard
#38. Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling ... it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#39. In our life sometimes we have to make painful choices. And it takes a bit of courage to make up our mind for it involves an element of renunciation, something hard to accept in a world steeped in pleasure and comfort.
Fr. Henry Bocala
#40. I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries.
Mahatma Gandhi
#41. Globally, democracies have also acted in ways that suggest an outright renunciation of their principles at home.
Nayef Al-Rodhan
#42. We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
Paulo Coelho
#43. I dare predict that the influence of the Treaty of Renunciation of War will be felt in a large proportion of all future international acts.
Herbert Hoover
#44. Meditation means this opening out of the soul to the Divine and letting the Divine shine in without obstruction from the personal self. Therefore it means renunciation. It means throwing away everything that one has, and waiting empty for the light to come in.
Annie Besant
#45. He reminds us that true renunciation is mental, not necessarily physical. We are not required to disown our husbands or wives and turn our children out of doors. We must only try to realize that they are not really ours; to love them as dwelling-places of Brahman, not as mere individuals.
Swami Vivekananda
#46. The highest and greatest goal that every soul has to reach is God. As everything needs renunciation, that highest goal needs the highest renunciation.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#47. Yes - it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities , and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
#48. Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Rabindranath Tagore
#49. Marriage is a state of penance. It calls for prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, renunciation, and the intention to increase the Kingdom of God.
Anne Catherine Emmerich
#51. The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
A.J. Muste
#52. An act of renunciation is an act of union with God. The Divine Master looks lovingly upon a person who gains a victory over self.
Madeleine Sophie Barat
#53. Our music draws the listener away, beyond the limits of everyday human joys and sorrows, and takes us to that lonely region of renunciation which lies to the root of the universe, while European music leads us to a variegated dance through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
#54. Cling to the One who clings to nothing;
And so clinging, cease to cling.
Thiruvalluvar
#55. A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#56. That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?
Jennifer Haigh
#57. Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that's fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.
Pema Chodron
#58. Zarathustra received his revelations from the archangels at age thirty, when he began his prophetic mission; Siddhartha's great renunciation of his princely life took place in his thirtieth year. Thoreau at age thirty finished his self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond.
Kevin Dann
#59. I found myself facing a Christian Science Reading Room. My God! It had been eight years. There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away.
Henry Fonda
#60. a starched collar affected him as a renunciation of freedom.
Jack London
#61. A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
#63. Truth, purity, self-control, firmness, fearlessness, humility, unity, peace, and renunciation - these are the inherent qualities of a civil resister.
Mahatma Gandhi
#64. It is vital to understand that however positive this worldly life, or even a small part of it, may appear to be, ultimately it will fail because absolutely nothing genuinely works in samsara.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
#65. The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.
Jack Kornfield
#66. Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means "slay," as in homicide or suicide).
Irvin D. Yalom
#67. All excess, as well as renunciation, brings its own punishment.
Oscar Wilde
#68. "I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.
Swami Vivekananda
#69. People who are involved in self-discovery lead different types of lives. The lives they lead are not necessarily the lives of renunciation. Rather, it is a structuring of the elements in your life in a particular way.
Frederick Lenz
#70. The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.
Hugh Kingsmill
#72. The life of Gautama Buddha illustrates the power of service, compassion and, most importantly, renunciation. He was convinced that material wealth is not the sole goal.
Narendra Modi
#74. How seek the way which leadeth to our wishes? By renouncing our wishes. The crown of excellence is renunciation.
Hafez
#75. Each and every object in Nature teaches us something. Renunciation and selflessness are the greatest lessons to learn from Nature.
Mata Amritanandamayi
#76. It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct ...
Sigmund Freud
#77. Alas! it is not the renunciation of our past and future selves that is difficult; it is the steady denial of our present self which makes the disciple.
Amelia E. Barr
#78. Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.
Adolf Hitler
#79. What an unilateral life, when from the material of a renunciation, we must fashion something we love.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#80. Renunciation-is a piercing Virtue-The letting go A Presence-for an Expectation-.
Emily Dickinson
