“Hopelessness means renunciation of all hopes. Aimlessness means renunciation of all aims. Helplessness means renunciation of all help. No master, no disciple, means renunciation of spirituality. And the New Life I have in mind eventually means absolute renunciation. Therefore, if any one asks you what this New Life is, say, 'Absolute and perfect renunciation.' If they ask, 'Renunciation of what?”

— Meher Baba

say, 'Of everything — aims, hopes, help and life itself.
Statement during the New Life period (1949 - 1952), 10:3481
Lord Meher (1986)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Meher Baba113

Indian mystic 1894–1969

Abu Nasr as-Sarraj

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 82

“Renunciation of the World is the most essential mark of the spiritual journey to God.”

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Hasan al-Niffari

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 80

“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 à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 536.

“Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

“The renunciation of recognition will never become possible without a certitude that our life is directed by a suprahuman authority.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

I'm not Stiller (1955)

“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 (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Heroes abound at the dawn of civilizations, during pre-Homeric and Gothic epochs, when people, not having yet experienced spiritual torture, satisfy their thirst for renunciation through a derivative: heroism.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

“Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation.
'A beggar cannot renounce wealth,' Master would say. 'If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!'
Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 44 - "With Mahatma Gandhi At Wardha"

“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 (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

Matthew Arnold (1928) p. 89

“With deepest veneration and fellow feeling, I clasp your hand on the occasion of your eightieth birthday. I know of no other person who combines such profound intellectual gifts with such self-renunciation while finding the whole meaning of his life in quiet service to the community. We -- all of us -- thank you not only for what you have accomplished and brought about, but also because we feel happy that such a man should exist at all in this time of ours, which is so lacking in genuine personalities.
With reverent greetings….”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Albert Einstein, letter to Justice Brandeis on 1936-11-10, ibid.
Dukas and Hoffman comment: "the handwritten original is among the Brandeis papers at the Law School of the University of Louisville."

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