"Abstention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Scotch nobles was not generally responded to. They had lost much of their power over their vassals, many of whom had fought under Wallace in spite of the abstention of their lords. It was clear, too, that if they joined the English, and another defeat of the latter took place, their countrymen might no longer condone their treachery, but their titles and estates might be confiscated. Consequently but few of them presented ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... of the German statesmen, and of the Kaiser himself, that war had been forced upon them were declared untrue by their associate Italy in the very beginning, and the verdict of Italy was the verdict of the world. Not much was said in the beginning about Italy's abstention from war. The Germans, indeed, sneered a little and hinted that some day Italy would be made to regret her course, but now that the Teuton snake is scotched the importance of Italy's action has been perceived and appraised at its ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a little crude,—that very air of being the uncritical and slightly puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... had never got up in the morning without looking forward to seeing her and hearing her voice before he should lie down again. A man more like others would have said to himself that no promise could bind him to anything more than the performance of an action, or the abstention from one, and that the right of dreaming was his own for ever. But Zorzi judged differently. He had a sensitiveness that was rather manly than masculine; he had scruples of which he was not ashamed, but which most men would laugh at; he had delicacies of conscience in his most private thoughts ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... have something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... words and a dangerous equivocation. For social justice is not revolutionary justice. They are both in perpetual antagonism: to serve the one is to oppose the other. As for me, my choice is made. I am for revolutionary justice as against social justice. Still, in the present case I am against abstention. I say that when a lucky chance brings us an affair like this we should be fools not to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... said no word in public. He threatened disclosure in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr. Tennant—in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had confidence—he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any sign of recovery since the Coalition Government ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... a shiver; then the man half rose and faced her. She was startled at his expression. He was facing the most dreadful, not mere thought of ruin to him and his—"Suzuki San is liar and thief. Fifty ryo[u] in hand the promise was for abstention. Now he demands twenty ryo[u] more—the interest on the debt in full." His voice rose to a harsh scream. He laughed despairingly. "Seventy-five ryo[u] interest, for the loan of a month; and that loan ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his abstention from generous fluids was, we are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... more look back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention. The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... would have paid two obols apiece,' and the city would have gained this. The sentence which follows favours (3), but perhaps (2) is best. The petty interests of the city would include (from the point of view assumed by Aeschines) the abstention from showing civility to the enemy's envoys. The two-obol ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... such methods do not appear to be coercive in nature, since they involve merely an abstention from action on the part of the group offering the resistance. Actually they are coercive, however, because of the absolute necessity for inter-group cooperation in the maintenance of our modern social, economic, and political systems. Under modern conditions the group against whom the resistance ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... in the course of Wagner's travail. But, as Wagner's most eminent English interpreter once put it to me at Bayreuth between the acts of Night Falls On The Gods, the master wanted to "Lohengrinize" again after his long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in 1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art) gave him exactly the libretto he required for that outbreak of the old operatic Adam in him. So ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... character, which has given rise to the motion presented by Mr. JANSSEN, it follows that every measure voted by the Congress tending to the adoption of a national meridian, will be, by the very fact of the abstention of France, an incomplete measure, and which will not answer the purpose sought by the Conference. I hasten to add, in order to avoid all erroneous interpretations which could be given to my words, that it would be the same, if, for instance, the meridian of ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... thinking that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget. So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the hope—a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless—that she had nothing ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Karen as the cause for his abstention since Madame von Marwitz regretted that Karen had missed the piece, Gregory said that he had heard too much perhaps. "I don't believe I should care for anything the man wrote," ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... prudent policy of taking sides with neither, because allies of both, is either safe for you or fair to us. Practically it is not as fair as it pretends to be. If the vanquished be defeated, and the victor conquer, through your refusing to join, what is the effect of your abstention but to leave the former to perish unaided, and to allow the latter to offend unhindered? And yet it were more honourable to join those who are not only the injured party, but your own kindred, and by so doing to defend the common interests ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... differences between the members. For instance, several castes have been created by the degradation of members of the existing castes on account of their marriage of widows. The Pandarams of South India are held in distinction among the begging castes because of their abstention from meat, alcohol, and widow marriage. Indeed, it is interesting to note that a former caste status has been more frequently lost by, and degradation to a new caste has been consequent upon, the adoption of widow marriage, than through almost any other act. And, at present, this prohibition ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... at Warsaw; and Napoleon III. presented to them a memorandum by which he engaged to abandon Piedmont in the event of her attacking Venice. But "he presupposed that the German Powers would also confine themselves to an attitude of abstention, and would avoid furnishing a pretext for an Italian attack of Austria." At length, the Piedmontese fleet, under Admiral Persano, succeeded in demolishing the more important portion of the fortifications of Ancona. A ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... it was by no means wholly Socialist, but in successive Congresses Marx won it over more and more to his views. At its third Congress, in Brussels in September, 1868, it became definitely Socialist. Meanwhile Bakunin, regretting his earlier abstention, had decided to join it, and he brought with him a considerable following in French-Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy. At the fourth Congress, held at Basle in September, 1869, two currents were strongly marked. The Germans and English followed ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... different conditions of life are to be performed throughout life only for the purpose of originating such knowledge. This the Strakra declares in Ve. S. IV, 1, 12; 16; III, 4, 33, and other places. The Vkyakra also declares that steady remembrance results only from abstention, and so on; his words being 'This (viz. steady remembrance meditation) is obtained through abstention (viveka), freeness of mind (vimoka), repetition (abhysa), works (kriy), virtuous conduct (kalyna), freedom from ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... austerity also were means calculated to promote faith in the sincerity of the priest, and consequently in the truth of their assertions and divine interpretations. The abstention from sexual intercourse was strictly enjoined on all who had received a Magbabya, and observance of the restriction was rigid apparently. The priests and their wives slept in the religious building, but did not cohabit, the men ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... those who are disinclined to battle will be forced into the ranks by compulsion. "Those who continue to work will be compelled to quit," says Guerard. The strike is not to be merely a peaceable abstention from work. The very machines are to be made to strike by being rendered incapable of production. These are the methods of ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... reduplication of the phenomena, with a second edition, if not a second and enlarged volume, of the whole story. For our part, our faith is firm in the impolicy of interference, and this faith is founded on an experience of many years, during which our practice has been that of abstention. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... streets, or to sit in the St. Stephen's Green Park. She knew every bird in the Park, those that had chickens and those that had had chickens, and those that never had any chickens at all—these latter were usually drakes, and had reason on their side for an abstention which might otherwise have appeared remarkable, but they did not deserve the pity which Mary lavished on their childlessness, nor the extra pieces of bread with which she sought to recompense them. She loved to watch the ducklings swimming after their mothers: they ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... sins of the spirit. Puritanism overturned the balance of things, and by concentrating its condemnation on sexual derelictions became blind to the greater sins of pride, avarice and anger. We have inherited the prejudice without acquiring the abstention, but the Middle Ages had a clearer sense of comparative values and they could forgive, or even ignore, the sin of Abelard and Heloise when they could less easily excuse the sin of spiritual pride or deliberate cruelty. Moreover, these same Middle ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... the question converted itself into a positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable—she could make their abstention enormously definite. There might indeed have been for Strether the portent of this ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... William Bentinck as Governor-General of India in March 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of congratulation, his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to violate. He had brought from England the feeling of disquietude in regard to the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but it would appear that he ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... do not buy American books any longer, because they can get English works, mere printed rags, but paying nothing to English authors, for a few cents. The rags, of course, fall to pieces, and are tossed into the waste-paper basket, and thus a habit of desultoriness and of abstention from books worth styling books grows and grows, like a noxious and paralysing parasite, over the American intellect. In this way our pleasant vices are made instruments to plague us, and the condition of the law, which leaves the British ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... arbitrary, the process can be clearly observed. Thus the Andhs, Kolis, Rautias and Halbas are now all Hindus, and the same remark applies to the Kols, Bhils and Korkus in several Districts. By strict abstention from beef, the adoption of Hindu rites, and to some extent of child-marriage, they get admission to the third group of castes from whom a Brahman cannot take water. It will be desirable here to digress from the main argument by noticing briefly the origin and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... look at you from their bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of centuries of experience with climate,—abstention from solid food before the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;—and you find each repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... tragedy, mangled in deference to James Ballantyne. Scott did not often care to trust himself out of the last echoes of "the pipes that played for Charlie," and though his knowledge of contemporary life was infinitely wider than Stevenson's, we see many good reasons for his abstention from use of his knowledge. For example, it is obvious that he could not attempt a romance of the War in the Peninsula, and of life in London, let us say, while Wellington was holding Torres Vedras. Even among Stevenson's abandoned projects, there is not, I think, one which deals ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was full —his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books dealt simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other churches in the town less successful than his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... months' abstention, that I took the Sacrament for the last time. My mother had an intense longing to communicate before she died, but absolutely refused to do so unless I took it with her. "If it be necessary to salvation," ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... him. He may reflect that he at least prevents the evil which would be produced by his apostasy; and very frequently in life, when we abstain from doing wrong, we have to be satisfied with a negative result and with the simple absence (which nobody notices) of some direct mischief, although the abstention may cost more than positive well-doing. This too, however, is but cold consolation when the cord is brought and the grave is ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... explain the recent action of the Holy See, but there were high-minded Catholics who liked to think that the controlling reason was religious—that the Pope and his counsellors had at last been persuaded that the old policy of abstention wrought irreparable harm to the religious life of millions of the faithful ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... for the first time what he was to realise yet further in connection with this strange business, namely, that the many who go through life refusing to act the part of good Samaritans have at any rate excellent reasons for their abstention. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to be noted that of the entire household only Lady Wetherby could fairly be described as happy. It took very little to make Lady Wetherby happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete abstention from classical dancing—give her these and she asked no more. She was, moreover, delighted at Claire's engagement. It seemed to her, for she had no knowledge of the existence of Lord Dawlish, a genuine manifestation of Love's Young Dream. She liked Dudley ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... are all that can be desired. But my cousin, whose experiences I have to tell you now, went to the Golden Lion the first time that he visited Viborg. He has not been there since, and the following pages will, perhaps, explain the reason of his abstention. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... "continence" is taken by various people in two ways. For some understand continence to denote abstention from all venereal pleasure: thus the Apostle joins continence to chastity (Gal. 5:23). In this sense perfect continence is virginity in the first place, and widowhood in the second. Wherefore the same applies to continence understood ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the end of the period of digestion, in order to neutralise the acid in the stomach. This gives relief, but does not cure, as the dose has to be repeated after each meal; in course of time the quantity of soda has sometimes to be increased to an alarming extent. Fourth; the abstention from starchy foods and the substitution of an exclusive flesh dietary. In the "Salisbury" treatment, raw minced beef is given. This method often gives immediate relief, but its ultimate effect on the kidneys and other organs is ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... embargo. Whether this be quite a fair statement may be doubted; but there was in it so much of truth as to suggest the possibility, if not of acquiescence in the Orders in Council, at least of such abstention from active resentment as would ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... through three acts, was finally rewarded with the legal possession of a pretty heroine's person on the strength of a staggering lack of virtue. Indeed their only conception of the meaning of the word virtue was abstention from stealing other men's wives or from ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... not work out their own salvation then it were well that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have advocated such self denial ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... distinction made by Sir Edward Grey between the Austro-Servian and Austro-Russian conflict is quite correct. We wish as little as England to mix in the first, and, first and last, we take the ground that this question must be localized by the abstention of all the Powers from intervention in it. It is therefore our earnest hope that Russia will refrain from any active intervention, conscious of her responsibility and of the seriousness of the situation. If an Austro-Russian dispute should arise, we are ready, with ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... two, in the course of ten days; and the spirit moved him, after long abstention, to indulge in a rambling screed to Tara telling of his quest; revealing more than he quite realised of the inner stress he was trying to ignore. The quest, he emphasised, was a private affair, confided to her only, because he knew she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... were concealed. At all periods of his career he was a small and frugal eater, partly because he deprecated extravagance in living, and partly because he considered that the angina pectoris from which he thought he suffered could be best coped with by abstention from a sumptuous or heavy diet. Some days he would almost starve himself, and then in the night Nature would assert herself, and he would have to come downstairs and take whatever he found in the larder. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... is much more difficult to see or feel the results. Many people experience rapid relief from acute headache pain or digestive distress such as gas attacks, mild gallbladder pain, stomach aches, etc., after only one day's abstention from food. In one week of fasting a person can relieve more dangerous conditions such as arthritic pain, rheumatism, kidney pain, and many symptoms associated with allergic reactions. But even more fasting time is generally needed for the body to completely heal serious diseases. That's ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... commented upon by critics, I feel regret, although not repentance—namely, on any "anecdotic iconoclasm" where fact refuted fancy, and on my abstention from pronouncing judgments where the evidence was inconclusive. But how can a conscientious biographer help this ungraciousness and inaccommodativeness? Is it not his duty to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, in order that his subject may stand ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sick at heart of my [forced] abstention from calling on the name of God; so I said, "There is no god but God and Mohammed is His apostle." Whereupon the shining one smote the Marid with his javelin and he melted away and became ashes; whilst I was precipitated from his back and fell headlong toward the earth, till I dropped ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... ethical law demands more than abstention from definitely anti-social actions. It demands from every individual that he shall recognise the precepts of public morality as of superior obligation to those ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... forever have been the prey of overindulgence, sexual wantonness, civil strife, and apathy. They would have remained beasts and never won their dominance on the earth. Even rudimentary moral codes came as an amelioration of this dangerous and unhappy situation; they enabled men, by abstention from dangerous passions and from idleness, to make their lives efficient, interesting, and comparatively free from pain; by cooperation and mutual service to resist their enemies and develop a civilization. Morality thus has ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... those who defend religious persecution, those who insist on the removal and those who insist on the retention of religious disabilities, those who are in favour of and those who are opposed to a relaxation of the marriage laws, those who advocate a total abstention from intoxicating liquors and those who allow of a moderate use of them,—men on both sides in these controversies, or, at least, the majority of them, doubtless act conscientiously, and yet, as they arrive at opposite conclusions, the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... the States General held at Blois in 1576 proved highly favorable to the League. The chief reason for their overwhelming success was the abstention of the Protestants from voting. In continental Europe it has always been and is now common for minorities to refuse to vote, the idea being that this refusal is in itself a protest more effective ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... parlour pointed only to a little better than three o'clock they were obliged to eat heartily, for fear of giving pain to Uncle Meshach; to drink much was not essential, but nothing could have excused abstention from the solid fare. The repast, actively conducted by the mourning host, was not finished until nearly half-past four. Then Twemlow and the doctor ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... were evenly divided. The result was the same on thirty-five successive ballots. On the thirty-sixth, February 17, Jefferson received the votes of ten States and Burr of four. The votes of Delaware and South Carolina were blank, the Federalists having agreed to produce a tie by not voting. A similar abstention from voting on the part of Federalists from Vermont and Maryland gave the votes of those ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced this reason for abstention from the polls with ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... liquor made from the mahua flower, and this is consumed as largely as funds will permit of at weddings, funerals and other social gatherings, and also if obtainable at other times. They have a tribal panchayat or committee which imposes penalties for social offences, one punishment being the abstention from meat for a fixed period. A girl going wrong with a man of the caste is punished by a fine, but cases of unchastity among unmarried Baiga girls are rare. Among their pastimes dancing is one of the chief, and in their favourite ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... antarabhava; (3) merit accrues not only by gift (tyaganvaya) but also by the fact of the actual use and advantage reaped by the man to whom the thing was given (paribhoganvaya pu@nya); (4) not only abstention from evil deeds but a declaration of intention to that end produces merit by itself alone; (5) they believe in a pudgala (soul) as distinct from the skandhas from which it can be said to be either different or non-different. "The pudgala cannot be said to be transitory ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... the Government, they were absolutely terrified by this act of 'boycotting' (the slang word then current for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in the lump of all the workmen's committees; the next ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... it was distinctly audible, but the tones strengthened and deepened as he proceeded. His audience hung upon his every word, and so he discoursed for half an hour. It was not a great speech,—a series of calm, unimpassioned statements in which clearness of phrase and absolute abstention from aggressive attack upon his opponents were the most marked characteristics. It was courteous toward friend and foe, and foes no less than friends received each clear-cut sentence with attention most ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... marriage it is prescribed to procreate as many children as possible, and all preventive measures in coitus are severely condemned. Hence, if the woman is very fruitful, the husband has only the choice between complete abstention from coitus (when both conjoints are in agreement) and pregnancies following without interruption. The woman never has the right to refuse coitus to her husband, nor the latter to refuse it to his wife, so long as he is ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... bringing the government and society to terms was used twice by the Roman proletariat over two thousand years ago. The plebeians, so the story goes, unable to get their economic and political rights, stopped work and withdrew from the city to the Sacred Mount. Their abstention from labor did not mean the going out of street lamps, the suspension of street-car traffic, and the closing of factories and shops, but, besides the loss of fighting men, it meant that no more shoes could be had, no more carpentry work done, and no more wine-jars ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output—again a beautiful word—of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once again upon ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... enough to have done so in any case; for now, instead of sitting at home comfortably, and reading off the week's chronicle of sport while he nursed his leg, the unfortunate gentleman had to be up and away to Fenhurst every Sunday morning, or who would have known that the old cause of his general abstention from Sabbath services lay in the detestable doctrine of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... regards disarmament, I have deliberately abstained from mentioning it hitherto, although it is certainly a question of the greatest importance. The reason for my abstention is a very simple one. I have always maintained that disarmament can neither diminish the number of wars nor abolish war altogether, but that, if the number of wars diminishes or if war be abolished ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... all fruitless vexations, dull anxieties, sordid designs. To detach oneself, not from life, but from the scum and foam of life; to realise that the secret lay in the middle of it all, and that it was to be discerned not by fastidious abstention, not by a chilly asceticism, but by welcoming all nobler impulses, all spiritual influences; not by starving body or mind, but by selecting one's food carefully and temperately. If a man, Hugh thought, could live life in this spirit, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had taken up his abode at the cottage down by Platt's farm. His looks, his habits, and his motives for coming there had formed food for discussion throughout one meal in the servant's hall; a stranger whose abstention from brush and palette showed him to be no artist being an object of interest. And while the solution put forward by a romantic lady's-maid, a great reader of novelettes, that the young man had come there to ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... move, and have our being." There is nothing in us or about us, no positive perfection of ours whatsoever, that is not His gift, and a gift that He is not giving continually, else it would be lost to us. We are therefore bound in His regard, not merely to abstention but to act. And first, for inward acts, we must habitually feel, and at notable intervals we must actually elicit, sentiments of adoration and praise, of thanksgiving, of submission, of loyalty and love, as creatures to their ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... secure your perfect recovery? Really, dearest Franz, you will cause me the deepest anxiety unless you satisfy me on this point, and every rational person will see that this can be done only by a long and careful cure, together with absolute rest and abstention from every effort and excitement. To speak plainly, you dear people cannot long go on as you do now. Others would be ruined very soon by this kind of thing, which, at last, must become detrimental to you also. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... on August 8th, for the purpose of voting the war credits, the Social Democrats of both factions, Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, fourteen in number,[2] united upon a policy of abstention from voting. Valentin Khaustov, on behalf of the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... like the lack of effusive words. Harry knew that his general had not tasted food. Neither had he. He had actually forgotten it in his keenness for his work, and now he was proud of the fact. He was proud, too, of the comradeship of abstention that it gave him with Stonewall Jackson. As he rode in silence by the side of the great commander he made for himself an ideal. He would strive in his own youthful way to show the zeal, the courage and the untiring devotion that marked ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is no doubt difficult for some men to fully abstain from sexual intercourse and be entirely chaste in mind. The great majority of men experience frequent strong sexual desire. Abstention is very apt to produce in their minds voluptuous images and untamable desires which require an iron will to banish or control. The hermit in his seclusion, or the monk in his retreat, are often flushed with these passions and trials. It is, however, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them—not without some truth—valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their general abstention was not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... kinds, poultry, game and fish, and in this proper association the root is probably capable of superseding all other vegetable foods, bread alone excepted. It is far from our intention to recommend abstention from Asparagus, Cauliflower, Peas, and Sea Kale, and to regard Potatoes as a sufficient substitute for these and other table delicacies; but it is well to remember that by virtue of its starchy compounds the Potato has a direct tendency to promote health and that freshness of complexion ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... quarrel with them, to offer a penny for their thoughts, to force them to be as unselective and vulgar as one's self. But one desists, feeling instinctively the refreshment (as of some solitary treeless down or rocky stream) and purification of their fine abstention in this world where industry means cinder-heaps, and statesmanship, philosophy, art, philanthropy, mean "secondary products" of ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... an hour when all but one ceased suddenly from wine; that one, who still continued to drink as he saw fit, was the host. He knew the reason of their abstention; he had heard the trumpet in the harbour that told the hour and proclaimed the fast and vigil, and he felt, as all did, that at last the figure and the presence of which none would speak—the figure and the presence of the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... timid man does that which he would not. For though an avaricious man should, for the sake of avoiding death, cast his riches into the sea, he will none the less remain avaricious; so, also, if a lustful man is downcast, because he cannot follow his bent, he does not, on the ground of abstention, cease to be lustful. In fact, these emotions are not so much concerned with the actual feasting, drinking, &c., as with the appetite and love of such. Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to these emotions, but high-mindedness and valour, whereof I ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... for the first time since the beginning of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that abstention from ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... ourselves to that which promotes the neighbor's welfare. Likewise, when we labor, fast, or when we regulate our sexual relations, we are to exercise reason, lest the body should be injured by too much fasting, watching and toil, and also by needless abstention from sexual intercourse. Let everyone take heed to remain within bounds by using reason and discretion. The apostle counsels the married (1 Cor 7, 5) not to defraud each other too long, lest they be tempted. In all such matters, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... rest, their doctrine was innocent enough, and, but for certain extravagances and some dangerous dogmas borrowed from other sects, their diffusion among the working-classes of the towns might even have been desirable. Sexual chastity was one of their main postulates, and they also recommended absolute abstention from meat, spirits, and tobacco. But at the same time they ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... O'BRIEN took swift revenge. House dividing on PREMIER'S motion allotting time for remaining stages of Budget Bill, he led his little flock into Opposition Lobby, assisting to reduce Ministerial majority to figure of 23. In this labour of love he found himself assisted by abstention of two groups of Ministerialists, one objecting to procedure on Finance Bill, the other thirsting for blood of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... months of abstention, and for the last time, I took the Sacrament. This statement will seem strange to my readers, but the matter happened ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... I went to take the admiral's orders. The fort surrendered during the night. The garrison, two thousand strong, evacuated the place, and a convention was concluded with the general in command at Vera Cruz for the abstention of both sides from further hostilities. We then occupied the fort, and the admiral gave me orders to moor the Creole under its walls, and together with Comte de Gourdon, commanding the Cuirassier, to put prize ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... in the life and the offices of the court, exposed to all the temptations of the world. It is no longer the desert of the penitents of PortRoyal, or the strict cloister of Mother Angelica; Fenelon is for only inward restrictions and an abstention purely spiritual; from afar and in his retreat at Cambrai, he watches over his faithful flock with a tender pre-occupation which does not make him overlook the duties of their position. "Take as penance for your sins," he wrote, "the disagreeable ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... powers to no single statesman, but held the reins in his own hand. His ability as a ruler consisted in his tact and moderation in managing the conflicting parties, and in his honest abstention from encroaching on the liberties of the people in rare emergencies; so that his reign was peaceable and tolerably successful. It required no inconsiderable ability to preserve the throne to his successor amid such a war of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... merits of these virtues, truth and alms-giving, kind speech and abstention from injury to any creature, are known (measured) by their objective gravity (utility). Truth is (sometimes) more praiseworthy than some acts of charity; some of the latter again are more commendable than true speech. Similarly, O mighty king, and lord of the earth, abstention ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reply to such a Christian speech. On the other hand, I thought in advance how puzzled I should be to reply to M. d'Asterac when he inquired of me after news of the Salamander. What could I say? How was I to avow my reserve and my abstention without betraying my defiance and fear? And after all, without being aware of it, I was curious to try the adventure. I am not credulous. On the contrary I am marvellously inclined to doubt, and by this inclination to brave common-sense, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... and Miles ran the boat down to the water's edge, and floated it, getting in and paddling up and down to see that there was no leakage, and to enjoy the novel sensation after the long abstention from boating. But there was work to be done, and they could not afford to spend even a part of the day in rowing for their own amusement. Stores had to be taken down to Seal Cove, and there was some bargaining ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... says expressly in your letter: "The Emperor ought to thank God that my view of Russian policy, my fidelity to your Majesty, have prevented me from making him begin the Turkish war on the other side of his own frontier. The enormous advantage of this abstention is totally forgotten in France, and, unfortunately, in ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... few who did not in their hearts dislike them. However much the young person might be shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of the world—often far nicer people than the prophets who preached abstention—continually spoke sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small wonder, then, that the more human among the student classes were provoked by the touch- not, taste-not, handle-not precepts of their rulers, into questioning ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... based on fear. It would be far better that men should be rewarded for working well than that they should be punished for working badly. This system is already in operation in the civil service, where a man is only dismissed for some exceptional degree of vice or virtue, such as murder or illegal abstention from it. Sufficient pay to ensure a livelihood ought to be given to every person who is willing to work, independently of the question whether the particular work at which he is skilled is wanted at the moment or not. If it is not wanted, some new trade ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... tension between John and Paula which Mary saw mounting daily over the question of his next visit to Ravinia. Paula wanted him, was getting restless, moody, as nearly as it was possible for her to be ill-natured over his abstention. Yet it was evident enough that she had not invited him to come; furthermore, that she meant not to invite him. Once Mary would have put this down to mere coquetry but this explanation failed now to satisfy altogether. There was something ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to the north pole. Milly was ready, under orders, for the north pole; which fact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend's actual abstention from orders. "No," she heard him again distinctly repeat it, "I don't want you for the present to do anything at all; anything, that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will be made clear to you, and let me within a few days ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... escape without another revulsion of feeling. A sudden realisation of what his life would be under the new conditions did not fail to frighten him, and he looked back with passionate regret on his abandoned dreams. But his nature was changed, abstention he knew was beyond his strength, and after many struggles, each of which was feebler than the last, he determined to propose to Kitty on the ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... a million times has been, urged that abstention from activity in public affairs by men of brains and character leaves the business of government in the hands of the incapable and the vicious. In whose hands, pray, in a republic does it logically belong? What does the theory of "representative government" affirm? What is the lesson of every ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... wrote to the Council giving their version of the situation. This letter was not signed by the licentiate Herrera, one of the auditors, who afterwards wrote to the Emperor, explaining and justifying his abstention, by saying that he disapproved of the violent language used against the bishops and did not share the views of his associates concerning them. Although he found Las Casas over-zealous, he considered that the Indians were ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... condition of aboriginal man is far sighted. His wild life, his nomadic nature, his seeking for game, his watching for enemies, his abstention from continued near work, have given him this protection. Humboldt speaks of the wonderful distant vision of the South American Indians; another traveler in Russia of the power of vision one of his guides possessed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Meat Substitutes. It is not necessary to be a vegetarian to desire a change from a meat diet. There are health reasons often demanding abstention from meats; or economy may be an impelling motive; or a desire for change and variety in the daily bill of fare may be warrant enough. However we look at it here is the wonder book to point the way to better ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer
... united with that of Leon by Fernando III. (1230-1262) the son of Alfonso IX. of Leon. Lanfranc Cigala, the troubadour of Genoa, excuses the Spaniards at this time for their abstention from the Crusades to Jerusalem on the ground that they were fully occupied in their struggles with the Moors. Fernando is one of the kings to whom Sordello refers in the famous sirventes of the divided heart, as also is Jaime I. of Aragon (1213-1276), the "Conquistador," of whom much is heard ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... where any guest is welcome, it might be my duty to act differently. But my ways are cast in places where there is no need for social press-gangs, and the highways and hedges are left unsearched. If therefore by abstention I gain a qualified peace for myself, and confer positive benefit on others, I may go ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... emphasized by the leadership of the prime minister. Long after the rise of the cabinet to controlling influence in the state the members of the ministerial body continued supposedly upon a common footing in respect both to rank and authority. The habitual abstention of the early Hanoverians from attendance at cabinet meetings, however, left the group essentially leaderless, and by a natural process of development the members came gradually to recognize a virtual ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... hastily, and went his way. If there was a thoughtfulness in the generosity of this action, the mode in which it was performed—the measured coldness of the words—the look of impassive examination that accompanied them, and the abstention from anything that savoured of apology for a liberty—were all deeply felt ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to persuade her. He believed that she had a very sweet reason behind her abstention. She had had Robin all to herself for many months; perhaps she thought the father ought to have his turn now, perhaps to-day she was handing over her little son to his father for the education which always comes from a man. Her sudden unselfishness—Dion believed it was that—touched ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... imposed on them in Massachusetts by the obligatory abstention from labor on two days, on one day by conscience and the other by the rigorous laws of the Puritans, made Roger Williams's little state the paradise of the Sabbatarians, and the sect flourished greatly in it, while the social isolation consequent on the practice of contracting marriages only ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... "Oh! Ce n'est rien; papa dit que c'est la sante des enfants"! Parasitic worms of various kinds, though they often cause disease and death, are accepted and tolerated even by the most refined and luxurious, who risk infection rather than submit to the precaution of abstention from raw vegetables and fruits, or to the expenditure of trouble in cleansing those nests of infective germs. It is only within the last thirty or forty years that such cleanliness of body and of clothing and of house-fittings ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... of action for the man of activities, and it was probably reciprocated. Lucas was an over-well nourished individual, some nine years Basset's senior, with a colouring that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive culture in an asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere abstention from exercise. His hair and forehead furnished a recessional note in a personality that was in all other respects obtrusive and assertive. There was certainly no Semitic blood in Lucas's parentage, but his appearance contrived to convey at least a suggestion of Jewish extraction. Clovis Sangrail, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... delegates. This course was unfortunate, for it gave the control of the convention wholly into the hands of the pro-slavery party, with consequences that were far-reaching for Kansas and the nation.[622] But by October the free-State party had abandoned its policy of abstention from territorial politics, so far as to participate in the election of a new territorial legislature. The result was a decisive free-State victory. The next legislature would have an ample majority of free-State men in both ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... silently, as a sign of acquiescence. Naroumoff laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and wished ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to have any hitch; it is simply that the small influence which, in certain given circumstances, I could exercise, is paralysed by other circumstances that now predominate. I should be obliged to explain various things to make you understand my extrinsic inaptitude, and consequently my obligatory abstention on some points which touch me closely. I prefer not to enter into these details in writing; perhaps we shall have an opportunity of speaking about them: as to the present time the following is my reply, reduced ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... gradually improved and a more normal state of affairs was brought about, which has continued to the present day, broken only by periods of abstention, chiefly caused by the attacks of anemia and menstrual irregularities from which his wife suffers from time to time. Ordinarily, he enjoys coitus once or twice in the month, hardly oftener, taking one month with another. At one time he exemplified in his ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... cannot embark here upon the history of sales of MSS. in the last hundred years. But my abstention, due to considerations of space, must not be imitated by my readers. Those who deal with modern collections or make collections of their own—a thing still possible for quite modest purses, in spite of the inflated prices which the great ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... that at last we began to joke about it in the reception-room; outriders and footmen tossed it from one to another when a new guest entered: "Alone!" And we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. But M. Nicklauss, with his extended knowledge of society, considered that the almost universal abstention of the fair sex was ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... bottle was circulated from hand to hand, the hilarity sensibly increasing with each passage. Their enforced abstention of late made them more than usually susceptible. Their faces were flushed, and their eyes began to be a little bloodshot. They continually forgot that the girl could not speak English, and their facetious remarks to each other were in reality for her benefit. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Public"; the careers of Raphael and Millet are capital instances of the happy productiveness of an artist in sympathy with his public or of the difficulties, nobly conquered in this case, of an artist without public appreciation; the greatest merit attributed to "The American School" is an abstention from the extravagances of those who would make incomprehensibility a test of greatness. Finally, the work of Saint-Gaudens is a noble example of art fulfilling its social function in expressing and in elevating the ideals ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... questions—and if he remained in Paris he would naturally go to the Senate and vote. I quite agreed that he couldn't suddenly detach himself from all political discussions—must take part in them and must vote. The policy of abstention has always seemed to me the weakest possible line in politics. If a man, for some reason or another, hasn't the courage of his opinions, he mustn't take any position where that opinion would carry weight. I told her we were going ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... convention, no convention could be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fully carried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of them voted (against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority in each State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of the conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical majority with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In South Carolina and Louisiana, there were Negro majorities. In every State except North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... any hurry. It would expire with dignity and leave a rich inheritance of stench. Meanwhile, its decadence was marked enough to frank the Major in neglecting "Harry Lorrequer" for the rest of the time, and also served to persuade him that he had really been reading. Abstention from a book under compulsion has something of the character of perusal. Gibbon could not have collected his materials on those lines, certainly. But the Major felt his conscience clearer from believing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the senses, cares only about preserving himself, and all his concern is that others should not force their way into his sphere, should not disturb him, should not interrupt his idleness; and in return for their abstention or for the sake of example he refrains from forcing himself upon them, from interrupting their idleness, from disturbing them, from taking possession of them. "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you," he translates thus: I do not interfere ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... perpetrating the cruel joke, I felt that I wouldn't have missed the sight for anything. I was really extremely proud of my achievement, although conscious that I should have to pay dearly bye-and-bye for my freak in the way of "pandies" and forced abstention from food; but I little thought of the stern Nemesis at a later period of my life Providence ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything that might lead up to the subject—this halting on all sides at the boundary of what they might not mention—brought before their minds with still greater purity and clearness what ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... ideas of conservation hampered them in the least. If the water gave out, they argued, they would be thirsty; but it was as well to be thirsty later from lack of water than to be thirsty now from some silly idea of abstention. No white man could have travelled successfully under that system. Nevertheless, the little band held together and arrived in the fringe of ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... four days, and for that period he would be the sober, stolid, British workman. The pleasures of the pot-house would claim him on Saturday, when he would have money in his pockets and the appetite that comes from abstention. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil doer. I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violent implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can he inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... be actively enforced, in view of special interests in the Caribbean. In the Far East the United States claimed an equality of status with the European powers. In the rest of the world, Europe, Africa, the Levant, the traditional American policy of abstention held good absolutely, at least until the close ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... Christly edict, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone," had been followed out there would never have been another stone cast. And one might ask if the world would have been, or could have been, the worse for that abstention. For, whatever else may be true, the venerable practices of justice ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon things were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and the flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste in the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patience with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Othello; while he constantly informs us that ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... agent's wife framed in the leafy screen behind his lodge, the perfume of her hair and breath mingled with the spicing of the bay, the brief thrill and tantalization of the stolen kiss still haunted him. Through his long, shy abstention from society, and his two years of solitary exile, the fresh beauty of this young Western wife, in whom the frank artlessness of girlhood still lingered, appeared to him like a superior creation. He forgot his vague longings in the inception of a more tangible but equally ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... hear of a German bride who will not go down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, "I think ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... that happened to be there! He observed this prohibition faithfully until Dr. Pocock left Beaconsfield in 1919. Dr. Bakewell, who succeeded him advised moderation but only occasionally found it necessary to order total abstention. It was the amount of liquid he feared rather than its nature. When he forbade wine he did so because wine increased the general tendency to absorb liquid. For Gilbert was always unslakeably thirsty. Daily he drank several ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... cold and chilly business at any time—had become doubly cold. They were chilled to the bone now, their teeth chattering so hard that it was with difficulty they could speak, while a natural appetite—an appetite increased by their enforced abstention from food during a whole day, their rapid crossing of the country since they had broken out of Ruhleben, and their movements on this evening—was dulled by the temperature to which their bodies had been lowered. "B—b—beastly cold," ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... as to blockade, contraband, the exercise of the right of search, and the immunity of neutral flags and neutral goods under enemy's flag.[19] A similar proclamation was made by the Spanish Government. In the conduct of hostilities the rules of the Declaration of Paris, including abstention from resort to privateering, have accordingly been observed by both belligerents, although neither was a ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... tendency to speak disrespectfully of dukes. Nothing could be nicer than manner of prosecuting counsel. They were there to discharge a public duty as champions of the truth, vindicators of desirable habit of abstention from exaggeration. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... glance towards the servants as he began to read in a voice deeper and more hurried than usual. When he laid down the Bible and took up the book of prayers he remained standing, as he sometimes did if he had a touch of rheumatism; but he had none now, and his abstention from a kneeling position amounted to a declaration that he was willing to go through the form of family prayers for routine's sake but must really be excused from giving a mind to it ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... of Fano may have refrained from offering themselves to the duke's dominion when, in the previous October, he had afforded them by his presence the opportunity of doing so, their conduct now hardly indicated that the earlier abstention had been born of reluctance, or else their minds had undergone, in the meanwhile, a considerable change. For, when they received the brief appointing him their lord, they celebrated the event by public rejoicings ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Moody's style is unlike that of most religious revivalists. He neither shouts nor gesticulates, and mentioned "hell" only once, and that in connection with the life the drunkard makes for himself. His manner is reflected by the congregation in respect of abstention from working themselves up into "a state." This makes all the more impressive the signs of genuine emotion which follow and accompany the preacher's utterance. When he was picturing the scene of Daniel ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy |
