Mortify Quotes & Sayings

I see that you have hitherto been one of that herd who, in order to learn how matters such as this take place, and in order to acquire a knowledge of natural effects, do not exhaust themselves in waking and studying, and mortify themselves with experiments and observations, but retire into their studies and glance through an index and a table of contents to see whether Aristotle has said any thing about them; and, being assured of the true sense of his text, consider that nothing else can be known. — Galileo Galilei

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Art, like the Jewish God, wallows in sacrifices. So tear yourself to pieces, mortify your flesh, roll in ashes, smear yourself with filth and spittle, wrench out your heart! You will be alone, your feet will bleed, an infernal disgust will be with you throughout your pilgrimage, what gives joy to others will give none to you, what to them are but pinpricks will cut you to the quick, and you will be lost in the hurricane with only beauty's faint glow visible on the horizon. — Gustave Flaubert

Call the Sabbath a delight: 13 a delight to the soul and a delight to the body. Since there are so many acts which one must abstain from doing on the seventh day, "you might think I have given you the Sabbath for your displeasure; I have surely given you the Sabbath for your pleasure." To sanctify the seventh day does not mean: Thou shalt mortify thyself, but, on the contrary: Thou shalt sanctify it with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy senses. "Sanctify the Sabbath by choice meals, by beautiful garments; delight your soul with pleasure and I will reward you for this very pleasure." 14 — Abraham Joshua Heschel

A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit. — John Owen

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I constantly say things that I regret. I mortify myself constantly. — Kathy Griffin

Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves. — John Flavel

If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will. — Teresa Of Avila

Oh, I constantly say things that I regret. I mortify myself constantly. But that's just part of the deal. I'm not really sure what's going to come out of my mouth. — Kathy Griffin

American Women: How they mortify the flesh in order to make it appetizing! Their beauty is a vast industry, their enduring allure a discipline which nuns or athletes might find excessive. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Never underestimate a parent's ability to mortify his child. — Peter Gallagher

The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin. — John Owen

Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. — John Owen

He, then, that would mortify any disquieting lust: let him take care to be equally diligent in all parts of obedience, and know that every lust, every omission of duty, is burdensome to God, though only one be burdensome to him. — John Owen

Moral of the story: Mortify yourself - when you are at your lowest, you feel ironically self-confident! — Felicia Day

There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit. — Alexander Pope

Some persons are so inclined to mortify themselves that at every opportunity they have, they do so. What a beautiful practice this is, and how profitable! — Alphonsus Rodriguez

In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself. — Benjamin Franklin

In reality, there is perhaps not one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as our pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please. It is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. You will see it, perhaps, even within the abbeys of the realm. For even if I, an Aldermaston, could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility. — Jeff Wheeler

He who does not mortify his palate will neither know how to mortify his flesh. — Paul Of The Cross

Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies. — Lord Chesterfield

There are three idols that Christians find very hard to mortify, namely, the applause of the world, the pleasures of the world, and the reproaches of the world. — Andrew Gray

It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh. — D.H. Lawrence

God is very precise in this point; he will say to such as invent ways to worship him of their own, coin means to mortify corruption, obtain comfort in their own mint: 'Who hath required this at your hands?' This is truly to be 'righteous over-much,' as Solomon speaks, when we will pretend to correct God's law, and add supplements of our own to his rule. — William Gurnall

In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible. — Marina Abramovic

The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I should mortify a dozen Sir Johns if it might aid my investigation." - Elizabeth Bennet — Debbie Cowens

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible. — James Joyce

So, you see, you will have to learn to listen to more of the radio music of life. It'll do you good. You are uncommonly poor in gifts, a poor blockhead, but by degrees you will come to grasp what is required of you. You have got to learn to laugh. That will be required of you. You must apprehend the humor of life, its gallows-humor. But of course you are ready for everything in the world except what will be required of you. You are ready to stab girls to death. You are ready to be executed with all solemnity. You would be ready, no doubt, to mortify and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn't you? It is time to come to your senses...You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you — Hermann Hesse

It being our duty to mortify ... we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, does but half his work. — John Owen

Nothing but a miracle of grace can lead to the saving of any sinner. Oh, my reader, be not deceived on this vital matter; to mortify the lusts of the flesh, to be crucified unto the world, to overcome the Devil, to die daily unto sin and live unto righteousness, to be meek and lowly in heart, trustful and obedient, pious and patient, faithful and uncompromising, loving and gentle; in a word, to be a Christian, to be Christ-like, is a task far, far beyond the poor resources of fallen human nature. — Arthur W. Pink

Some drawings are better than others ... Some are utterly spoiled ... I keep them all. I find a use sometimes even for the worst drawing ... But their chief use is to mortify one's conceit, to show how thoroughly incompetent it is possible to be, and to shame one into better ways. — Walter J. Phillips

Others make a point of trying to attain the precision and poise they see in those who have the ability to choose from a great number of horses those with [ ... ] qualities found in only a very small number of horses. This leads to a circumstance in which these imitators of such studied poise mortify the spirit of a noble horse, and remove from it all of the goodness of temperament Nature has given it. — Francois Robichon De La Gueriniere

We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence. — C.S. Lewis

It is pleasant to be virtuous and good, because that is to excel many others; it is pleasant to grow better, because that is to excel ourselves; it is pleasant to mortify and subdue our lusts, because that is victory; it is pleasant to command our appetites and passions, and to keep them in due order within the bounds of reason and religion, because this is empire. — John Tillotson

Eating Out Alone"
The loneliness inside me is a place,
Harvard where no one might always be someone.
When we're alone people we run from change
to the mysterious and beautiful
I am eating alone at a small white table,
visible, ignored ... the moment that tries the soul,
an explorer going blind in polar whiteness.
Yet everyone who is seated is a lay,,
or Paul Claudel, at the next table declaiming:
"L'Academie Groton, eh, c'est une ecole des cochons."
He soars from murdered English to killing French,
no word unheard, no sentence understood
a vocabulary to mortify Racine ...
the minotaur steaming in a maze of eloquence — Robert Lowell

For to pretend that men may live habitually sinful lives without any attempt by the Spirit to mortify sin in them, nor with any desire for repentance, is to deny the Christian religion. — John Owen

The Professor looked like a Protestant saint when the cannibal offered him the choice of taking six wives or being boiled alive. He wanted to mortify some flesh, but he didn't know which. — Joyce Cary

If your neighbors talk about you, and you think that they do wrong in speaking evil of you, do not let them know that your ever heard a word, and conduct yourselves as if they always did right, and it will mortify them, and they will say, "We'll not try this game any longer." — Brigham Young

To mortify a sin is not utterly to kill, root it out, and destroy it, that it should have no more hold at all nor residence in our hearts. It is true this is that which is aimed at; but this is not in this life to be accomplished. — John Owen

Julie always tried to stand beside me, or talk to me, or in some other way mortify me. — Wendelin Van Draanen