"Abstinence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the care of boys. In small parties they began to leave the ground and ride rapidly away over the plains to the westward. I had taken no food that morning, and not being at all ambitious of further abstinence, I went into my host's lodge, which his squaws had erected with wonderful celerity, and sat down in the center, as a gentle hint that I was hungry. A wooden bowl was soon set before me, filled with the nutritious preparation of dried meat called pemmican by the northern ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 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 ear and so opposed to good taste. Such young singers ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... lawless element. I was heavily burdened and could see "the wicked walking on every side, and the vilest men exalted." I was ridiculed and my work was called "meddler" "crazy," was pointed at as a fanatic. I spent much time in tears, prayer and fasting. While not a Roman Catholic, I have practiced abstinence from meat on Friday, for Christ suffered on that day, and 'tis well for us to suffer. I also use the sign of the cross, for it is medicine to the soul to be reminded of His sufferings. Jesus left us the communion of bread and wine that we might remember His passion. I would also ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... being denied their full and free expression in the oratory of a partisan, found vent in the doleful prognostications of a despairing patriot which fill his letters throughout the months of June and July. His abstinence from the passing topics of Parliamentary controversy obtained for him a friendly, as well as an attentive, hearing from both sides of the House whenever he spoke on his own subjects; and did much to smooth the progress of those immense and salutary ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... days; but then this could not be so, as he had not even once experienced the cravings of hunger or thirst: as he had not suffered in this particular, he felt convinced that the time that had elapsed was much less, and that it must have appeared so from his total abstinence. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... before, Caradoc could never have withstood that terrific bombardment, but his hard life on the dock, his abstinence from alcohol, and the fact that tobacco had long ago run out, all this had armored his ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... make them angry—for a moment. They possess several magic phrases, which are like the incantations of a voodoo doctor driving devils away. The phrases that the good, kind people repeat to themselves and to one another sound like "abstinence," "temperance," "thrift," "virtue." Sometimes they say them backward, when they sound like "prodigality," "drunkenness," "wastefulness," and "immorality." They do not really know the meaning of these phrases, but they think they do, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... condescend more to the infirm condition of an opium-eater; that are "sweet men," as Chaucer says, "to give absolution," and will show some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I can no more endure in my nervous state than opium that has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement, must make ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... blind, the palsied, the scrofulous and the halt, they should no longer visit their temples and sacred groves, and admire no more Pan's huge sexuality and hang garlands upon it, nor carve images of Diana and Apollo. Such abstinence they could not comprehend, and deemed it enough that they were ready to proclaim him a god on the occasion of every great miracle, a readiness that gave great scandal and caused many Jews to turn away from Jesus. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... round-shouldered man, bent by the plow, emaciated through abstinence, bony, with a skin dried by a sparing use of water. His wife followed him, small and thin, like a tired animal, carrying a large green ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... it being allowed that where there is taxation without representation tyranny begins. Now, if the writer really believes that there are corrupt practices in the Government, who can blame him, for proposing (by abstinence from those articles which are taxed and yield a revenue so large that it supports a system of misgovernment) to compel our rulers, by a diminution of their means of undue influence to a regard to economy and a just administration? ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Then his abstinence, sure sign of a saint. The eggs and milk they brought him at first he refused with horror. Know ye not the hermit's rule is bread, or herbs, and water? Eggs, they are birds in disguise; for when the bird dieth, then the egg rotteth. As for milk, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... book of his "Politiques," sets forth many other detestable things. Lactantius, in the third of his Divine Institutions, shows that Plato's community of property and women took away frugality, abstinence, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... his reasons have been made so plausible that a number of persons have coincided with him. Cowan says the efficacy of the treatment has been established in many instances, a fact that he can prove by ample testimony. During his long abstinence from food he had numerous letters and telegrams from Dr. Dewey, encouraging him in the undertaking. When asked why he had fasted, Cowan explained that for years he had suffered from chronic nasal and throat catarrh which would not yield to medical ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... I behaved well? Upon my word, I believe I shall have to stand treat to my own abstinence, before ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... those middle ages, you know, it was the custom to name monarchs from some peculiarity of person or habitude—and I put it to any reasonable soul; Was this mere Yarman Brince likely to have become the central figure of the 10th century, but for such rigid abstinence from external application of water as is implied in the significant name of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... rubs off—and the least shade might ruin you with some people. If you were married, I should introduce you to that set with pleasure, for they entertain me vastly, and it is a great privation to me this winter—a long fast; but even this abstinence from wit I can endure for your sake, my dear Caroline—you are my first object. If you would take the bel esprit line decidedly—Talents you have, but not courage sufficient; and even if you had, you are scarce old ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... green grass on the slope of a sequestered valley, lulled by the tinkling bells of the flock and the piping of a shepherd from a rock hard by. The pious chant of pilgrims, passing on their way to Rome, wakens his slumbering conscience, and bids him expiate his guilt by a life of abstinence and humiliation. His meditations are interrupted by the appearance of the Landgrave of Thuringia, his liege lord, who is hunting with Wolfram von Eschinbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, and other minstrel-knights of the Wartburg; but his newly awakened sense of remorse forbids him ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... they took no regard of no worldly riches. For when they saw Sir Lancelot endure such penance, in prayers and fasting, they took no force what pain they endured, for to see the noblest knight of the world take such abstinence that he waxed full lean. And thus upon a night there came a vision to Sir Lancelot, and charged him in remission of his sins, to haste him unto Almesbury—and by then thou come there, thou shalt find Queen Guinevere ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... his pocket a leather box, and opened it. On the oblong of white satin, within the cover, was pinned a very small and very thin gold medal. But, light as it was, it had represented much abstinence from estaminets and tobacco-shops, on ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... freedom. I should have grown to manhood ignorant of the life and language of Europe, and my knowledge of the world would have been confined to an English cloister. But my religious error fixed me at Lausanne, in a state of banishment and disgrace. The rigid course of discipline and abstinence, to which I was condemned, invigorated the constitution of my mind and body; poverty and pride estranged me from my countrymen. One mischief, however, and in their eyes a serious and irreparable mischief, was derived from the success ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... for his tenant, he began to see things differently. If Bill Cavers drank he would not be able to pay the rent. So Mr. Steadman desired Bill to be a sober man, and to this end had a very straight talk with him on the subject of total abstinence. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... that's the way he's preparing to come ashore. It may be one day, it may be two, afore the schooner can get in. Le Maitre he won't get off it till it's in th' harbour. I guess that's about all there is to tell." O'Shea added this with grim abstinence from fiercer comment. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... 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, and proved ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... show suffering, but this did not make her alter her way, or drive her to appeal to Tom. She was ignorant of the simplest things a mother needs to know, and never imagined her abstinence could hurt her baby. So long as she went on nursing him, it was all the same, she thought. He cried so much, that Tom made it a reason with himself, and indeed gave it as one to Letty, for not coming home at night: the child would not let him sleep; and how was he to do his work if he ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... one, and especially a librarian, who is supposed (however erroneously) to know everything, should know more of his own constitution than any physician. With a few judicious experiments in daily regimen, and a little abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... honest, hard-working, and very prosperous Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, who thought he religiously performed his parental duty in bringing up his many children in the fear of his heavy hand, in unceasing labor, and in almost total abstinence from all amusement and self-indulgence. Far from thinking himself cruel, he was convinced that the oftener and the more vigorously he applied "the strap," the more conscientious a ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide. Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first treated the disease as a diabolical visitation, and "with deplorable consistency," to borrow the phrase used by one of their friends in the case of Cowper's desperate abstinence from prayer, abstained from calling in a physician. Of this again their religion must bear the reproach. In other respects they behaved admirably. Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with her unhappy partner, tended him with unfailing love; alone she did it, for ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... 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 medicines contain ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... fatigue or labour. They are not provident in their provision for the future, but a sufficiency of food is commonly laid by at the camp for the morning meal. In travelling, they sometimes husband, with great care and abstinence, the stock they have prepared for the journey; and though both fatigued and hungry, they will eat sparingly, and share their morsel with their friends, without encroaching too much upon their store, until some reasonable prospect appears ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... distinguished for the great fervour of his behaviour in celebrating the Mass "as if he handled a visible Lord Saviour"—a touching devoutness which never left him, and which contrasted strikingly with the perfunctory, careless or bored ways of other priests. He injured his health by over-abstinence, one effect of which was to cause him to grow fat, Nature thus revenging herself by fortifying his ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... cry of fright, and, as I did, cast herself on her knees beside him. He had fainted. Abstinence from food, drink, his tremendous effort of will towards sobriety, the strain of the interview, had brought him to the verge of the precipice, and it only required the shock of the letter to send him toppling over. We propped his head on ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the note on Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 15. sect. 2. It is somewhat probable, as Hapercamp supposes, and partly Spanheim also, that the Latin is here the truest; that Pompey did him Hyrcanus, as he would have done the others from Aristobulus, sect. 6, although his remarkable abstinence from the 2000 talents that were in the Jewish temple, when he took it a little afterward, ch. 7. sect. 6, and Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 4. sect. 4, will to Greek all which agree he did not ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... avoids all reflections on the policy of Russia or Austria. An article, which I wrote on Servia for an English publication, was reproduced in a translation minus all the allusions to these two powers; and I think that, considering the dependent position of Servia, abstinence from such discussions is dictated ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... certainly not for display! And to make it worse, Marilda is the most literal-minded girl. Fasting was quite a new mind to her, for she never realises what she does not see; and she got Clem into a corner, where I heard him going on, nothing loth, about days of abstinence, out of Mr. Fulmort's last catechising, I should think; and ended by asking what Cousin Edward did, so that I fully expected that I should find her eating nothing, and that I should be ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kept 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, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... hidden away in their hearts all the mysteries of the chafing-dish; but Father Francis was not one of these. His form was thin, but the bronze of his face was the bronze that comes from red corpuscles, and the strongly corded neck and calloused, bony hands told of manly abstinence and exercise in the open air, and sleep that follows peaceful thoughts, knowing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... calling with a dreadful shout To council all the heroes of the host.[4] Then, even they who in the fleet before 50 Constant abode, helmsmen and those who held In stewardship the food and public stores, All flock'd to council, for that now at length After long abstinence from dread exploits Of war, Achilles had once more appear'd. 55 Two went together, halting on the spear, (For still they felt the anguish of their wounds) Noble Ulysses and brave Diomede, And took an early seat; whom follow'd last The King ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... boys, when, from her throne of turf, With boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf, Vile humours which, in life's corrupted well Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell, Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes, Where hunger e'en to madness seem'd to rise, Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart, Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start: ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... him, and 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 ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... well, Everyman: Because with Knowledge ye come to me, I will you comfort as well as I can; And a precious jewel I will give thee, Called penance, voider[92] of adversity: Therewith shall your body chastised be With abstinence and perseverance in God's service; Here shall you receive that scourge of me, Which is penance strong that ye must endure, Remember thy Saviour was scourged for thee With sharp scourges, and suffered it patiently: So must thou, ere thou pass thy pilgrimage. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... 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 pious old mathematical visionaries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... throughout the School; and, as if to make up for the abstinence of the past few weeks, the fervour of the athletic set waxed high as the eventful day drew near. Yorke had out his men once or twice, practising kicks, and selecting where in the field each player ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... thankfulness that they never knew the sins of gambling, drunkenness, fornication, or adultery. In all these cases abstinence has been, and continues to be, liberty. Restraint is the noblest freedom. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him; on the contrary, self-restraint has been liberty, strength and blessing. Solemnly ask young ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upward before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... quitting Versailles, without sacrificing her easy chair, she fulfilled the duties of religion with punctuality, gave to the poor all she possessed, and strictly observed Lent and the fasts. The table of Mesdames acquired a reputation for dishes of abstinence, spread abroad by the assiduous parasites at that of their maitre d'hotel. Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times. I saw her one day exceedingly ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... men had been long since extinguished; and, consigned to a mere repose of limb, in which the eye and heart shared not, the inferior soldiery pressed their rude couches with spirits worn out by a succession of painful excitements, and frames debilitated, by much abstinence and watching. It was an hour at which sleep was wont to afford them the blessing of a temporary forgetfulness of endurances that weighed the more heavily as they were believed to be endless and without fruit; but sleep had now apparently been banished from all; ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Bolton, "his nose is too red for that; and if a little abstinence should make it a trifle paler, Pen won't need to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... just described, he was present at a discussion between the Yankee overseer and the Scotch mason, in which these two dissenters, the first a congregationalist, and the last a seceder, were complaining of the hardships of a ten years' abstinence, during which no spiritual provender had been fed out to them from a proper source. The Irishman broke out upon the complainants in a way that will at once let the reader into the secret of the county Leitrim-man's principles, if he has any ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... I must denounce Temperance as the deadliest of sins, and proclaim Abstinence to be the only virtue. There is a grand State Convention of Progressive Gladiators at present in session in Foxden; all the neighboring towns have sent delegates. Well, it was only yesterday afternoon that Stellato, in behalf of one of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... author found nine shades of politico-religious differences in the Irish Liverpool. As the impartial observer must, in such a case, necessarily displease eight parties, and probably the whole nine, Thackeray advised a rigid abstinence from all intellectual curiosity. Dr. La Touche says, if we wish to know the north better, it will do us no harm to study the Plantation of Ulster, the United Irish movement, Orangeism, Irish Jacobitism, the effect of French and Swiss Republicanism in the evolution ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... understanding, kindly talk about his men; many of whom on this Thursday afternoon—the quasi half-holiday of the Fleet when in harbour—are snatching an hour's sleep when and where they can. That sleep-abstinence of the Navy—sleep, controlled, measured out, reduced to a bare minimum, among thousands of men, that we on shore may sleep our fill—look at the signs of it, in the eyes both of these officers, and of the sailors crowding the "liberty" boats, which are just bringing them back from ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drunken men and women one after another, he first wondered whether they were helped by tracts, and then decided that the mind befogged with alcohol was unfit to receive the gospel message. Then for fifteen years he threw himself into a total-abstinence crusade, distributing thousands of pamphlets, calling in one year at over four thousand homes to teach the industrial and moral reasons for total abstinence. Finally, he began to wonder whether back of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... lady say of this very passage, she did really offend against God, since it was in her power to deliver herself from death; whereas in seeking it and advancing it as she did, she really killed herself. And thus have done many similar to her, who by excessive continence and abstinence have brought about the destruction both of their souls and bodies."—Lalanne's OEuvres de Brantome, vol. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... "sacrifice" conveys a just idea of what the laborer undergoes, and it corresponds to the abstinence of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... earth, and the joys of this world have no charm for you!" "I have laid the oath of virtue and chastity upon the altar of the Invisibles," replied Wollner, with a severe tone of voice. "I have given myself to a pious life of abstinence, and sworn to employ every means to lead those that I can attain to upon the narrow path which leads to the paradise of science, of knowledge, and heavenly joys. How could I forget my oath, which is to win the prince, who is to become a light and shield ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... to spend a considerable sum of money in his own defence, and with the entire force ready and eager to get at the tramp and put him out of business? He swallows his pride, if he has any, and ruefully slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... in the way were but hostile impediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal's she ventured to urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy on the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leadership belongs not to any party or to any section, but to those whose consciences were quickened by the teachings of the Bible. Total abstinence was naturally more prevalent among church members than among those outside of the church, and this, of course, was the foundation upon which prohibition rested. The arguments against the use of liquor are the basis of the arguments in favour ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... religious example and influence made a lasting impression upon his character, held the most orthodox Hindu views, and only agreed to his crossing "the Black Water" to England after exacting from him a three-fold vow, which he faithfully kept, of abstinence from flesh, alcohol, and women. He returned to India as soon as he had been called to the Bar and began to practise as an advocate before the Bombay High Court, but in 1893, as fate would have it, he was to be called to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of abstinence he always wore linen clothes of a pale colour; and he changed his food and moved from his ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... Mental suggestion was used greatly, and the patient was put to sleep, his cure being often revealed to him in a dream which was interpreted by the priests. The expectancy of his mind, and the reduced state of his body as the result of abstinence conduced to a cure, and trickery also played a minor part. Albeit, much of the treatment prescribed was commendable. Pure air, cheerful surroundings, proper diet and temperate habits were advocated, and, among other methods of treatment, exercise, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... princely style. My first business was to improve his reputation in Gibraltar. He gave a very large sum to the charities of the city; and where the officers and soldiers had benefit associations he filled up their coffers. He did not drink a drop of spirits or wine, and would have signed a total-abstinence pledge if I had asked him to do so. I am not quite old enough to be his father; but if he had been my son I could have had ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... instances the term used for God is T'ien. Only in one single passage does Mencius use Shang Ti:—"Though a man be wicked, if he duly prepares himself by fasting and abstinence and purification by water, he ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... carried out without discretion there is danger lest it should come to naught, as S. Antony says. Hence one Religious Order is not superior to another because its observances are stricter, but because its observances are directed to the end of that Order with greater discretion. Thus, for example, abstinence from food and drink, which means hunger and thirst, are more efficacious means for preserving chastity than wearing less clothing, which means cold and nakedness; more ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... Advent, preceding Christmas, and Lent, preceding Easter. The two great Fasts are Ash-Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, and Good Friday, the day of our Lord's crucifixion. Other days of fasting and abstinence are the forty days of Lent, all the Fridays in the year, the Ember-days (the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday before the four stated Times of Ordination to the holy ministry), and the Rogation-days (the Monday, Tuesday, and ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... she had lived in the house with a Morisco named Juan, by trade a coppersmith, and a native of Segovia; that she had observed that neither he nor his children ate pork or drank wine, and that, on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings they used to wash their feet, which custom, as well as abstinence from pork and wine, was peculiar to the Moors. The old man was at that time an inhabitant of Benevente, and seventy-one years of age. But the inquisitors at once summoned him into their presence, and questioned him at three several interviews. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... turn a rope-walker, gymnast, actor, ventriloquist and, singularly enough, electro-physician. For most of these varied callings he had a certain adaptability by reason of his splendid physique, perfect health, entire abstinence from stimulants, ready wit, good-humor, fertility in expedients and promptitude and energy in execution, as well as by the daring and ambition naturally associated with such physical and mental qualifications. A friend writes of him: "He was as ready to navigate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... considered unwholesome, and therefore may account for its proscription by the legislators and priests of the East. In Egypt, Syria, and even the southern parts of Greece, although both white and delicate, it is so flabby and surcharged with fat, that it disagrees with the strongest stomachs. Abstinence from it in general was, therefore, indispensable to health under the burning suns of Egypt and Arabia. The Egyptians were permitted to eat it only once a year,—on the feast of the moon; and then ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to do with that out-of-the-way old curiosity-shop of the American continent? One might fancy him now—but that it is growing late—in the United States. He might be invited to attend a Total Abstinence Convention. He might run Mr. J.B. Gough hard on his favorite stump. He might be tempted, perchance, to cross the ocean in the evening of his days, to note down, with his inimitable and still unfaltering pencil, some of the humors of Yankee-land. I am certain, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... way of being able to make a heavy night of it and then turn out as fresh as paint in the morning," Terence retorted; "but you see, Captain O'Grady, even my abstinence has its advantages, for at least there will always be one officer in the corps able to go the round ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... twelve months after all manifestations of the disease have ceased. If these conditions have been complied with, there is little danger of communicating the disease to their wives or transmitting it to their offspring. They must moreover, have been under the treatment during all this period. Abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, dissipation, and especial care of the teeth ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... "penny had not dropped!" If the 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 and ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... that I owe more of my great labours to my strict adherence to the precepts that I have here given you, than to all the natural abilities with which I have been endowed; for these, whatever may have been their amount, would have been of comparatively little use, even aided by great sobriety and abstinence, if I had not, in early life, contracted the blessed habit of husbanding well my time. To this, more than to any other thing, I owed my very extraordinary promotion in the army. I was always ready: if I had to mount guard ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... if we deprive an animal of food, the weight of its body diminishes during every moment of its existence. If this abstinence is continued for some time, the diminution becomes apparent to the eye; all the fat of the body disappears, the muscles decrease in firmness and bulk, and, if the animal is allowed to die starved, scarcely anything but skin, tendon, and bones, remain. This emaciation which occurs in ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... welfare of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of entire abstinence from intoxicating liquids as a beverage."[206:1] But, as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous liquors, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... that the wrath of God at such a crime would assuredly be avenged by calamities on the inhabitants, and confessions were made daily. The friars agreed to appease the anger of the Almighty by making public penance and by public prayer. The Archbishop subjected himself to a most rigid abstinence. He perpetually fasted, ate herbs, drank only water, slept on the floor with a stone for a pillow, and flagellated his own body. On Corpus Christi day a religious procession passed through the public thoroughfares solemnly exhorting the delinquents to restore ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... used abstinence and stopped myself from telling her that she could never have done it, for she was quite solemn, and I thought we were getting at something. I hoped, too, that we should get it quickly, for a tired feeling was creeping ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 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
... and clearly showed her real enjoyment. She had taken to it first when she was about fifteen, as she found it helped her to feel less hungry. Now it had become as much a necessity to her as to many men, and the long abstinence of term-time ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enjoined with increasing stringency abstinence from labor on ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... St. James. Then he eulogized Captain Angelats, the hero of the day, the Cid of Soller, and also the valiant donas of Can Tamany, two women on an estate near the village who had been surprised by three Turks greedy to satiate their carnal appetites after long abstinence on the solitudes of the sea. The valiant donas, arrogant and strong, as are all good peasants, neither cried out nor fled at sight of these three pirates, enemies both of God and of the saints. With the bar ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... his board free, but it'll be total abstinence for him. I wonder what took him on ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... that any meeting of Deputies has taken place at my residence since the closing of the session of 1829. This is all I have to say; I should feel ashamed of formally denying absurd reports, in which the King is not more respected than the truth." Without feeling myself restricted to the severe abstinence of M. Royer-Collard, I sedulously avoided all demonstrative opposition; my friends and I were mutually intent on furnishing no pretext for the mistakes ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the episcopal see. And 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 ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and of all joy hereafter; that when she thought of him as a minister of God, whose duty it was to pronounce God's threats to erring human beings, she was almost alarmed. She could hardly understand his leniency,—his abstinence from reproof; but entertained a vague, wandering, unformed wish that, as he never opened the vials of his wrath on them, he would pour it out upon her,—on her who would bear it for their sake so meekly. If there was such a wish it was certainly ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge and the habits that lead to a healthy life. The main articles of the sanitary creed are few and simple. Moderation and self-restraint in all things—an abundance of exercise, of fresh air, and of cold water—a sufficiency of steady work not carried to excess—occasional change of habits and abstinence from a few things which are manifestly injurious to health, are the cardinal rules to be observed. In the great lottery of life, men who have observed them all may be doomed to illness, weak vitality, and early death, but they at least add enormously to the chances of a strong and full ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 never ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... as he might at his pleasure satisfy all his appetites within the restrictions only of law, virtue, and religion; so he might, if his health required, or his inclination prompted him to temperance, or even to abstinence, absent himself from any meals, or retire from them, whenever he was so disposed, without even a sollicitation to the contrary: for, indeed, such sollicitations from superiors always savour very strongly of commands. But ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of these hypochondria of genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with his wife, his eye fixed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... strawberry in fourteen years," said Smith, more proud than regretful, as if such a long abstinence were a virtue. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... abstained from the usual fashion of having his hair dressed, in order that he might give the money so saved to the poor. He refused to return the visits of those who called on him, that he might avoid all idle conversation. His fasts were so severe that they seriously impaired his health, and extreme abstinence and gloomy views about religion are said to have contributed largely to hurry one of the closest of his college companions to an early and a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... morning in a petty newspaper a biting burlesque of which I was the grotesque hero: I figured (my name was given in full) as a member of a temperance society, whose members were pledged to total abstinence from the use of ideas, wit, and style; at one of our monthly dinners, we were said to have devoured Balzac at the first course, De Beranger for the roast, Michelet for a side-dish, and George Sand for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... something tempting in its outward appearance, but it is like the beautiful colour of some poisons, from which, however they may attract our eyes, a regard to our own welfare commands us to abstain. And this is an abstinence to which wisdom alone, without any Divine command, hath been often found adequate, with instances of which the Greek and Latin authors everywhere abound. May not a Christian, therefore, be well ashamed of making a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... unchaste; for the Lord says, "That whosoever looketh upon another's woman, so as to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart," Matt. v. 28. It is impossible to enumerate all the causes of abstinence from adulteries in the body only, they being various according to states of marriage, and also according to states of the body; for there are some persons who abstain from them from fear of the civil law and its penalties; some from fear ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... churchyard, and took a path across the fields. He was hungry and thirsty. In one of his sermons there occurred this passage: "We should habituate ourselves to hold our appetites in check. By constantly accustoming our selves to abstinence little abstinences in our daily life—we alone can attain to that true spirituality without which we cannot hope to know God." And it was well known throughout his household and the village that the Rector's temper was almost dangerously spiritual if anything ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Presidential candidate. Now, among the Greeks, the eating 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 Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... their allowance for the following day, for it was at this time the Mahometan Lent, which, being kept with religious strictness by the Moors, they thought proper to compel their Christian captive to a similar abstinence. Time, in some degree, reconciled him to his forlorn state: he now found that he could bear hunger and thirst better than he could have anticipated; and at length endeavoured to amuse himself by learning to write Arabic. The people, who came to see him, soon made him acquainted with the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... but was rejected because Uncle Charles would speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit, and approached those he did speak to with caution till they were sixty. He regarded them as one of the chief causes of modern unrest. He liked them so much that he hated them. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance. Uncle Charles was no good ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... to the highest rank as a statesman and a patriot, and show him equally mindful of his own honour and his country's good. He alone has moderated the rancour of Lyndhurst, kept in check the violence of Brougham, and restrained the impetuosity and impatience of his party. His abstinence from opposition exceedingly provoked his followers, for, with the exception of the question of the appointment of magistrates by the Chancellor, upon which he treated the latter with considerable asperity, and blamed his conduct severely, he displayed uniform leniency and forbearance; at the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... nourishment he took during the twenty-four hours, and that, so far from this regime affecting his spirits, it made him feel lighter and more lively; and, in short, gave him greater command over himself in all respects. This great abstinence is almost incredible.... He thought great eaters were generally ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Mr. Lavender. "I shall sleep at High Barnet; I must address them there tomorrow on abstinence during ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the giddy summit of a Royal Oak omnibus, and on arriving in the vestibulum, were peremptorily commanded to undergo total abstinence from our umbrellas. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... 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" ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... days with the gout in his ankle; an absolute professed gout in all the forms, and with much pain. Mr. Chute is out of town; when he returns, I shall set him upon your brother to reduce him to abstinence ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Fawns, taken out of the Doe's Bellies, and boil'd in the same slimy Bags Nature had plac'd them in, and one of the Country-Hares, stew'd with the Guts in her Belly, and her Skin with the Hair on. This new-fashion'd Cookery wrought Abstinence in our Fellow-Travellers, which I somewhat wonder'd at, because one of them made nothing of eating Allegators, as heartily as if it had been Pork and Turneps. The Indians dress most things after the Wood-cock Fashion, never taking the Guts out. At the House we lay at, there was very good ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... follows: "D'Artagnan s'assit alors pres de la fenetre, et, cette philosophie de Planchet lui ayant paru solide, il y reva." In a man who finds all things good, you will scarce expect much zeal for negative virtues: the active alone will have a charm for him; abstinence, however wise, however kind, will always seem to such a judge entirely mean and partly impious. So with Dumas. Chastity is not near his heart; nor yet, to his own sore cost, that virtue of frugality which is the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That looks like a brewery! Consider the sea of beer they brew there once a month, and then think of your oath of abstinence ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy |
