Hosea Ballou Quotes

Not many of us are willing to give up everything we have.

In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation.

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

The highest fulfillment of religion requires a giving up of all possessions.

Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious

But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

Renunciation is in our blood.

Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. Its what your'e willing to give up.

There is nothing so high as renunciation of self.

My life is so full of sacrifices.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

I know the word 'sacrifice.'

Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

Tremendous purity, tremendous renunciation, is the one secret of spirituality. “Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone is immortality to be reached,” say the Vedas. “Sell all that thou hast and give to poor, and follow me,” says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without renunciation?

The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.

Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That's what they do for a living.

This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Real. We must go to the Real. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves.

The secret of happiness is renunciation.