Literary notes about abnegation (AI summary)
Literary works employ "abnegation" to illustrate a profound renunciation of self, often highlighting a character’s willingness to sacrifice personal desires or even identity for a higher ideal. It may appear as a transformative, almost redemptive act—where the very renunciation of self paves the way for the recognition of deeper truths or the embrace of love [1, 2]—or as a deliberate act of moral or spiritual self-sacrifice, as seen in portrayals of Christian love and ethical submission [3, 4]. Sometimes, abnegation is depicted in a heroic light, a necessary element of achieving greatness or artistic purity [5, 6], while in other instances it serves to critique the limits of self-denial when it stifles individuality or intellect [7, 8].
- He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love—which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts.
— from The Works of Frederick Schiller by Friedrich Schiller - It almost seemed as though this final stroke of self-abnegation excited more eloquence in him than all the rest.
— from Wood and Stone: A Romance by John Cowper Powys - Christian love, on the other hand, springs from a complete abnegation of Self.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Proverbs by Robert F. (Robert Forman) Horton - When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - He saw more distinctly what Christ came to do; and how he did it by complete self-abnegation, and by descending to the level of the lowest.
— from Brought Home by Hesba Stretton - And may it not be that some touch of heroic self-abnegation is necessary before we can have a soul which death cannot touch?
— from Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge - 286 Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge of art.
— from The Life of Cicero, Volume One by Anthony Trollope - It veils itself further under fatalism and resignation, objectivity, self-tyranny, stoicism, asceticism, self-abnegation, hallowing.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche
