Quotes & Sayings About Abnegation

Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born ... — Marquis De Sade

Do they have to be so public?" I say.
"She just kissed him." Al frowns at me. When he frowns, his thick eyebrows touch his eyelashes. "It's not like they're stripping naked."
"A kiss is not something you do in public."
Al, Will, and Christina all give me the same knowing smile.
"What?" I say.
"Your Abnegation is showing," says Christina. "The rest of us are all right with a little affection in public."
"Oh." I shrug. "Well ... I guess I'll have to get over it, then."
"Or you can stay frigid," says Will, his green eyes glinting with mischief. "You know. If you want. — Veronica Roth

I'm not abnegation, I'm not dauntless, I am Divergent — Veronica Roth

In her, as an Alexandrian, licence was in a curious way a form of self-abnegation, a travesty of freedom; and if I saw her as an exemplar of the city it was not of Alexandria, or Plotinus that I was forced to think, but of the sad thirtieth child of Valentinus who fell, 'not like Lucifer by rebelling against God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him'.* — Lawrence Durrell

An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation just like some Muslims who conseiders their sheikh as holy, some christians worship their (elder) — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your Abnegation is showing, — Veronica Roth

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?"
"I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son."
"You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns."
"You can stay here if you want," I say.
"Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run."
"I don't expect anything more."
He is a strange sort of person. — Veronica Roth

She tips her chin up and looks at me with that Abnegation stubbornness I know so well. She may have left them, but they are what's making her strong. — Veronica Roth

I settle into their pace. The uniform pounding of feet in my ears and the homogeneity of the people around me makes me believe that I could choose this. I could be subsumed into Abnegation's hive mind, projecting always outward. — Veronica Roth

Tris: Wait. So you have no idea what my aptitude is?
Tori: Yes and No. My conclusion is that you display equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite. People who get this kind of result are..are called ... Divergent. — Veronica Roth

This gospel we have received is one of sacrifice, service and self-abnegation from beginning to end. That is what constitutes the straight and narrow way that leads to life eternal. — George F. Richards

The very act of sacrifice magnifies the one who sacrifices himself to the point where his sacrifice is much more costly to humanity than would have been the loss of those for whom he is sacrificing himself. But in his abnegation lies the secret of his grandeur. — Andre Gide

All I can see when I look at him is a belt swinging toward Tobias, and the butt of a gun slamming into Caleb's jaw. I don't care that he hurt Caleb
I would have done it, too
but that he is simultaneously a man who knows how to hurt people and a man who parades around as the self-effacing leader of Abnegation, suddenly makes me so angry I can't see straight.
Especially because I chose him. I chose him over Tobias.
"Your brother is a traitor," says Marcus as we turn a corner. "He deserved worse. There's no need to look at me that way."
"Shut up!" I shout, shoving him hard into the wall. He is too surprised to push back. "I hate you, you know that! I hate you for what you did to him, and I am not talking about Caleb." I lean close to his face and whisper, "And while I may not shoot you myself, I will definitely not help you if someone tries to kill you, so you'd better hope to God we don't get into that situation. — Veronica Roth

Can you tell me where to find Tobias'? I ask. When I imagine his face, affection for him bubbles up inside of me and all I want to do is kiss him. 'Four, I mean. He's so handsome, isn't he? I don't really understand why he likes me so much. I'm not very nice, am I?'
-Tris — Veronica Roth

A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed
that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. — Victor Hugo

I look at myself head-on again. For the first time, the idea of leaving my Abnegation identity behind doesn't make me nervous; it gives me hope. — Veronica Roth

Whoa there, Tobias," says the man to my left. "Weren't you raised a Stiff? I thought the most you people did was ... graze hands or something."
"Then how do you explain all the Abnegation children?" Tobias raises his eyebrows.
"They are brought into being by sheer force of will," the woman on the arm of the chair interjects. "Didn't you know that, Tobias?"
"No, I wasn't aware." He grins. "My apologies. — Veronica Roth

As much automatic, Abnegation-bred sympathy as I have for the people living in this place, I am also afraid of them. If they are like the factionless, then they are surely desperate like the factionless, and I am wary of desperate people. — Veronica Roth

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

She kisses my cheek and slides the panel over the mirror. I think my mother could be beautiful, in a different world. Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation. — Veronica Roth

The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them. — Aung San Suu Kyi

don't belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don't belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me - they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could. I — Veronica Roth

Five years ago, volunteer construction workers from Abnegation repaved some of the roads. They started in the middle of the city and worked their way outward until they ran out of materials. The roads where I live are still cracked and patchy, and it's not safe to drive on them. We don't have a car anyway. — Veronica Roth

may have lived on Abnegation bread and vegetables for most of my life, with nothing to spare, but I was never that desperate. — Veronica Roth

It's my choice now, no matter what the test says. Abnegation. Dauntless. Erudite. Divergent. — Veronica Roth

Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation. We walk together to the kitchen. On these mornings when my brother makes breakfast, and my father's hand skims my hair as he reads the newspaper, and my mother hums as she clears the table - it is on these mornings that I feel guiltiest for wanting to leave them. The bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles me from side to side, even though — Veronica Roth

Yeah, well," I say, "I left Abnegation because I wasn't selfless enough, no matter how hard I tried to be."
"That's not entirely true." He smiles at me. "That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend, who hit my dad with a belt to protect me-that selfless girl, that's not you?" ...
"You've been paying close attention, haven't you?"
"I like to observe people/"
"Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you're a terrible liar. — Veronica Roth

They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man. — Thomas Carlyle

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea. — Christopher Hitchens

I will become my undoing if I become my obsession -excerpt from Abnegation manifesto — Veronica Roth

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression. — Lincoln Kirstein

The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation
abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a "virtue" that corrodes self-esteem. — Nathaniel Branden

It's not about Al," I snap. "It's about everyone watching! Everyone who now sees
hurling themselves into the chasm as a viable option. I mean, why not do it if everyone
calls you a hero afterward? Why not do it if everyone will remember your name? It's ... I
can't ... — Veronica Roth

I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.
I am Divergent. — Veronica Roth

When we choose to have an abortion, we must do so understanding the full ramifications of what we are doing. Anything less feels to me to be hypocritical, a selfish abnegation of reality and responsibility. — Ayelet Waldman

So now we all know," says Four, quietly, "that you are afraid of a short, skinny girl from Abnegation." His mouth curls into a smile. — Veronica Roth

It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. — Thomas Carlyle

He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don't belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don't belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the firnge. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me- they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could. I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the though of death. I love him and all I can think, all I can hear in my mind, are the words I said to him a few days ago : I would never deliver you to your own execution — Veronica Roth

When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it's beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again. — Veronica Roth

Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. — Swami Vivekananda

A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; ... This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France. — Alexis De Tocqueville

There was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice; that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being puts one in the role of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach; yet, for the same master, he would have gladly gone to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifice of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one Victim. — Robert Leckie

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. — Antonia Fraser

You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you
have one?"
"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now."
"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion
involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any
son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! If
you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent
to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a
knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return
"
"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the other paused.
"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme suddenly took off his hat. — G.K. Chesterton

Women are culturally conditioned to care for others, but not ourselves. We believe that having needs, feelings, ambitions, or thoughts of our own is not good. In this self-abnegation, we enact a culturally prescribed role that perpetuates sexist social structures. The needs and thoughts of men matter, but not ours. Christian theology presents Jesus as the model of self-sacrificing love and persuades us to believe that sexism is divinely sanctioned. We are tied to the virtue of self-sacrifice, often by hidden social threats of punishment. We keep silent about rape, we deny when we are being abused, and we allow our lives to be consumed by the trivial and by our preoccupation with others. We never claim our lives as our own. We live as though we were not present in our bodies. — Rebecca Ann Parker

No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know. — Veronica Roth

Candor values honesty, but our faction, Abnegation, values selflessness. — Veronica Roth

He touches my cheek and, even though we're in a room full of people, crowded by laughter and conversation, slowly kisses me.
"Whoa there, Tobias," says the man to my left. "Weren't you raised a Stiff? I thought the most you people did was ... graze hands or something."
"Then how do you explain all the Abnegation children?" Tobias raises his eyebrows. — Veronica Roth

The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Dear David, I'm sorry, but it's not going to happen the way we planned it. I can't do it. I know you're just going to think I'm being a stupid teenager, but this is my life and if I'm going to be here for years, I have to do this my way. I'll still be able to do my job from outside of Erudite. So tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, Andrew and I are going to choose Abnegation together. I hope you're not angry. I guess even if you are, I won't hear about it. - Natalie — Veronica Roth

Few people who are born into Abnegation choose to leave it. When they do, we remember. — Veronica Roth

Dauntless,' he says. 'I was born for Abnegation. I was planning on leaving Dauntless, and becoming factionless. But then I met her, and ... I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision.'
Her.
For a moment, it's like I'm looking at a different person, sitting in Tobias's skin, one whose life is not as simple as I thought. He wanted to leave Dauntless, but he stayed because of me. He never told me that. — Veronica Roth

Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others. And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice: not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. — Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodeness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know.
My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it. — Veronica Roth

Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self; the second in a compelled recollection of others. — Lord Chesterfield

Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous
so full of hope. They exist! And this is the only fundamental truth of fiction. — Joseph Conrad

I don't understand', I say,'why they care what I think, as long as I'm acting how they want me to.'
'You're acting how they want you to now', he says,'but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain tells you to do something else, something they don't want? — Veronica Roth

France is going to endure, and I'll tell you [ISIS people who attacked Paris ] why. If you're in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck, because go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They'll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, Marcel Proust and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked. — John Oliver

I could tell him I've been worried for weeks about what the aptitude test will tell me - Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity, or Dauntless? — Veronica Roth

Abnegation say you should only let someone sacrifice himself for you if it's the ultimate way for them to show they love you. — Veronica Roth

May it please Christ our Lord to grant us true humility and abnegation of will and judgment, so that we may deserve to begin to be His disciples. — Saint Ignatius

As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom. — Paulo Freire

Nicholas is sometimes compared with his half-crazy great-great-grandfather Paul, who was strangled by a camarilla acting in agreement with his own son, Alexander "the Blessed." These two Romanovs were actually alike in their distrust of everybody due to a distrust of themselves, their touchiness as of omnipotent nobodies, their feeling of abnegation, their consciousness, as you might say, of being crowned pariahs. But Paul was incomparably more colorful; there was an element of fancy in his rantings, however irresponsible. In his descendant everything was dim; there was not one sharp trait. Nicholas — Leon Trotsky

He wanted you to be the small, quiet girl from Abnegation," Four says softly. "He hurt you because your strength made him feel weak. No other reason."
I nod and try to believe him.
"The others won't be as jealous if you show some vulnerability. Even if it isn't real."
"You think I have to pretend to be vulnerable?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes,I do." He takes the ice pack from me, his fingers brushing mine, and holds it against my head himself. I put my hand down, too eager to relax my arm to object. Four stands up. I stare at the hem of his T-shirt.
Sometimes I see him as just another person, and sometimes I feel the sight of him in my gut, like a deep ache.
"You're going to want to march into breakfast tomorrow and show your attackers they had no effect on you," he adds, "but you should let that bruise on your cheek show, and keep your head down."
The idea nauseates me. — Veronica Roth

If abnegation has indeed so many charms for you, why do you fail to practice it in private life? Society will be grateful to you, for someone, at least, will reap the fruit; but to desire to impose it upon mankind as a principle is the very height of absurdity, for the abnegation of all is the sacrifice of all, which is evil erected into a theory. — Frederic Bastiat

But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence — Winifred Holtby

I open my eyes and for the first time stare openly at my own reflection. My heart rate picks up as I do, like I am breaking the rules and will be scolded for it. It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.
... Looking at myself now isn't like seeing myself for the first time; it's like seeing someone else for the first time. Beatrice was a girl I saw in stolen moments at the mirror, who kept quiet at the dinner table. This is someone whose eyes claim mine and don't release me; this is Tris. — Veronica Roth

In the one, we find in ourselves the resources to make the journey to God. In the other, there is no journey except God provide its means and take us by the hand to its end. The one, then, is all about self-assertion albeit clothed and hidden in noble religious language. The other is about grace, and that grace can work only as the self is not simply mortified, or disciplined, but dies. In one, there is self-seeking; in the other, there is self-abnegation. — David F. Wells

Dear Supreme Altruist-

I hope you are in a receptive mood.

Thanks very much for placing wihin me the bomb that never stops exploding. Though the benefits have been intangible and in fact I feel that this terrifying mechanism has generally made my life intolerable, I shall never ask you to reverse the situation. I feel I have done everything that may be reasonably expected of me in the way of self-abnegation. However, I now find to my dismay that my lifelong fear of death is beginning to desert me. I believe that this may mean that the bomb's continual explosions may be causing the growth of new slabs of man-bark instead of blasting the loathesome stuff away as it has been doing.

I therefore humbly request that the explosive power of the bomb be increased. Please do not make me weaker; make the bomb stronger.

Amen. — Jim Woodring

When you care more if someone else lives than you do about yourself- is that what [love is]? — Jodi Picoult

It was not by gentle sweetness and self-abnegation that order was brought out of chaos; it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid attention to detail, by ceaseless labor, by the fixed determination of an indomitable will. — Lytton Strachey

I can't imagine what kind of poverty would motivate a person to forget themselves and everyone they loved so their families could get a monthly stipend. I may have lived on Abnegation bread and vegetables for most of my life, with nothing to spare, but I was never that desperate. Their situation must have been much worse than anything I saw in the city. - Tris — Veronica Roth

Gray stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, lit coals for Dauntless, and glass for Candor. — Veronica Roth

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

I wasn't good enough for abnegation," I say, "and I wanted to be free. So I chose Dauntless." "Why weren't you good enough?" "Because I was selfish." I say. "You were selfish? You aren't anymore?" "Of course I am. My mother said that everyone is selfish," I say, "but I became less selfish in Dauntless. I discovered there were people I would fight for. Die for, even. — Veronica Roth

A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I regret ... " Tobias tilts his head, and sighs. "I regret my choice."
"What Choice?"
"Dauntless," he says. "I was born Abnegation. I was planning on leaving Dauntless, and becoming factionless. But I met her, and ... I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision."
Her. — Veronica Roth

Maybe there is some Abnegation in everyone, even if they don't know it. — Veronica Roth

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty. — Herman Melville

I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.
I am Divergent. And I can't be controlled. — Veronica Roth

I smirk a little. I did it, I put that expression on his face. I am not the perfect Abnegation child, doomed to be swallowed by the system and dissolved into obscurity. Instead, I am the first Abnegation-Dauntless transfer in more than a decade. — Veronica Roth

We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires
which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance, and resignation, but it's all false. The norm is for people to think that they desire whatever comes to them, whatever they achieve along the way or whatever is given to them
they have no preconceived desires. — Javier Marias

I don't have an answer to that, and I don't even know if he's right about me. Am I wired like the Abnegation, or the Dauntless? Maybe the answer is neither. Maybe I am wired like the Divergent. — Veronica Roth

Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: "Not my will, but thine, be done." What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion? — Harry Emerson Fosdick

And I don't see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity endorses degraded novels, self-abnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy has given us inflation and income tax. — L. Ron Hubbard

All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will,and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live fir others;to make complete abnegation of themselves,and to have no life but in their affections. — John Stuart Mill

Abnegation who switch to Dauntless become... I don't know, soldiers, I guess. Revolutionaries. That's what he could be, if he trusted himself more" he adds."If Four wasn't so plagued with self-doubt, he would be one hell of a leader, I think. — Veronica Roth

Who there, Tobias," says the man to my left. "Werent' you raised a Stiff? I thought the most you peole did was graze hands or something." "Then how do you explain all the Abnegation children?" Tobias raises his eyebrows. "They're brought into being by sheer force of will, — Veronica Roth

I'm here to see Evelyn."
"Sure," one of them says. "Because we just let anyone in who wants to see her."
"I have a message from the people outside," I say. "One I'm sure she would like to hear."
"Tobias?" a factionless woman says. I recognize her, but not from a factionless warehouse
from the Abnegation sector. She was my neighbor. Grace is her name.
"Hello, Grace," I say. "I just want to talk to my mom."
She bites the inside of her cheek and considers me. Her grip on her pistol falters. "Well, we're still not supposed to let anyone in."
"For God's sake," Peter says. "Go tell her we're here and see what she says, then! We can wait. — Veronica Roth

Above all, remember that God looks for solid virtues in us, such as patience, humility, obedience, abnegation of your own will - that is, the good will to serve Him and our neighbor in Him. His providence allows us other devotions only insofar as He sees that they are useful to us. — Saint Ignatius

And he's right to say that every faction loses something when it gains a virtue: the Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling. — Veronica Roth

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. — A.W. Tozer

The love of woman is a precious treasure. Tenderness has no deeper source, devotion no purer shrine, sacrifice no more saintlike abnegation. — Germain-Francois Poullain De Saint-Foix

He was in that broken mood for which the Middle Ages offered the cloister as a remedy; he felt the urgent need of sacrifice and abnegation to purge him. — John Meade Falkner

In all social classes except the most privileged, abnegation and hard work are considered the supreme female virtues; a spirit of sacrifice is a question of honor: the more one suffers for family, the prouder one feels. Women are used to thinking of their mate as a foolish child whose every serious fault, from drunkenness to domestic violence, they forgive . . . because he's a man. — Isabel Allende

The only possible explanation for the absence of a proactive word to express nonviolence is that not only the political establishments but the cultural and intellectual establishments of all societies have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society's key components, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself. It is not an authentic concept but simply the abnegation of something else. It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous. — Mark Kurlansky

Be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in the deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God . — Alexander MacLaren

I forgot at the time that this inability to penetrate a room is a particular form of hesitation to be associated with persons in whom an extreme egoism is dominant: the acceptance of someone else's place or dwelling possibly implying some distasteful abnegation of the newcomer's rights or position. — Anthony Powell

Maybe. Maybe there's more we all could have done," he says, "but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time." I frown and pull back. That is a lesson that members of Abnegation learn - guilt as a tool, rather than a weapon against the self. It is a line straight from one of my father's lectures at our weekly meetings. — Veronica Roth