"Abstemious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marked with blood. The character of the people partakes of the nature of their government, religion, and climate. They are arrogant, ignorant, and austere; passing from devotion to obscenity; fastidiously abstemious in some things, and grossly sensual in others. They have cherished the virtues of hospitality, and are fond of conversation but their domestic life is spent in voluptuous idleness, and is dull and insipid compared with that of Europeans. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... word. from abs. away from. temetum. intoxicating liquor, from which is derived the English "abstemious'' or temperate), a name formerly given to such persons as could not partake of the cup of the Eucharist on account of their natural aversion to wine. Calvinists allowed these to communicate in the species of bread only, touching the cup with their lip; a course which was deemed a profanation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my instructions, stood behind my chair, and seldom moved except to refill Ferrari's glass, and occasionally to proffer some fresh vintage to the Duke di Marina. He, however, was an abstemious and careful man, and followed the good example shown by the wisest Italians, who never mix their wines. He remained faithful to the first beverage he had selected—a specially fine Chianti, of which he partook freely without its causing ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects upon the class of men—hunters, transport riders, and others—amongst whom he had passed so many years of his life. Consequently the good wine took more effect on him that it would have ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... D'Alton was able to go out again, and, as during her husband's stay at Orchard Beach she was particularly abstemious, she was able to associate with the ladies in the hotel, and made several acquaintances, who, seeing that she had the dress and manners of a lady, interchanged calls with her and invited her to visit them in Montreal. On her return to her home, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... invalid, the King was abstemious, but the Elector was a mighty drinker. It was not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed. They were usually carried there. But it was the wish of Ferdinand to be conciliatory, and he bore himself as well as he could at the banquet. The Elector ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal; their meager clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived; their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... did its work in slaking their energies; but more radical still was the change wrought by the contrast of poverty and abundance, enforced asceticism and luxury, presented by the old and new home. The restless, tireless shepherds became a sedentary, agricultural people; the abstemious nomads,—spare, sinewy, strangers to indulgence—became a race of rulers, revelling in luxury, lording it over countless subjects; finally, their numbers increased rapidly, no longer kept down by the scant subsistence of arid grasslands and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... chanced that the worthy dean, who albeit a man of most abstemious habits, possessed a nose which, in color and development, was a most unfortunate witness to call to character, and as Mooney heard Webber narrate circumstantially the frightful excesses of the great ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his meals he was most abstemious, and at the same time irregular. His brother describes an arrangement by which he was able to take, at all events, his midday meal, and at the same time to carry on his official work, especially in the matter of receiving visitors. He had a deep drawer in his table, in which the food was ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the glass of wine he had been toying with—Rupert was an abstemious man. "So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous role of rescuer of distressed damsels—squire of dames and what not. The last one would have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... l'Anglaise, made by one of our English servants; was helped twice, and observed, that he hoped he should not shock us by eating so much: "But," added he, "the truth is, that for several months I have been following a most abstemious regime, living almost entirely on vegetables; and now that I see a good dinner, I cannot resist temptation, though to-morrow I shall suffer for my gormandize, as I always do when I indulge in luxuries." He drank three glasses of champagne, saying, that as he considered it a jour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... the Cardinal, without noticing any of the towns that lie between. It is curious to find our poet out of humour with Flanders on account of the high price of wine, which was not an indigenous article. In the latter part of his life, Petrarch was certainly one of the most abstemious of men; but, at this period, it would seem that he drank good liquor enough to be concerned ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... in order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers—abstemious male workers—was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been so is sufficiently attested by ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Elizabeth—not the best memory for your happiness. What are you eating? Only bread and butter. Will you have no sardines, bacon, eggs, honey? Nothing! A very abstemious young lady! You have done with school, and may wean ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... satisfaction of vehement appetites and passions; as, to glut a vengeful spirit with slaughter; we speak of glutting the market with a supply so excessive as to extinguish the demand. Much less than is needed to satisfy may suffice a frugal or abstemious person; less than a sufficiency may content one of a patient and submissive spirit. Compare ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... slim and abstemious I am. Well, nothing can rid me of the idea that when I am forty I shall be a great eater and very fat. I foresee that my constitution will undergo a change. I take exercise enough, but what will you!—it's a presentiment; and it won't fail ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... "William, thou abstemious youth," he addressed the clerk, "I am tempted to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack you off with another ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... a most abstemious man; but I know what he never can resist, and that is cold raspberry tart and cream. There are plenty of raspberries ripe in the plantation—I will gather some, and I'll make the pastry for the ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... ideas. Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange failings, too, had John Ardworth,—some of the usual vagaries and contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious. For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up some allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-saturnalia,—would stride off with old college friends to an inn in one of the suburbs, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... useless against the impenetrable stoicism of an Asiatic and that only personal regard and obligation on their part will produce results. In striking contrast to the Japanese, small and sinewy, any two of them weighing no more than one Russian, quiet, taciturn, genial and abstemious, were the children of the "Little White Father." The Russians were an aggressive, big, well set up, heavy type of men, by no means teetotalers, talkative, with overbearing swagger, always posing, talking contemptuously about the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... existence. Especially after he had made his fortune in the cotton manufacture, and had thus attained the chief object of his ambition—the object which had engaged his talent for order and persevering application. For his easy leisure caused him much ennui. He was abstemious, and had none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's time first with indulgence and then with the process of getting well from its effects. He had not, indeed, exhausted the sources of knowledge, but here again his notions of human pleasure were narrowed by his ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Though habitually abstemious, Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with anything but ginger-beer he went to bed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there were no complications whatever in my case; it was just as simple as a cut finger. Regarded from this point of view, a broken head is a small matter indeed, in a youth of abstemious habits and healthy life. Well, he was a very thoroughly chastened youth who accepted the cheery physician's congratulations upon his early discharge ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... square of the presidio, and carrying mud and bricks for the buildings; yet a few reals would generally buy them off. Intemperance, too, is a common vice among the Indians. The Spaniards, on the contrary, are very abstemious, and I do not remember ever ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... nine and one-half inches high, weighs one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and has not varied as to weight in a quarter of a century, although as a young man he was slim to gauntness. He is very abstemious, hardly ever touching alcohol, caring little for meat, but fond of fruit, and never averse to a strong cup of coffee or a good cigar. He takes extremely little exercise, although his good color and quickness of step would suggest to those who do not know ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... when he was unwell, which, with his healthy, abstemious, open-air life, was not often; and by degrees the people for miles round found out that he made decoctions of herbs—camomile and dandelion, foxglove, rue, and agrimony, which had virtues of their own. He it was who cured Dan Rugg of that affection ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... the Brahmanas who had mastered the Vedas, and permitted Amba, the eldest daughter of the ruler of Kasi to do as she liked. But he bestowed with due rites the two other daughters, Ambika and Ambalika on his younger brother Vichitravirya. And though Vichitravirya was virtuous and abstemious, yet, proud of youth and beauty, he soon became lustful after his marriage. And both Ambika and Ambalika were of tall stature, and of the complexion of molten gold. And their heads were covered with black curly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... yet he could not resist drinking once again to the health of the ladies. The pedant and the tyrant drank like old topers, who can absorb any amount of liquor—be it wine, or something stronger—without becoming actually intoxicated. Matamore was very abstemious, both in eating and drinking, and could have lived like the impoverished Spanish hidalgo, who dines on three olives and sups on an air upon his mandoline. There was a reason for his extreme frugality; he feared that if he ate and drank like other people he might ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... double said, was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart and body in the members of the order, which otherwise might have lain open to too many timorous, merely abstemious, men and women. Many things had been suggested, swordplay and tests that verged on torture, climbing in giddy places and the like, before this was chosen. Partly, it is to ensure good training and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... caused to be served up; and not only did he call upon the Herr Administrator to join him in his encomiums, but he also asked him pointedly what he thought of various ways of dressing dishes. The Herr Administrator replied somewhat dryly that he was a temperate and abstemious man, accustomed from his youth up to the greatest frugality. At noon, for dinner, he was satisfied with a spoonful or two of soup and a little piece of beef, but the latter must be cooked hard, since so cooked a smaller quantity sufficed to satisfy the hunger, and there was no need to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... system called VMS Of cycles by no means abstemious. It's chock-full of hacks And runs on a VAX And makes my poor stomach all squeamious. — The ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Colonel D'Egville and his more civilized guests quaff their claret; more gratified than annoyed by the savoury atmosphere wreathing around them, while, taking advantage of the early departure of the abstemious Tecumseh, they discussed the merits of that Chief, and the policy of employing the Indians as allies, as will be seen in ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... his life Michael Angelo has been very abstemious, taking food more from necessity than from pleasure, especially when at work, at which time, for the most part, he has been content with a piece of bread, which he munched whilst he laboured. But latterly he has lived more regularly, his advanced age requiring it. I have often heard ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... of whiskey in his room at the tavern, and to its contents all the "afflicted" were welcome. It could not be said of him that he was the principal consumer, for, except under unusual circumstances, he was a fairly abstemious man. As he himself declared, he drank sparingly except when his "soul was tried." The fact that he had taken several copious draughts of the fiery Mononga-Durkee immediately upon his return was an indication that his soul was tried, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... so casually from tin cups near the summit of the Cascades, had been a part of the store of that great dreamer and most abstemious of men, James J. Hill, laid in for the use of that other great dreamer and idealist, Albert, when he was his guest. While we ate, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Castle of Vilvorde, where the next year he was strangled and burned. T. was one of the most able and devoted of the reforming leaders, and his, the foundation of all future translations of the Bible, is his enduring monument. He was a small, thin man of abstemious habits ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Consequently, whenever they wish to caricature a capitalist they invariably represent him as a man with a huge, protuberant stomach. The folly of this conception is sufficiently shown by the fact that many of the greatest of fortune-makers have, in their personal habits, been abstemious and even niggardly to a degree which has made them proverbial; and that, even in the case of those who value personal luxury, the maximum of self-indulgence which any single human organism can appreciate, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... city, in crossing the Matanzas sound, so named probably from some sanguinary battle with the aborigines on its shores; we passed two Minorcans in a boat, taking home fuel from the island. These people are a mild, harmless race, of civil manners and abstemious habits. Mingled with them are many Greek families, with names that denote their origin, such as Geopoli, Cercopoli, &c., and with a cast of features equally expressive of their descent. The Minorcan language, the dialect of Mahon, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... thoughts were very much more stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism. It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before his time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a most abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyes and independent thoughts, was an emancipating phenomenon. He had divested himself of all Danish prejudices. "There is still a great deal of phlogiston in our philosophy," he used to ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... for the richer and more reckless diggers; while the touter's cry of "Eggs and chickens here" was a very telling one. Wine and spirits were also obtainable, but were seldom taken by the Americans, who are abstemious abroad ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... readily make such perforations if they wished; yet I have never seen one take up his stand upon an acorn and work at it with his augur. Then why this fruitless labour? A mere nothing suffices these abstemious creatures. A superficial operation performed upon the surface of a tender leaf yields ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess that's true. That fact of the business is you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you're ninety to read some of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated abstemious critic to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... as all the superior class of people in Lima, are exceedingly temperate in drinking. Water and a kind of sweet wine are their favorite beverage; but the lower classes and the people of color are by no means so abstemious. They make free use of fermented drinks, especially brandy, chicha, and guarapo. The brandy of Peru is very pure, and is prepared exclusively from the grape. On the warm sea coast, the use of this liquor is not very injurious; there, its evil effects are counteracted by profuse perspiration. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart and body in the Samurai. Otherwise the order might have lain open to too many timorous, merely abstemious men and women. Many things had been suggested, sword-play and tests that verged on torture, climbing in giddy places and the like, before this was chosen. Partly, it is to ensure good training and sturdiness of body and mind, but partly also, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the subject of age. "I attribute my many years," said Dr. Bigelow, "to the fact that I have been most abstemious. I have eaten sparingly, and have not used tobacco, and ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... bad season, the mother herself is extremely abstemious. At long intervals, she accepts, in my jars, a belated Locust, whom I have captured, for her benefit, in the sunnier nooks. In order to keep herself in condition, as when she is dug up in the course of my winter excavations, she must therefore sometimes break her fast and come ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... rising barrister, the abstemious, thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level. It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... honest men were indulging in what seemed to be highway robbery. But I noted at the time that every man who was taking part in this incident was a drinking man, while their fellow villagers, who were abstemious, had sufficient provisions in their own homes. Thus it was that I observed the industrial effects of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... delight of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong, but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find that he followed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after prescribing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most succulent and the most unwholesome of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... king of wits, was also king of coffee drinkers. Even in his old age he was said to have consumed fifty cups daily. To the abstemious Balzac (1799-1850) coffee was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... friend grace the stage, Of praise he is not too abstemious, But shares, alas! in all the faults That genius has—without the genius! His prejudices (like those words That LINDLEY MURRAY terms "enelitic") Cling close, and grow a part of him. To form the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... course, with active exercise, reduced him from the enormous weight of four hundred and forty-eight pounds, to one hundred and forty; and restored his health and the vigor of his mind. After a few years, he ventured to change his abstemious diet for one more rich and stimulating. But the effect was a recurrence of his former corpulence and ill health. A return to milk, water, and vegetables restored him again; and he continued in uninterrupted health ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... little regard to the wounds they receive in duels or which are inflicted on them as punishments; their sufferings from all injuries are much less than those which Europeans would undergo in similar circumstances; this may probably arise from their abstemious mode of life, and from their never using any other beverage than water. A striking instance of their apathy with regard to wounds was shown on one occasion in a fight which took place in the village of Perth in Western Australia. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After six his friends were admitted to visit him, and would sit with him till eight. At eight he went down to supper, usually olives or some light thing. He was very abstemious in his diet, having to contend with a gouty diathesis. He was not fastidious in his choice of meats, but content with anything that was in season, or easy to be procured. After supping thus sparingly, he smoked a pipe of tobacco, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... was also a bad one, though different from the preceding. The patient was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been unable to go underground for several years. He was a staid, sober man, and an abstemious liver, but it was evident that his life on earth was drawing to a close. He had been employed chiefly in driving levels, and had worked a great deal in very bad air, where the candles could not be made to burn unless placed nine or ten feet behind the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... any rate, still adhered to Indian sugar. Drugs are not forbidden, but they are not usually addicted to them. Tobacco is forbidden to the Jains, but both they and the Hindus smoke, and their women sometimes chew tobacco. The Bania while he is poor is very abstemious, and it is said that on a day when he has made no money he goes supperless to bed. But when he has accumulated wealth, he develops a fondness for ghi or preserved butter, which often causes him to become portly. Otherwise his food remains simple, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... been the abode of Damian for nearly a month, when, strange as it may seem, his health, which had suffered much from his wounds, began gradually to improve, either benefited by the abstemious diet to which he was reduced, or that certainty, however melancholy, is an evil better endured by many constitutions than the feverish contrast betwixt passion and duty. But the term of his imprisonment seemed drawing speedily to a close; ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... honours with stately grace; and, on the rare occasions when he could be induced to dine out, his presence was sure to make the party a success. In early life he had been pestered by a delicate digestion, and had accustomed himself to a regimen of rigid simplicity; but, though the most abstemious of men, he knew and liked a good glass of wine, and in a small party would bring out of the treasures of his memory things new and old with a copiousness and a vivacity which fairly fascinated his hearers. His conversation had a certain flavour of literature. His classical scholarship was easy ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... scandalised. "My father was singularly abstemious in eating and drinking," she said stiffly. "Why do you ask ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... hours kept him dumb. Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the world as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with delight. He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence was becoming ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for a short time, his lordship spoke of his conversation as I could have wished. Dr Johnson had said, 'I have done greater feats with my knife than this;' though he had eaten a very hearty dinner. My lord, who affects or believes he follows an abstemious system, seemed struck with Dr Johnson's manner of living. I had a particular satisfaction in being under the roof of Monboddo, my lord being my father's old friend, and having been always very good to me. We were cordial together. He asked Dr Johnson and me to stay all night. When ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the courage he manifested on all occasions, the abstemious life he led, and the favour he showed to all who served his cause, soon collected around him a band of hardy and reckless followers. Being ambitious, he now formed the project of carving out an empire for himself in the fertile plains he had so often devastated. Educated in ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... are allowed to doctor ourselves as we best can. What with the salubrity of the climate, and our abstemious fare, we are enabled, with the aid of a little Turlington balsam, and a dose of salts, perhaps, to overcome all our ailments. Most of us also use the lancet, and can even "spread a plaster, or give a glister," when necessary; but the Indians ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... liberty of choice or change. The first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to have been one of the best of the tribe: Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or the jollity of the college. But his knowledge of the world was confined to the university; his learning was of the last, rather than the present age; his temper was indolent; his faculties, which were not of the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... spotless white cloth was spread a frugal meal of bread, butter, cheese, and lettuce; a jug of milk, another of water, and a bottle of cowslip wine; for the habits of the family were more than usually frugal and abstemious. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... effeminately attached to Oriental indolence, sensual in tastes, and a wooer of dreams, I worked incessantly, and refused to taste any of the enjoyments of Parisian life. Though a glutton, I became abstemious; and loving exercise and sea voyages as I did, and haunted by the wish to visit many countries, still child enough to play at ducks and drakes with pebbles over a pond, I led a sedentary life with a pen in my fingers. I liked talking, but I ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... when the conversation turned from fashions to cooking, "I give very little time to cooking, we eat to live only"—which is exactly what an animal does. Eating to live is mere feeding. Brillat-Savarin, an abstemious eater himself, among other witty things on the same topic says, "L'animal se repait, l'homme mange, l'homme ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... always a plain, gray uniform, with cavalry boots reaching to his knees, and a broad-brimmed gray felt hat. He seldom wore a weapon, and his only mark of rank was the stars on his collar. Though always abstemious in diet, he seemed able to bear any amount of fatigue, being capable of remaining in his saddle all day and at his desk ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... now to live for which stirred him continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to look at. He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more dignity than ever. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... landing I could not see him very well, but there was something in his voice that surprised me. I knew he was of abstemious habit or I should have thought he had been drinking. I led the way into my sitting room and asked him to ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the Homestead I went at once to see him. He was sitting in my mother's wheeled chair, quite helpless, yet cheerful and confident of ultimate recovery. He had always been a man of dignity, and singularly abstemious of habit, and these qualities were strongly accentuated by his sudden helplessness. He was very gentle, very patient, and the sight of him lying there made ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... unspeakable. Madness seized the poor mate. Before he could be restrained, he leaped from the raft and sunk below the waves. The other two men sickened. First one, then the other died. The captain, though the oldest of all, kept his senses and his strength. He was a calm, even-tempered, abstemious man. Still, as he sat on the chest in the middle of the raft, of which he and I were the only occupants, he spoke encouragingly and hopefully to me. I listened, but could scarcely reply. I felt a sickness overcoming me. I thought death was approaching. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... it would be more beneficial to mankind if we could show them that a pleasant and varied diet was equally consistent with health, as the very strict regimen of Arnard, or the miller of Essex. These, and other abstemious people, who, having experienced the greatest extremities of bad health, were driven to temperance as their last resource, may run out in praises of a simple diet; but the probability is, that nothing but the dread of former sufferings could have given them the resolution to persevere ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... her." When, a year later, young John Adams came courting the brilliant Abigail, the parish, which assumed a right to be heard on the question of the destiny of the minister's daughter, grimly objected. He was upright, singularly abstemious, studious; but he was poor, he was the son of a small farmer, and she was of the gentry. He was hot-headed and somewhat tactless, and offended his critics. Worst of all, he was a lawyer, and the prejudice of colonial ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which schemes failed; for the Spaniard was as abstemious as any monk, and drank little but water; the second succeeded not over well, for the Spaniard was as cunning as any fox, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... for the common decencies of my sex. I was sent to gaol, and was in hopes there, at least, this usage would have ended. But was told it was reported I was frequently drunk; that I attempted to make my escape; that I never attended the chapel. A more abstemious woman, my lords, I believe does ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... corner. He could sleep anywhere, in the saddle, under fire, or in church; and he could compel sleep to come to him when and where he pleased. He cared as little for good quarters as a mountain hunter, and he was as abstemious as a Red Indian on the war-path. He lived as plainly as the men, and often shared their rations. The majority of the cavalry were better mounted, and many of his officers were better dressed. He was not given to addressing his troops, either in mass or ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... is fancy, or whether it arises from the regular and abstemious habits they generally observe whilst working here, I cannot tell; but the notion I found was universal ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Mr. Maxwell's room and office on the other. Underneath are bath-rooms, and guard-rooms for the Sikh sentries. There are no ornaments or superfluities. There are two simple meals daily, with tea and bananas at 7 A.M., and afternoon tea at 5 P.M. Mr. Maxwell is most abstemious, and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There is a perpetual coming and going of Malays, and an air of business without fuss. There is a Chinese "housemaid," who found a snake, four feet long, coiled up under my down quilt yesterday, and a Malay ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Jones was an abstemious man, as a rule, but he had a highly strung nervous system and it had been worked up. The unaccustomed whiskey and soda had taken him in its charge, comforting him and conducting his steps, and now the bar keeper, a cheery person, combined with the champagne cocktail, the cheeriest of drinks, so ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... said Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present of that for your next temperance meeting. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... divinity, in humane authors, and naturall philosophy. But now scholars studie these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live as students ought to do—viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to ride abroad in grey coats with swords ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... Abstemious, very, when prices are high, He learns to be merry without any pie; An expert at poker, with money to spare, A down and out broker who plays solitaire; An orator forceful, a whale to invent, O Sammy's resourceful, a versatile gent, Though late ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... with pickled fir-tree cones, and roots of the lotus lily. A kind of beer brewed from rice is a usual drink; samshu is a spirit distilled from the same grain and at dinners is served hot in small bowls. Excellent native wines are made. The Chinese are, however, abstemious with regard to alcoholic liquors. Water is drunk hot by the very poor, as a substitute for tea. Tea is drunk before and after meals in cups without handle or saucer; the cups are always provided with a cover. Two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... favour of temperance or even of extreme abstinence, that some of those men who have done most work in their day—John Howard, Wesley, and Cobbett, for example—have been either very moderate, or decidedly abstemious. But on the other hand, such men as Samuel Johnson, who was a free liver and glutton, and Thackeray, who drank to excess, have also got through ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... he said persuasively, and slipped the brick into his bag; "merely a memento of the past—ah, happy past, bright past! You will not take a touch of spirits? no? I find you very abstemious. Well," he added, "if you have really no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his life, he had but one answer,—that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Hermit of pure disposition, abstemious and virtuous, had made his cell in one of the environs of Baghdad, and passed his morning and evening hours in the worship of the All-wise King, and by these means had shaken his skirt clear from ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... food of many Indian tribes when on a journey. They carry it in a bag, or a hollow leathern girdle; and when they reach a brook or pond, they take a spoonful of the dry meal, and then one of water, to prevent its choking them. Three or four spoonfuls are sufficient for a meal for these hardy and abstemious people; and, with a few dried shellfish, or a morsel of deer's flesh, they will subsist ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... strange, perhaps, that he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew the long climbs and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes in quest of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it. Abstemious, frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's table were given him grudgingly. He often went hungry rather than ask the bread he had failed to earn. How his great frame was nurtured in those days he never knew; perhaps the giant mountains recognized some kin in him ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... so Poe lived quietly at Fordham, guarded by the watchful care of Mrs. Clemm,—writing little, but thinking out his philosophical prose poem of "Eureka," which he deemed the crowning work of his life. His life was as abstemious and regular as his means were small. Gradually, however, as intercourse with fellow literati re-aroused his dormant energies, he began to meditate a fresh start in the world. His old and never thoroughly ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... were telling or asking about other brothers and their wives and belongings. They speak rather quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are very abstemious. One speaks near me—"You knew so and so? Good horseman—wasn't he? Curious seat—do you remember the way he rode with his toes out?" "Yes, yes—ha, ha!—it was funny! He led a column with me at Abu Lassin. Very sad his death, poor fellow—never ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... ever rested on Mistress Gardner, who was both proud and fond of her elderly husband, and who found him as tender and thoughtful a friend as he had always been to the wife of his youth. For twenty-one years he passed from honor to honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Frederick was abstemious. A glass of wine at dinner was his wildest excess. Three cigars a day he permitted himself, and these he smoked either on the broad veranda or in the smoking room. What else was a smoking room for? Cigarettes he detested. Yet his brother was ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... a rule conspicuously abstemious, he had drunk rather freely to-night, and that with an odd haste of thirst. Now he touched his champagne tumbler, intimating to Bates, the house-steward—sometime the Brockhurst under butler—that it should ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... replied Suddenly our hero spied Coming aft, his labours done, Our benignant Number One (Most abstemious is he, And, in fact, a strict T.T., But—it shows how Fate can blunder— No one could be rubicunder. Ernest, after one swift glance, Said, "Excuse my ignorance, But, Sir, can you tell me why You are always red, while I, Even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... can't be that: he is most abstemious. I am afraid he drank too much formerly, and has to drink too little now. You know, Mrs Hushabye, I really think he has ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... collar, that he himself should begin to pay a due regard to his health—to restrict his indulgences; and he drew an agreeable picture of the consolation that Adams' friendship might afford to an abstemious man of middle age. "By Jove—confound this button—there, I've twisted it like the deuce—by Jove, it is refreshing to be thrown with a chap who is interested in something besides women and horses—who finds other objects—or subjects ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... polished, a more abstemious people; as scribes and architects they were men to whom this district was greatly indebted. Our only castle, our oldest remaining churches, our most curious and valuable records, are ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... was very abstemious, and took great care of his health, and if he was really verging on eighty (which I very much doubted), I thought he might not improbably live to be a hundred and ten and even a hundred and twenty. He ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... finer attributes of his class. His character was unimpeachable; he was abstemious, and unless his fiery temper was aroused by the sight of some supposed lack of seamanship on the part of his men or boys, or the idea of imposition on himself or his owner, he might have been considered religious, but never amiable. Parsimony was his besetting sin, and he carried ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... expression of sweetness of temper, which was not fallacious; his manners were rather formal, but full of genuine kindness, especially when exercising the duties of hospitality. His general habits were not only temperate, but severely abstemious; but upon a festival occasion, there were few whom a moderate glass of wine exhilarated to such a lively degree. His religion, in which he was devoutly sincere, was Calvinism of the strictest kind, and his favorite study related to church history. I suspect the good old man was often engaged ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and strength; and though there was no delicacy of youthful bloom upon his dark cheek, and though lines which should have come later marred its smoothness with the signs of care and thought, yet an expression of intelligence and daring, equally beyond his years, and the evidence of hardy, abstemious, vigorous health, served to show to the full advantage the outline of features which, noble and regular, though stern and masculine, the artist might have borrowed for his ideal of a young Spartan arming for his first battle. Arthur, slight to feebleness, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... above the age and the race in which his lot was cast. "From the earliest period of his life," says Mr. Johnston, the late Indian agent at Piqua, "Tecumseh was distinguished for virtue, for a strict adherence to truth, honor, and integrity. He was sober[A] and abstemious, never indulging in the use of liquor nor eating to excess." Another respectable individual,[B] who resided for near twenty years as a prisoner among the Shawanoes, and part of that time in the family of Tecumseh, writes to us, "I know of no peculiarity about him that gained him popularity. ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... dinner, laid for the young nuns in the refectory, would have satisfied the most fastidious epicure. But I doubt if any epicure could have enjoyed it half as well as did these abstemious young women, whose appetites were only let loose on ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... humiliation on the part of the recipient, nor any of the feeling of condescending charity on the part of the giver, in the distribution of funds to the needy. And it was astonishing how few the needy were—because of the abstemious lives, the industry, and ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... people, and listened with deep interest to the old soldiers' praises of their great general. The ladies of our party chatted freely with them. They all had interesting anecdotes to relate of their chief. They said he seldom slept over four hours, was an abstemious eater, and rarely changed a servant, as he hated a strange face about him. He was very fond of a game of chess, and snuffed continuously; talked but little, was a light sleeper,—the stirring of a mouse would awaken him,—and always on the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... wond'rous still, waters there are, with power "The mind to change as well as change the limbs. "Who has not heard of Salmacis obscene? "And Ethiopa's lake, which whoso drinks "Or furious raves, or sinks in sleep profound? "Whoe'er his thirst at the Clitorian fount "Quenches, he loathes all wine: abstemious, joys "To drink pure water: whether power the waves "Possess to thwart the heating vinous juice, "Or, as the natives tell, with herbs and charms "When the mad Praetides Melampus cur'd, "He in the stream the mental medicine flung; "And hate ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... they passed to calumny and ridicule, and as these weapon are forged by evil imaginations and their exercise is unhampered by the restrictions of truth, many fantastic accusations were invented against Las Casas, and diligently circulated. The most frugal and abstemious of men was accused of gluttony and intemperance; his learning, which was certainly varied if not vast and was by no means mediocre, was declared to be superficial and insufficient to enable him to properly weigh nice questions of theology ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... weather-beaten and decrepit old creatures, with faces and forms very much like a pair of antiquated nut-crackers. He occupies only two or three rooms plainly furnished, and apparently lives in the simplest and most abstemious style. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... abroad that he was an "unbeliever," which was the easy label for any one who disagreed in religion with the person who applied it. The rumor was based in part on a passage in an address on temperance. In 1842, Lincoln, who had always been abstemious, joined that Washington Society which aimed at a reformation in the use of alcohol. His address was delivered at the request of the society. It contained this passage, very illuminating in its light upon the generosity, the real humility of the speaker, but ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... anything more agreeable, many things might be easily supplied by the ground, and plants in great abundance, and of incomparable sweetness. Add to this, strength and health, as the consequence of this abstemious way of living. Now compare with this, those who sweat and belch, being crammed with eating, like fatted oxen: then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most, attain it least: and that the pleasure of eating lies ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... shall be devoted to the virtue of mortification. Put away the comforts of eating and drinking, the extravagance of living, personal luxuries. Live simply and like a poor man. Be simple in dress, but be well dressed. Be abstemious at your table. Especially guard against over indulgence in drink. Abstemiousness in drink is a very commendable virtue. Deny yourself many things that are unnecessary. Do not yield to all the promptings ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... warm and dry clothing, had never been known to preach a sermon without previously swallowing a raw egg—albeit he was gifted with good lungs and a powerful voice,—and was, generally, extremely particular about what he ate and drank, though by no means abstemious, and having a mode of dietary peculiar to himself,—being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a patron of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive organs, and therefore ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... weigh these Two Characters, it is plain, that Nicanor was an abstemious Man; that the Motives which spurred him on to Industry, were his Love of Money, and Desire after worldly Greatness. Considering the small Delight he always seem'd to take in strong Liquors, and his known Thirst after Gain, it is impossible to account rationally for his excessive Drinking one ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... reformed. He taught himself to read and to write, accomplishments which he had before, if at all, scantily possessed. He studied the Koran, abandoned the use of strong liquors, became scrupulously abstemious, plain in his attire, assiduous in his attention to business, urbane and courteous to all.' In 1833, Shah Soojah, issuing from the British territory, made an abortive attempt to recover his kingdom; but Runjeet Singh, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... an old person of Rye, Who went up to town on a fly; But they said, "If you cough, you are safe to fall off! You abstemious old ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... music, and he now determined to become a painter, to the horror of his family, who belonged to the stiff and narrow Piedmontese aristocracy. His father reluctantly consented, and Massimo settled in Rome, devoting himself to art. He led an abstemious life, maintaining himself by his painting for several years. But he was constantly meditating on the political state of Italy. In 1830 he returned to Turin, and after his father's death in 1831 removed to Milan. There he remained for twelve years, moving in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... forest. Accommodating himself with ease to the nomadic life of the tribes; contrasting his gay and lively temperament with the solemn taciturnity and immoveable phlegm of the savage; dazzling him with the splendour of his religious ceremonies; abstemious in his diet, and coinciding in his recklessness of life; equally a warrior and equally a hunter; unmoved by the dangers of canoe navigation, for which he seemed as well adapted as the Red Man himself; the enterprising Gaul was everywhere feared and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... that what has happened, although it came upon me like coup de tonnerre, and has given me a great deal of bile, and my stomach I find weakened from that cause, more than from any other,—for I'm more and more abstemious every day,—yet I now see that all will end well, and that in the meantime neither you (n)or Lady C(arlisle) will make yourselves uneasy by placing things before you in ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the number of physicians, who used to get drunk, proves any thing, I could insert a good round catalogue, amongst whom I do not find any English doctors, for they are the most abstemious persons in the world; however, being unwilling to trouble my gentle reader with so long a bead-roll, I shall instance only two very illustrious topers of the faculty. The first is no less a man than the great Paracelsus, who used to get ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... childish love of nonsense,—headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat shy, he had a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which made his society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the simplest. His whole manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred courtesy, though he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary conventionalities of life. He ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... company on the long journey. When she would be ordered on a longer journey by a mightier Authority, medical science forbore to specify; but in the higher interests of American music it was urgently pressed upon her that she be abstemious in diet, niggardly of work, careful about fatigue and excitement, and in general comport herself in such manner as to deprive the lease of life remaining to her of most of its savor and worth. She had told Ban that the physicians thought her ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... never imagined. This sort of thing, he concluded half-despairingly, would either be the making of him or kill him. At home the general fear was about too much. Here satiety, over-satiety, seemed to be the rule as at all German firesides. While he dreaded to think what his abstemious digestive apparatus would do, his new friends took not amiss the bountiful spilling of edibles and liquids upon their napkins spread conspicuously over their breasts. Laundering must be cheap in Germany. That was ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... and approve my trust. Lo! the reward your shining virtues bring: The grateful placemen bless their useful king! But while you quaff the nectar of my favor I mean somewhat to modify its flavor By just infusing a peculiar dash Of tonic bitter in the calabash. And should you, too abstemious, disdain it, Egad! I'll hold your ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... as sound morally and physically as the mighty forests in which a considerable part of his life was spent, brave, determined, aggressive, domineering almost to the point of intolerance, deeply religious and abstemious—a mixture of the frontiersman and the Old Testament prophet. Walter Page dedicated one of his books[2] to his father, in words that accurately sum up his character and career. "To the honoured memory of my ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... seniors, yet I do not think that we mutually bored each other the least. They did not need the stimulus of alcohol to aid this flow of spirits, for, like most Frenchmen of that class, they were very abstemious, although the "Patron" always produced for us "un bon vieux vin de derriere les fagots," or "un joli petit vin qui fait rire." It was sheer "joie de-vivre" stimulated by the good food and that spontaneous gaiete francaise which ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew that he would never, as he had hoped, leave Salem. He was an abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause—the small safety or an inward flaw—he had never been part ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... his valor and conduct that the Isle of Lesbos and the principality of AEtolia were restored to their ancient allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth [22] may sustain the presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by rapine. He does not indeed specify the value of his money, plate, and jewels; yet, after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... meditation, fancy free, by field and farm, for no dog will plunge out at you from unsuspected gate, with breath-taking surprise of ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is a Christian land and a civilized. We saw upward of a million cats in Bermuda, but the people are very abstemious in the matter of dogs. Two or three nights we prowled the country far and wide, and never once were accosted by a dog. It is a great privilege to visit such a land. The cats were no offense when properly distributed, but when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the highest bidders. With all his wealth there were but two things which the Roman noble could buy, political power and luxury; and in these directions his whole resources were expended. The elections, once pure, became matters of annual bargain between himself and his supporters. The once hardy, abstemious mode of living degenerated into ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude |
