Denying Quotes & Sayings

Fasting is the only method of suicide permitted by the Catholic Church. All other ways imply despair, a distrust of God's wisdom, an unwillingness to bear the hardships with which God tests his children. An absolute sin, suicide's punishment is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. But fasting is undertaken for the purpose of penance, meditation, and spiritual ecstasy. It purifies the spirit by denying the body. It brings a soul closer to God. — David Morrell

That was six years ago. We can't keep turning our backs on chances to live or...at least stop denying ourselves pleasure. — Ally Fleming

I think that freshness and that innocence is something that is missing from a lot of female singers. I'm certainly not denying that I'm young, but I'm not fluff. — Jessica Simpson

But selfishness can take on many disguises. It can also be about defending and trying to prove your own belief system while denying there could be value in the beliefs of others. — Karlyle Tomms

Why you?" I asked. "Why are you the one
here with me? Why isn't it him?"
Grayson's smile was sad and full of sympathy. "I don't know, Aves, but maybe it's for the best. You guys are almost seventeen. If it hasn't happened by now, maybe it's not supposed to."
"I can't accept that."
"Denial isn't good for you."
"It isn't denial."
"Now you're denying your denial."
"But look at you," I said. "You always thought I was like a sister too. If you can change your mind, then he can too. He just needs a wake up call."
"Hey now, you can't just go jumping in the shower with every guy you know. That's totally our thing. — Kelly Oram

I know what love feels like, but this, this man ... fuck me. Steals my breath. Knots me up. Torches me."
"No, this is what denying love feels like, man. Why you denying your heart? — Adrian Phoenix

The principle of plural marriage was revealed to the Mormons amid much secrecy. Dark clouds hovered over the church in the early 1840s, after rumors spread that its founder, Joseph Smith, had taken up the practice of polygamy. While denying the charge in public, by 1843 Smith had shared a revelation with his closest disciples. — Scott Anderson

There is no denying that we are suffering from a collective neurosis and the novel which does not face this is not a novel of our time. — Anais Nin

So whatever is experientially real, accept it. You cannot do anything by denying it. By denying it you create the problem, and the problem becomes more complex. It is simple: you feel you are a coward, so what? So, "I am a coward." Just see the point! If you can accept cowardice you have already become brave. Only a brave person can accept the fact of being a coward; no coward can do that. You are already on the way to transformation. So the first thing is that nothing that is experienced as a fact has to be denied reality. Second, — Osho

Now I don't know why he's denying them habeas corpus. I can only assume the guys they got detained over there did something really unforgivable. Like remind Obama he was once a professor of Constitutional Law. — Stephen Colbert

You're not a Dom, not a Master, Josh," she said. "You've never even been close. You're a submissive. A gorgeous, incredibly sensual submissive that any Mistress in her right mind would cherish forever. You were doing as your Mistress told you to do, and she used you cruelly. I won't let you blame yourself for anything, Josh, except maybe for not recognizing it sooner, because you are an intelligent man. Your inly crime is in denying your own worth, because she made you doubt yours. A Mistress doesn't do that, Josh. — Joey W. Hill

More often than not, the chances that are presented to us go unnoticed. Their lessons left unlearned. The most common occurrence is love. Many guard their hearts out of fear that they will be broken, but what is learned by denying one's self? Chance is a miracle. Not an act of God, but a genuinely inexpiable opportunity that can surpass the bonds of one's fate potentially altering the outcome. — A.C. Heller

Churchgoers feel righteous, responsible, and obedient to God's will. They view anyone unlike themselves as devoid of values, and therefore unworthy of God's love. By denying God to all those who have strayed from the path of righteousness, the devout are unwittingly taking on themselves a role that belongs only to God. — Deepak Chopra

Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains. — Samuel Beckett

We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back. — Theodor Herzl

On the surface, we are all different. We ascribe to a variety of belief systems, attain our identity from various stories, get our customs from diverse cultures, and so on. And, rightly or wrongly, we generally define ourselves by these differences - there is no denying that. However, when we look beneath the surface, we discover certain universal elements. — Gudjon Bergmann

There's no denying you'll find yourself in places you won't want to be, seeing things you wish you weren't seeing, but resistance to now is resistance to the very life you're living. — Jared T.L.C.

Whenever you feel compelled to put others first at the expense of yourself, you are denying your own reality, your own identity. — David Stafford

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

And our task is harder even than that," he said, "for we also have to invoke the grey fumes without denying the palpitating breath of roses. We have to give glimpses of a world that sometimes seems to work like a machine bent on some inexorable but inscrutable task, with all of us caught in its coils, cogs meshing always with the absurd, frantic pistons pushing away at the futile."

"And yet," he added, his voice now only a murmur which seemed to be a part of the rustling of the withered bushes and the passing noises of the road, "we may also at times suggest a slight faltering in the grinding of the machine, or the brief opening of an unknown vista suggesting that the machine is not all that there is. — Mark Valentine

The act of language or the act of denying language carries its own heaviness. — Leni Zumas

There's no denying that television is one of the most powerful propaganda media we've ever invented. — Jim Fowler

I can't help but smile as I swipe a lone tear trailing down my cheek. How can I not be crazy in love with this guy? Time away from him didn't change anything. I can't deny him another chance. That would be denying myself. — Simone Elkeles

Remember, deniers claim 90 to 100% of all Holocaust deaths are some fantasy concocted years after the war. Rest assured the only books anywhere that talk about the tiny death toll numbers deniers believe in (i.e. tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands instead of millions) are Holocaust-denying books written by anti-Semitic "historians," religious zealots or neo-Nazis. No mainstream history books ever published since 1945 mention a death toll that isn't in the millions for the Holocaust. Period. — James Morcan

[T]raveling, a local is shocked to realize that in neighboring countries locals view him as a foreigner; between villages, clans, nations, and classes there are wars, potlatches, agreements, treaties, and struggles that remove the absolute meaning from the idea of the 'other' and bring out its relativity; whether one likes it or not, individuals and groups have no choice but to recognize the reciprocity of their relation. How is it, then, that between the sexes this reciprocity has not been put forward, that one of the terms has been asserted as the only essential one, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative, defining the latter as pure alterity? Why do women not contest male sovereignty? — Simone De Beauvoir

It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is no denying that there are 'royal roads' through existence for the upper classes; for them, at least, the highways are macadamized, swept, and watered. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Does evil come from inside ,from the dark depths of the human soul or does it come from outside ,from the objective conditions of human life?
This question divides all people into two large groups: believers and materialists. For believers all evil and good is in man. Hence denying violence because it's directed toward the outside, is a fight with an imaginary, nonexistent evil. Violence should be directed toward ourselves, inside, in the form of repentance or asceticism.
To assert that evil is outside, that a man is evil because the conditions in which he lives are bad, that changes in these conditions would bring changes in man,to insist that man is a result of outside circumstances, is from the religious point of view the most godless and the most inhuman idea which has ever appeared in the human mind. Such an opinion degrades man to a thing, to a helpless executor of outside, mechanical, unconscious forces. — Alija Izetbegovic

That feels like the worst part: denying people hope. I don't know where I'd be if I couldn't even tell myself that any day now, five minutes, or an hour from now, everything will change. — Nicole Hardy

It's hard for me to speak to you as if you were not a tyrant," I say. "You sit here and think you are more civilized than Luna because you obey your creed of honor, because you show restraint." I gesture to the simple house. "But you are not more civilized," I say, "You're just more disciplined."
"Isn't that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulse for stability?" He eats his fruit in measured bites. I set mine on the stone.
"No, it's not. But, I'm not here to debate philosophy or politics."
"Thank Jove. I doubt we'd agree upon much. He watches me carefully.
"I'm here to discuss what we both know best, war. — Pierce Brown

Well, let's argue this out, Mr Blank. You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value, for I am an inefficient member of Society, slow in the uptake, uncertain, slightly damaged in the fray, there's no denying it. So you have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month, to lodge me in a small, dark room, to clothe me shabbily, to harass me with worry and monotony and unsatisfied longings till you get me to the point when I blush at a look, cry at a word. We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were. Isn't it so, Mr Blank? There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. Some must cry so that the others may be able to laugh the more heartily. — Jean Rhys

For the tiny percentage of people who are negatively affected by our embracing of standards, they can just get their sports somewhere else in the meantime. It's not like we're denying them hospital care. — Mike Davidson

There is sexism
I'm not denying its existence. But I'm saying that I will deny its effort against me. I just pay it no nevermind and say, 'Get out of my way.' — Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Well, I am denying it. You think the world revolves around sex. It's pathetic. — Clive Barker

Weakness and strength are necessary for balance. No one or nothing is only weak or only strong. But some of us overlook our weaknesses, and even deny that we have them. That can be dangerous, because denying there is a weakness is in itself a weakness. Likewise, accepting that we have weaknesses becomes a strength. And by the same token, overestimating strength is a weakness. You should not be blinded by your strengths. The feeling of strength is not the same as having strength. Neither should you ignore your weaknesses. Know them well, too. — Joseph M. Marshall III

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love? — Betty Friedan

We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad. — Ernest Becker

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling appeared before Congress. Do you think they even bothered swearing him in? Now he is denying he lied to Congress last week. He's saying it was just the liquor talking. — Jay Leno

The same teen who can't legally operate a four-wheeler, or [ATV] ... in a farm lane workplace environment can operate a jacked-up F-250 pickup on a crowded urban expressway. By denying these [farm work] opportunities to bring value to their own lives and the community around them, we've relegated our young adults to teenage foolishness. Then as a culture we walk around shaking our heads in bewilderment at these young people with retarded maturity. Never in life do people have as much energy as in their teens, and to criminalize leveraging it is certainly one of our nation's greatest resource blunders. — Joel Salatin

Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. — Grant Morrison

As much as I disagree with Sarah Palin, there's no denying that she was the victim of sexism. — Jessica Valenti

There's no denying that I loved him and still do, but there are lots of things to be happy about. The Ocean Teacher said that the purpose of life is to be happy. The Divine Weaver told me not to become disheartened when the pattern doesn't suit. She said I should wait and watch and be patient and devoted.
The threads of my life are all tangled and jumbled up. I don't know if I'll ever get them straightened out. The fabric of my existence is pretty ugly right now. All I can do is hold onto my faith, believing that someday I'll see the light of that bright star again. — Colleen Houck

Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender. — Jon Meacham

My final advice for young people is to not wait for leadership from adult politicians. Step forward today, because our current leaders are denying the dire reality we are facing. Leadership can come form anywhere. — Kumi Naidoo

Managers can waste a lot of time at the outset of a crisis denying that something went wrong. Skip that step. — Jack Welch

Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease. — Jean Genet

God has graciously called us; now we must live up to that calling. That cannot mean less than that we should become increasingly holy, self-denying, loving, full of integrity, steeped in the knowledge of God and his Word, delighted to trust and obey our heavenly Father. — D. A. Carson

Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience. — Henry Cloud

I'm speaking to you man to man," he said, "not doctor to patient. How much longer can you continue denying yourself? You can't live without warmth." "Warmth?" I said, sending him a 'shut up' message. "Yes. Sexual expression. David, you don't even masturbate." We were silent for at least a minute. My intrigues huddled within me like guerilla warriors, hiding behind other thoughts. Finally, I thought of something to say: "If we're going to talk man to man and not doctor to patient, then I don't think you should charge me for this hour. — Scott Spencer

Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others. — Samantha Power

I have mixed feelings about how fast things are changing as a result of technology. There's no denying that through technology there are amazing things being created that help people with diseases or help people's dreams come true. But there's also this obsession. Social media is the most dangerous of them all. — Amanda Crew

The devil and God are components of a Siamese twin. Neither has any existence apart from the other. In denying the existence of the one, Christians have helped to kill the other. If there need to be no fear of hell, people may well ask what is the attraction of heaven? Gods and devils were born together. Gods and devils will die together. — Chapman Cohen

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of a process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet of an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. But both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing - the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. GOD IN THE DOCK "Dogma and the Universe — C.S. Lewis

Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. — Charles Dickens

I can write no other than this: unless we use the weapons of the spirit, denying ourselves and taking up our cross and following Jesus, dying with Him and rising with Him, men will go on fighting, and often from the highest motives, believing that they are fighting defensive wars for justice and in self-defense against present or future aggression. — Dorothy Day

There's no denying it now. I'm in the world. And, too, the world is in me. — Nicola Yoon

Embracing and rejecting tradition, bound and liberated by faith, torn between obscurantism and reason, self-assured and self-critical, they were a kaleidoscope of fragments, positions held and abandoned, images formed and shattered, God-fearing Jew, God-denying Jew, passionate and indifferent, hero and villain, yea-sayer, nay-sayer. — Israel Shenker

With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of the difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness {...} Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone's contradictions - someone's idiocies, even - is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Just by breathing deeply on your anger, you will calm it. You are being mindful of your anger, not suppressing it ... touching it with the energy of mindfulness. You are not denying it at all. When I speak about this to psychotherapists, I have some difficulty. When I say that anger makes us suffer, they take it to mean that anger is something negative to be removed. But I always say that anger is an organic thing, like love. Anger can become love. Our compost can become a rose. If we know how to take care of our compost ... Anger is the same. It can be negative when we do not know how to handle it, but if we know how to handle our anger, it can be very positive. We do not need to throw anything away, (50). — Thich Nhat Hanh

I cannot imaging anyone looking at the sky and denying God. — Abraham Lincoln

There's no denying that it takes effort to set the intention to see our fundamental connected-ness with others. — Sharon Salzberg

We should travel on in the way of obedience to all God's commands, even the difficult as well as the easy; denying all our sinful inclinations and interests. The way to heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel up hill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh. We should follow Christ; the path he travelled, was the right way to heaven. We should take up our cross and follow him, in meekness and lowliness of heart, obedience and charity, diligence to do good, and patience under afflictions. The way to heaven is a heavenly life; an imitation of those who are in heaven, in their holy enjoyments, loving, adoring, serving, and praising God and the Lamb. — Jonathan Edwards

Why are they denying it?" Larena laid her head on Fallon's shoulder. "He's denying it. She's just trying to hold herself together in the face of what he's done. — Donna Grant

Still, there's no denying that in some sense I 'feel better,' and with that comes at once a short of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one's unhappiness. — C.S. Lewis

There is cruelty in divorce. There is cruelty in forced or unfortunate marriage. We will continue to cry at weddings because we know how bittersweet, how fragile is the truth. We will always need legal divorce just as an emergency escape hatch is crucial in every submarine. No sense, however, in denying that after every divorce someone will be running like a cat, tin cans tied to its tail: spooked and slowed down. — Anne Roiphe

There was no denying she could get him all hot and bothered, but she could also soothe him with a look, make him laugh when he felt like crying, and more importantly, he knew she would be there when he needed her to. — Sandra Panting

For me, there has never been one definition of beauty. I think we all have something to offer and when beauty shines from within, there can be no denying it — Alek Wek

By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry , plot and narrative and character in fiction , the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience . They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite. — Steven Pinker

Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him. — Frances Wright

Denying our weaknesses is neither power, nor protection. We cannot overcome those disabling parts of our own nature which in fact steal our power away, if we do not acknowledge they exist. — Sonia Choquette

I've conducted an experiment on my kids. Instead of denying them access to media, I've encouraged it. They read comic books, play Nintendo and watch way too much TV. — Matt Groening

That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground
or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence. — Shirley Hazzard

Weasels
and stoats
and foxes
and so on. They're all right in a way
I'm very good friends with them
pass the time of day when we meet, and all that
but they break out sometimes, there's no denying it, and then
well, you can't really trust them, and that's the fact. — Kenneth Grahame

If you expect the worse, you're only denying someone a chance to be better — Sangu Mandanna

Two hundred years from now, she had - I will? she thought wildly - stood in front of this portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, furiously denying the truth that it showed. Ellen MacKenzie looked out at her now as she had then; long-necked and regal, slanted eyes showing a humor that did not quite touch the tender mouth. It wasn't a mirror image, by any means; Ellen's forehead was high, narrower than Brianna's, and the chin was round, not pointed, her whole face somewhat softer and less bold in its features. But the resemblance was there, and pronounced enough to be startling; the wide cheekbones and lush red hair were the same. And around her neck was the string of pearls, gold roundels bright in the soft spring sun. — Diana Gabaldon

Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things ... and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!? — Edward Albee

When I function in only one mode or the other, I am denying half myself, half my potential. — Dean Koontz

It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Think of a lifeless forest in which a small plant pushes its head upward, out of the ruin. In our grief process, we are moving into life from death, without denying the devastation that came before. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself. — John Lennon

The other exception to the rule regards dealings with masochists. A masochist derives pleasure from being hurt; so denying the masochist his pleasure through-pain hurts him just as much as actual physical pain hurts the non masochist. The story of the truly cruel sadist illustrates this point: The masochist says to the sadist, "beat me." To which the merciless sadist replies, "NO!" If a person wants to be hurt and enjoys suffering, then there is no reason not to indulge him in his
wont. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Wimbledon attracted Bill Clinton to the gallery at Centre Court Tuesday at the All England Club. NBC cameras showed his head turning back and forth with each volley. Even at a tennis match, it looks like he's denying everything. — Argus Hamilton

....The wife is the heartbeat of the home. She serves as the thermometer--if she's warm, so is the rest of the family; if she's cold, so is the rest of the family. And if she's an extreme temp--boiling or frigid--the family will follow suit. Calm or chaos comes from her.

I've resisted this responsibility often. It's much easier to point to my husband, the biblically appointed leader of the household, and to examine what I perceive are his flaws, his failures, his lack of whatever. But ultimately, I'm just denying what I really know--that I have a great role to honor and live up to in my marriage and in our home. The questions is, do I embrace it? Or do I run from it? My fear is that I've run from it for a while now. But I'm not running any more. — Sara Horn

She watched him in the glow of the lamplight, his broad shoulders hunched over the piano, his hair flopping over his face, and knew she couldn't fight her feelings for him any longer. Denying him wasn't going to make them go away. And looking at him right at this moment, she didn't want them to. — Alexandra Potter

Stephens resumed speaking as the crowd quieted. He referred to one final "improvement" the Confederate Constitution had introduced, a brief but crucial clause that banned forever any "bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves." "The new Constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions - African slavery as it exists among us - the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization." This question, Stephens baldly admitted, "was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."20 Stephens then referenced — Don H. Doyle

Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable. For people of science, he is a hero. Denying man a privileged place in creation, .. he reaffirms with his own intellectual courage the dignity of man. — Primo Levi

Denial does not change reality for everyone else. Only for the one denying and those who are foolish enough to believe the fantasy. — Elle Casey

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role? — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Identifying as a writer is a matter of self-acceptance. It's not a thing that can be given to you, or bestowed upon you. You are a writer if you write. That's it. If what you are seeking is to be acknowledged as a writer by other people, many of them strangers, you're in for a demoralizing journey. It is a silly club where those who have been 'accepted' are loathe to permit others into. It's sort of like how we Americans love denying our own immigrant origins while railing against immigration. — Vincent Louis Carrella

The gnosis of God is intermediate between immoderation, which is ascribing human characteristics to God, and negligence, which is denying any attributes to God ... The Truth lies in the balance between the two extremes. — Ibn Ata Allah

But we don't get over grief by denying it. We have to feel it. We have to give it its due. — Claudia Gray

Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs of a dysfunctional society, denying the use of imagination, was the ghetto. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Denying Ahab greatness is an aesthetic blunder: He is akin to Achilles, Odysseus, and King David in one register, and to Don Quixote, Hamlet, and the High Romantic Prometheus of Goethe and Shelley in another. Call the first mode a transcendent heroism and the second the persistence of vision. Both ways are antithetical to nature and protest against our mortality. The epic hero will never submit or yield. — Harold Bloom

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying. — Dorothy L. Sayers

You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."
"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"
"Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."
"Don't try to deny it."
"I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. "I agree with all you've said. — Joseph Heller

Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor's credibility. — Jonathan Dimbleby

It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived ... And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability - such that we enjoy now - without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history. — Ashim Shanker

There is no shame in ignorance, only in denying it. By knowing what we do not know, we can take steps to remedy our lack of knowledge — Graham McNeill

You hate the very source of your life, it's ultimate basis - for there's no denying it, 'sex is fundamental. And you hate it, hate it.' 'Me?' It was a novel accusation. Spandrell was accustomed to hearing himself blamed for his excessive love of women and the sensual pleasures. 'Not only you. All these people.' With a jerk of his head he indicated the other diners. 'And all the respectable ones too. Practically everyone. It's the disease of modern man. I call it Jesus's disease on the analogy of Bright's disease. Or rather Jesus's and Newton's disease; for the scientists are as much responsible as the Christians. So are the big business men, for that matter. It's Jesus's and Newton's and Henry Ford's disease. Between them, the three have pretty well killed us. Ripped the life out of our bodies and stuffed us with hatred.' Rampion — Aldous Huxley

Overwhelmed? Delegate. For perfectionists of the world, this is often a challenge. While you may think only you can do it best, you are denying someone else an opportunity to learn when you do everything yourself. Being the bottleneck serves no one, including you. — Lisa A. Mininni