"Abstinence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand to the pledge, he dreamed not of these repulses and difficulties. He was a good workman, and he thought that any one of his old employers would be glad to get him back again, so soon as they learned of his having signed the total-abstinence pledge. But he had so often promised amendment, and so often broken his promise and disappointed them, that they had lost all confidence in him; at least, the two to whom he had, thus ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Aequos, mountaineers (closely allied to the Sabines) who lived in the mountains forming the E. boundary of Latium. Cincinnatus. 'The true type of primeval virtue, abstinence, and patriotism.' —Ihne. 2-4. qui ... recuperavit. The Aequian general, Gracchus Cloelius, had defeated the consul, L. Minucius, and blockaded him in his camp on Mt. Algidus, the E. spur of the Alban ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... under Thornhill's Kopje. Route marching and field days occupied the men most mornings, hockey and football most afternoons. The men suffered a good deal at first from jaundice, which was chiefly the result of over-eating after their long abstinence, but they got fit and recovered their strength gradually; it was, however, fully six weeks to two months before they were really ready ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... to have been in no sense a hermit. With the exception of Byron, he was perhaps less of a recluse than any of his poetical contemporaries. With respect to society he frequently practiced total abstinence; but the world was amusing, and he liked it. He was fond of the theatre, fond of whist, fond of visiting the studios, fond of going to the houses of his friends. But he would run no risks; he was shy ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... from eating out my whole stock at a meal. I could easily have done it, and it required all my resolution to refrain. But my resolution was backed by the too certain knowledge that such a meal would be my last, and my abstinence was strengthened simply by ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... for a minute in a vain effort to decide whether or not he were speaking seriously. He could not help remembering his abstinence from food, but at the time had not doubted the man ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... A's: Abundance, abstinence, and annihilation. Abundance to the poor. Abstinence to the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... every penny of his own expense, but sparing none for his family. And now, when he found himself so much better off, with more income and less outlay, he could not be blamed for enjoying good things with the wholesome zest of abstinence. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... building!" said he. "That looks like a brewery! Consider the sea of beer they brew there once a month, and then think of your oath of abstinence and ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It was cherry time in the country, and the sight of the scarlet fruit suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Polotzk, I could not say how many ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... average of 94 deeds for each day of the month; the number actually found for the four "sabbaths," i. e. for the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days, were 100, 98, 121 and 91 respectively. The Babylonians evidently did not keep these days as days of rest, or of abstinence from business, as the Jews keep their sabbath, or Christian countries their Sunday. They cannot even have regarded it as an unlucky day, since we find the average of contracts is rather higher for a "sabbath" than for a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... with several most religious oaths and imprecations, and explained how men were not always quite so strong as they looked; that he might, if he liked it, by permission of his bishop, eat meat at every meal in the day, and every day in the week; that his not doing so was a voluntary abstinence—not conscientious, only expedient—to prevent the 'unreasonable remarks' of his parishioners (a roar of laughter); that he was, perhaps, rightly served for not having publicly availed himself of his bishop's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... far more common but, owing to the famines which almost invariably followed them, were far more destructive to human life than in our own days, and deaths by violence, whether at the hands of the state or as the result of personal enmity, were of daily occurrence in all lands. Under these conditions abstinence on the part of woman from incessant child-bearing might have led to almost the same serious diminution or even extinction of her people, as in the savage state; while the very existence of her civilisation depended on the production of an immense number ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... private elementary schools, of whatever denomination, provided they had duly certificated teachers; were accessible to all children of the neighbourhood without distinction of religion or race; and 'offered solid guarantees for abstinence from proselytism and intolerance, by subjecting their rules and course of teaching to the Board of Education, and empowering that Board at any moment to cancel the certificate of the teacher.' In the wards in which such schools were founded, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... my Cousin Sam had gone on with me even-pace, that he would have lived till to-day. When we came abroad I seemed to be the weakest; he returned, and died in a few months from our hereditary disease. How many hecatombs of young men have been murdered by "seriousness" and "total abstinence," miscalled temperance, in our American colleges, can never be known; perhaps it is as well that it never will be; for if it were, there would be a rush to the other extreme, which would "upset society." And here be it noted ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the matter introduced. Let it be withdrawn, and in a few days the bones will assume their former color—evidently from the effects of absorption. The changeful state of the body is further shown by the losses to which it is subjected; by the necessity of aliment; by the emaciation which follows abstinence from food. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... of beans was strictly forbidden to all such as had it in mind to consult those expert amphibologists, and this same prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples is understood to imply an abstinence from politics, beans having been used as ballots. That other explication, quod videlicet sensus eo cibo obtundi existimaret, though supported pugnis et calcibus by many of the learned, and not wanting the countenance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger experience ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the chase for the Cove was over, the boys' appetites returned, and were all the keener because of the abstinence through the day. The lads set to work at once and in less than half an hour they had a steaming, savory meal prepared in the best style known to Lester and Bill, who were the acknowledged leaders in the culinary line. They ate as only hungry, ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... the early morning. As soon as Carandas had verified the arrangement and constant practice of these gallant diversions, he determined to wait for a day when the lovers would meet, hungry one for the other, after some accidental abstinence. This meeting took place very soon, and the curious hunchback saw the boatman waiting below the square, at the Canal St. Antoine, for the young priest, who was handsome, blonde, slender, and well-shaped, like the gallant ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... against fever, he abstained from all nourishment, persuaded that this diet would suffice to drive away or at the least assuage the malady; but added to the fever came that pain in the side which the Greeks call pleurisy; nevertheless the emperor persisted in his abstinence, supporting his body only by drinks taken at long intervals; and on the seventh day after that he had taken to his bed, having received the holy communion," he expired about nine A.M., on Saturday, the 28th of January, 814, in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... teacher, yet laughing too. Heavy was so ridiculous that it was impossible not to be amused. "You should practise abstinence. Really, you are the very fattest girl at Ardmore, I ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... to be substantial but frugal, fit for labourers engaged in hard toil; nothing costly, nothing but what was necessary; on the other hand no special rigour of abstinence, beyond that demanded of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... your case. However you have sinned, you have made amends by the depth and sincerity of your repentance. Your days and nights—for you allow yourself only such rest as nature forces on you, and take even that most unwillingly—are passed in constant prayer. Your abstinence is severer than any anchoress ever practised, for I am sure for the last month you have not taken as much food altogether as I consume in a day; while, not content with this, you perform acts of penance that afflict ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it, next with the prospect of a crooked leg, but he bore cheerfully the most excruciating torture in having it straightened by a series of painful experiments, and in no long time he recovered his activity. In the army he showed his strength of will by rigid abstinence from drinking and gambling, no easy feat in those days; and he learned by his father's example to control all extravagance and to live contentedly on a small allowance. His earliest enthusiasm among books was for Plutarch's ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Easter, King Edward the Confessor, wearing his royal crown, sat at dinner in his palace of Westminster, surrounded by many of his nobles. While others, after the long abstinence of the lent season, refreshed themselves with dainty viands, on which they fed with much earnestness, he, raising his mind above earthly enjoyments, and meditating on divine things, broke out into excessive laughter, to the great astonishment of his guests. But no one presuming to inquire ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... successful if a true education for temperance is accepted as the next goal. But for the man of neurasthenic constitution and for any brain of weak resistance, the limit for permissible alcoholic beverages ought to be drawn very narrow and in such cases temporary abstinence is usually the safest advice. Individual cases must indicate where a glass of light beer with the meal or a glass of a mild wine may be permissible. Strong drinks like cocktails are absolutely to be excluded. In the same ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... alone is responsible for the barbarous derivation 'Carne Vale,' farewell meat—a philological impossibility. In the minds of the people it is probably most often translated as 'Meat Time,' a name which had full meaning in times when occasional strict fasting and frequent abstinence were imposed on Romans almost by law. Its beginnings are lost in the dawnless night of time—of Time, who was Kronos, of Kronos who was Saturn, of Saturn who gave his mysterious name to the Saturnalia in which Carnival had its origin. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of perverted sexual vice, the sinfulness of what are commonly classified as "sins of the flesh" consists in wrongful indulgence or lack of self-control in respect of that which in itself is legitimate and good. The Christian ideal is not abstinence, but temperance. A Christian will be temperate, for example, in sleep, food, alcohol, and tobacco. Intemperance means slavery to a habit, the loss of spiritual self- mastery, whereby the whole character is enervated, and efficiency, both physical and moral, is impaired. "All ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... had from the first to battle against the defects of a voice that was both harsh and weak, a defective pronunciation, and above all, the depression of his physical powers, exhausted as they were by too severe abstinence. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... treating of circumstances which occurred prior to his being dubbed; but it is so customary to speak of him by that title that we found it difficult to dispense with it.] Johnson was so delighted with his friend's elevation that he broke through a rule of total abstinence with respect to wine, which he had maintained for several years, and drank bumpers on the occasion. Sir Joshua eagerly sought to associate his old and valued friends with him in his new honors, and it is supposed ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... words and engagements. Averse alike to debt and to litigation, they were bound to their neighbors by a tie of singular good-will and respect. Their kindness to the unfortunate and their humanity to travellers knew no bounds. One could readily distinguish them from others by their abstinence from unnecessary oaths, and their avoidance even of the very name of the devil. They never indulged in lascivious discourse themselves, and if others introduced it in their presence, they instantly withdrew from the company. It was true that they rarely entered the churches, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of the arts, sciences, and literature. Content to conquer in battle, and, as the just reward of their superior prowess, to impose tribute and a governor, they seldom interfered with local customs and usages. Perhaps one great secret of their marvellous success was this systematic abstinence from intermeddling with the local administrations. The principle of self-government was never more fully appreciated than by this remarkable people, who, sending forth consuls, vice-consuls, and ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... one of us deliver another; the redemption of the soul is more precious than so, Psalm xlix. 7, 8. Nor is there any thing we can do for ourselves that will avail here; all our prayers, tears, whippings, fastings, vows, alms-deeds, purposes, promises, resolutions, abstinence from some evils, outward amendments, good morality and civility, outward religiousness, yea, and if it were possible, our keeping of the whole law, will not help us out of this pit. And we may weary ourselves in such exercises in vain; for they will prove but bodily exercises that ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... infidelity; who does not believe in human responsibility; who makes a mock of religion; who is addicted to profanity; who is either grossly intemperate or given to moderate tippling, be it ever so little, so long as he does not believe in and practice total abstinence; who uses tobacco; who is a jockey, a fop, a loafer, a scheming dreamer, or a speculator; who is known to be unchaste, or who has led ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Sir William Temple:—The first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humour, and the fourth for my enemies. But because it is impossible for one who lives in the world to diet himself always in so philosophical a manner, I think every man should have his days of abstinence, according as his constitution ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to deficiency of stimulus. 5. Inverts successive trains of motion. Inverts ideas. 6. Induces paralysis and death. VI. Cure of increased exertion. 1. Natural cure of exhaustion of sensorial power. 2. Decrease the irritations. Venesection. Cold. Abstinence. 3. Prevent the previous cold fit. Opium. Bark. Warmth. Anger. Surprise. 4. Excite some other part of the system. Opium and warm bath relieve pains both from defect and from excess of stimulus. 5. First ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... you mean to say that you stick to that always?" said Mrs. Townsend, who firmly believed that no good could come out of Nazareth, and that even abstinence from whisky must be bad if accompanied by anything in the shape of a Roman ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... word to Margaret, nor pressed her hand, nor even looked into her eyes and sighed. Yet at times it had seemed to him that she would not have been ill-pleased if he had done one of these things, or all; that she wondered, indeed, that he did not, and thought none the better of him for his abstinence. Moreover, now he learned that her father wondered also, and this was a strange reward ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... beads, with an expression of humor something like delight beaming from his fixed, steady countenance; and when anything that would have been particularly worthy of a joke met his glance, I could perceive a tremulous twinkle of the eye intimating his inward enjoyment. I think still this jocular abstinence was to him the severest part of the pilgrimage. I asked him was he ever at the "Island" before; he peered into my face with a look that infected me with risibility, without knowing why, shrugged up his shoulders, looked into the fire, and said "No," with a dry emphatic cough after it—as ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... that without very serious exertion. He continues to reign quietly, steadfastly, and firmly; and there never has been any serious friction between him and the Government of India, whose wise policy is a studied abstinence from interference in the internal affairs of ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... their reason for submission will not be absolutely despicable; they will know there is no employment worth speaking of without it. After all, one has only one life, and it is not pleasant to pass through it in a state of futile abstinence from the general scheme. Life, unfortunately, does not end with heroic moments of repudiation; there comes a morrow to the Everlasting Nay. One may begin with heroic renunciations and end in undignified envy and dyspeptic comments outside the door one has slammed on one's self. In such ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... itself in her is by a strict observance of the Sabbatarian rule. Dissipation and low dresses during the week are, under her control, atoned for by three services, an evening sermon read by herself, and a perfect abstinence from any cheering employment on Sunday. Unfortunately for those under her roof to whom the dissipation and low dresses are not extended, her servants namely and her husband, the compensating strictness of the Sabbath includes all. Woe betide ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... kip at two-up, and staked his last shilling more readily than the first. It was always the last shilling that was going to turn the scale and make his fortune. Well, he would try his luck again unknown to Pinkey, arguing with the blind obstinacy of the gambler that after his abstinence fate would class him as a beginner, the novice who wins a sweep with the first ticket he buys, or backs the winner at a hundred to one ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... scenical and rhetorical composition, for the brief dialogue in the second act between the heroine and her attendant angel. Its simplicity is so childlike, its inspiration so pure in instinct and its expression so perfect in taste, its utterance and its abstinence, its effusion and its reserve, are so far beyond praise or question or any comment but thanksgiving, that these forty-two lines, homely and humble in manner as they are if compared with the refined rhetoric and the scrupulous ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... carrying peace, and love, and gladness, through the streets—that was enough to make the most serious smile. No fear was in them, or care. Every haggard man they met—some of them feverish, restless, beginning to think of riot and pleasure after forced abstinence—there was a new shout, a rush of little feet, a shower of soft kisses. The women were following after, some packed into the carts and waggons, pale and worn, yet happy; some walking behind in ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission, abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules of life—these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediaeval Church. The Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick veil which they had drawn between the mind of man and the outer world, and flashing the light of reality ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not to go on Sunday, for the Cardinal Archbishop had ordered the Trappists at the Chartreuse near not to receive guests on that day; while Saturday, he thought, was almost as bad, for nothing better than an omelette could be obtained on days of abstinence. Saturday, then, was clearly the day to ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... scandalous mode of life. He took my reproof in good part; and you will be pleased to hear that when he was at length restored to health, he became quite a new man—scrupulously faithful in discharge of his duty, sober to abstinence, and cheerfully obedient to orders. He has had a narrow escape from death, and is, I trust, thankful to God that he was not cut off suddenly in his mad career. He is grateful to me for the service I rendered him—says, indeed, that I saved his life; I shall take advantage of that feeling to keep ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... elevation of sentiment and a propriety of deportment which distinguishes them as the most refined and polished ladies in the whole country. There is with these a softness of deportment and delicacy of expression, an abstinence from all violent and boisterous expressions of their feelings and sentiments, and above all, the entire freedom from petty scandal, which makes them lovely, and to be loved by every honorable and high-bred gentleman who may ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... be kept out of the body should be mentioned habit-forming drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocain, heroin, chloral, acetanilid, alcohol, caffein, and nicotin. The best rule for those who wish to attain the highest physical and mental efficiency is total abstinence from all substances which contain poisons, including spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, many much-advertised patent drinks served at soda-water fountains, most patent medicines, and even coffee and tea. Many so-called patent or proprietary ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... breath of intense enjoyment, as a thirsty cricketer may do after the first deep draught of claret-cup that rewards a two hours' innings. "It's very refreshing, after weeks of total abstinence, to see a woman who goes in for dress, and does it thoroughly well." He had no time for more, for the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... have profoundly affected habits of thought and feeling by uniting together the merely natural emotion of sexual reserve with, on the one hand, the masculine virtue of modesty—modestia—and, on the other, the prescription of sexual abstinence. Tertullian admirably illustrates this confusion, and his treatises De Pudicitia and De Cultu Feminarum are instructive from the present point of view. In the latter he remarks (Book II, Chapter I): "Salvation—and not of women only, but likewise of men—consists ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... alacrity, and when it had been effected, surveyed himself in a mirror with considerable complacency. His temporary abstinence from liquor while at the Island had improved his appearance, and the new suit gave him quite a respectable appearance. He had no objection to appearing respectable, provided it were at other people's expense. On the whole, he was in excellent spirits, ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... themselves in unionism, came out in ever bolder relief. The distinctive Lutheran doctrines of the Lord's Supper, the person of Christ, Baptism, absolution, infant faith, the means of grace, the Sabbath, abstinence, separation of State and Church, etc., were all rejected and assailed by the most prominent leaders of the General Synod. And the unionistic spirit, with which also the most conservative within the General Synod were infected, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... This abstinence may seem strange, but some explanation of their self-restraint was to be found in Dirk's character. In mind he was patient, very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in carrying them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not give way to them. For two years or more he had ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Carnival is just over, and we have entered upon the gloom and abstinence of Lent. The first day of Lent we had coffee without milk for breakfast; vinegar and vegetables, with a very little salt fish, for dinner; and bread for supper. The Carnival was nothing but masking and mummery. M. Heger took ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of our faithful Molly), she fell asleep over her cards. We hushed the servants who came to lay out the supper-table (she would always have this luxurious, nor could any injunction of ours or the Doctor's teach her abstinence), and we sat a while as we had often done before, waiting in silence till she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of modern times who have followed their example. The philosopher, Franklin, who reached a great age, for a considerable portion of his life kept entirely to a vegetable diet; and Abernethy, a name yet more familiar in our ears, has left us this maxim, that "a vegetable diet and abstinence from fermented liquors tends more than anything else to tranquillize the system."—(vide the Abernethian Code.) Another popular and scientific writer of the present day makes a similar confession, which coming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... the enormous waste induced by whisky drinking, and by the smoking of tobacco and opium. The sect Tsai li ti referred to was a small organisation among the Chinese for endeavouring to secure entire abstinence from all three. It did not seem tolerable to him that the level of Christian morality and practice with regard to these things should be lower than that of the heathen. Famine often visited those parts, and he came to ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... services which it will buy, he can produce more shoes than would otherwise be possible. Not only can he afford to pay interest, but he is obliged to pay it, since otherwise he could not secure the required loan. Though some people tend carelessly to overlook this fact, saving and abstinence are necessary to the accumulation of money. The individual who has money, therefore, cannot be expected to allow the entrepreneur to use it without payment, especially not when, as we have just seen, the entrepreneur can acquire wealth by the use ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... CHAMBERLAIN's remarks on abstinence from bodily exercise. Sold my bicycle, and gave away all my rackets, bats, &c. Resolved to follow the latest system. Shall doubtless, by these means, reach Mr. C.'s high position as a statesman and orator. Went out in a Bath-chair. Five minutes after starting, man said ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... againe to Milos house, both without money and meat, and so got into my chamber. Then came Fotis immediately unto mee, and said that her master desired me to come to supper. But I not ignorant of Milos abstinence, prayed that I might be pardoned since as I thought best to ease my wearied bones rather with sleepe and quietnesse, than with meat. When Fotis had told this to Milo, he came himselfe and tooke mee by the hand, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... I have ever tasted—except at Communion. I was brought up to think it meant destruction. And afterward, wherever I travelled to study, the old prejudice continued to guide me. And after that, even when I began to think of taking the veil, I made abstinence one of my first preliminary vows.... And look what ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... prayerfully seek to be guided in the right way, and then turn thou to what thou hast shaken down and transport it all to thy home and store it up against what time the dates fail; and when the fruits are spent and the delay is longsome upon you, address thyself to total abstinence." Exclaimed the pigeon, "Allah requite thee with good for the righteous intention wherewith thou hast reminded me of the world to come and hast directed me into the right way!" Then he and his wife worked hard at knocking down the dates, till nothing was left on the palm-tree, whilst ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... once. Say every thing that I have said, and say it better. His disposition is with us. Convenience, all political propriety, counsel and would justify his abstinence. A return to Rome would seem weak, fitful, capricious, and would prove that his previous retirement was ill-considered and ill-informed. It would disturb and alarm Europe. But you have, nevertheless, to fight against great odds. It is 'Madre Natura' against St. Peter's. Never was the abomination ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, and Uncle Hughey with his wife, and close after them Mr. Dow, alone, who told how his wife had gone into one of her fits—she upon whom Dr. Barker at Drybone had enjoined total abstinence from all excitement. Voices of women and children began to be up lifted; the Westfalls arrived in a lather, and the Thomases; and by sunrise, what with fathers and mothers and spectators and loud offspring, there was gathered such a meeting as has seldom been before among the generations of speaking ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... knowing that there are three things whose effect upon himself no man can foretell —namely, desire of woman, the dice-box, and the drinking of ardent spirits - find total abstinence from them the best of rules. Yet, after all, if there is no cow, we must ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... under a strict regimen," replied Varney. "The simplest diet alone does for me, and I have accustomed myself to long abstinence." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... explained that Therese has the power, through prayer, of working out on her own body the ailments of others. The saint's abstinence from food dates from a time when she prayed that the throat disease of a young man of her parish, then preparing to enter holy orders, be transferred to ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... not play bridge—and, it being her habit to group all such obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together, regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in this case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed boredom of their host and hostess. In such emergencies, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... commit.' Or, to put it into another language, the Apostle is regarding Christian people here as members of society, and exhorting them to a certain course of conduct in reference to plain and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... passion, as in the first hour of the discovery of his love. Her near presence gave him exquisite pleasure; but, save when she needed his assistance in some practical matter, he refused to indulge himself by passing much time in her society. Abstinence still remained his rule of life. But just now, strong with the mystic strength of his late ministrations, and perceiving her troubled state, he permitted himself to remain and pace ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... with the fragrance of Aunt Virginia's bounty: fried ham, fried eggs, fried chicken, strong coffee, and hot biscuits—of fresh Yankee flour from Suez. No wine, and no tonic before sitting down. In the pulpit and out of it Garnet had ever been an ardent advocate of total abstinence. He never, even in his own case, set aside its rigors except when chilled or fatigued, and always then took ample care not to let his action, or any subsequent confession, be a temptation in the eyes of others who might ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... that shall lend a hand of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw him ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... pay a heavy fine. This set many people thinking. Ursel will tell you what sinful prices we have paid since for butter and meat. Even the innocent are obliged to buckle their belts tighter. Those who wished to escape fasting are now compelled by poverty to practise abstinence. It is said the Roman King Ferdinand is urging the revocation of the order. If I were in his place, I would advise making it more stringent till the rebels sweat blood and crept ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unknown, he did not make it a case of conscience; but if he never lent himself to this ellipsis, he, "the lyric Talma," "the exquisite singer," as he has frequently been called, should we not regard his abstinence as a condemnation from which there is no appeal? I do not believe, moreover, that either Nourrit or Dupre authorized by their example a habit so contrary to the rules of French versification, so disagreeable to the well-trained ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... member of the Royal Family, who immediately attacked it with a good appetite, helping themselves with fingers and teeth, instead of knife and fork. During the repast, the suite ate nothing, but remained looking on, and I did not perceive that they were indemnified for their abstinence, even when the residue of the feast was carried out. When the repast was over, and a prayer said as before, the Royal personages washed their hands with water, and their mouths with cocoa-milk, and then lay down altogether to sleep; ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... in general is of an amiable and lovely Nature, there are some particular kinds of it which are more so than others, and these are such as dispose us to do Good to Mankind. Temperance and Abstinence, Faith and Devotion, are in themselves perhaps as laudable as any other Virtues; but those which make a Man popular and beloved, are Justice, Charity, Munificence, and, in short, all the good Qualities that render ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... clear) We do not number here Such spirits as are only continent, Because lust's means are spent; Or those who doubt the common mouth of fame, And for their place and name, Cannot so safely sin: their chastity Is mere necessity; Nor mean we those whom vows and conscience Have filled with abstinence: Though we acknowledge who can so abstain, Makes a most blessed gain; He that for love of goodness hateth ill, Is more crown-worthy still Than he, which for sin's penalty forbears: His heart sins, though he fears. But we propose a person like our Dove, Graced with a Phoenix' love; A beauty of ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... rightness is abstinence from evil, then a lamp-post must always be better than a man, for it justly can lay claim to all the negative virtues. What an easy way of life is this, simply to find out the things we know other people like to do and to determine ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... Publican is beating upon his breast and confessing his sins, it is not because he has sinned worse than the Pharisee. It is simply that the Publican has seen that what God says is woefully true of him, and the Pharisee has not. The Pharisee still thinks that outward abstinence from certain sins is all that God requires. He has not yet understood that God looks, not on the outward appearance, but on the heart,[footnote7:1 Sam.16:7] and accounts the look of lust the equivalent of adultery,[footnote8:Matt.5:27-28] the attitude of resentment ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... the wind eddying by; and never had the sound fallen upon his ear so fearfully. It seemed like the wail of a departing spirit, or like some funeral dirge, moaning heavily and deep through the sudden pauses of the blast. He threw himself on the bed. Fatigue and long abstinence had enervated his frame. Nature, forced almost beyond the limit of endurance, had become passive, and almost incapable of suffering. A deep slumber stole upon him, yet could he not escape the horrors by which he was surrounded. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... suffered any inconvenience from it. He gave them in lieu of the rum, an allowance of molasses, with which they appeared to be entirely satisfied. When Mr. H. informed the people of his intention to discontinue the spirits, he told them that he should set them the example of total abstinence, by abandoning wine and malt liquor also, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... take that would save itself from dangerous error. The philosopher must start from the complete living totality of man, formed as he is, not of flesh merely, a Falstaff—or of spirit merely, a Simon Pillarman and Total Abstinence Saint—but of both flesh and spirit, body and soul, in his healthy and normal condition. For this reason clearly—true philosophy is not merely sense-derived and material like the French philosophy of Helvetius, nor altogether ideal like that of Plotinus, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... beauty. Her kindness of heart knew no difference between the most illustrious and the humblest of her guests. She accomplished what would have been impossible to most women, the maintenance of a gracious and delightful hospitality while strictly adhering to her principles of total abstinence, and rigorously excluding all wines and intoxicating liquors from the White House during her administration. The old wine drinkers of Washington did not take to the innovation very kindly. But they had to console themselves with a few jests or a little ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... How is this abstinence from legislation, on the part of the ancient kings, to be accounted for, except on the supposition that the people would accept, and juries enforce, few or no new laws enacted by their kings? Plainly it can be ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... on the threshold of life; at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other light reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil—not good and evil—were never transplanted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a prudent hardy couple, who, by many years of peculiar labour and peculiar abstinence, were the least poor of all the neighbouring cottagers, had an only child (who has been named before) called Agnes: and this cottage girl was reckoned, in spite of the beauty of the elder Miss Rymers, by far the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteemed sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of open-air abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still laboured under the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... though of specific record in the earlier scriptures;[181] and from sources other than scriptural we learn of their existence at and after the time of Christ. The Nazarite was one of either sex who was bound to abstinence and sacrifice by a voluntary vow for special service to God; the period of the vow might be limited or for life. While the Essenes cultivated an ascetic brotherhood, the Nazarites were devoted ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... quite well, my dear. It was bad for him, of course; but a strong, healthy boy does not take long to recover from a long walk and some enforced abstinence—There, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... his temperament, a boy's devilry, not really wicked, but compounded of sensuality, vanity, the passion for conquest, and the determination to hold his own against other males and to shine in his world's esteem, was augmented by the abstinence from his usual life. The few days in the house seemed to him a lifetime already wasted. He meant to make up for it, and he did not care at whose expense, so long as some of the debt was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... had proved a severe but wholesome lesson, and he had let cards alone at once and forever. In his ignorance of his own family history, he did not know that for one of his blood, the only safety lay in total abstinence from the cup that cheers, but the intense and instantaneous excitement he found a single glass of wine produced in his brain—an excitement amounting almost to madness—was in itself a warning to him, and kept him strictly within the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... said, "even if I decide to jump the ditch, to confess and communicate, that terrible question of the senses would always have to be resolved. I must determine to fly the lusts of the flesh, and accept perpetual abstinence. I could ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... his lips from parching and his tongue from cleaving to the roof of his mouth, and by the dawning of the Sabbath morn he was "verily an hungered"—not suffering from the puny and sickly faintness of temporary abstinence, but literally starving for want of food. He paced his narrow cell—called loudly from the window—exhausted his strength in fruitless endeavours to shake the door which the treacherous Burrell had so securely fastened, until, as the day again ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that lady held very strong views. I had felt a little irritated at the conversation, for I entertained scant sympathy for what I regarded as hygienic fads; and the emphasis with which the lady averred that she touched neither flesh nor alcohol, and felt that by this abstinence she was not "besotting her brain nor befouling her soul," amused me much. Dr. Armitage, to my surprise, expressed some sympathy with her views, and treated the question with what I considered undue importance. This discussion was brought at last to a termination ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... therefore he was not born of a woman, nor did he die to rise again. Christ had thus no personal existence. As the body, being matter, was thought to be essentially evil, it was the aim of the Manicheans to set the soul free from matter; hence abstinence, and the various forms of asceticism which early entered into the pietism of the Oriental monks. That which gave the Manicheans a hold on the mind of Augustine, seeking after truth, was their arrogant claim to the solution of mysteries, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... get as much animal food as he requires, whilst sour cabbage and cucumbers are probably the only vegetables he can procure, and fruit of any kind is for him an unattainable luxury. Under these circumstances, abstinence from eggs and milk in all their forms during several months of the year seems to the secular mind a superfluous bit of asceticism. If the Church would direct her maternal solicitude to the peasant's drinking, and leave him to eat what he pleases, she might exercise a beneficial influence on his material ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... name in abhorrence. Moreover, he professed to look upon their Dinners as orgies; but it is far more likely that the predominance in its pages and in its councils of his mighty rival, John Leech, had more to do with his total abstinence—from Punch, I mean—than any other consideration. "Between Cruikshank and Leech," says Mr. Frith, "there existed little sympathy and less intimacy. The extravagant caricature that pervades so much of Cruikshank's work, and from which Leech was entirely free, blinded him ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... NEPIER was a person of great abstinence, innocence, and piety: he spent every day two hours in family prayer: when a patient or querent came to him, he presently went to his closet to pray: and told to admiration the recovery, or death of the patient. It appears by his papers, that he did converse ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Machault a Duquesne, 17 Fev. 1755. The letter of Mirepoix proposing mutual abstinence from aggression, is dated on the 6th of the same month. The French dreaded Fort Halifax, because they thought it prepared the way for an advance on Quebec by way of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... promised no speedy abatement of it. The duke endeavoured to reconcile himself to pass the night in his present situation, and ordered a fire to be lighted in the place he was in. This with much difficulty was accomplished. He then threw himself on the pavement before it, and tried to endure the abstinence which he had so ill observed in the monastery on the preceding night. But to his great joy his attendants, more provident than himself, had not scrupled to accept a comfortable quantity of provisions which had been offered them at the monastery; and ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... slightly acquainted with the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kerry would suggest that total abstinence was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... probable that the entire "school" would explode. But, somehow, no such success has hitherto been achieved, and this keeps the school together; for, every attempt that happens to fail, can be made to appear as a conscious effort of abstinence, in the sense of the exercises of the lower grades; [Footnote: For a curious example of such exercises, see Ferdinand Hiller's "Oper ohne Text;" a set of pianoforte pieces, a quatre mains.] and "the opera," which beckons in the distance like a forlorn ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... contents of the nine Codices[88] which made up the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, and mentions the names of the chief commentators upon each. After some important cautions as to the preservation of the purity of the sacred text and abstinence from plausible emendations, the author proceeds to enumerate the Christian historians—Eusebius, Orosius, Marcellinus, Prosper, and others[89]; and he then slightly sketches the characters of some of the principal Fathers—Hilary, Cyprian, Ambrose, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Fukeer said, 'Well, O liberal person, do you explain them to me.' I replied, 'The three letters are F, K, and R. From F comes "faka" (FASTING); from K, "kinaut" (CONTENTMENT); and from R comes "reeazut" (ABSTINENCE). He is not a Fukeer in whom these qualities are not. Oh, avaricious creature! you have taken from forty doors, from one gold mohur to forty. Calculate, therefore, how many you have received. And, in addition to this, your avarice has brought you again to the first door. Expend what you ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... hands in astonishment at this strange abstinence; it was not thus she was used to see ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... stomach thus overburdened creates a thirst not readily satisfied. A person who has noted how frequently one is called upon to assuage thirst after having eaten too heartily of food on any occasion, will hardly doubt that indigestible holiday dinners are detrimental to the cause of total abstinence. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg |
