“Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.”

— George Bernard Shaw

#87
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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George Bernard Shaw 413

Irish playwright 1856–1950

Dokyo Etan (1642–1721) Son of Sanada Nobuyuki

Spoken to Hakuin Ekaku; as cited in: Hakuin Ekaku (author), Norman Waddell (translator). Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin. 2010. p. xxii

“Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Sometimes quoted with the spelling "forgo", but Bierce used "forego" in his 1911 Collected Works
Epigrams

“Nothing in excess, including self-denial.”

Poul Anderson book The Boat of a Million Years

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 2 “The Peaches of Forever” (p. 29)

“Modern religious teachings have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

“…the Outsider's problem is the problem of denial of self-expression.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Four The Attempt to Gain Control

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Self-denial surely means somethings far greater than some slight and insignificant lessening of our self-indulgences!”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Ribband of Blue and Other Bible Studies. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 113).

“It would be a great things, a brave thing, for the Hindus to achieve act of self-denial.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, 12 March 1931. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1930s

“If "safeguards of individual liberty" do not have "any intrinsic worth", then neither does individual liberty. And if individual liberty has no intrinsic worth, neither does individual life. It is impossible to imagine a more complete denial of President Bush's proclamation of the sanctity of human life, or of his assertion of an "essential human dignity attached to all persons by virtue of their very existence." This is not only legal positivism, it is nihilism. It is not only a denial of any moral foundation of constitutionalism, it is a denial of any moral foundation of political community.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

“The very act of faith by which we receive Christ is an act of the utter renunciation of self, and all its works, as a ground of salvation. It is really a denial of self, and a grounding of its arms in the last citadel into which it can be driven, and is, in its principle, inclusive of every subsequent act of self-denial by which sin is forsaken or overcome.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 535.

“Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.”

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George Bernard Shaw 413

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