Weekend Words: Deny
"Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends."
In the first and only Vice Presidential debate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine repeatedly attempted to turn Donald J. Trump’s own statements against Indiana Governor Mike Pence, whose simple strategy was to deny that Trump had ever made them.
However, he was unable to deny or defend his running mate’s newly revealed boasts about sexual assault, even as prominent members of the Republican Party called on him to replace Trump at the top of the ticket.
This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.
—Matthew 26:34 (KJV)
I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget.
—Benjamin Disraeli
She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.
—Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn
He teaches to deny that faintly prays.
—Francis Quarles, A Feast for Worms
Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
—Ambrose Bierce
I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.
—Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
—Andre Malraux
In your winter you deny your spring.
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny each other’s existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal.
—Ingmar Bergman
Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism – and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part – must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.
—Murray Rothbard
Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.
—Claude Levi-Strauss
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
—H. L. Mencken
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
—Abraham Lincoln
I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.
—Philip Johnson
There is only one Evil. To deny life.
—D. H. Lawrence, “Cypresses”
