"Continency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them with obloquy; yet their number increases constantly; and, indeed, of all those that have been thus born to Christ, I cannot give the number, besides those living in holy widowhood, and keeping continency in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... false Philosophy, to say the work of Marriage is repugnant to Chastity, or Continence, and by consequence to make them Morall Vices; as they doe, that pretend Chastity, and Continence, for the ground of denying Marriage to the Clergy. For they confesse it is no more, but a Constitution of the Church, that requireth ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... and saying to him "O man, there is not amongst womankind my peer in nobility[FN397] and chastity;" and as often as she repeated this saying to him he would give credit to her words and cry, "Wallhi, no man hath a wife like unto the lady my wife for high caste and continence!" Now he was ever singing her praises in every assembly; but one day of the days as he was sitting in a sance of the great, who all were saying their says anent womankind and feminine deeds and misdeeds, the man rose up and exclaimed, "Amongst women there is none like my wife, for ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... made itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length, laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the luxurious Friar devoured their charms: Had his Penitents consulted those Interpreters, He would have needed no other means of expressing his desires. For his misfortune, they were so strongly persuaded of his continence, that the possibility of his harbouring indecent thoughts never once entered their imaginations. The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Who, in truth, reads epics now—save in the enforced study of school and college? Will not Browning's larger works—like "The Ring and the Book"—suffer disastrously with the passing of time because of a lack of continence, of a failure to realize that since life is short, art should not be too long? It may be, too, that Richardson, newly handling the sentiment which during the following generation was to become such a marked trait of imaginative letters, revelled in it to an extent unpalatable ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... well shapen, of a high colour, stout, big, strong, eating and drinking like a convalescent, and indeed, was always rising from a little malady that attacked him at certain times; and, later on, he would have been his own executioner, had he determined to observe his canonical continence. Add to this that he was a Tourainian, id est, dark, and had in his eyes flame to light, and water to quench all the domestic furnaces that required lighting or quenching; and never since at Azay has been such vicar seen! A handsome vicar was he, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... three then follow'd her.—"Well, well, But what of Pamphilus?"—"Of Pamphilus! He supp'd, and paid his reck'ning."—I was glad. Another day I made the like inquiry, But still found nothing touching Pamphilus. Thus I believ'd his virtue prov'd, and hence Thought him a miracle of continence: For he who struggles with such spirits, yet Holds in that commerce an unshaken mind, May well be trusted with the governance Of his own conduct. Nor was I alone Delighted with his life, but all the world ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... observe that the vow of chastity is the most startling exception to the natural condition of man which society makes necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest's profession; he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to physical sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to the misery whose wounds are laid bare to their ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... and sort of men vertue is commendable, but not egally: not onely because mens estates are vnegall, but for that also vertue it selfe is not in euery respect of egall value and estimation. For continence in a king is of greater merit, than in a carter, th'one hauing all opportunities to allure him to lusts, and abilitie to serue his appetites, th'other partly, for the basenesse of his estate wanting such meanes and occasions, partly by ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... so that we may be sure of giving it only to those who really want it. Especially let the unmarried postpone it. The risks of the age of puberty are extreme. Let people have married or be anyhow steeled in continence before they are admitted to baptism. It would appear from the homilies of Aphraates (c. 340) that in the Syriac church also it was usual to renounce the married relation after baptism. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses, insists on "the longing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... "Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind,—these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. But through ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... by the standards of to-day. Women deceived their husbands with much the same relish as Boccaccio depicts in his Decameron; passions were everywhere the moving forces, in the higher and lower classes as well, and nowhere was there to be seen the continence which comes from an ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the progress of disease or convalescence, entire continence must be observed. It is then necessary that all of the vital energies should be employed in effecting a recovery from disease, without having the additional tax imposed of overcoming the debilitating effects of sexual ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control, amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety, chastity, completed and finished Barkilphedro. He culumniated those virtues by ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... annihilates it. Nothing is purely true, and thus nothing is true, meaning by that pure truth. You will say it is true that homicide is wrong. Yes; for we know well the wrong and the false. But what will you say is good? Chastity? I say no; for the world would come to an end. Marriage? No; continence is better. Not to kill? No; for lawlessness would be horrible, and the wicked would kill all the good. To kill? No; for that destroys nature. We possess truth and goodness only in part, and mingled ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... The two pictures which I would last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion—it was the fullness of passion in the life of a Britomart. But the mid-age and old age of nations is not like the mid-age or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Preceptor, "I think, possessed you both. How oft have I preached to you caution, if not continence? Did I not tell you that there were enough willing Christian damsels to be met with, who would think it sin to refuse so brave a knight 'le don d'amoureux merci', and you must needs anchor your affection on a wilful, obstinate Jewess! By the mass, I think old Lucas Beaumanoir ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and her broken feather in the slums of London, the same story is told and the same moral preached. Where is an equal army of men to be found to invite the contumely of their own sex? A woman's virtue is her continence, and a man's virtues are truthfulness and courage. There is an unspeakably great army of the one sex which makes a show and a lure of its penal uniform. Find me anywhere a band of men who flaunt themselves in an equal ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... that the soldier, without robbing her of her honour, had taken from her everything she had, and made off, leaving her in the cave, a thing that still further surprised everybody. It was not easy for us to credit the young man's continence, but she asserted it with such earnestness that it helped to console her distressed father, who thought nothing of what had been taken since the jewel that once lost can never be recovered had been left to his daughter. The same day that Leandra made her appearance ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... all cold and comfortless, he slept; his lady whilome retiring to her forecastle boudoir; beguiling the hours in saying her pater-nosters, and tossing over and assorting her ill-gotten trinkets and finery; like Madame De Maintenon dedicating her last days and nights to continence and calicoes. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Angelo is of a good complexion; his figure rather sinuous and bony than fleshy and fat; healthy above all by nature, as well as by the use of exercise and his continence of life and moderation in taking food; nevertheless, as a child he was feeble and sickly, and as a man he had two illnesses. He has suffered much for several years in the passing of urine, which trouble would have turned into a stone if he had not been relieved ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an end to the sexual excitement, there are other essential facts which bring the sexual tension into relation with the sexual products. In a life of continence the sexual activity is wont to discharge the sexual substance at night during pleasurable dream hallucinations of a sexual act, this discharge coming at changing but not at entirely capricious intervals; ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... to be forced into a life of unnatural continence which further aggravates her ill health and produces constant discord? Shall she go on having children who come into being with a heritage of ill health and poverty, and who are bound to become public burdens? Or would it be the better policy to let motherhood follow its ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... continence, corroded the heart? Why did people who, through predilection, went to churches, regard those who didn't with such an insistent animosity? Why did the church itself seek to obliterate—as though they ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... found the explanation of the eagerness with which the Celts everywhere, but particularly in Ireland, as soon as Christianity was preached to them, rushed to a life of perfection and continence. St. Patrick himself expressed his surprise, and showed, by several words in his "Confessio," that he was scarcely prepared for it. "The sons of Irishmen," he says, "and the daughters of their chieftains, want to become monks and virgins of Christ." We know what a multitude of monasteries ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... taught as the multiplication table is taught. Example here counts for more than precept, and practice teaches more than either, provided it is carried on in the light of precept and example. The rash and unqualified statements concerning the immense benefits of continence, or the awful results of self-abuse, etc., frequently found in books for young people will occur to every one. Stated with wise moderation they would have been helpful. Pushed to harsh extravagance they are not only useless to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... purity; decency, decorum, delicacy; continence, chastity, honesty, virtue, modesty, shame; pudicity^, pucelage^, virginity. vestal, virgin, Joseph, Hippolytus; Lucretia, Diana; prude. Adj. pure, undefiled, modest, delicate, decent, decorous; virginibus puerisque ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one was safe. No one was tolerant. Very few were free from the grosser vices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meet at night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and shrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoined temperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. and Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and Gregory ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... thee, O Spitama Zarathustra! the man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above him who has none. And of two men, he who fills himself with meat receives in him Vohu Mano much better than he who does not ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... member of my text (to speak ecclesiastically) shall be the subject of my following discourse; THE TONGUE TO PERSUADE—as judicious, preachers recommend those virtues, which they think their several audiences want the most; such as truth and continence, at court; disinterestedness, in the city; and sobriety, in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... gratifications. The whole efforts of man in civilized life are directed to the increase of human enjoyment, the incitement of human desire. Need we wonder, then, if religion, which prescribes an abstinence from the pleasures of sin, which enjoins continence to the sensual, sobriety to the drunkard, reflection to the unheeding, gentleness to the irascible, restraint to the voluptuous, probity to the avaricious, punishment to the profligate, meets in such an age with very few votaries? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. No wonder that Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." This must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the food—which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator, Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the words themselves. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... one to look for her, and share in her victories. And, lastly, she promises to be a mild and agreeable guardian of life; as well of the rich as of the poor; of the male as of the female sex; the old as of the young; being that, which teaches the rich modesty; the poor frugality; men, continence; women, chastity; the old, how to ward off the attacks of death; and bestows on youth firmer and securer hopes of life. Sobriety renders the senses clear, the body light, the understanding lively, the soul brisk, the memory ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... have committed a pious fraud on his good people. Being importuned by his council to marry, he espoused the daughter of the powerful Earl Godwin; to whom he privately disclosed a vow of perpetual continence under which he had bound himself: but offered to raise her to the regal seat (and she was accordingly publicly crowned as queen), on condition that he should be allowed without molestation to observe his vow. She is represented by our historians as ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... "hath set a comely example of continence to her subjects, and will doubtless do justice on this inhospitable robber. But wert thou not better apply to the Earl of Leicester, in the first place, for justice on his servant? If he grants it, thou dost save the risk of making thyself ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... modify in some degree this tremendous natural sex instinct. To most of us it was like spitting on a burning building—the battle went on fiercer every day of life! I tackled it from two points of view; first, the moral point of view. My religion demanded purity, continence and self-mastery. The other point of view—I don't think this was clear to me at the time; I don't believe that I intentionally pursued this course with the object in view that it actually accomplished; nevertheless, whether intentional or unintentional, planned ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the foundation of your fortune here, my boy. Heavens! when I was in that bronze shell I was astonished only at my continence in not bursting. You have grown,—you have shot up and filled out. I register my thanks to your grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor degree, to Captain Jasper Welsh. Between that man Rippenger and me there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the foregoing observations, I may quote the following narrative, written by a man of letters: "From puberty to the age of 30 (when I married), I lived in virgin continence, in accord with my principle. During these years I worked exceedingly hard—chiefly at art (music and poetry). My days being spent earning my livelihood, these art studies fell into my evening time. I noticed that productive ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... imbued, Vowing no more offence. Not less to thine Unfaithful didst thou cry, 'Come back, poor Child; be all as 'twas before.' But I, 'No, no; I will not promise any more! Yet, when I feel my hour is come to die, And so I am secured of continence, Then may I say, though haply then in vain, "My only, only Love, O, take me back again!"' Thereafter didst thou smite So hard that, for a space, Uplifted seem'd Heav'n's everlasting door, And I indeed the darling of thy grace. But, in some dozen changes of the ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Champlain was no formalist, nor was his an empty zeal. A soldier from his youth, in an age of unbridled license, his life had answered to his maxims; and when a generation had passed after his visit to the Hurons, their elders remembered with astonishment the continence ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... of the most disgusting expressions. He had no taste whatever for women, and no inclination towards the pleasures of the flesh; but this was only owing to a deficiency in his natural temperament, and yet he claimed for himself the virtue of continence. On that score, everything appeared to him food for merriment, and when he had drunk rather too much, he would ask questions of such an indecent character that they would bring blushes on everybody's countenance. Yet the brute would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Greek Church has preserved and retained to this day. But when, by the grace of God, the Church has increased so that there was no lack of ministers in the Church, Pope Siricius, eleven hundred and forty years ago, undoubtedly not without the Holy Ghost, enjoined absolute continence upon the priests, Canon Plurimus, Dist. 82—an injunction which Popes Innocent I., Leo the Great and Gregory the Great approved and ratified, and which the Latin Church has everywhere observed to this day. From these facts it is regarded sufficiently ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... freedom of speech was sometimes curtailed. But the fact that such a restriction should have been noticed, suggests that it was exceptional.[7] One good effect followed, let us admit. The virtuousness of continence was not treated as a superstition by those who vindicated it as Turgot did, but discussed like any other virtue; and was defended not as an intuition of faith, but as a reasoned conclusion of the judgment. It was permitted to occupy no solitary and mysterious throne, apart and away from other ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Epaminondas, that illustrious condottiere, strictly restrained himself from intemperance, from every lust, every allurement of pleasure. So, also, Scipio, the Roman leader, was valorous through the same continence as Epaminondas; and therefore they brought back signal victory, one over the Spartans, the other over the Carthaginians, and both erected immortal trophies." He promised them mercy with repentance, but ended threateningly: ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... continence is rarely shown by the young Jallabs or slave-traders; when older they learn how much money is lost ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... whole their continence was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of 'single blessedness,' and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... which the whole of this is based, has added to this broad criterion the division of a life into four stages, to each of which appropriate virtues are assigned: the Student Period, with its virtues of perfect continence, industry, frugality, exertion; the Household Period, with its virtue of duties appropriate to the position, the earning and enjoying of wealth, the gratification of desires; the Retirement Period, ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... untraceable; mothers were not to know their children, nor children their parents, but there is nothing to forbid the supposition that he intended these people to select and adhere to congenial mates within the great family. Aristotle's assertion that the Platonic republic left no scope for the virtue of continence shows that he had jumped to just the same conclusions a contemporary London errand boy, hovering a little shamefacedly over Jowett in a public library, might be expected ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to Agathopous says: "Since He endured all things, and was continent [i.e., self-controlled], Jesus, accordingly, obtained for Himself divinity. He ate and drank in a peculiar manner, not giving forth His food. Such was the power of His continence [self-control] that the food was not corrupted in Him, because He himself was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... brooding, with the slow, the wrathful incoherence that centuries of silence in those lonely fields had passed into the blood of his forebears and himself. Brooding, in the dangerous disproportion that enforced continence brings to certain natures, loading the brain with violence till the storm bursts and there leap out the lurid, dark insanities of crime. Brooding, while in the air flies chased each other, insects ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would seem that man possessed of grace needs no help to persevere. For perseverance is something less than virtue, even as continence is, as is clear from the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 7, 9). Now since man is justified by grace, he needs no further help of grace in order to have the virtues. Much less, therefore, does he need the help of grace to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... sent an obedient governor, and one who does what he is ordered, he is the most evil man in all the world; and they parade him in their pulpits, attempting to ascertain and publish what belongs to God alone alone—[asking] whether the continence of the governor and his endeavor not to furnish a bad example, is the virtue of chastity, or the fault of nature. These things, Sire, are taught here in the pulpits by the Dominican friars. The guardian of St. Francis said publicly in the pulpit of the cathedral church (because the computer ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. The home-keeping wit, on the other hand, is that continence or content which finds all the elements of life in its own soil; and which has its own perils of monotony and deterioration, if not stimulated by ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... priests to marry. As though priests are not men! We judge indeed that the things which we maintain concerning human nature in general pertain also to priests. Does not Paul here command those who have not the gift of continence to marry? For he interprets himself a little after when he says, v. 9: It is better to marry than to burn. And Christ has clearly said Matt. 19, 11: All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... a home, while adultery and libertinism produce unrest, distrust and misery. It must be remembered that a married man can practice the most absolute continence and enjoy a far better state of health than the licentious man. The comforts of companionship develop purity and give rest ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... of "venereal diseases."[2] The second is to separate the question of syphilis at least temporarily from our thought about morals, from the problem of prostitution, from the question as to whether continence is possible or desirable, whether a man should be true to one woman, whether women should be the victims of a double standard, and all the other complicated issues which we must in time confront. Such a picking to pieces of the tangle is simply the method of scientific ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... from their strictly moral life, they did not abuse the procreative powers, but those who were married, used them only for obtaining children in the right season, and many of them lived in celibacy in the strictest continence all their life time. Such was the life of the Therapeute Monk Eli or Heli, the Father of Jesus Christ, Luke 1:23. He, while living in the strictest celibacy arrived to an advanced age, and when the time arrived for the procreation of the Messiah of the Jews, ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... vessel all of gold; Some are of tree, and do their lord service. God calleth folk to him in sundry wise, And each one hath of God a proper gift, Some this, some that, as liketh him to shift.* *appoint, distribute Virginity is great perfection, And continence eke with devotion: But Christ, that of perfection is the well,* *fountain Bade not every wight he should go sell All that he had, and give it to the poor, And in such wise follow him and his lore:* *doctrine He spake to them that would live perfectly, — And, lordings, by your leave, that am ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... gather, I find that all the remedies for pauperism and fecundity—sanctioned by universal practice, philosophy, political economy, and the latest reformers—may be summed up in the following list: masturbation, onanism, [19] sodomy, tribadie, polyandry, [20] prostitution, castration, continence, abortion, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Strasbourg, Charles rescued a pretty young lady from a fire; she lost her heart at once to the 'Comte d'Espoir' (his travelling title), but the Prince behaved like Scipio, not to mention a patriarch famous for his continence. 'I am no stoic,' said His Royal Highness to La Luze, 'but I have always been taught that pleasures, how pardonable soever in themselves, become highly criminal when indulged to the prejudice of another,' adding many other noble ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... published the first rational work on comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNAEUS once in despair abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... bonds of rhyme and rule, And finds in them, not bonds, but wings. Postponing still their private ease To courtly custom, appetite, Subjected to observances, To banquet goes with full delight; Nay, continence and gratitude So cleanse their lives from earth's alloy, They taste, in Nature's common food, Nothing but spiritual joy. They shine like Moses in the face, And teach our hearts, without the rod, That God's grace is the only grace, And all grace ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept with the prettiest persons, that their continence ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... 'lust, which is as near to the murder as fire to smoke.' The demoralization of the people at large, in the practice of licentiousness, furnishes a topic of the greatest anxiety to the philanthropist. When American women lose their shame, the race is lost—church-membership is no bar. The continence of man and the chastity of woman ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted as it is by so many lacunae, the power of Eabani over the beasts of the field seems to have depended on his continence. From the moment in which he yields to his passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns. This explains the means devised by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... But ye do me no more than a judicature, in supposing that, in this matter, I am habituated wi' the best intentions. For I can assure you, Mr Pawkie, that no man in this community has a more literal respect for your character than I have, or is more disposed for a judicious example of continence in the way of public enterteenment than I have ever been; for, as you know, I am of a constipent principle towards every extravagant and costive outlay. Therefore, on my own account, I had a satisfaction at seeing the abridgement which you made of our former inebrieties; but there are other persons ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... enjoyment; while the servility of its population was to create a new type of Roman ruler in the man who for one glorious year wielded the power of a Pergamene despot, without the restraint of kingly traditions or the continence induced by an ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... charite, to clothe and fede The povere folk and forto parte The worldes good, bot thei departe Ne thenken noght fro that thei have. Also thei sein, good is to save 470 With penance and with abstinence Of chastite the continence; Bot pleinly forto speke of that, I not how thilke body fat, Which thei with deynte metes kepe And leyn it softe forto slepe, Whan it hath elles al his wille, With chastite schal stonde stille: And natheles I can noght seie, In aunter if that I misseye. 480 Touchende of this, how ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... Sometimes the dying husband bequeathed his widow. In later times some widows contracted their own second marriages.[1306] Marcus Aurelius would not take a second wife as a stepmother for his children. He took a concubine. Julian, after the death of his wife, lived in continence.[1307] On Roman tombstones of women the epithet "wife of one husband" was often put ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... passionately. The discipline of youth, in all its work, is in cooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and urging itself; you know the Bacchic chorus of old men in Plato's Laws. To the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest nature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest natures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you have to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm—quiet, above everything; and modest, with this most essential ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... meant to arouse the soul with the taste of power, and to start off on journeys for itself. But the great inspired utterances, like the Bible,—what would they gain by being cast in the moulds of metrical verse? In all that concerns art, viewed from any high standpoint,—proportion, continence, self-control, unfaltering adherence to natural standards, subordination of parts, perfect adjustment of the means to the end, obedience to inward law, no trifling, no levity, no straining after effect, impartially attending to the back and loins ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... made him a kind of Rousseau; but he was more amiable than the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them. It is observable, not only that he never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of entire continence ever since he entered the walls of his prison, being then in his thirty-fifth year.[36] Was this out of fidelity to some mistress? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent? or was it from some principle ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... regardee comme le symbole de la continence. La reine de France en decorait les femmes titrees dont la conduite etait irreprochable." Hist. de la reun. de Bretagne a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... other hand, the rhetoric of the minor key, which seems poor at first blush, soon reveals itself to be more attractive. It moves with a livelier, more life-like rhythm; it is less bombastic. This rhetoric implies continence and basic economy of effort; it is like an agile man, lightly ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... sins, without malice and without joy, contain their own forgiveness. Their faults, which are pains, participate in the merits attached to pain; slaves to brutal passion, they are deprived of all voluptuousness, and in this they are like the men who practise continence for the kingdom of God. They are like us, culprits; but shame falls on their crime like a balm, suffering purifies it like fire. That is the reason why God will listen to the first voice which they shall ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Than your penance to hear her. Whilst she speaks, She throws upon a man so sweet a look That it were able to raise one to a galliard. That lay in a dead palsy, and to dote On that sweet countenance; but in that look There speaketh so divine a continence As cuts off all lascivious and vain hope. Her days are practis'd in such noble virtue, That sure her nights, nay, more, her very sleeps, Are more in heaven than other ladies' shrifts. Let all sweet ladies break their flatt'ring glasses, And dress ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... a picture of supreme happiness, crimes to be committed and lust to be gratified. But in vain did vice descend from the abode of the gods armed with their sacred authority; the moral instinct refused to admit it into the heart of man. While the debaucheries of Jupiter were celebrated, the continence of Xenocrates was revered; the chaste Lucrece adored the shameless Venus; the bold Roman offered sacrifices to Fear; he invoked the god who mutilated his father, and he died without a murmur at the hand ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... does require a certain abstraction and concentration of our limited spiritual energies, and can only be trodden at the cost of a certain inward seclusion of which outward seclusion is normally a condition. Instinctively, Catholic tradition has regarded it as a vocation apart—as, like the life of continence, a call to something more than human, and demanding a sacrifice or atrophy of functions proper to another grade of spirituality. Even what is called a "life of thought" makes a similar demand to a great extent; it involves a narrowing of other interests; a departure from the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... erroneous beliefs about the sex function, Dr. M.J. Exner brought together the testimony of the foremost medical authorities of the United States. He drew up a statement regarding sexual continence, and submitted it to leading physiologists for criticism so as to bring its phraseology wholly within the requirements of scientific precision. It was then submitted for endorsement to leading medical authorities throughout the country. The ready and hearty response of 370 of these men in ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... attitude towards womanhood. Sec. 31. Developing ideals of love and marriage. Sec. 32. Reasons for pre-marital continence. Sec. 33. Essential knowledge concerning prostitution. Sec. 34. Need of refinement of men. Sec. 35. Dancing as a sex problem for men. Sec. 36. Dress of women as a sex problem for men. Sec. 37. The problem of self-control ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... at least three moral standards in existence in the English world. There is first the Christian standard, for which men and women are equal, which recognizes the sacredness of personality in every case, and which calls for absolute continence and chastity before marriage and absolute fidelity after it. This is the standard I am concerned to ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... rain, thunder, and lightning are rare phenomena in these regions; but when they do occur, it is with that violence which characterises the storms of the tropics. The elements, escaping from their wonted continence, rage in fiercer war. The long-gathering electricity, suddenly displaced from its equilibrium, seems to revel in havoc, rending asunder the harmonies ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... honour. The conversation was of a lively and dissolute cast, a tone encouraged by the Prince, as if designing to counterbalance the gravity of his morals in the morning, which Ramorny, who was read in old chronicles, had the boldness to liken to the continence of Scipio. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... 264.] The game was often ushered in with singing. Like lacrosse it was prescribed as a remedy for sickness or in consequence of dreams, and the sufferer in whose behalf the game was played was borne to the cabin in which it was to take place. Preliminary fasting and continence were observed, and every effort made that superstition could suggest to discover who would be the lucky thrower and who could aid the caster by his presence at the contest. Old men, unable to walk thither, were brought up on the shoulders ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... The word continence should apply to the act of self-restraint in the matter of the emotions, desires, and passions, whether of the sex-passion or the passion of anger, avarice, or gluttony. The word has come to mean, in many cases, ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad |
