Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 2 “The Peaches of Forever” (p. 29)
“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”
“I would rather have regrets of excess than regrets of denial.”
“Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.”
Sometimes quoted with the spelling "forgo", but Bierce used "forego" in his 1911 Collected Works
Epigrams
“…the Outsider's problem is the problem of denial of self-expression.”
Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Four The Attempt to Gain Control
“Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.”
#87
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
The Failure of Christianity (1913)
(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, 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
“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.”
"On Bright Old Things — and Other Things" in Sidelights on New London and Newer New York : And Other Essays (1932)
