It is your virtue, being men, to try;
And it is ours, by virtue to deny. [ Drayton ]
Better deny at once than promise long. [ Proverb ]
Harmless all malice, if our God be nigh;
Fruitless all pains, if he his help deny.
Patient I pass these gloomy hours away,
And wait the morning of eternal day! [ Lady Jane Dudley ]
He that gives his heart will not deny his money. [ Proverb ]
I deny that with both my hands, and all my teeth. [ Proverb ]
True wisdom, laboring to expound, heareth others readily;
False wisdom, sturdy to deny, closeth up her mind to argument. [ Tupper ]
To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible. [ Froude ]
The more we deny ourselves, the more the gods supply our wants. [ Horace ]
It is more commendable to deny upon occasion than to grant upon none. [ Proverb ]
He that gives time to resolve, gives time to deny, and warning to prevent. [ Proverb ]
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. [ Voltaire ]
That is true love which is always the same, whether you give everything or deny everything to it. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
When you give, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give. [ Henry Taylor ]
Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death. [ Mackenzie ]
My May of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. [ William Shakespeare ]
Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]
Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose - a power to accomplish all that we undertake;
for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry. Pope in painting. Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. [ Colton ]