"Self-restraint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trained Cilly in self-restraint, and the want of surveillance made her generous nature the more scrupulous in her treatment of her pupils; she taught them diligently, kept good order, won their affection and gave them some of her own, but nothing could obviate her growing weariness ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eye had measured her for his victim verified, if ever man did, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive, unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of her instructor in the English language and literature, gave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but from the first page to the last there is a nameless and elemental ecstasy—that of the man who is doing the kind of thing that he can do. Dickens, like every other honest and effective writer, came at last to some degree of care and self-restraint. He learned how to make his dramatis personae assist his drama; he learned how to write stories which were full of rambling and perversity, but which were stories. But before he wrote a single real story, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... be denied that, in acting as he did, the corsair displayed a self-restraint and a loyalty to the Sultan hardly to be expected in the circumstances. The jealousy which so often obtains among rival commanders was singularly in evidence in the forces of the Padishah: Dragut had good cause to be dissatisfied with the dispositions which had been made, and ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... in London, of this marriage. If I have consented to live away from you previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine, you at least were no one else's; but I will not—pardon me, I can not—endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another's. Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me from your presence; it was by chance that I met you ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... then they resolutely faced each other. 'I accept your offer to fight it out with joy, and shall in the battle of experience cause not pain, but, I hope, pleasure.' Faraday notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly checks it. There is at times something almost mechanical in his self-restraint. In another nature it would have hardened into mere 'correctness' of conduct; but his overflowing affections prevented this in his case. The habit of self control became a second nature to him at last, and lent serenity ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the background. She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more, perhaps, than he really had. She was piqued, too, at his very modesty and self-restraint. Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her, spread out his peacock's train for her eyes; and try to show his worship of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours? And yet this ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... snatching back in which strong hands of hell tore his beloved from the man's grasp. Within his arms the form of Eurydice faded away, and as he clutched at her his fingers closed upon the empty air. That, too, is a law deep in the nature of things. It is by no arbitrary decree that self-restraint has been imposed on love. In this, as in all other things, a man must consent to lose his life in order to find it; and those who will not accept the conditions, will be visited by no melodramatic or violent catastrophe. Love which has ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the villa, and they followed. Their hearts were filled with delight over the victory; and Vinicius had to use self-restraint to avoid throwing himself on the neck of Petronius, for it seemed now that all dangers and obstacles ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change came with the marvelous development of the natural sciences, compelling radical readjustments of thought both within and without the college, the quickening of the social life about the campus, and the sharp division ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... she threw away her modesty and brawled and rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found little fault with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially. They thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... kinds of joy at work in the world, and some which we cannot understand. We may of course mistrust destructive joy, the joy of selfish pleasure, rough combativeness, foolish wastefulness, ugly riot—all the joys that are evidently dogged by sorrow and pain; but if we see any joy that leads to self-restraint and energy and usefulness and activity, we must recognise it ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... them." Early the next morning, when they were departing, Elijah wished those present in the synagogue in which they had lodged, that God might raise them all to be "heads." Rabbi Joshua again had to exercise great self-restraint, and not put into words the question that troubled him profoundly. In the next town, they were received with great affability, and served abundantly with all their tired bodies craved. On these kind hosts Elijah, on leaving, bestowed the wish that ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a lump of ice upon my lady's heart. She could not wait, she could not contain herself, she lost all self-control, all power of endurance, all capability of self-restraint, and she ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class interests, and the central government, made pitiably ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... covering, even for her feet and head. These garments, and perhaps a brass pot, were probably all the worldly goods of most of them just then. But every attitude, gesture, tone, was full of grace; of ease, courtesy, self-restraint, dignity—of that 'sweetness and light,' at least in externals, which Mr. Matthew Arnold desiderates. I am well aware that these people are not perfect; that, like most heathen folk and some Christian, their morals are by ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... strong exercise of self-restraint, my aunt resigned herself to listen. "Let's hear your proposal," she said. "Have you any Scotch blood in your veins, David? You are wonderfully prudent and cautious for so ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... eyes; some were young, with the glow of irrepressible enthusiasm on their smooth faces, and the intense wish to have a chance to dare and do swelling their bold hearts; others were middle-aged, iron-moulded; as able and as bold to the full as the younger men, with the coolness and self-restraint of the old ones; but all, old, middle-aged, and young, looking proud and pleased, and so gentle in their demeanour (owing, no doubt, to the presence of the fair sex), that it seemed as if a small breeze of wind would have made them all turn tail and run away,— especially ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... turn them into a race of assassins or law breakers. They are now the very reverse of that. They have shown a higher regard for the sacredness of human life than we have to-day in America. They have shown more self-restraint, more respect for personal rights, have dealt more fairly with their opponents than we did in our revolution. They are the superiors of both ourselves and the English and they are inferior to us and the English only ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which broke out in the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously through her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... commerce with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts tend to develop in us that healthy kind of asceticism so requisite to every workable scheme of greater happiness for the individual and the plurality: self-restraint, choice of aims, consistent and thorough-paced subordination of the lesser interest to the greater; above all, what sums up asceticism as an efficacious means towards happiness, preference of the spiritual, the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... first exploits was the capture of the town of Hoyan, where he manifested a high order of courage and political wisdom in saving the inhabitants from rapine by his ill-paid and hungry soldiers. Here was a degree of self-restraint and power of command which none of the Chinese leaders had shown, and which seemed to point out Choo as the man destined to win in the coming struggle for ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... people who rarely like the Romanesque. "They prefer the Gothic.... No doubt, they are right, since they are young: but men and women who have lived long and are tired—who want rest—who have done with aspirations and ambitions—whose life has been a broken arch—feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel nothing else." The Education is in fact the record, tragic and pathetic underneath its genial irony, of the defeat of fine aspirations and laudable ambitions. It is the story of a life which the man himself, in his old age, looked back upon ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... temptations to sin mortally. It surprised him however to find that at the end of his course of intricate piety and self-restraint he was so easily at the mercy of childish and unworthy imperfections. His prayers and fasts availed him little for the suppression of anger at hearing his mother sneeze or at being disturbed in his devotions. It needed an immense effort of his will to master ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... plotting and contriving occasions for meeting unobserved. This went on for a long time, so that some even had children born to them before they ever saw their wives by daylight. These connections not only exercised their powers of self-restraint, but also brought them together with their bodies in full vigour and their passions unblunted by unchecked intercourse with each other, so that their passion and love for each other's ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... that much more than amusement ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is really confidential. It is singular—but many of my readers will know it for a truth—that vast numbers of people, though liberated from all reasonable motives to self-restraint, cannot be confidential—have it not in their power to lay aside reserve; and many, again, cannot be so with particular people. I have witnessed more than once the case, that a young female dancer, at a certain turn of a peculiar dance, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... physical expression, become by habit a sort of joy, similar to the joy in intoxication, but if only the habit can be formed the other way there is an equal joy obtainable from self-restraint. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... eying the owl, "I don't live here," and were both off into a gale of laughter that swept down the barriers of self-restraint. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... composure, beneath which she divined a suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint were well-nigh broken down by a torrent ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... herd A domineering instinct, serves at once For way and guide, a fluent receptacle 170 That gathers up each petty straggling rill And vein of water, glad to be rolled on In safe obedience; that a mind, whose rest Is where it ought to be, in self-restraint, In circumspection and simplicity, 175 Falls rarely in entire discomfiture Below its aim, or meets with, from without, A treachery that foils it or defeats; And, lastly, if the means on human will, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... a gentleman who has, I am given to understand, enjoyed the personal friendship of the late Mr. Constant, and has cooperated with him in various schemes for the organisation of skilled and unskilled classes of labour, as well as for the diffusion of better ideals—ideals of self-culture and self-restraint—among the working men of Bow, who have been fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in the possession (if in one case unhappily only temporary possession) of two such men of undoubted ability and honesty to direct their divided counsels and to lead them along a road, which, though ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... traced back through a series of years. In a specially marked manner the pan-Serb chauvinism showed itself during the Bosnian crisis. Only to the far-reaching self-restraint and moderation of the Austro-Hungarian Government and the energetic intercession of the powers is it to be ascribed that the provocations to which at that time Austria-Hungary was exposed on the part of Servia, did not lead to a conflict. The assurance of future well-behaviour ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... listened with considerable patience and self-restraint to this conversation, but as soon as the hope of tea and refreshment died away, and they realised that some one had fooled them, they looked out for a victim, and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... She carried her head, weighted by its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern woman carries a goulah of water. There was something pathetic yet self-reliant in the whole figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, however, might at any moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment of control and self-restraint. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mr. Phillips, "you have a task of self-restraint before you. It is necessary that this great joy of ours should be kept awhile from your mother. She is not strong enough to bear it. But she must see Mary and get accustomed to her as soon as possible. I have a plan. ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... of the Chamber of Deputies, it is my sincere desire and the desire of my countrymen, that in the performance of this task for the republic of Mexico you may be guided in wisdom and in peace. May you possess that self-restraint which is so necessary to the preservation and security for property, for enterprise, and for life, guarding you always from unwise extremes, leading you always to test every question of legislation by sound principles taught by history. May you always, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... my text: These Jews were four months, according to the narrative, in travelling from their first station upon their journey to Jerusalem across the desert. There were enemies lying in wait for them by the way. With noble self-restraint and grand chivalry, the leader of the little band says: 'I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen, to help us against the enemy in the way; because we had spoken unto the king, saying, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Puritans, to "those morose persons" who condemn novels; in truth, "delight is the least advantage redounding from such compositions." French romances (which seem to have altered somewhat in this respect) are nothing but a school of morality, generosity, and self-restraint: "Not to say anything concerning the ground work which is generally some excellent piece of ancient history accurately collected out of the records of the most eminent writers of old, ... the addition of fictitious adventures is so ingenious, the incident discourses so handsome, free ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... serene in a dignity too absolute and self-contained for pride, but expressing a consciousness of command over others as evident as the unconscious, effortless command of self to which it owed its supreme and sublime quietude. The lips were not set as with a habit of reserve or self-restraint, but close and even as in the repose to which restraint had never been necessary. The features were large, clearly defined, and perfect in shape, proportion, and outline. The brow was massive and broad, but strangely smooth and even; the head had no single marked development or deficiency ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... what he's talking about," retorted Philip, who had to exercise some self-restraint not to express himself more forcibly "and you can tell him so when you see him. I am no more likely to go to the ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... even of those who, like Madame de Stael and her friend Benjamin Constant, had declared before the coup d'etat that it was necessary to the salvation of the Republic. That accomplished woman was endowed with nearly every attribute of genius except political foresight and self-restraint. No sooner had the blow been dealt than she fell to deploring its results, which any fourth-rate intelligence might have foreseen. "Liberty was the only power really conquered"—such was her later ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... embodying and enforcing the Austro-Hungarian arguments justifying the note. These the ambassadors were instructed to present to the Foreign Offices of the countries to which they were accredited. The chancellor commended the self-restraint of Austria-Hungary in thus far avoiding war with Serbia. Now, however, he feared that Serbia would not comply with the just demands of the country she had injured, but would adopt ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... times and on all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly amiable, a more purely unselfish man it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... mightier grief than that which could be felt by any others—a grief unspeakable—beyond words, and beyond thought. White-haired, and with a face which now seemed turned to stone in the fixedness of its great agony, this figure tottered rather than walked into the room. There was no longer any self-restraint in this woman, who for years had lived under a self-restraint that never relaxed; there was no thought as to those who might see or hear; there was nothing but the utter abandonment of perfect grief—of grief which had reached its ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... decided unless when thoroughly convinced, was a great triumph for Ardan, who, as the gracious reader doubtless remembers, had had a famous dispute with M'Nicholl on that very subject at Tampa.[D] His eyes brightened and a smile of pleasure played around his lips, but, with a great effort at self-restraint, he kept perfectly silent and would not permit himself even to look in the direction of the Captain. As for M'Nicholl, he was apparently too much absorbed in Doerfel and Leibnitz ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... much occupied, however, to attend at all to the well-being of his children, and his wife 'has no taste for anything of the kind.' So, as I said, Belle grows up a spoiled child. She has never been subject to control, and has not the slightest idea of self-restraint. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... are natural enemies and must so remain. The situation is further embittered by acts of enmity being practised by both sides to the extreme provocation of the faithful few. Their forbearance will be sorely tried, and this is the final test of men. By those who cling to prejudice and abandon self-restraint, extol enmity, and always proceed to the further step—the plea to wipe the enemy out: the counter plea for forbearance is always scorned as the enervating gospel of weakness and despair. Though we like to call ourselves Christian, we have no desire for—nay ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... broke into a storm of impatience so unlike her usual self-restraint, that Clara was ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... until she could control the least tremor of her voice. Then she turned upon him her noble eyes, the exquisite passionate tender light of which no effort of the will could curtain in. Nor could any self-restraint turn aside the electrical energy of her words:"I thought I should not let you go away without saying something more to you about what has happened lately with Amy. My interest in you, your future, your success, has caused me to feel everything more than you can possibly realize. But I am ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... as if arousing himself with difficulty from a nightmare; and Constance, recalled to herself, in turn, looked up to encounter his gaze, and to be astonished at the new, purposeful self-restraint upon his face, and the inscrutable intentness ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... owing to Leucha's conduct, now the ruling spirit in the school, not by any means as regards lessons, but as regards what schoolgirls treasure so much, popularity and good-fellowship. Even Barbara and Dorothy Fraser went boldly to her side, and congratulated her on her self-restraint, and even apologised for ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... affected. Moreover, Pike did not believe that acting alone they could even be a thoroughly adequate home force. He, therefore, urged again and again that their contingent should be supplemented by a white force and by one sufficiently large to give dignity and poise and self-restraint to the whole, when both forces were combined, as ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... annihilation of early life. The hours which Napoleon spent with her were so many that he laid himself open to the charge of uxoriousness. The physician attendant at the birth of the infant King of Rome declared that the mother would succumb to a second confinement, and the father exercised a self-restraint consonant with the consideration he had displayed at the birth of his heir. He was the squire and constant attendant of his spouse, her riding-master even, and often her playfellow in the romps of which ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... disappointments borne, would have made any life beautiful. And seeing and feeling all this, there gradually grew out of her admiration a desire to imitate what seemed so beautiful in the little maid; and many a time when she was disappointed or angry did the remembrance of her humble friend help her to self-restraint. With a vague idea that Christie's power came from a source beyond herself, she groped blindly and only half consciously for the same help. She studied in secret the Bible that seemed to be so precious to her, and ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... did give a model to the world, and showed us for ever what blessings are freedom of life and thought, self-restraint and a generous education: all those blessings the ancient free peoples set forth to the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... honest perseverance might have been; but the worst faults of boyhood 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 ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... develops a well regulated character, which will preserve from excess those tenderer emotions and deeper passions of woman, which are potent in her for evil or for good, in proportion as they are undisciplined and allowed to run wild, or are trained and developed into a noble and harmonious self-restraint. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... not made a mistake in making it so suddenly and without gloves. His face purpled, the veins on his forehead started out, his great form shook with an ire that in such domineering natures as his can only find relief in a blow. But the right hand did not rise nor the heavy fist fall. With admirable self-restraint he faced me for a moment, without attempting either protest or denial. Then his blazing eyes cooled down, and with a sudden gesture which at once relaxed his extreme tension of nerve and muscle, he pointed toward the end of the ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... sweeten this little hand,' are equally unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean. Hers, like some of her other speeches, are the more moving, from their greater simplicity and because they seem to tell of that self-restraint in suffering which is so totally lacking in him; but there is in them comparatively little of imagination. If we consider most of the passages to which I have referred, we shall find that the quality which moves our admiration is ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... however, after his broken leg was set, he was feverish and forgot his self-restraint. He was lying flat on his bed, and he began to run his eyes round the room to see if the moth was still about. He tried not to do this, but it was no good. He soon caught sight of the thing resting close to his hand, by the night-light, on the green table-cloth. The wings quivered. ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to gods and men. And the complexity lies in the fact that you enjoy going, and conscience pricks you every now and then because you never read, and you seem to go through the day in a slipshod way, with no definite rule,—no daily cross-bearing, no self-restraint to give salt to the day. At school you have a definite duty of self-improvement set before you, and everything urges you to follow it. This remains a duty when you go home, but it is very hard to reconcile it with the many things that clash—not the least of these being ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Pete showed remarkable self-restraint. He did not slay Buttermilk violently and instantly. Instead he led him back to the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience' sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... said of the Philippine Malays who in bodily formation and mental characteristics alike, may fairly claim a place, not among middling ones merely, but among almost the higher names inscribed on the world's national scale. A concentrated, never-absent self-respect, an habitual self-restraint in word and deed, very rarely broken except when extreme provocation induces the transitory but fatal frenzy known as 'amok,' and an inbred courtesy, equally diffused through all classes, high or low, unfailing decorum, prudence, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... those that preach to us the washing off of sin— Thine own self is the stream for thee to make ablutions in: In self-restraint it rises pure—flows clear in tide of truth, By widening banks of wisdom, in ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... always exercised a super-feminine self-restraint in the case of casual mice, and it served her in the present instance. Instead of screaming, she said, after the suppression of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... endeavoured to enslave Greece; at that time he was but a lad, and lived in the house of Pammenes. On this account he was thought to be an imitator of Epameinondas, and perhaps he did take to heart that great man's energy in war, which was one of his virtues, but as to the spirit of self-restraint, justice, magnanimity and mildness, which formed the true greatness of his character, of this Philip neither by nature or ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... deep, inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had been shy but impulsive. The fires of discipline had given him remarkable self-restraint. She could not tell he was finding in her face the quality to inspire in a painter a great picture, the expression of that brave young faith which made her a touchstone to find the gold ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... promising himself the satisfaction of presently thundering at Dawes for being a few minutes behind his time. An outbreak of temper towards his man was not common with him; for Dempster, like most tyrannous people, had that dastardly kind of self-restraint which enabled him to control his temper where it suited his own convenience to do so; and feeling the value of Dawes, a steady punctual fellow, he not only gave him high wages, but usually treated him with exceptional civility. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... expected, the Montreal press attributed this wise and magnanimous self-restraint to fear for his own safety. But he was not to be moved from his resolve by the paltry imputation; nor did he even care that his friends should resent or refute it on ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... fevered train of his thoughts. But he was no whit more inclined to listen to it here, in the calmness and soberness of solitude, than when her own lips had spoken it, and the charm of her own presence had swept away prudence and self-restraint. ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... never be countenanced, no matter how abundant the flowers may be. Self-restraint is not inculcated for the sake of saving the flowers so much as for the influence it will have upon the development of the child, although there are parts of the country where one would like to see it exercised for the sake of the flowers themselves. The child who learns ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... of the Restoration and Queen Anne periods—which may be regarded as one, for present purposes—was classical, or at least unromantic, in its self-restraint, its objectivity, and its lack of curiosity; or, as a hostile criticism would put it, in its coldness of feeling, the tameness of its imagination, and its narrow and imperfect sense of beauty. It was a literature not simply of this world, but of the world, of the beau ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... turn, fairly adored the tall, brawny man, whose whole bearing bespoke self-restraint, and the calm exercise of authority, and if his attitude towards them was both chivalrous and tender, theirs to him ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... appealed to him, the pathos of her quiet resignation: he felt how mean and unmanly it would be to give way to that rebellious rage which was burning in his veins. Three years under the orders of ofttimes brutal petty officers had taught him a measure of self-restraint; the two further years of hard, unceasing toil under foreign climes, the patient amassing of florin upon florin to enable him to come back and claim the girl whom he loved, had completed the work of changing ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... were a man of sentiment!" Dominey scoffed. "I thought you understood a little of human nature. Stephanie Eiderstrom is Hungarian born and bred. Even race has never taught her self-restraint. You don't seriously suppose that after all these years, after all she has suffered—and she has suffered—she is going to be content with an emasculated form of friendship? I talk to you without reserve, Seaman. She has made it very plain to-night that she ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND is his wonderful self-restraint. When Mr. GINNELL stridently inquired whether to institute legal process against the police in Ireland was not like bringing an action against Satan in hell, the ordinary man would have been tempted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... surprising degree in a commune, as well as business skill. The constant necessity of living in intimate association with others, and taking into consideration their prejudices and weaknesses, makes the communist somewhat a man of the world; teaches him self-restraint; gives him a liberal and tolerant spirit; makes him an amiable being. Why are all communists remarkably cleanly? I imagine largely because filth or carelessness would be unendurable in so large a family, and because system and method are ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... withdrawn. It was later pointed out to us by Mr. Belcher, upon the veranda, that, although Wealth had its privileges, it was held in trust for the welfare of Mankind, and that the children of the Rich could not too early learn the advantages of Self-restraint and the vanity of a mere gratification of the Senses. Early and frequent morning ablutions, brisk morning toweling, half of a Graham biscuit in a teacup of milk, exercise with the dumb-bells, and a little rough-and-tumble play in a straw hat, check ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this about slowly, viciously, who can tell with what science of evil, and who, in such a case, has not steadiness and self-restraint enough to quench that flame by some icy words, who has not sense enough for two, who cannot recover his self-possession and master the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge of the precipice over which she is going to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a second or two, only gulped with desperate effort at self-restraint. Then, at length, in a muffled voice, "Don't let him take me away!" she besought him shakily. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... already advanced, namely, his dread of being exposed to her infatuating charms. He had been candid enough to make her acquainted with the cause of exiling himself from her presence; and she admitted the prudence of self-restraint, although she would have very well satisfied with the continuance of his intimacy and conversation, which were not at all beneath the desire of any lady in the kingdom. Notwithstanding this interruption, she still retained a friendship and regard for his character, and felt all the affliction ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... their lives they have lacked the courage and conviction, even if opportunity had arisen, necessary for creative work. For the highest achievement in the arts they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion to work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint, which can come only from discipline, from long training, and freedom. Yet I make the claim that woman, from her constitutional femininity, is a compound of all those qualities that genius demands. The channels of woman's energy have been everywhere choked. No great creative art has ever ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... experience and increase rather than alienate the reader's sympathy. Thus, Richard Delavel's outburst of relief upon the death of his first wife, so far from being vulgar and brutal, as it might have seemed in other circumstances, recalls and emphasises the high sense of duty and honour and the iron self-restraint which had enabled him to be in all essentials a good husband for twenty-five years to a cold-hearted creature, between whom and himself there had never been either common interest or feeling, and for whose sake he had relinquished the woman that would ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... strange, but some explanation of their self-restraint was to be found in Dirk's character. In mind he was patient, very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in carrying them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not give way to them. For two years or more he had loved ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... procession of human effort becomes a spectacle at sight of which Homeric laughter may sometimes be permissible, but tears never. If a man once gives way to weeping in Keewatin, he will weep always. Only by the exercise of a self-restraint which at first seems brutal can life ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... this is madness not love. And it is absurd to detract from woman's various excellence. Look at their self-restraint and intelligence, their fidelity and uprightness, and that bravery courage and magnanimity so conspicuous in many! And to say that they have a natural aptitude for all other virtues, but are deficient as ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... revolution which was the prelude to years of national discord and national suffering. Whatever may have been the grounds of his action, the rule of Richard the Second after his assumption of power had shown his capacity for self-restraint. Parted by his own will from the counsellors of his youth, calling to his service the Lords Appellant, reconciled alike with the baronage and the Parliament, the young king promised to be among the noblest ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... an author, is demonstrated by his self-restraint, in refusing to make "copy" out of ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... the representations she had always heard of the lady's awfulness. Mrs Bellingham swept into her son's room as if she were unconscious what poor young creature had lately haunted it; while Ruth hurried into some unoccupied bedroom, and, alone there, she felt her self-restraint suddenly give way, and burst into the saddest, most utterly wretched weeping she had ever known. She was worn out with watching, and exhausted by passionate crying, and she lay down on the bed and fell ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Gordon-Cumming was concerned, but went on to say that what was blameless as an example in meaner men, was very different in one of his exalted position. The Standard denounced the whole affair from beginning to end. "The Prince of Wales is not as other men. His position demands a sobriety, a self-restraint, and a dignity from which people of less exalted position and lighter responsibilities are absolved." The religious press put no bounds to its denunciation. The Christian World spoke of the matter as an "outrage to the public conscience" and the British ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... among the youth; they grew at once rapacious and prodigal; they undervalued what was their own, and coveted what was another's; they set at naught modesty and continence; they lost all distinction between sacred and profane, and threw off all consideration and self-restraint. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... disappears when detached from their context. But it was his peculiar charm that he never used his powers to inflict pain. His hearers felt that he could have pierced the thickest hide or laid bare the ignorance of the most pretentious learning. But they could not regret a self-restraint which so evidently proceeded from abounding kindness of heart. Smith's good nature led him to lend too easy an ear to applications for the employment of his abilities upon tasks to which his inferiors would have been competent. I do not know whether ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the position for a moment almost overwhelmed her. She knew that she had no love—love such as he required—to give him in return. And when that finally became patent to him away would go the last vestige of self-restraint, and his ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... that we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested deliberation. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty to offer our active assistance. It is now our duty to show what true neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order again and wait for a further ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... Mrs. Oswald answered, with such self-restraint as she could command. 'It's not much of a trial to his father and me, for we're glad to let him have a little rest after working so hard at Oxford. He works too hard, ma'am, but he gets compensation for it, don't 'ee see, Miss Luttrell, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... wholly even now, the merely natural impulses of Western peoples. And if, as many now say, faith has departed from among ourselves, and still more will depart in the coming years; if we have no higher sanction to propose for self-restraint and righteousness than enlightened self-interest and the absurdity of war, war—violence—will be absurd just so long as the balance of interest is on that side, and no longer. Those who want will take, if they can, not merely from motives of high policy ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... vibrated with feeling and suggested great self-restraint, Mr. Callice proceeded to tell the story of the latest outrage. How when found that morning the mare was still alive, of the terrible nature of her injuries, and that the perpetrator had disappeared, ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... of the message, and brought with it a tumult and thrill of anticipation. But he was called on to show that he had outgrown youthful impetuosity and impatience, and to prove himself worthy of trust and honour by perfect self-restraint and composure. So far as the world knows, he awaited his lady's will without a sign of restlessness or disturbance. If blissful dreams drove away sleep from the pillows on which two young heads rested ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... most praiseworthy; but they may border upon qualities not quite so praiseworthy. It is a melancholy truth that your martyr is apt to be a little sanctimonious, and that a penitent is generally a bit of a sneak. Resignation and self-restraint are admirable qualities, but admirable in proportion to the force of the opposing temptation. The strong man curbing his passions, the weak woman finding strength in patient suffering, are deserving of our deepest admiration; but in Massinger we feel that ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... admonition ringing in his ears, did not bid on anything, although it will never be known how great was the heroic self-restraint he put on himself, until just at the last, when he did bid on a collection of flower-pots, thinking he might indulge himself to that small extent. But Josiah Sloane had been commissioned by his wife to bring those flower-pots home to her; ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unpleasant fault indicative of self-absorbed natures. When he did anything with his hands he seemed very active, because thoroughly in earnest. He delighted me by the way in which he took hold of any material thing, for it proved his self-mastery. Strength of will joined to self-restraint is a combination always enjoyable to the onlooker; but it is also evidence of discomfort and effort enough in the heroic character that has won the state which we contemplate with so much approval. I remember his standing ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... here, and watch the people inside and out as they pass along the way without their seeing you. But take care not to speak violently, for I hold that man to be rather imprudent than brave who goes too far and loses his self-restraint and commits some deed of violence the moment he has the time and chance. So if you cherish some rash thought be careful not to utter it. The wise man conceals his imprudent thought and works out righteousness if he can. So ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... adding to it a Daemonology borrowed partly from the Chaldees, and partly from the Jewish rabbis, which formed a descending chain of persons, downward from the highest Deities to heroes, and to the guardian angel of each man; the meed of the philosopher being, that by self-culture and self-restraint he could rise above the tutelage of some lower and more earthly daemon, and become the pupil of a God, and finally ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self,—really to human nobleness in many most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is there some human nobleness in you, or is ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... in truth very few—all contained in a closet opening out of his father's bedroom; but Cosmo had a feeling of inexhaustible wealth in them—partly because his father had not yet allowed him to read everything there, but restricted him to certain of the shelves—as much to cultivate self-restraint in him as to keep one or two of the books from him,—partly because he read books so that they remained books to him, and he believed in them after he had read them, nor imagined himself capable of exhausting them. But the range of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... difficulties and dangers of the unknown; she looked to the future; she turned to her own home, and with an affection all the more felt because of the trial to which it was now exposed. The many lessons of self-control and self-restraint which she had learnt returned with instinctive force. Sometimes it happens that people miss what is perhaps the best for the sake of the next best, and we see convenience and old habit and expediency, and a hundred ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... necessity of fighting altogether; and this, as we have seen, was the one fatal mistake made by Pericles. But, once launched in the conflict, they were sure of an easy victory, if they had only shown a very moderate degree of prudence and self-restraint. And we need not blame the great statesmen too harshly for not foreseeing the wild excesses of folly and extravagance which we shall have to record in the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... her husband's friends only showed itself in a trembling, a very slight trembling, of the hand that rested on my arm. My interest in her increased tenfold. Only a woman who had been accustomed to suffer, who had been broken and disciplined to self-restraint, could have endured the moral martyrdom inflicted on her as this woman endured it, from the beginning of the ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... She took another stitch. The self-restraint of her New England mother was upon her then. Burr Gordon, betrothed to Dorothy Fair, loving her not, yet still noble enough and kind enough to have perilled his life to save hers, should know nothing of the greater sacrifice ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
