self-denial

• He needs no Aristotle to teach him the value of habits; he is soon forced to use them as defences against his pet weaknesses; above all he finds that self-denial has its reward in perfect health; that the thistle pain, too, has its flower. —  Oscar Wilde His Life and Confessions
• He said that he did not believe in self-denial unless people liked it. —  Father Payne
• It called for a far larger amount of self-denial than ordinary people are capable of; it demanded too much singleness of purpose and sincerity of speech. —  Elizabeth Fry
• Perhaps there was something selfish in his self-denial, for the purity and girlishness which it indicated were very dear to him, and he hated to lessen them by anything he did. —  The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him
• There might be many more and just occasions taken to speak of his books, which none ever did or can commend too much; but I decline them, and hasten to an account of his Christian behaviour and death at Bourne; in which place he continued his customary rules of mortification and self-denial; was much in fasting, frequent in meditation and prayers, enjoying those blessed returns, which only men of strict lives feel and know, and of which men of loose and godless lives cannot be made sensible; for spiritual things are spiritually discerned. —  Lives of John Donne Henry Wotton Rich'd Hooker George Herbert etc

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context