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1 " The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed. "
― Brennan Manning , Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
2 " Ingratitude to God does not rely only on our refusal to give the verbal thanksgiving due to Him, but also recides in our inability to appreciate his gifts and potentials in us by leaving them untapped. "
― Israelmore Ayivor
3 " Nothing seems to me more tragic than the pressures we put on artists to do what we think we'll like, and our refusal to prize what is most ornery and special about them. "
4 " Re-vision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction--is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. A radical critique of literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name--and therefore live--afresh. A change in the concept of sexual identity is essential if we are not going to see the old political order reassert itself in every new revolution. We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us. "
― Adrienne Rich , On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978
5 " Disappointment is really just a term for our refusal to look on the bright side. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
6 " Solzhenitsyn described this: It would be hard to identify the exact source of that inner intuition, not founded on rational argument, which prompted our refusal to enter the NKVD schools… People can shout at you from all sides: ‘You must!’ And your own head can be saying also: ‘You must!’ But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don’t want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without me; I want no part of it. "
― Jonathan Glover , Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
7 " The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action. "
― Lena Dunham , Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
8 " Jews have been an ever-dying people that never died. They have experienced a continuous resurrection, like the dry bones that Ezekiel saw in the valley. This has become the sine qua non of every Jew. It is the mystery of the hidden miracle of survival in the face of overwhelming destruction. Our refusal to surrender has turned our story into one long, unending Purim tale. "
― Nathan Lopes Cardozo , Foreword to A Damaged Mirror: A story of memory and redemption: Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo discusses prophecy and memory
9 " Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation. "
― Audre Lorde , Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
10 " The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action, "
11 " Everything we do these days - our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusal to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism - all of this propels us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope. "
