"Abstention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... long-standing joke amongst his assistants when Bruce Wright had belonged to Hartley Parrish's secretarial staff. Thrift had become with him more than a habit. It was a positive obsession. It revealed itself in such petty meannesses as a perpetual cadging for matches or small change and a careful abstention from any offer of hospitality. Never in the whole course of his service had Bruce Wright heard of Mr. Jeekes taking anybody out to lunch or extending any of the usual hospitalities of life. He was not a little surprised, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... 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 ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... very extensive and important patronage by the vast number of petty posts which the system employed for collecting tickets places at their disposal. The tobacco monopoly is farmed out to a company, on whom any loss would fall in the first instance; but if the abstention from tobacco were continued long, the Government would soon feel the effects, through the inability of the company to keep up their present rate ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Petersburg, was more dignified than the practice of the imperial Court. It is true that I had already received this impression in Louis Philippe's time, during whose reign it became quite the fashion in France to distinguish oneself in the direction of excessively free and easy manners, and of abstention from courtesy, especially towards ladies. Although it had become better in this respect during the Second Empire, the tone in official and Court society and the demeanor of the Court itself still remained below the standard of the three great eastern ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... flesh-forming constituents naturally associates this vegetable with meat of various 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 ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... 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 ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they lay, each wrapped up in his blanket, Mick in the middle, with our two friends at the sides. Now it was not only on Mick's account, but quite as much in reference to Dick Shand, that Caldigate deprecated any reference to drink. The abstention hitherto had been marvellous. He himself would have gone daily to the store for a bottle of beer, but that he recognised the expediency of keeping them away from the place. He had heard that it was a peculiarity of the country that all labour was done without drink, even ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... national 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 ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... further safeguarded and 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 presidency on ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... she answered, "Philologically it signifieth cleanliness and freedom from impurities." Q "And of Salt or prayer?" "An invocation of good" Q "And of Ghusl?" "Purification." Q "And of Saum or fasting?" "Abstention." Q "And of Zakt?" "Increase. Q "And of Hajj or pilgrimage?" "Visitation." Q "And of Jihd?" "Repelling." With this the doctor's arguments were cut off,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... but he had preserved toward his wife the exact fidelity of act that is sometimes supposed to excuse any divagation of feeling; so that, for years, the tie between them had consisted mainly in his abstaining from making love to other women. The abstention had not always been easy, for the world is surprisingly well-stocked with the kind of woman one ought to have married but did not; and Lethbury had not escaped the solicitation of such alternatives. His immunity had been purchased at the cost of taking refuge in the somewhat rarified atmosphere ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... 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, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... participates in collective bargaining is to be ostracized. And even 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 the militant ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... before, I did not miss a lesson, and I even went to the deportment class, at which poor old M. Elie, duly curled, powdered, and adorned with lace frills, presided. This was the most amusing lesson imaginable. Very few of us attended this class, and M. Elie avenged himself on us for the abstention of the others. At every lesson each one of us was called forward. He addressed us by the familiar term of thou, and considered us as his property. There were only five or six of us, but we all had to go on the stage. He ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... try 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 ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the facts, are neither accurate nor happy. The ancient historians, as Herodotus and Thucydides, aimed at a pleasing narrative. To attain this end, neither an exhaustive investigation of facts nor a conscientious abstention from fiction was necessary. Hence we find the works of the one filled with impossible events, and those of the other with orations confessedly fictitious; but in both cases the introduction of legend ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... could find suitable premises at a moderate rent. For this was the great characteristic of the management. Modesty, moderation, simplicity. Neither The Orb nor The Sceptre nor yet their parent the Thrift and Independence had built for themselves the usual palaces. For this abstention they were praised in silly public prints as illustrating in their management the principle of Thrift for which they were founded. The fact is that de Barral simply didn't think of it. Of course he had soon moved from Vauxhall ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... result, were usually insisted upon as essential to the success of the operation.(2) A period of fasting prior to the experiment was also frequently prescribed as necessary, which, by weakening the body, must have been conducive to hallucination. Furthermore, abstention from the gratification of the sexual appetite was stipulated in certain cases, and this, no doubt, had a similar effect, especially as concerns magical evocations directed to the satisfaction of the sexual impulse. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... stepping-stone to ulterior objects, which they dared not avow till their power of carrying them into effect should be by this first acquisition secured." But the alarm which the spread of revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some of which were not, indeed, unwarranted by precedent, but others of which can hardly be denied to have ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... yourself join in attacking it!! For your Majesty 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, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... 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 and ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer
... Holy Communion when they feel inclined, instead of according to a fixed rule, modifying the rule, just as they would in the case of their meals, by circumstances which may arise; spiritual sickness might dictate abstention from Communion for a while, just as bodily disease might require a ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... 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 of Sicily ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... too fully to leave room for mere human feelings. Then, too, in the early days of January he was goaded to the verge of frenzy by the action of the enemy in shelling the district on the left bank of the river. He had come to credit the Prussians with reasons of humanity for their abstention, which was in fact due simply to the difficulties they experienced in bringing up their guns and getting them in position. Now that a shell had killed two little girls at the Val-de-Grace, his scorn and hatred knew no bounds for those barbarous ruffians ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... road waiting for Henri's return—a 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," Stuart admitted, and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... occupation in Sydney. It may be that the causes behind my aloofness from mere vulgar frivolity, and worse, were pretty mixed: part pride, or even conceit, and part prudence or parsimony. No matter. The influence was helpful, for the abstention was real, and the distaste grew always more rooted as time wore on. Also, the same influence tended to make me more fastidious, more critical, less crude than I might otherwise have been. It led me to give more serious attention to pictures, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Church should predominate. Free institutions do not settle the question; it is most manifestly rife to-day in a free country, Canada. In Italy itself a great clerical party is working silently but ceaselessly, under the mask of abstention from the elections, to recover its political power. The Sardinian Government could not withdraw from the duel at will; the Church in Piedmont was a political force constantly on the lookout for an opening to retake the position it had lost. Besides the moral power derived from ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... engaged 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 of egoism ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... bowed 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 him ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... welcome change to the Army Boys, who had chafed over the forced inaction and abstention from outdoor sports caused by the severe winter. Now most of the time off duty was spent in the open, and baseball and other games made the banishment from home seem less of a hardship. Company teams were organized ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... 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 ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... means of power; the moral conquest of Germany." Obviously there had been a long discussion, in which Lassalle had persuaded the Minister to adopt universal suffrage. The letters continue with reference to the machinery of the elections, and means of preventing abstention from the poll, for which Lassalle professes to have ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... not. Is there any remedy? Does our constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course, no support of the government and no government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their legislatures, we will elect no senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it. Again, suppose the two houses were to assemble in their usual order, and a majority of one in this body or in the Senate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... 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 to the most ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... 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 ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... came 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 Faith—had entered that room in spite of its dignity and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... 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 harshly treated and ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... withdrawal from the duties of life, and the obligations that we owe to society. God's world is a good one; man's world is a bad one. It is man's world that we have to leave, but the lofties, sanctity requires no abstention from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... case of the greater 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 Ages believed very ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... these, far more than the occupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of 1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer, and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions of the other ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... 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 and illuminations; whilst on July 21 the Council, representing the people, in the presence ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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
... by abstention from his usual method of prolonged evolution. No caverns, however spacious, will serve his turn, because they have limits. He could practise this self-denial when his artistic sense found it needful, whether for variety of verse or for the greater ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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
... persons out of the 467 who were addressed sent serviceable replies, and these cannot be considered a fair sample of the whole. Abstention might have been due to dislike of publicity, to inertia, or to pure ignorance, none of which would have much affected the values as a sample; but an unquestionably common motive does so seriously—namely, when the person addressed had no noteworthy ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... 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
... 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 ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... hear the average player express. If I lived in the backwoods 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 my way without ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... this in vain. None offered. It was also in vain that he waited to hear that the Queen had worn the necklace. But he does not appear to have been anxious on that score. Moreover, the Queen's abstention was credibly explained by Madame de la Motte to Laporte with the statement that Her Majesty did not wish to wear the necklace ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... all efforts at conciliation emanate from one side, and if Germany and Austria can speculate on the abstention of Great Britain, Austria's demands will remain inflexible, and an agreement between her and Russia will become impossible. I am profoundly convinced that at the present moment, the more Great Britain, France and Russia can give a deep impression that they are united ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... 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 that he ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... pay, and still greater influence or production on labor and on business, are social authorities, and who should become legal authorities. In every country where conditions are unequal, the preponderance of a numerical majority necessarily ends in the nearly general abstention or almost certain defeat of the candidates most deserving of election. But here the case is different; the elected, being towns-people (citadins) and not rural, are not of the species as in the village. They read a daily newspaper, and believe that they understand ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 than a definite minority ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... higher mark than they are today, and never was there a time when confidence was more justified in the power of the navy to protect our commerce and to protect our shores. The thought is with us always of the suffering and misery entailed, from which no country in Europe will escape by abstention, and from which no neutrality will save us. The amount of harm that can be done by an enemy ship to our trade is infinitesimal, compared with the amount of harm that must be done by the economic condition that is caused on ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... travel and exercise. The women especially were amazed that Mainwaring had taken "nothing for it," in their habitual experience of an unfettered pill-and-elixir-consuming democracy. In their knowledge of the thousand "panaceas" that filled the shelves of the general store, this singular abstention of their guest seemed ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from protest at Gaston's petulance was the more generous as he was capable, for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. Gaston didn't ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... replied that the benefits were "so problematical and so uncertain" that he thought they might. Mr. MOLTENO used his freedom to vote against the Second Reading; but only a handful of Members followed his example. Mr. RUNCIMAN and his friends decided that abstention was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... period, after eighteen months of abstention, and for the last time, I took the Sacrament. This statement will seem strange to my readers, but the matter ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... moderation. To be sure, we must be always on our guard against slipping into the forbidden extreme, but it is not necessary for this purpose to inflict additional burdens upon ourselves or to practice mortification of the flesh and abstention from food and drink beyond what is prescribed in the Law. For many of the regulations in the Pentateuch have been laid down for this very purpose. The dietary laws, the laws of forbidden marriages, the laws of tithes, the laws ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... 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 ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... interdicts is into orders of abstention, of restitution, and of production. The first are those by which the praetor forbids the doing of some act—for instance, the violent ejection of a bona fide possessor, forcible interference with the internment of a corpse in a place where ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... our every day life with those who are not of our own Faith. Willingly or unwillingly we are bound to leave an impression of our belief in the business and social circles into which our life is cast. Our silence and abstention alone often militate against the Church. Let then the purity and spirituality of our lives, the honesty of our commercial relations, the sanctity of our home, bear witness to the sacredness of our religion and to the seriousness ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... Viborg—Preisler's and the Phoenix 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
... sum to a correct answer. Keggs knew of the strange American gentleman who 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 cure himself of some unhappy passion by communing with nature, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... already 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 ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... eventually become a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each other whenever there entered a new guest "all alone!" And we laughed and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... sailor men attacked the ample venison pasty with a zeal and thoroughness that betokened long abstention from work of a similar nature, and the sack trickled gratefully down parched throats. Morgan and Jeffreys drank to their better fortune, but would not touch the food, pleading that their ordinary dinner time was a full hour off, and that they were pledged to make havoc of some pastries made by ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... connected with the 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), ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... intellect of that kind myself. Reform for me is mainly a question of method. But the principle of revolt is a physical intoxication, a sort of hysteria which must be kept away from the masses. You agree to this without reserve, don't you? Because, you see, Kirylo Sidorovitch, abstention, reserve, in certain situations, come very near to political crime. The ancient ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... and 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 crews on board the vessels of the Mexican Navy lying ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... social 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. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... moment of 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 had in ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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
... to pick a 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" ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... writing a treatise on vegetarianism, but we consider a few words of explanation necessary. Years back many persons were under the impression that by vegetarianism was meant simply an abstention from flesh-meat, but that fish was allowed. Such, however, is not the case, according to the rules of most of the Vegetarian Societies of the day. On the other hand, strictly speaking, real vegetarians ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... only to satisfy hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection. His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life, truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered; but "he proclaimed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Gauri, the wife of the great god Siva. When he comes to know that Garuda, the bird celebrated in mythology, is used to eat up one snake each day, he makes up his mind to offer himself to the bird as a victim, and eventually succeeds in converting Garuda to the principle of Ahimsa or abstention from slaughter; but he himself is on the point of succumbing to the wounds he has received, when, through the timely intervention of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... were no objections, but there were reasons, positive ones—and all excellent, all charming." She spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. "It IS always the Prince; and it IS always, thank heaven, marriage. And these are the things, God grant, that it will always be. That I could help, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... more and more, in order to 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. Listen, my Franz, come to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of my freedom from the diseases to which others succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the army, I had constructed a theory—on premises that were doubtless as insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon—that drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... 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
... Constitution. People 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, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... class made them hospitable only to those reforms which spared their privileges. But their privileges could not be spared, provided Englishmen allowed rational ideas any decisive influence in their political life; and the consequence of this abstention from ideas was the gradual cultivation of a contempt for intelligence, an excessive worship of tradition, and a deep-rooted faith in the value of compromise. In the interest of domestic harmony they ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... 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
... all. The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind it, showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all been gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a firm disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the premature concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice was made inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was hindered by the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by the authors of systems. As the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... any other land—a fact which shows how little the romantic imagination tells as against cheapness and comfort of hotels and the notion that a heart strained by climbing is good for the health. And this fact does but make our Sovereign's abstention the more remarkable. Switzerland is not 'smart,' but a King is not the figure-head merely of his entourage: he is the whole nation's figure-head. Switzerland, alone among nations, is a British institution, and King Edward ought not to snub her. That we expect him to do so without protest from ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... country life by cultivating allotments during their period of urban residence, and precedence has been given to those who have shown a real desire to return to the land. Other essentials are a good character, both personal and as a worker, bodily and mental health, and total abstention from any form of alcohol. No creed test is required, and there are men of various religious faiths upon the Settlement, only a proportion of them ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... doing the polite thing unless he went to pay them his respects. Benyon felt afresh how little it was in his line to call upon strange women; he was not in the habit of hunting up female acquaintance, or of looking out for the soft emotions which the sex only can inspire. He had his reasons for this abstention, and he seldom relaxed it; but the consul appealed to him on rather strong grounds; and he suffered himself to be persuaded. He was far from regretting, during the first weeks at least, an act which was distinctly inconsistent with his great rule,—that ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... the view that abstention from hostile action against their neighbours should be made a condition of their ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... 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 have ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... 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 ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... I 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 ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... bidden to practice continence before undertaking any of their enterprises. Hence arises the notion of a "state of grace," not the state produced by work in the workday world, but a state produced by abstinence from work, from enjoyment, and from the experience of good and ill. Abstention from wine, meat, other luxuries of food and drink, and from women gives power which is magical, because it has no real causal connection with desired results in war or industry. Uncivilized people almost always ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... who attain these heights, through pain of upward toil and the rigors of abstention, are as the demigods, secure above evil and the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a family of his own, in addition to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred. Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but few and fugitive—he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate quality. It thrilled very sensibly, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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 ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her Christian name. His name she had obviously never used during their separation, and her dignified sense of their total severance was shown not much less by this abstention than by the hardships she had chosen to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time) rather than apply to his father ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... 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 was wholly ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... mutual advantages of the exchange. But early in the present century a powerful Tortirran demagogue named Pragam began to persuade the people that commerce was piracy—that true prosperity consisted in consumption of domestic products and abstention from foreign. This extraordinary heresy soon gathered such head that Pragam was appointed Regent and invested with almost dictatorial powers. He at once distributed nearly the whole army among the seaport cities, and whenever a Stronagu trading proa ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... 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. It ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a little too much in playing Machiavelli, and in exalting abstention to a system. Their fondest desire at the present moment is not, we are persuaded, to march on Austria, but, on the contrary, not to march at all, and not to intervene in the war up to the day ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... reinforced in my already-expressed opinion that Mr. Carville was a man of more ability than ambition. There was to me something bizarre in his deliberate abstention from any contact, save books, with the larger intellectual sphere to which he by right belonged. His naive confession of culture showed that he was aware of his latent power, but I was not sure whether he had ever realized the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... 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 from doing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... after his return from New York Mr. Brassfield adopted a new style of signature, and wondered at it. Some noticed a change in all his handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... other functionaries were to take a step in advance and at once stifle the insurrection they would find themselves thrown into the shade, and even arrested in their exploits; they would have neither time nor means to make themselves useful. What they longed for was complete abstention, general panic among the functionaries. If only all regular administration should disappear, and they could dispose of the destinies of Plassans for a single day, their fortune ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... become ever simpler and more a matter of course.[42] And if he finds that he is not justified in aiding to carry on the race, the eugenist will be content to make himself, in the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's sake," whether, under modern conditions, that means abstention in marriage from procreation, or voluntary sterilization by operative methods.[43] For, as Giddings has put it, the goal of the race lies, not in the ruthless exaltation of a super-man, but in the evolution of a super-mankind. Such a goal can only be reached ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... still another way of regarding the saints; the purely material view, which denies the immediate action of supernatural power upon the details of natural daily life, mental or physical. This view—or rather, this abstention from seeing—is futile; because, without a particle of actual proof to sustain its negative, it refuses to admit possibilities of truth to which the really comprehensive and perceptive mind must always hold ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... demands of pecuniary emulation, that any inclination in this direction is practically overborne and any incentive to diligence tends to be of no effect. The most imperative of these secondary demands of emulation, as well as the one of widest scope, is the requirement of abstention from productive work. This is true in an especial degree for the barbarian stage of culture. During the predatory culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought with weakness ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... 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 forced on this Cho[u]zaemon by Ito[u] Kwaiba! Kibei has squandered ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... that abstention from violence and persistence in the programme are our only and surest ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... the new villa on the slope of Devil's Ford, which even in its own bizarre fashion was exceeded by the barbarous ostentation of the villas and private houses around them—but the double cabin under the trees, which now seemed to them almost aristocratic in its grave simplicity and abstention. In the mysterious forests of masts that thronged the city's quays they recalled the straight shafts of the pines on Devil's slopes, only to miss the sedate repose and infinite calm that used to environ them. In the feverish, pulsating life of the young metropolis they often stopped oppressed, ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... I only ran after Larry. I thought it was a shabby thing of the Unionists not to have supported him—" he stopped abruptly, remembering Major Talbot-Lowry's abstention, remembering also the feud, of which he knew only that he had never wholly divined its origin, between Coppinger's Court and Mount Music. He cursed himself for a fool. He had not meant to talk politics, but ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... from Morris' dislike of rhetoric and moralising, the two main nerves of eighteenth-century verse. Left to themselves, these make sad work of poetry; yet poetry includes eloquence, and life includes morality. The poetry of Morris is sensuous, as upon the whole poetry should be; but in his resolute abstention from the generalizing habit of the previous century, the balance is lost between the general and the concrete, which all really great poetry preserves. Byron declaims and Wordsworth moralises, both of them perhaps too much; yet in the end to the advantage of their poetry, which is full of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Let me say rather it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet being the average Perimeter it follows ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... would then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On this ground, he wishes his supporters in this country to do everything in their power to secure a Labour majority in Parliament; he does not advocate abstention from Parliamentary contests, but participation with a view to making Parliament obviously contemptible. The reasons which make attempts at violent revolution seem to most of us both improbable and undesirable ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... portentously solemn, that when you learnt that he was perfectly well in mind, body and estate, the inclination to laugh was irresistible. This remarkable man began to speak in a husky, asthmatical voice, that gradually came out of the clouds and grew clear. His subject was, 'The Abstention of our Young Men from Politics: Causes and Cure.' He was evidently a master of his subject, and spoke without notes. He was absolutely without any pretence to oratory; and yet for thirty minutes ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Poly. Swimming Bath and the Poly. Gym. As he said, he "fair abused 'em." But he considered that the Poly. "got home again" on his exceptionally moderate use of the Circulating Library, and his total abstention from the Bible Classes. He was not yet aware of any soul in him apart from that abounding and sufficing physical energy expressed in Fitness, nor was he violently conscious of any moral sense ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... 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
... all this Redmond 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 was formed, came to him with ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... look, that the Senator realised 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
... Chinese cook and flung his knife and fork down upon his plate. In his elation he forgot the heat, the sticky flies. He forgot his usual custom of abstention during the day. He poured himself out a long drink of really good whisky, which he gulped down, smacking his lips with appreciation before flinging his customary curse at the head ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... futile tasks the need whereof is a 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 those ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... astronomical calculations. The country which especially attracted the missionaries was China, that enormous and populous empire, which ever since the arrival of Europeans in India, had persevered with the greatest strictness in the absurd policy of abstention from any intercourse whatsoever with foreigners. It was not until the close of the sixteenth century that the missionaries obtained the permission, so often demanded before in vain, to penetrate into the Middle Empire. Their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy facilitated their ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... pretty travelling dress, and otherwise replenished her slender wardrobe. She also contributed a little good advice as to abstention from flirting, explaining that in her unprotected situation she could not be too sceptical of the honest ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... 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 ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... contrary, and resorted to a shallow artifice for achieving their end. A story was started that authenticated copies of the same papers had been received from England by somebody. There was a prudent abstention from any inquiry into the truth of this statement. "I know," said Franklin, "that could not be. It was an expedient to disengage the House." Dishonest as it obviously was, it was successful; members accepted it as a removal of the seal of secrecy; and the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... was a long-drawn discomfort. There were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and of a 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the abstention of the free-state people, the pro-slavery party had secured absolute control of the constitutional convention. Yet there was the most absolute assurance by the Governor in the name of the President of the United States that no constitution would be sent to Congress ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... later of putting a check to the increase of monasticism, but it may be a matter of regret that in Italy, the toleration granted to the learned community of Monte Cassino was not extended to more of the historic monasteries. The abstention of the Clerical party from the voting urns deprived them of an influence which, on such points as these, they might have exercised legitimately and perhaps beneficially. To that abstention, the disequilibrium ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... governorship of Gaul. Shortly afterwards, when defending the citizenship of L. Cornelius Balbus, he delivered a glowing panegyric on Pompey's character and services to the state. This was followed by a complete abstention from any farther opposition to the carrying out of Caesar's law for the allotment of the Campanian land—a subject which he had himself brought before the senate only a short time before, and on which he really continued to feel strongly.[14] Cicero's most elaborate defence of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... spectator, but not an indifferent one. Once again mere momentary material interest counseled abstention; precedent was invoked to justify isolation and indifference. The timid, the ignorant, the disloyal, those to whom physical life was more precious than the dictates of conscience, counseled "peace and prosperity." Many began to wonder if ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... I better know, Thou Glorious One! The very truth—Heart's Lord!—of Sannyas, Abstention; and enunciation, Lord! Tyaga; and what separates ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Synagogues are decked with flowers, while the Decalogue is solemnly intoned from the Scroll of the Pentateuch, the Feast of Pentecost has no ceremonial trappings even with the orthodox. Passover and Tabernacles stand on a different footing. The abstention from leavened bread on the former feast has led to a closely organised system of cleansing the houses, an interminable array of rules as to food; while the prescriptions of the Law as to the bearing of palm-branches and other emblems, and the ordinance ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... all a trifle grave. In the case of two of the party, at least, their faces were stamped with a certain quiet resolution and a hint of the forcefulness which comes of rigid and continuous self-denial. Men discover in the bush that abstention from most of the little comforts and amenities of life not infrequently tends to vigor of body and clarity of mind. This, however, is a fact that has been accepted long ago, for it is not, as a rule, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... is this: When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn't we be honest and honourable, and lie every time ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the somewhat boisterous and material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an "example." Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness. Once ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... up to that time, but he did not do a stroke of work during the concluding hours of his ordeal. It was observed by his partner, Budge Isham, that his appetite was unusually good and he seemed to be in high spirits. His friends attributed this to the closeness of his reward for his abstention, but he took several walks up the mountain side and was gone for a good while. He wore a smiling face and Vose Adams declared that he overheard him communing with himself, when he thought he was too far off for ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... anything 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 bottles of Vichy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... 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 chambers. It was with the discomfiting knowledge, then, that ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... his thanks 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 ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... She remarked, "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 as will banish parasitic insects has become at all general. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... singular abstention is, that business under discussion is Vote on account of Relief of Distress in Ireland. Prince ARTHUR asks for L55,000 for that purpose; wouldn't do for Irish Members to obey their first instinct, and oppose Vote moved by Chief Secretary. If ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... elapsed since Crabbe's last appearance as an author, and he seems to have thought it due to his readers to give some reason for his long abstention from the poet's 'idle trade.' He pleads a higher 'calling,' that of his professional duties, as sufficient excuse. Moreover, he offers the same excuse for his 'progress in the art of versification' being less marked than his readers might otherwise expect. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it to be? would he have us represent it as beautiful and gratifying? The answer to this question, I fear, must be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossible to root out of an Englishman's mind the notion that vice is delightful, and that abstention from it is privation. At all events, as long as the tempting side of it is kept towards the public, and softened by plenty of sentiment and sympathy, it is welcomed by our Censor, whereas the slightest attempt to place it in the light ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... child. When a couple has arranged to adopt a child, both man and wife observe for some weeks before the ceremony all the prohibitions usually observed during the later months of pregnancy. Many of these prohibitions may be described in general terms by saying that they imply abstention from every action that may suggest difficulty or delay in delivery; E.G. the hand must not be thrust into any narrow hole to pull anything out of it; no fixing of things with wooden pegs must be done; there must be no lingering on the threshold on ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... me as you have done," rejoined Jean Jacques. "What do you know of the reasons for the abstention of madame? The soul must enjoy rest as well as the body, and madame has a—mind which can judge for itself. I have a body that is always going, and it gets too little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter too. It must be getting to mass ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mary. She had prided herself on a rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved to give no color to such an accusation. "Mr. Saffron has sent for me—professionally. He's ill, it seems," she said ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony |
