All 19 Uses of
renounce
in
War and Peace
- How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?†
Chpt 3 *
- Besides, Sonya is so charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness.†
Chpt 4
- "One more question, Count," he said, "which I beg you to answer in all sincerity—not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you renounced your former convictions—do you believe in God?"†
Chpt 5
- "No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced her former infatuations," he told himself.†
Chpt 6
- Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still restrained Boris.†
Chpt 8
- Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.†
Chpt 9
- He did not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to justify himself.†
Chpt 9
- He understands that there is something stronger and more important than his own will—the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something else.†
Chpt 10
- Pierre had first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life—all that men so painstakingly acquire and guard—if it has any worth has so only by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.†
Chpt 11
- Moreover, at this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction.†
Chpt 11
- Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer's look and tone.†
Chpt 11
- And the more imbued he became with that principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which—in the absence of such love—stands between life and death.†
Chpt 12
- He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.†
Chpt 15
- Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then the words chance and genius become superfluous.†
Chpt 15
- Not that Natasha liked solitude—she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought that she did not—but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing society.†
Chpt 15
- And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile.†
Chpt 15
- As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own personality.†
Chpt 15
- In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.†
Chpt 15
- In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.†
Chpt 15
Definition:
-
(renounce) to formally reject, give up, or turn away from
(as in to give up the power of a monarch, to change belief, behavior, support, or association)