“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.”
“I wonder if you can refuse to inherit the world.”
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.”
1960s, Address on Courage (1965)
Context: Deep down in our nonviolent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right, he’s afraid his home will get burned, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot or beat down by state troopers. He may go on and live until he’s 80, but he’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. And the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died...
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
So we're going to stand up right here amid horses. We're going to stand up right here, in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas! We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!
“I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.”
“Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched….”
Source: Paint it Black
Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 8 : 'Beyond the Beauty Myth', p. 290
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
Source: Letter to My Daughter
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 235)
Source: Shards of Honour
Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
Source: The Visitor (2002)
Context: You asked for wisdom? Hear these words. Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
“I told my brain., said my brain. My brain refused to get out of my head. Inconsiderate brain.”
Source: The Hammer of Thor
“You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you”
“As a matter of fact, she has refused to marry me.”
“So when's the wedding?” Ramsey asked.”
Source: Ransom
Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism
“Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.”
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Miscellaneous
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 23.
Context: To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.
Source: The Secret Life of Bees
Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
“It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.”
Source: Little Children
Source: The Princess Bride
“I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.”
As quoted in Untamed Tongues : Wild Words from Wild Women (1993) by Autumn Stephens, p. 132
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.”
Composition as Explanation (1926)
Context: For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Context: No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Source: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
Source: Secrets of a Summer Night
Source: Tangled Up In You
“You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go.”
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes
“We would oppose the turning of the planet and refuse the setting of the sun.”
Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Source: Pride and Prejudice
Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York, defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position (19 March 1940).
1940s
Variant: Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.
“There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”
Variant: There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden," Francisco said softly, "except one: the refusal to think.
Source: Atlas Shrugged: Wer Ist John Galt?
Statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172, Third statement for June 11. This has often been misattributed to Helen Keller in some published works since at least 1980, perhaps because she somewhere quoted it.
Variant:
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
The Book of Good Cheer : A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts (1909) by Edwin Osgood Grover, p. 28; also in Masterpieces of Religious Verse (1948) by James Dalton Morrison, p. 416, where it is titled "Lend a Hand"
Variant: I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
"The Truth the Dead Know"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)
Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
