"Abstemious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Holy Ghost. Though in the middle period of life the subject of frequent and severe attacks of pain in the head, which, for the time, greatly enfeebled her, she had, by the blessing of God upon the use of suitable means in connection with her abstemious habits, overcome the force of disease, and recovered a degree of strength and vigour which was remarkable. Her step was light and active; her gait erect; and as, in consequence of the removal of her children into active ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... table was always bountifully supplied for his guests, he seldom partook of those preparations of the cook which specially please the appetite. He was very abstemious, and never indulged to excess in eating or drinking. His breakfast-hour was seven o'clock in summer, and eight in winter. He usually made a frugal meal of Indian cakes, honey, and tea or coffee, then mounted his horse and visited every part of his estate, where the current ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... their wives and belongings. They speak rather quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are very abstemious. One speaks near me—"You knew so and so? Good horseman—wasn't he? Curious seat—do you remember the way he rode with his toes out?" "Yes, yes—ha, ha!—it was funny! He led a column with me at Abu Lassin. Very sad ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the landing I could not see him very well, but there was something in his voice that surprised me. I knew he was of abstemious habit or I should have thought he had been drinking. I led the way into my sitting room and asked him ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of the Hebrides, for of the women's diet I can give no account, as soon as he appears in the morning, swallows a glass of whisky; yet they are not a drunken race, at least I never was present at much intemperance; but no man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... philosophy. But now scholars studie these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live as students ought to do—viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to ride ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... success in the other arts presupposes a diet as abstemious as any invalid's; eat and drink to your heart's content, and you make no ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... his Attendants to be so.] And as he is abstemious in his eating, so in the use of women. If he useth them 'tis unknown and with great secrecy. He hath not had the Company of his Queen this twenty years, to wit, since he went from Candy, where he left ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... outlive all his critics. I guess that's true. That fact of the business is you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you're ninety to read some of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated abstemious critic to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor and the empire; and it was by his valor and conduct that the Isle of Lesbos and the principality of AEtolia were restored to their ancient allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth [22] may sustain the presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by rapine. He does not indeed specify the value of his money, plate, and jewels; yet, after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of silver, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of the salut at the parish church; and on festivals particularly solemnized by any community of the towns in which he resided, he usually assisted at the divine service in their churches. He was very abstemious in his diet; and considered systematic sensuality as the ultimate degradation of human nature. He never was heard to express so much disgust, as at conversations where, for a great length of time, the pleasures of the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... age. He had inherited the complaint, for it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other qualities in a sort of succession. While he was in the prime of life he overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure living, and when it became sharper in its attacks as he grew old he bore up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered incredible torture and the most horrible agony—for the pain was no longer confined, as before, to the feet, ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers—abstemious male workers—was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been so is sufficiently attested by the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... on, the abstemious Hun had obviously made a halt. The litter of bottles was appalling. There was a perfect wall of them for about a quarter of a mile. The proportion of bottles to the number of men estimated to occupy four hundred ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... might suppose that Leo would have remembered with pride the fact that it was his father who gave Michelangelo his first start in life, and have treated the great artist in the way Lorenzo would, were he then alive. But the retiring, abstemious habits of Michelangelo did not appeal to Leo. The handsome and gracious Raphael was his favorite, and at the expense of Michelangelo, Raphael was petted, feted and advanced. Hence arose that envious rivalry between these two great men, which reveals each in a light far from pleasant—just ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... resembled him that both at school and college he had been a rather careful and abstemious boy. Probably the spectacle of his mother's adventures had revealed to him very early the humiliations of the debtor. At any rate, during his four years abroad he had never exceeded the modest yearly sum he had reserved for himself on leaving England; ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Frederick was abstemious. A glass of wine at dinner was his wildest excess. Three cigars a day he permitted himself, and these he smoked either on the broad veranda or in the smoking room. What else was a smoking room for? Cigarettes he detested. Yet his brother was ever rolling ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... true Brahmans for my sake, And constant offerings duly make, With fire-oblations and with flowers, To all the host of heavenly powers. Look to the coming time, and yearn For the glad hour of my return. And still thy duteous course pursue, Abstemious, humble, kind, and true. The highest bliss shalt thou obtain When I from exile come again, If, best of those who keep the right, The king my ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Hermit of pure disposition, abstemious and virtuous, had made his cell in one of the environs of Baghdad, and passed his morning and evening hours in the worship of the All-wise King, and by these means had shaken his skirt clear from the dust of worldly ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... getting to know Gladstone." At Oxford we are told the effect of his example was so strong that men who followed him there ten years later declare "that undergraduates drank less in the forties because Gladstone had been so courageously abstemious ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to look at. He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an early riser, and generally sat down to breakfast with a book on entomology in his hand. He ate and read, and read and ate—regarding no one, and speaking to no one. He was delicate and abstemious, and on gross feeders he often exercised the severity of his wit. Two meals a day were all he ventured on—he always avoided supper—the story of his having supped on raw pork-chops that he might dream his picture of the Nightmare, has no foundation. Indeed, the dreams he delighted to ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... us know our own fathers, and none of us our grandfathers. If our family tree record a line of abstemious forbears, and we mysteriously develop a partiality for neat rum and loose company, we hesitate whether to reproach ourselves for the vices of a previous existence or to disparage ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... dangerous, particularly those of the table; and yet, insensible or fearless of danger, they live on, and enjoy a short and a merry life: the rays of their sun seem to urge them irresistibly to dissipation and pleasure: on the contrary, the women, from being abstemious, reach to a longer period of life, and seldom die without having had several husbands. An European at his first arrival must be greatly surprised when he sees the elegance of their houses, their sumptuous furniture, as well as the magnificence of their tables. Can he imagine ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... which schemes failed; for the Spaniard was as abstemious as any monk, and drank little but water; the second succeeded not over well, for the Spaniard was as cunning as any fox, and answered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a supply of whiskey, their favorite liquor—did Colonel D'Egville and his more civilized guests quaff their claret; more gratified than annoyed by the savoury atmosphere wreathing around them, while, taking advantage of the early departure of the abstemious Tecumseh, they discussed the merits of that Chief, and the policy of employing the Indians as allies, as will be seen ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... himself in his blankets, and lay down under a tree or in a fence corner. He could sleep anywhere, in the saddle, under fire, or in church; and he could compel sleep to come to him when and where he pleased. He cared as little for good quarters as a mountain hunter, and he was as abstemious as a Red Indian on the war-path. He lived as plainly as the men, and often shared their rations. The majority of the cavalry were better mounted, and many of his officers were better dressed. He was not given to addressing his troops, either in mass or as individuals. His praises ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a more polished, a more abstemious people; as scribes and architects they were men to whom this district was greatly indebted. Our only castle, our oldest remaining churches, our most curious and valuable records, are ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fairer in Socrates than that typical Greek virtue, temperance. Without a touch of asceticism, he knew how to be contented with a little. His diet he measured strictly with a view to health. Naturally abstemious, he could drink, when he chose, more than another man; but no one had ever seen him drunk. His affections were strong and deep, but never led him away to seek his own gratification at the cost of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... His conduct was now marked by the strictest attention to the decencies of his station. To the train of knights and noblemen, who had been accustomed to wait on him, succeeded a few companions selected from the most virtuous and learned of his clergy. His diet was abstemious; his charities were abundant; his time was divided into certain portions allotted to prayer and study and the episcopal functions. These he found it difficult to unite with those of the chancellor; and, therefore, as at his consecration he had been declared ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... science's well-considered verdict wrapped up in tactful words to bear her company on the long journey. When she would be ordered on a longer journey by a mightier Authority, medical science forbore to specify; but in the higher interests of American music it was urgently pressed upon her that she be abstemious in diet, niggardly of work, careful about fatigue and excitement, and in general comport herself in such manner as to deprive the lease of life remaining to her of most of its savor and worth. She had told Ban that the physicians thought ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... you, young woman, and differently characterized in every important particular. That, carnivorous," he continued, glancing his eye at the open page of his tablets; "this, granivorous; habits, fierce, dangerous; habits, patient, abstemious; ears, inconspicuous; ears, elongated; horns, diverging, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Here Let one poor wreath adorn thy early bier, That scarce allowed thy modest youth to claim Its living portion of thy certain fame! Oh! Mrs. Bennet! Mrs. Norris too! While memory survives we'll dream of you. And Mr. Woodhouse, whose abstemious lip Must thin, but not too thin, his gruel sip. Miss Bates, our idol, though the village bore; And Mrs. Elton, ardent to explore. While the clear style flows on without pretence, With unstained purity, and unmatched sense: Or, if a sister ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... was eleven years old he assumed the dress of philosophers, something plain and coarse, became a hard student, and lived a most laborious, abstemious life, even so far as to injure his health. He abandoned poetry and rhetoric for philosophy, and attached himself to the sect of the Stoics. But he did not neglect the study of law, which was a useful preparation ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... time finished her cordial—it was not the first she had taken that day; and, though a woman of strong brain, and cautious at least, if not abstemious, in her potations, it may nevertheless be supposed that her patience was not improved by the regimen which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... might be made of abstemious lawyers; but their temperance is almost invariably mentioned by biographers as matter for regret and apology, and is even made an occasion for reproach in cases where it has not been palliated by habits of munificent hospitality. In ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... their bread; not but that, should nature require anything more agreeable, many things might be easily supplied by the ground, and plants in great abundance, and of incomparable sweetness. Add to this strength and health, as the consequence of this abstemious way of living. Now, compare with this those who sweat and belch, being crammed with eating, like fatted oxen; then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most attain it least; and that the pleasure of eating lies not ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... further explanation that he had heard nothing. The women were sorry for him, but the men for the most part admired the deed and laughed at the poor priest, who had the great fault, in their eyes, of being abstemious and not knowing how to mingle with people with that easy-going fraternity which comes only from ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... This remarkable man, abstemious in his mode of living, regular in his habits, and using much exercise, enjoyed good health to extreme old age; and such was his activity, that he could outwalk persons more than half a century younger. At that period of advanced ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... provided by Roy and Dyan, was no scratch wayside meal, but an ambrosial affair:—salmon mayonnaise, ready mixed; glazed joints of chicken; strawberries and cream; lordly chocolate boxes; sparkling moselle—and syphons for the abstemious. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the bye, if the number of physicians, who used to get drunk, proves any thing, I could insert a good round catalogue, amongst whom I do not find any English doctors, for they are the most abstemious persons in the world; however, being unwilling to trouble my gentle reader with so long a bead-roll, I shall instance only two very illustrious topers of the faculty. The first is no less a man than the great Paracelsus, who used to get drunk very often; and the ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... "cowboy." A reckless and dashing rider, yet mindful of his horse's needs; good-humored by nature, but quick in quarrel; independent of circumstance, yet shy and sensitive of opinion; abstemious by education and general habit, yet intemperate in amusement; self-centred, yet possessed of a childish vanity,—taken altogether, a characteristic product of the Western plains, which he never ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... was a widower and a foreman in M. Lebrument's button manufactory. He was a very upright man, very well thought of, abstemious; in fact, a sort of model workman. He lived at ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... abeyance, abhorrent, abject, abjure, aboriginal, abortive, abrade, abrasion, abrogate, absolution, abstemious, abstention, abstruse, accelerate, accentuate, acceptation, accessary, accession, accessory, acclamation, acclivity, accolade, accomplice, accost, acerbity, acetic, achromatic, acidulous, acme, acolyte, acoustics, acquiescence, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... which are essential to the comfort of the girl-model, and they are cigarettes and sweets. These are their only indulgences, for, obviously, if you are depending for your livelihood on your personal figure, self-denial and an abstemious life are compulsory. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... by a resolute economy to the limits of his income, and took up the pencil for a profession. With passionate enthusiasm, great purity of character, distaste for all society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and an industry very much concentrated and rendered effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was very likely to develop what genius might lie between his head and hand, and his progress in the first year had been allowed, by eminent artists, to give very unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... foreigners, or perhaps rather that of the stock of brandy. As there are no Europeans settled at Behring's Straits, at least on the Asiatic side, we learn from the traffic in brandy that there are actually natives abstemious enough to be able to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... fifty cents, without wine. At one very neat French place he got a dinner at the same price with wine, but it was not so abundant; and March inquired in fruitless speculation why the table d'hote of the Italians, a notoriously frugal and abstemious people, should be usually more than you wanted at seventy-five cents and a dollar, and that of the French rather less at half a dollar. He could not see that the frequenters were greatly different at the different places; they were mostly Americans, of subdued manners ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these weapon are forged by evil imaginations and their exercise is unhampered by the restrictions of truth, many fantastic accusations were invented against Las Casas, and diligently circulated. The most frugal and abstemious of men was accused of gluttony and intemperance; his learning, which was certainly varied if not vast and was by no means mediocre, was declared to be superficial and insufficient to enable him to properly weigh nice questions of theology and law, and finally it was insinuated that some of his ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... consulted with the Brahmanas who had mastered the Vedas, and permitted Amba, the eldest daughter of the ruler of Kasi to do as she liked. But he bestowed with due rites the two other daughters, Ambika and Ambalika on his younger brother Vichitravirya. And though Vichitravirya was virtuous and abstemious, yet, proud of youth and beauty, he soon became lustful after his marriage. And both Ambika and Ambalika were of tall stature, and of the complexion of molten gold. And their heads were covered with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... is applied to the lips, it renders them instantly pale, by promoting the venous absorption; if the whole skin was moistened with warmish vinegar, would this promote venous absorption in the lungs by their sympathy with the skin? The very abstemious diet on milk and vegetables alone is frequently injurious. Flesh-meat once a day, with small wine and water, or small beer, is preferable. Half a grain of opium twice a day, or a grain, I believe to be of great use at the commencement of the disease, as appears ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... dishes, expressed pleasure at partaking of a plum pudding, a l'Anglaise, made by one of our English servants; was helped twice, and observed, that he hoped he should not shock us by eating so much: "But," added he, "the truth is, that for several months I have been following a most abstemious regime, living almost entirely on vegetables; and now that I see a good dinner, I cannot resist temptation, though to-morrow I shall suffer for my gormandize, as I always do when I indulge in luxuries." He drank ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... cotton manufacture, and had thus attained the chief object of his ambition—the object which had engaged his talent for order and persevering application. For his easy leisure caused him much ennui. He was abstemious, and had none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's time first with indulgence and then with the process of getting well from its effects. He had not, indeed, exhausted the sources of knowledge, but here again his notions of human pleasure were narrowed ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... conversation as I could have wished. Dr Johnson had said, 'I have done greater feats with my knife than this;' though he had eaten a very hearty dinner. My lord, who affects or believes he follows an abstemious system, seemed struck with Dr Johnson's manner of living. I had a particular satisfaction in being under the roof of Monboddo, my lord being my father's old friend, and having been always very good to me. We were cordial together. He asked Dr Johnson and me to stay all night. When I said we ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... or whether it arises from the regular and abstemious habits they generally observe whilst working here, I cannot tell; but the notion I found was universal ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... next year he was strangled and burned. T. was one of the most able and devoted of the reforming leaders, and his, the foundation of all future translations of the Bible, is his enduring monument. He was a small, thin man of abstemious habits ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Scholer, the Pearch is not only valiant to defend himself, but he is (as you said) a bold biting fish, yet he will not bite at all seasons of the yeer; he is very abstemious in Winter; and hath been observed by some, not usually to bite till the Mulberry tree buds, that is to say, till extreme Frosts be past for that Spring; for when the Mulberry tree blossomes, many Gardners ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... had worked as a boy and man in a large iron foundry. He had been a very capable workman, and had received as the years went on the maximum amount (with overtime) to be earned by men doing his class of work. He had not been abstemious, and so he had spent a good deal of his earnings in what is in Kennington Park called "pleasure"; but he had also possessed that common kind of sense which leads men to pay money into sick and benefit clubs. Accordingly, his wife's illness ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... seized the poor mate. Before he could be restrained, he leaped from the raft and sunk below the waves. The other two men sickened. First one, then the other died. The captain, though the oldest of all, kept his senses and his strength. He was a calm, even-tempered, abstemious man. Still, as he sat on the chest in the middle of the raft, of which he and I were the only occupants, he spoke encouragingly and hopefully to me. I listened, but could scarcely reply. I felt a sickness overcoming me. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... very bad since I left home, although I have been very careful not to drink much, remaining to the full as abstemious as usual, and have not eaten any great quantity, having no appetite. I suffered such an ecstasy of pain all night at Stratford that I was half dead yesterday, and was obliged last night to take a dose of henbane. The effect was most delicious. I slept soundly, and without feeling ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... everybody who has lived in Aden must do, that that is the worst place in the world for effecting cures, had I not, in addition to a strong constitution which I fortunately possess, been living for many months previously in a very abstemious manner, principally, as appears in the body of the journal, on dates, rice, and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to recount the journey over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor. He was a strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now he was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now self-indulgent and prodigal. He had a will like flint, and under it a soft heart. Cross his moods, and he hated you. I never thought to cross them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... same if I had not abstained from anything. If, for example, I had found the dollar which some other careful fellow had lost, I could still get interest upon it. Or if I had inherited money from my father, it might happen that, so far from being abstemious and thrifty, I had been most extravagant, while the fellow who came to borrow had been very thrifty and abstemious, but still unable to provide for his family. Yet I should ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... he was very abstemious always, while he took nothing in the middle of the day except a glass of wine and a biscuit. Under these circumstances it is not very surprising that the healthy appetites of his little friends filled him with wonder, and even with alarm. When he took a certain one of them ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... worn. He stands five feet nine and one-half inches high, weighs one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and has not varied as to weight in a quarter of a century, although as a young man he was slim to gauntness. He is very abstemious, hardly ever touching alcohol, caring little for meat, but fond of fruit, and never averse to a strong cup of coffee or a good cigar. He takes extremely little exercise, although his good color and quickness of step would suggest to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... he had been addicted to wine. Once seated on the throne, the reformation of our Henry Fifth was not more thorough than was that of Dost Mahomed. He taught himself to read and write, studied the Koran, became scrupulously abstemious, assiduous in affairs, no longer truculent but courteous. He is said to have made a public acknowledgment of the errors of his previous life, and a firm profession of reformation; nor did his after life belie the pledges to which he committed himself. There was a fine ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... was a system called VMS Of cycles by no means abstemious. It's chock-full of hacks And runs on a VAX And makes my poor stomach all squeamious. —- The ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... abstemious as anchorites—but, if a little fortune falls into their hands, see them ride forth on the most ruinous fancies, loving the fairest and youngest, drinking the oldest and best wines, and not finding enough windows whence to throw their money; then—the last crown dead and buried—they begin again ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... the highest virtue, it was not strange, perhaps, that he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew the long climbs and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes in quest of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it. Abstemious, frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's table were given him grudgingly. He often went hungry rather than ask the bread he had failed to earn. How his great frame was nurtured in those ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Individuals whose labor is active, require more air than sedentary or idle persons, because the waste of the system is greater. On the same principle, the gormandizer needs more of this element than the person of abstemious habits. So does the growing lad require more air than an adult of the same weight, for the reason that he consumes more food than a person of mature years. Habit also exerts a controlling influence. A man who works in the open air suffers more when placed in a small, unventilated ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... to lead clean and sober lives. This was certainly true of the early Romans. They were a manly breed, abstemious in food and drink, iron-willed, vigorous, and strong. Deep down in the Roman's heart was the proud conviction that Rome should rule over all her neighbors. For this he freely shed his blood; for this he bore hardship, however severe, without complaint. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... own wine," he commented, "I can't withhold commendation. I sometimes think that only the very abstemious man can truly appreciate a good vintage. For him it is an undulled pleasure ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... capable of hard labour, being obliged to attend to their children; and, judging from appearance, 'one may conclude,' says the Captain, 'they would be prolific'; that 'he did not see how it could be otherwise, considering the regularity of their lives, their simple and excellent though abstemious mode of living, their meals consisting chiefly of a vegetable diet, with now and then good pork and ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... 'I have no hesitation in telling you what I have already told the inspector. Mr. Manderson was, considering his position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my four years of service with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic nature pass his lips, except a glass or two of wine at dinner, very rarely a little at luncheon, and from time to time a whisky and soda ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... very easy walking. Taking a piece of stick from the ground, he made the calculation in the sand. Eighteen days, and twenty miles a day—three hundred and sixty miles. More than enough to take him to freedom. It could be done! With prudence, it could be done! He must be careful and abstemious! Abstemious! He had already eaten too much, and he hastily pulled a barely-tasted piece of meat from his mouth, and replaced it with the rest. The action which at any other time would have seemed disgusting, was, in the case of this poor creature, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... have been considered as necessaries to one whose appetite was not strong. He could well have afforded such innocent indulgence, for he was a man of good fortune. He was, however, remarkable for his abstemious habits; and having been led, when high sheriff of his county, to look into the state of Bedford jail, he was so shocked with the miserable condition of the prisoners and their being crowded together in a place filthy, damp, and ill-ventilated, that he set himself to make a tour of inspection of ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... thousand more of his troops had been killed, "French at heart" as they were. He refused to see Yolande, after thus forcibly obtaining the means of so doing, and sent her to the castle of the Sire of Rochefort for safe-keeping. Abstemious as he had been all his life, never taking wine without water, the strong Burgundy in which he now suddenly ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... common life by what we see on convivial occasions," he made answer. "One may take wine freely with his friends and be as abstemious as ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... I do not feel like smoking myself." Cedric spoke rather sulkily and with none of his accustomed amiability. "Shall I give you some whiskey and soda?" But Malcolm refused this refreshment—no man was more abstemious than he. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pride is courtesy; the froward, a clever, courageous man; the drunkard, a boon companion; and adultery is a mere freak of youth. On the other hand, if she and her scholars' {110a} are to be believed, the godly is a hypocrite or a fool; the gentle, a coward; the abstemious, a churl, and so for every other quality. Send her thither in all her adornment, and I warrant you she will deceive everyone; she will blinden the counsellors, the soldiers, and all the officers of church and state, and ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... that one of two things would happen on the wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels. Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago approach his happiness; but, like most ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... by no means unpresentable. He was attired with perfect sanity. His methods at the dinner table, if at all unusual, erred on the side of restraint rather than of extravagance; he gave indications of a certain curious personal refinement; and in the matter of wine he was almost incredibly abstemious. It was the first time that Jewdwine had come to close quarters with his disciple, and with some surprise he saw himself going through the experience without a shock. Either he had been mistaken in Rickman, or Rickman had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Thence faintings, swounings of despair, And sense of Heav'ns desertion. I was his nursling once and choice delight, His destin'd from the womb, Promisd by Heavenly message twice descending. Under his special eie Abstemious I grew up and thriv'd amain; He led me on to mightiest deeds Above the nerve of mortal arm Against the uncircumcis'd, our enemies. 640 But now hath cast me off as never known, And to those cruel enemies, Whom I by his appointment had provok't, Left me all helpless ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I strongly advise you to be rather abstemious as to quantity of food, so I wish you not to be in the slightest degree fastidious as to its quality, provided it is wholesome, and free from qualities absolutely revolting. You may naturally like one thing better ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... habit of taking alcoholic drinks with the idea that they lead to a more fiery performance is a dangerous custom that has been the ruin of more than one pianist. The performer who would be at his best must live a very careful, almost abstemious life. Any unnatural excess is sure to mar his playing and lead to his downfall with the public. I have seen this done over and over again, and have watched alcohol tear down in a few years what had taken decades of hard practice and earnest study to ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... broad-shouldered, and sinewy in frame, nearly six feet in height, blue-eyed and golden-haired, he was the beau ideal cavalry leader—alert, active, ready, and responsive, with an eye to all details, a love for the picturesque in bearing and equipment, of great endurance, abstemious, healthy, and strong, and as much at home in the saddle and with the sabre as in his own little house in Monroe or by his blazing camp-fire. He married, in February, 1864, Elizabeth Bacon, a daughter of Judge Daniel S. Bacon, of Monroe. For ten ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the wine, I did. I knew well enough that they indulged a similar selfish hope, so I had no scruples about using their hospitality to their disadvantage if I could. The subject, however, was not mentioned at table, and we were all singularly abstemious in the matter of champagne—so much so that as we rose from a rather long session at the board we disclosed our sense of the ludicrousness of the situation by laughing outright. Nevertheless, neither party would accept defeat, and for the next few weeks the war ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Councils, and filled them again with his own men of no birth, the old man had come away from the Borders, disdaining to serve at the orders of knaves that had been butchers' sons and worse. He owned much land and was very wealthy, and, having been very abstemious, because he came of an old time when knighthood had still some of the sacredness and austerity of a religion, he was a man very sound in limb and peaceable of disposition. In his day he had been esteemed the most graceful whiffler in the world: now he used only the heavy sword, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... eyes full of expression. He never wore a beard, and in the latter part of his life his head was bald. His constitution was originally delicate, and he was twice attacked by epilepsy while transacting public business; but, by constant exercise and abstemious living, he had acquired strong and vigorous health, and could endure almost any amount of exertion. He took pains with his person, and was considered to be effeminate ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... trample upon base Enough. Oh, right is thy instructive praise Of the wealth of Nature's ways! Right thy most unthrifty glee, And pious thy mince-piety! For, behold! great Nature's self Builds her no abstemious shelf, But provides (her love is such For all) her own great, good Too-Much,— Too much grass, and too much tree, Too much air, and land, and sea, Too much seed of fruit and flower, And fish, an unimagin'd dower! (In whose single roe shall be Life enough to stock the sea,— Endless ichthyophagy!) ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... those of the English professional cricketers, taking them as a class. One of the London players warmly complimented the American players on their fine physique as athletes and especially commented on their abstemious habits in contrast, as the paper stated 'with our beer-drinking English professional cricketers.' In fact, the visit of the baseball players has opened old John Bull's eyes to the fact that we are not as neglectful of athletic sports as he thought we were, for one thing, and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... the course of his long life absorbed the forces of the republic into himself. While he shunned the external signs of despotic power he made himself the master of the State. His complexion was of a pale olive; his stature short; abstemious and simple in his habits, affable in conversation, sparing of speech, he knew how to combine that burgher-like civility for which the Romans praised Augustus, with the reality of a despotism all the more difficult to combat because it seemed nowhere and was everywhere. When he ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... display the usual magnificence of his predecessors, in all that met the public eye,—his general style of living, equipage, and the number and pomp of his retainers; but he relaxed nothing of his own personal mortifications. He maintained the same abstemious diet, amidst all the luxuries of his table. Under his robes of silk or costly furs he wore the coarse frock of St. Francis, which he used to mend with his own hands. He used no linen about his person or bed; and he slept on a miserable pallet like that used by the monks of his fraternity, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... All this was now to be reformed. He taught himself to read and to write, accomplishments which he had before, if at all, scantily possessed. He studied the Koran, abandoned the use of strong liquors, became scrupulously abstemious, plain in his attire, assiduous in his attention to business, urbane and courteous to all.' In 1833, Shah Soojah, issuing from the British territory, made an abortive attempt to recover his kingdom; but Runjeet Singh, the ruler of the Sikhs, was more successful in wresting from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... a constant memory, Elizabeth—not the best memory for your happiness. What are you eating? Only bread and butter. Will you have no sardines, bacon, eggs, honey? Nothing! A very abstemious young lady! You have done with school, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... character of Diogenes has never excited any general zeal of imitation, there are many who resemble him in his taste of wine; many who are frugal, though not abstemious; whose appetites, though too powerful for reason, are kept under restraint by avarice; and to whom all delicacies lose their flavour, when they cannot be obtained but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... but cresses with their bread, not but that, should nature require anything more agreeable, many things might be easily supplied by the ground, and plants in great abundance, and of incomparable sweetness. Add to this, strength and health, as the consequence of this abstemious way of living. Now compare with this, those who sweat and belch, being crammed with eating, like fatted oxen: then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most, attain it least: and that the pleasure of eating lies not ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... to its simplest elements. Abstemious to a degree impossible in a more northern climate, the Italian worker in town or village demands little beyond macaroni, polenta, or chestnuts, with oil or soup, and wine as the occasional luxury; and thus a woman who works fourteen or even fifteen hours a day for a lire ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew that he would never, as he had hoped, leave Salem. He was an abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause—the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... conference, extending their plans of campaign. Fielding and Norman were eager and nervous, and their hands and faces seemed to have taken on the arid nature of the desert. Before they sat down Dicky had put the bottle of whiskey out of easy reach; for Fielding, under ordinary circumstances the most abstemious of men, had lately, in his great fatigue and overstrain, unconsciously emptied his glass more often than was wise for a campaign of long endurance. Dicky noticed now, as they sat round the table, that Norman's hand went to the coffee-pot as Fielding's had gone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... being entirely unaccustomed to it, yet he could not resist drinking once again to the health of the ladies. The pedant and the tyrant drank like old topers, who can absorb any amount of liquor—be it wine, or something stronger—without becoming actually intoxicated. Matamore was very abstemious, both in eating and drinking, and could have lived like the impoverished Spanish hidalgo, who dines on three olives and sups on an air upon his mandoline. There was a reason for his extreme frugality; he feared that if he ate and drank like other people he ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... necessary, and then with modesty and good sense. He possessed a strong mind, improved by its own reflections and observations, not by books or travel. His dress was like his address— plain, regarding comfort and decency only. In his meals he was abstemious, eating generally of one dish, and drinking water mostly. He was sedulous and constant in his attention to the duties of his station, to which every other consideration yielded. Even the charms of the fair, like the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... abstinence. 4. It may be said in favour of temperance or even of extreme abstinence, that some of those men who have done most work in their day—John Howard, Wesley, and Cobbett, for example—have been either very moderate, or decidedly abstemious. But on the other hand, such men as Samuel Johnson, who was a free liver and glutton, and Thackeray, who drank to excess, have also got through ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... absolutely and weirdly alike, and arrayed on this occasion in garments of identical hue and cut. This was a favourite device of theirs when about to meet a new young man; it usually startled him considerably. If he was not a person of sound nerve and abstemious habits, it not infrequently evoked from him some enjoyably regrettable expression of surprise and alarm. I knew all the tricks in their repertoire, and waited interestedly to see ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... curiosity, dear boy,' he said persuasively, and slipped the brick into his bag; 'merely a memento of the past—ah, happy past, bright past! You will not take a touch of spirits? no? I find you very abstemious. Well,' he added, 'if you have really no curiosity to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... mission on the Gold Coast, the Rev. Dennis Kemp, who had enough courage and truth in him to stand up at a public meeting in Liverpool, on July 2nd, 1896, and record it as his opinion that, "the natives of the Gold Coast were remarkably abstemious; but spirits were, 'he believed,' of no benefit to the natives, and they would be better without them." I have quoted the whole of the remark, as it is never fair to quote half a man says on any subject, but I do not agree with the latter ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... enough, but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so threatening ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... for the last four years, at any rate. All the Portuguese officers were abstemious men; and I think that Bull felt that it would not do for him, commanding a battalion, to be less ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... away to a window, to conceal the paleness of her cheeks. Admiral Bluewater, though perfectly abstemious himself, regarded license with the bottle after dinner, like most men of that age, as a very venial weakness, and he quietly took a seat by the side of Mildred, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... soon prepared. The islanders are somewhat abstemious at this repast; reserving the more powerful efforts of their appetite to a later period of the day. For my own part, with the assistance of my valet, who, as I have before stated, always officiated as spoon on these occasions, I ate sparingly from ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... did not offer any variety, till we had nearly reached La Luc, 17 miles from Puget, whose situation and red sandy soil reminded us of a Herefordshire glen. The junction of two main roads has created a tolerable inn at this small place, which may with safety be recommended to persons on an abstemious regimen, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... and drinking he was, as far as I observed, abstemious rather than self-indulgent. I repeatedly breakfasted, dined, and supped in his company; and never knew him to partake of any thing stronger in drink than the light wines of France and Germany, and of these in great moderation. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... desire to know the author"; and Lord Mayor Beckford graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him "as politely as a citizen could." But of actual money he received but little. He was extremely abstemious, his diligence was great, and his versatility wonderful. He could assume the style of Junius or Smollett, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Churchill, parody Macpherson's Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope, or with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... imperial throne, calculated to do him honour, as he was guilty of the meanest flattery and servility to ingratiate himself with men in power. Yet, as a general, he was indefatigable in his duties, and of unquestionable valour; abstemious in his diet, and plain in his dress. On attaining to the imperial dignity he appears to have laid aside every vice except avarice. His elevation neither induced him to assume arrogant and lofty airs, nor to neglect those friends who had shown ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the worthy dean, who albeit a man of most abstemious habits, possessed a nose which, in color and development, was a most unfortunate witness to call to character, and as Mooney heard Webber narrate circumstantially the frightful excesses of the great functionary, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... as well as all the superior class of people in Lima, are exceedingly temperate in drinking. Water and a kind of sweet wine are their favorite beverage; but the lower classes and the people of color are by no means so abstemious. They make free use of fermented drinks, especially brandy, chicha, and guarapo. The brandy of Peru is very pure, and is prepared exclusively from the grape. On the warm sea coast, the use of this liquor is not very injurious; ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... he bethought him that one little glass of spirits would perhaps be just the thing. He drank, and hour after hour wore away unconsciously; he drank not one glass, but three or four, and strong glasses they were to him, for he was habitually abstemious. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... breakfast, was vastly particular about warm and dry clothing, had never been known to preach a sermon without previously swallowing a raw egg—albeit he was gifted with good lungs and a powerful voice,—and was, generally, extremely particular about what he ate and drank, though by no means abstemious, and having a mode of dietary peculiar to himself,—being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a patron of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive organs, and therefore were maintained ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Women's appetites might be restrained, but not those of men,—especially the appetite for blood. Kokoa revenged himself for his daughter's murder by killing a relative of her husband and serving him hot to an eager, because long abstemious, congregation. The taste of Hawaiian chops and shoulders revived a greed for this sort of meat, and they preyed openly on the populace of Kauai until those who remained arose as several men and drove them out of the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... itself on the mirror of his heart, and as the result of all the influences which were brought to {149} bear on his Majesty, there grew, gradually as the outline on a stone, the conviction on his heart that there were sensible men in all religions, and abstemious thinkers, and men endowed with miraculous powers, among all nations. If some true knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should truth be confined to one religion, or to a creed like Islam, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... interior we are allowed to doctor ourselves as we best can. What with the salubrity of the climate, and our abstemious fare, we are enabled, with the aid of a little Turlington balsam, and a dose of salts, perhaps, to overcome all our ailments. Most of us also use the lancet, and can even "spread a plaster, or give a glister," when necessary; but the Indians ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... wife put the climax upon everything by drinking out of her sister's glass he could contain himself no longer. "I never saw you touch spirits before," he said, determined that his friend should know that his wife was an abstemious woman. ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... to Major Hockin to take him for an extravagant man or a self-indulgent one because of the good dinner he had ordered, and his eagerness to sit down to it. Through all the best years of his life he had been most frugal, abstemious, and self-denying, grudging 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 ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... possesses many exclusive virtues; but they are more properly of the negative than the positive kind. He is mild, peaceable, and forbearing, unless his anger be roused by violent provocation, when he is implacable in his resentments. He is temperate and sober, being equally abstemious in meat and drink. The diet of the natives is mostly vegetable; water is their only beverage; and though they will kill a fowl or a goat for a stranger, whom perhaps they never saw before, nor ever expect to see again, they are rarely guilty of that extravagance for themselves; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... believe that what has happened, although it came upon me like coup de tonnerre, and has given me a great deal of bile, and my stomach I find weakened from that cause, more than from any other,—for I'm more and more abstemious every day,—yet I now see that all will end well, and that in the meantime neither you (n)or Lady C(arlisle) will make yourselves uneasy by placing things before you in a ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... strange nature the violence and the coldness were equally genuine, both being a means to gratify some personal ambition, desire, or indolence. It is not an uncommon Irish type; self-important, upright, honourable, yet with a bent towards subtlety: abstemious in habit, but with freaks of violent self-indulgence; courteous and impulsive towards strangers, though cold to members of the household; naturally violent, and often assuming violence as an instrument ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... porch to the supper-room, not to find himself a place at one of the snug little tables, but to go to the buffet and pour out a glass of brandy, which he drank at a draught. Yet, in a general way, there was no man more abstemious than ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... sinners, and the souls in purgatory. The Blessed Virgin entered the temple, at the age of three years, to perfect herself in that school of virtue; the daughters of the Congregation, in imitation of that act, consider themselves pupils of Mary during their novitiate. The Blessed Virgin was abstemious and mortified in her food, and in all the other necessaries of life; the Sisters should follow her example and mortify themselves in eating, drinking, sleeping, speaking, and clothing, using nothing but what is absolutely necessary, each one at the same time consulting her strength ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... understanding and forgiving an interval may sometimes be condoned. Condone it in this instance. Even at the time I gave Pethel due credit for risking his own life, for having doubtless risked it—it and none other—again and again in the course of his adventurous (and abstemious) life by field and flood. I was even rather touched by memory of his insistence last night on another glass of that water which just MIGHT give him typhoid; rather touched by memory of his unsaying that he "never" touched alcohol—he who, in point of fact, had to be ALWAYS gambling on ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... Menthe," she said. "Liqueur, you know. It looks as if I drank, doesn't it? As a matter of fact it goes to prove what an exceptionally abstemious person I am. I've had that jar for six-and-twenty years," she added, looking at it with pride, as she tipped it over, and from the height of the liquid it could be seen that ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Mistress Gardner, who was both proud and fond of her elderly husband, and who found him as tender and thoughtful a friend as he had always been to the wife of his youth. For twenty-one years he passed from honor to honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered any chafing ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... sweeping the square of the presidio, and carrying mud and bricks for the buildings; yet a few reals would generally buy them off. Intemperance, too, is a common vice among the Indians. The Spaniards, on the contrary, are very abstemious, and I do not remember ever having ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... that evening in Oxford. At any rate, the member would be howled down. So strong is the modern distaste for oratory. The day for oratory, as for toping, is past beyond redemption. 'Debating' is the best that can be done and appreciated by so abstemious a generation as ours. You will find a very decent level of 'debating' in the Oxford Union, in the Balham Ethical Society, in the Pimlico Parliament, and elsewhere. But not, I regret to say, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... "William, thou abstemious youth," he addressed the clerk, "I am tempted to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack you off with another ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... needy parasites and panderers to his pleasures, amongst whom he lavished rewards with an unsparing hand. But the ordinary round of sensual gratification ceased at last to afford him delight: he was observed to be more abstemious in the pleasures of the table, and to neglect the beauteous dancing-girls who used formerly to occupy so much of his attention. He was sometimes gloomy and reserved; and there was an unnatural wildness in his eye which gave ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... were regular attendants at some place of so-called worship, they were not all teetotallers, and some of them were now in different stages of intoxication, not because they had had a great deal to drink, but because—being usually abstemious—it did not take very much ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... was gentle and modest; his habits, as to sleep, food, and exercise, abstemious and regular. Meditation in the forest, or reading in his closet, seemed to constitute, together with attention to his scholars, his sole amusement and employment. He estranged himself from company, not because society afforded no pleasure, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... it was, luckily for him, the emptiest—that is, after he left England and his boon companions, as I know nothing of what he did there. From all that I heard or witnessed of his habits abroad, he was and had been exceedingly abstemious in eating and drinking. When alone, he drank a glass or two of small claret or hock, and when utterly exhausted at night, a single glass of grog; which when I mixed it for him I lowered to what sailors call "water bewitched," ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... value and benefits to be derived from an actively cultivated brain in making a long life one of comfort and of usefulness to its owner. The brain and spirits need never grow old, even if our bodies will insist on getting rickety and in falling by the wayside. But an abstemious life will drag even the old body along to centenarian limits in a tolerable state of preservation and usefulness. The foregoing list can be lengthened out with an indefinite number of names, but it ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... second time refused, he feigned a severe illness, and confined himself to his chamber. It was asserted, and believed, that about this time Nero made an attempt to poison him by the instrumentality of his freedman Cleonicus, which was only defeated by the confession of an accomplice or by the abstemious habits of the philosopher who now took nothing but bread and fruit, and never quenched his thirst except ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... was ever more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was God-intoxicated, Garibaldi was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... at all times an abstemious man—contented himself with a couple of glasses of wine after dinner, and, the moment that the conversation took a general turn, rose from the table, excusing himself upon the plea that he had several matters to attend ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... teachers were priests or monks, Benedictines, regular canons, Oratorians, the latter alone officiating in thirty colleges. Not subject to the expenses and necessities which a family imposes, they were abstemious through piety, or at least through discipline, habit, and respect for persons; frequently, the statutes of the school obliged them to live in common,[3160] which was much cheaper than living apart.—The same economical accord is found with all the wheels, in the arrangement and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... replied Suddenly our hero spied Coming aft, his labours done, Our benignant Number One (Most abstemious is he, And, in fact, a strict T.T., But—it shows how Fate can blunder— No one could be rubicunder. Ernest, after one swift glance, Said, "Excuse my ignorance, But, Sir, can you tell me why You are always red, while I, Even when I drink a lot, Only flush if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... Consequently, whenever they wish to caricature a capitalist they invariably represent him as a man with a huge, protuberant stomach. The folly of this conception is sufficiently shown by the fact that many of the greatest of fortune-makers have, in their personal habits, been abstemious and even niggardly to a degree which has made them proverbial; and that, even in the case of those who value personal luxury, the maximum of self-indulgence which any single human organism can appreciate, is obtainable by a hundredth part of the fortunes for the production ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and spade as they were with the lance and sword. They were inured to every kind of danger and difficulty, and not one of them was personally braver than the general who led them, or more skilful in riding a horse, or fording a river, or climbing a mountain. No one of them could be more abstemious. Luxury is not one of the peculiarities of successful generals ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... were from twenty to thirty years my seniors, yet I do not think that we mutually bored each other the least. They did not need the stimulus of alcohol to aid this flow of spirits, for, like most Frenchmen of that class, they were very abstemious, although the "Patron" always produced for us "un bon vieux vin de derriere les fagots," or "un joli petit vin qui fait rire." It was sheer "joie de-vivre" stimulated by the good food and that spontaneous gaiete francaise which appeals so ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... thirteenth century as lord of Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that time,—fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... previous evening. On either side were numerous clearings with log huts, and here and there a more pretentious store, before each of which several persons were seen taking their morning drams. My father was an abstemious man, and although invited to stop and liquor, declined doing so. We drove on as fast as the horses could go, as he was anxious to cross the river early in the day. The weather had hitherto been fine, but it now looked threatening, though ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the glass of wine he had been toying with—Rupert was an abstemious man. "So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous role of rescuer of distressed damsels—squire of dames and what not. The last one would have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... than the negative side. They made much of health as an end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. The Greek had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. He seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. An examination of what records remain to us ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... meals he was most abstemious, and at the same time irregular. His brother describes an arrangement by which he was able to take, at all events, his midday meal, and at the same time to carry on his official work, especially in the matter of receiving visitors. He ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of Peggy's death. This time he drank ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair |
