"Abstention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... particular evening, for the first time since the beginning of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that abstention from coffee might ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... three fourths to abandon the embargo. Whether this be quite a fair statement may be doubted; but there was in it so much of truth as to suggest the possibility, if not of acquiescence in the Orders in Council, at least of such abstention from active resentment as would have been ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... had but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was full —his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books dealt simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other churches in the town less successful ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... offer a penny for their thoughts, to force them to be as unselective and vulgar as one's self. But one desists, feeling instinctively the refreshment (as of some solitary treeless down or rocky stream) and purification of their fine abstention in this world where industry means cinder-heaps, and statesmanship, philosophy, art, philanthropy, mean "secondary ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather, it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet being the average ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... flee for protection to poverty against the loss of riches, nor to a lack of friendship against the loss of friends, nor by abstention from procreation against the death of children, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... persons out of the 467 who were addressed sent serviceable replies, and these cannot be considered a fair sample of the whole. Abstention might have been due to dislike of publicity, to inertia, or to pure ignorance, none of which would have much affected the values as a sample; but an unquestionably common motive does so seriously—namely, when the person addressed had no noteworthy kinsfolk to write about. On the latter ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... 848; id., Kontraere Sexualempfindung, 1899, p. 588). Bloch also (in a chapter on the question of sexual abstinence in his Sexualleben unserer Zeit, 1908) takes a similar standpoint. He advocates abstention during early life and temporary abstention in adult life, such abstention being valuable, not only for the conservation and transformation of energy, but also to emphasize the fact that life contains other matters to strive for beyond the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... those who are disinclined to battle will be forced into the ranks by compulsion. "Those who continue to work will be compelled to quit," says Guerard. The strike is not to be merely a peaceable abstention from work. The very machines are to be made to strike by being rendered incapable of production. These are the methods of the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course, no support of the government and no government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their legislatures, we will elect no senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it. Again, suppose the two houses were to assemble in their usual order, and a majority of one in this body or in the Senate should firmly band themselves ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... objections, but there were reasons, positive ones—and all excellent, all charming." She spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. "It IS always the Prince; and it IS always, thank heaven, marriage. And these are the things, God grant, that it will always be. That I could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... without another revulsion of feeling. A sudden realisation of what his life would be under the new conditions did not fail to frighten him, and he looked back with passionate regret on his abandoned dreams. But his nature was changed, abstention he knew was beyond his strength, and after many struggles, each of which was feebler than the last, he determined to propose to Kitty on the first ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... heart was still untouched by God or man, could lie and sleep soundly, though she knew George waited for her on the moor. The restlessness that had first driven her there had sent her home again, that, by a timely abstention, she might recover the full taste of adventure, and that, by the same means, George might learn her worth. She was a little puzzled by his behaviour, and she began to find monotony in its decorum. According to his promise, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... of sitting at home comfortably, and reading off the week's chronicle of sport while he nursed his leg, the unfortunate gentleman had to be up and away to Fenhurst every Sunday morning, or who would have known that the old cause of his general abstention from Sabbath services lay in the detestable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... resistance, the honest perseverance might have been; but the worst faults of boyhood have something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to be noted that of the entire household only Lady Wetherby could fairly be described as happy. It took very little to make Lady Wetherby happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete abstention from classical dancing—give her these and she asked no more. She was, moreover, delighted at Claire's engagement. It seemed to her, for she had no knowledge of the existence of Lord Dawlish, a genuine manifestation of Love's Young Dream. She liked Dudley ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of abstention was converted into ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... my freedom from the diseases to which others succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the army, I had constructed a theory—on premises that were doubtless as insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon—that drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious one, which sapped away the energy. I took some trouble ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... never got up in the morning without looking forward to seeing her and hearing her voice before he should lie down again. A man more like others would have said to himself that no promise could bind him to anything more than the performance of an action, or the abstention from one, and that the right of dreaming was his own for ever. But Zorzi judged differently. He had a sensitiveness that was rather manly than masculine; he had scruples of which he was not ashamed, but which most men would laugh at; he had ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... hour when all but one ceased suddenly from wine; that one, who still continued to drink as he saw fit, was the host. He knew the reason of their abstention; he had heard the trumpet in the harbour that told the hour and proclaimed the fast and vigil, and he felt, as all did, that at last the figure and the presence of which none would speak—the figure and the presence of the Faith—had entered that room ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... asceticism, no misanthropical withdrawal from the duties of life, and the obligations that we owe to society. God's world is a good one; man's world is a bad one. It is man's world that we have to leave, but the lofties, sanctity requires no abstention from anything ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... that has been upon us, those that have had Churches regularly formed in them, have generally been under a more sensible Protection of Heaven." "Sirs," he says, "a Church-State well form'd may fortify you wonderfully!" He recommends abstention from profane swearing, furious cursing, Sabbath breaking, unchastity, dishonesty, robbing of God by defrauding the ministers of their dues, drunkenness, and revels and he reminds them that even the Indians have family prayers! Like his successors who ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Chinese cook and flung his knife and fork down upon his plate. In his elation he forgot the heat, the sticky flies. He forgot his usual custom of abstention during the day. He poured himself out a long drink of really good whisky, which he gulped down, smacking his lips with appreciation before flinging his customary curse at the head of his ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... especially, is owing to many causes. As ecclesiastical decoration I have already attributed it to the archaeological tendencies of our day, as well as to the aesthetic sentiment which protests, after so long a period of abstention, against the puritanical bareness and coldness of our national forms of worship. The obliteration of embroidery from the list of the arts was more complete in England than elsewhere; as the church of Rome still ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the middle of a war. And so, while the German violation of existing international law had the uncomfortable result for Germany of bringing the United States into the war, the barbarous raids upon London caused the British at last to turn aside from their commendable abstention from air raids on unfortified and non-military towns and prepare for ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... that he was perfectly well in mind, body and estate, the inclination to laugh was irresistible. This remarkable man began to speak in a husky, asthmatical voice, that gradually came out of the clouds and grew clear. His subject was, 'The Abstention of our Young Men from Politics: Causes and Cure.' He was evidently a master of his subject, and spoke without notes. He was absolutely without any pretence to oratory; and yet for thirty minutes he played upon his audience as it were ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... waiting for Henri's return—a cold and chilly business at any time—had become doubly cold. They were chilled to the bone now, their teeth chattering so hard that it was with difficulty they could speak, while a natural appetite—an appetite increased by their enforced abstention from food during a whole day, their rapid crossing of the country since they had broken out of Ruhleben, and their movements on this evening—was dulled by the temperature to which their bodies had been lowered. "B—b—beastly cold," Stuart admitted, and he was the very last individual ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... to the Government on all sorts of questions—and if he remained in Paris he would naturally go to the Senate and vote. I quite agreed that he couldn't suddenly detach himself from all political discussions—must take part in them and must vote. The policy of abstention has always seemed to me the weakest possible line in politics. If a man, for some reason or another, hasn't the courage of his opinions, he mustn't take any position where that opinion would carry weight. I told her we were going to Italy ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... taking sides with neither, because allies of both, is either safe for you or fair to us. Practically it is not as fair as it pretends to be. If the vanquished be defeated, and the victor conquer, through your refusing to join, what is the effect of your abstention but to leave the former to perish unaided, and to allow the latter to offend unhindered? And yet it were more honourable to join those who are not only the injured party, but your own kindred, and by so doing to defend the common interests of Sicily and ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... no intention of writing a treatise on vegetarianism, but we consider a few words of explanation necessary. Years back many persons were under the impression that by vegetarianism was meant simply an abstention from flesh-meat, but that fish was allowed. Such, however, is not the case, according to the rules of most of the Vegetarian Societies of the day. On the other hand, strictly speaking, real vegetarians would not be allowed the use of eggs and milk; but ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... three or four hundred Liberal peers, Lord Lansdowne—following the example of the Duke of Wellington—advised the Conservatives in the House of Lords to refrain from opposition. The result of this abstention was that the Lords' amendments were not persisted in, and the Bill passed the Lords on August 10th, 1911, by 131 ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... these preventive influences may be: a better economic and social organization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacy given by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation, by means of voluntary abstention, in ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... incalculable, her desire for the information dropped and her attitude to the question converted itself into a positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable—she could make their abstention enormously definite. There might indeed have been for Strether the portent of this in ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... revolutionary justice. They are both in perpetual antagonism: to serve the one is to oppose the other. As for me, my choice is made. I am for revolutionary justice as against social justice. Still, in the present case I am against abstention. I say that when a lucky chance brings us an affair like this we should be fools not ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... duties to God our Lord, "in whom we live, move, and have our being." There is nothing in us or about us, no positive perfection of ours whatsoever, that is not His gift, and a gift that He is not giving continually, else it would be lost to us. We are therefore bound in His regard, not merely to abstention but to act. And first, for inward acts, we must habitually feel, and at notable intervals we must actually elicit, sentiments of adoration and praise, of thanksgiving, of submission, of loyalty and love, as creatures to their Creator, and as vassals to their very good Lord, for He is our Creator ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... connected with the different conditions of life are to be performed throughout life only for the purpose of originating such knowledge. This the Strakra declares in Ve. S. IV, 1, 12; 16; III, 4, 33, and other places. The Vkyakra also declares that steady remembrance results only from abstention, and so on; his words being 'This (viz. steady remembrance meditation) is obtained through abstention (viveka), freeness of mind (vimoka), repetition (abhysa), works (kriy), virtuous conduct (kalyna), freedom from dejection (anavasda), absence of exultation (anuddharsha); ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Wagner's travail. But, as Wagner's most eminent English interpreter once put it to me at Bayreuth between the acts of Night Falls On The Gods, the master wanted to "Lohengrinize" again after his long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in 1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art) gave him exactly the libretto he required for that outbreak of the old operatic Adam in ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... that it may be unsettled by some artificial influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a little crude,—that very air of being the uncritical and slightly puzzled American is precisely the source of his ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... confess that at the moment of perpetrating the cruel joke, I felt that I wouldn't have missed the sight for anything. I was really extremely proud of my achievement, although conscious that I should have to pay dearly bye-and-bye for my freak in the way of "pandies" and forced abstention from food; but I little thought of the stern Nemesis at a later period of my life Providence ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... persons who wished to find Baines's must ask and learn. For Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would have been to condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze for unscrupulous self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines's from indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by the more thoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height of Mr. Baines's principles was greater even than they ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... largely as funds will permit of at weddings, funerals and other social gatherings, and also if obtainable at other times. They have a tribal panchayat or committee which imposes penalties for social offences, one punishment being the abstention from meat for a fixed period. A girl going wrong with a man of the caste is punished by a fine, but cases of unchastity among unmarried Baiga girls are rare. Among their pastimes dancing is one of the chief, and in their favourite dance, known as karma, the men ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... we take the ground that this question must be localized by the abstention of all the powers from ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... more than ever reinforced in my already-expressed opinion that Mr. Carville was a man of more ability than ambition. There was to me something bizarre in his deliberate abstention from any contact, save books, with the larger intellectual sphere to which he by right belonged. His naive confession of culture showed that he was aware of his latent power, but I was not sure whether he had ever realized the stern ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... national character, which has given rise to the motion presented by Mr. JANSSEN, it follows that every measure voted by the Congress tending to the adoption of a national meridian, will be, by the very fact of the abstention of France, an incomplete measure, and which will not answer the purpose sought by the Conference. I hasten to add, in order to avoid all erroneous interpretations which could be given to my words, that it would be the same, if, for instance, the meridian ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... from the careless way in which the chief spiritual food is treated. People go to the Holy Communion when they feel inclined, instead of according to a fixed rule, modifying the rule, just as they would in the case of their meals, by circumstances which may arise; spiritual sickness might dictate abstention from Communion for a while, just as bodily disease might ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... was circulated from hand to hand, the hilarity sensibly increasing with each passage. Their enforced abstention of late made them more than usually susceptible. Their faces were flushed, and their eyes began to be a little bloodshot. They continually forgot that the girl could not speak English, and their facetious remarks to each other were in reality ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the success of the operation.(2) A period of fasting prior to the experiment was also frequently prescribed as necessary, which, by weakening the body, must have been conducive to hallucination. Furthermore, abstention from the gratification of the sexual appetite was stipulated in certain cases, and this, no doubt, had a similar effect, especially as concerns magical evocations directed to the satisfaction of the sexual impulse. Add to ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... a little too much in playing Machiavelli, and in exalting abstention to a system. Their fondest desire at the present moment is not, we are persuaded, to march on Austria, but, on the contrary, not to march at all, and not to intervene in the war up to the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... not. For though an avaricious man should, for the sake of avoiding death, cast his riches into the sea, he will none the less remain avaricious; so, also, if a lustful man is downcast, because he cannot follow his bent, he does not, on the ground of abstention, cease to be lustful. In fact, these emotions are not so much concerned with the actual feasting, drinking, &c., as with the appetite and love of such. Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to these emotions, but high—mindedness and valour, whereof I ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... is not limited; election last held 1 December 1991 (next to be held NA 1998); prime minister appointed by the president with the consent of the legislature election results: Blaise COMPAORE elected president with 90.4% percent of the votes of those who voted (the abstention ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... my supporters are detained voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced this reason for abstention from ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... 'The relative merits of these virtues, truth and alms-giving, kind speech and abstention from injury to any creature, are known (measured) by their objective gravity (utility). Truth is (sometimes) more praiseworthy than some acts of charity; some of the latter again are more commendable than true speech. Similarly, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each other whenever there entered a new guest "all alone!" And we laughed and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of the fair ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... there had been a long discussion, in which Lassalle had persuaded the Minister to adopt universal suffrage. The letters continue with reference to the machinery of the elections, and means of preventing abstention from the poll, for which Lassalle professes to have found ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... some versions of this story Harun's abstention from his bride for a year is attributed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... as if indeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention. The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... our every day life with those who are not of our own Faith. Willingly or unwillingly we are bound to leave an impression of our belief in the business and social circles into which our life is cast. Our silence and abstention alone often militate against the Church. Let then the purity and spirituality of our lives, the honesty of our commercial relations, the sanctity of our home, bear witness to the sacredness of our religion and to the ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... seemed to like the lack of effusive words. Harry knew that his general had not tasted food. Neither had he. He had actually forgotten it in his keenness for his work, and now he was proud of the fact. He was proud, too, of the comradeship of abstention that it gave him with Stonewall Jackson. As he rode in silence by the side of the great commander he made for himself an ideal. He would strive in his own youthful way to show the zeal, the courage and the untiring devotion that ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... German bride who will not go down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, "I ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... often care to trust himself out of the last echoes of "the pipes that played for Charlie," and though his knowledge of contemporary life was infinitely wider than Stevenson's, we see many good reasons for his abstention from use of his knowledge. For example, it is obvious that he could not attempt a romance of the War in the Peninsula, and of life in London, let us say, while Wellington was holding Torres Vedras. Even among Stevenson's abandoned projects, there is not, I think, one which deals with English ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... captive of the instinct of preservation and of the senses, cares only about preserving himself, and all his concern is that others should not force their way into his sphere, should not disturb him, should not interrupt his idleness; and in return for their abstention or for the sake of example he refrains from forcing himself upon them, from interrupting their idleness, from disturbing them, from taking possession of them. "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you," he translates thus: I do not ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... presented to them a memorandum by which he engaged to abandon Piedmont in the event of her attacking Venice. But "he presupposed that the German Powers would also confine themselves to an attitude of abstention, and would avoid furnishing a pretext for an Italian attack of Austria." At length, the Piedmontese fleet, under Admiral Persano, succeeded in demolishing the more important portion of the fortifications of Ancona. A white flag was now displayed on the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of centuries of experience with climate,—abstention from solid food before the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;—and you find each repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... that, The word "continence" is taken by various people in two ways. For some understand continence to denote abstention from all venereal pleasure: thus the Apostle joins continence to chastity (Gal. 5:23). In this sense perfect continence is virginity in the first place, and widowhood in the second. Wherefore the same applies to continence understood ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... as the cause for his abstention since Madame von Marwitz regretted that Karen had missed the piece, Gregory said that he had heard too much perhaps. "I don't believe I should care for anything ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the last that Dr. Chrystal would spend with his congregation previous to his going away, and as he appeared before them at the morning service it was the general opinion that his abstention from work was taking place none too soon, for he certainly seemed to sorely ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the Faithful." So he said to her, "O damsel, what is the lexicographical meaning of Wuzu?" And she answered, "Philologically it signifieth cleanliness and freedom from impurities." Q "And of Salt or prayer?" "An invocation of good" Q "And of Ghusl?" "Purification." Q "And of Saum or fasting?" "Abstention." Q "And of Zakt?" "Increase. Q "And of Hajj or pilgrimage?" "Visitation." Q "And of Jihd?" "Repelling." With this the doctor's arguments were cut off,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... more nobly by abstention from his usual method of prolonged evolution. No caverns, however spacious, will serve his turn, because they have limits. He could practise this self-denial when his artistic sense found it needful, whether for variety of verse or for the greater intensity of effect ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... revolutionists declared themselves in favor of the principle of absolutely no reelection. Meantime the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court handed down a decision that the action of the Congress in sustaining the President was illegal, since in reality no elections had been held because of the abstention of voters and the seizure of the polls by revolutionists or government forces. "Above the constitution, nothing; above the constitution, no one," he declared. But as this assumption of a power of judgment on matters of purely political concern was equally a violation of the constitution ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... although, to be sure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon things were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and the flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste in the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patience with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Othello; while he constantly informs us that he "never saw anything so good in his life" as the now ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... this list—a very unusual occurrence in divisions of that body; especially in the exciting conditions that then prevailed. The absentees, or at least abstentions from voting, were fifteen Republicans and five Democrats, more than one-third of the body. That very unusual absence or abstention from voting may well be attributed to the very proper hesitancy of Senators to commit themselves in advance, either way, on a proposition that was reasonably certain to lead to an impeachment of the ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... Restoration rendered preaching by persons outside the communion of the Church of England illegal, and he was arrested and imprisoned in Bedford jail. Consistently refusing to give the promise of submission and abstention from preaching which at any time would have secured his release, he continued in prison for twelve years, not suffering particular discomfort and working for the support of his family by fastening the ends ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... justified in the power of the navy to protect our commerce and to protect our shores. The thought is with us always of the suffering and misery entailed, from which no country in Europe will escape by abstention, and from which no neutrality will save us. The amount of harm that can be done by an enemy ship to our trade is infinitesimal, compared with the amount of harm that must be done by the economic condition that is caused ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... whose opinions are entitled to our respect: "Yes—birth control may be necessary, but the only birth control which is justifiable is voluntary abstention from connubial relations." Such abstention would be either ineffective or, if effective, impracticable and harmful to ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... at conciliation emanate from one side, and if Germany and Austria can speculate on the abstention of Great Britain, Austria's demands will remain inflexible, and an agreement between her and Russia will become impossible. I am profoundly convinced that at the present moment, the more Great Britain, France and Russia can give a deep impression ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... melancholy an agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an "example." Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness. Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the gesticulations of a few "friendlies" who had ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... social differences between the members. For instance, several castes have been created by the degradation of members of the existing castes on account of their marriage of widows. The Pandarams of South India are held in distinction among the begging castes because of their abstention from meat, alcohol, and widow marriage. Indeed, it is interesting to note that a former caste status has been more frequently lost by, and degradation to a new caste has been consequent upon, the adoption of widow marriage, than through almost any other ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... papa dit que c'est la sante des enfants"! Parasitic worms of various kinds, though they often cause disease and death, are accepted and tolerated even by the most refined and luxurious, who risk infection rather than submit to the precaution of abstention from raw vegetables and fruits, or to the expenditure of trouble in cleansing those nests of infective germs. It is only within the last thirty or forty years that such cleanliness of body and of clothing and of house-fittings as will ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... three acts, was finally rewarded with the legal possession of a pretty heroine's person on the strength of a staggering lack of virtue. Indeed their only conception of the meaning of the word virtue was abstention from stealing other men's wives or from ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... more than another on which Punch prides himself—on which, nevertheless, he is constantly reproached by those who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and vice—it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist. This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment you on it before your venerable face; but permit me to say that there ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... to; Spartans of same stock as the; effect of superstition on; abstention of, from swine's flesh; customs ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in any line of study. In this work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress and customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The illustrations are of a high grade of photographic ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... reason for this, which is that the soul has an intuitional longing for the other world which is destined for it. There are many things from which the soul is bidden to abstain, such as theft, adultery, and so on, which it desires, and abstention from which causes it pain. Surely there must be reward awaiting the soul for this suffering. Often the soul suffers hatred, persecution and even death for pursuing justice as she is bidden to do. Surely she will be rewarded. Even when a person ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... I went to take the admiral's orders. The fort surrendered during the night. The garrison, two thousand strong, evacuated the place, and a convention was concluded with the general in command at Vera Cruz for the abstention of both sides from further hostilities. We then occupied the fort, and the admiral gave me orders to moor the Creole under its walls, and together with Comte de Gourdon, commanding the Cuirassier, to put prize crews on board the vessels of the Mexican Navy lying there. With ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... another way of regarding the saints; the purely material view, which denies the immediate action of supernatural power upon the details of natural daily life, mental or physical. This view—or rather, this abstention from seeing—is futile; because, without a particle of actual proof to sustain its negative, it refuses to admit possibilities of truth to which the really comprehensive and perceptive mind must always ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General of India in March 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of congratulation, his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to violate. He had brought from England the feeling of disquietude in regard to the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but it would appear that he was wholly undecided what line of ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Franz, you will cause me the deepest anxiety unless you satisfy me on this point, and every rational person will see that this can be done only by a long and careful cure, together with absolute rest and abstention from every effort and excitement. To speak plainly, you dear people cannot long go on as you do now. Others would be ruined very soon by this kind of thing, which, at last, must become detrimental to you also. Listen, my Franz, come ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... and important patronage by the vast number of petty posts which the system employed for collecting tickets places at their disposal. The tobacco monopoly is farmed out to a company, on whom any loss would fall in the first instance; but if the abstention from tobacco were continued long, the Government would soon feel the effects, through the inability of the company to keep up their present ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything that might lead up to the subject—this halting on all sides at the boundary of what they might not mention—brought before their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... between death and rebirth called antarabhava; (3) merit accrues not only by gift (tyaganvaya) but also by the fact of the actual use and advantage reaped by the man to whom the thing was given (paribhoganvaya pu@nya); (4) not only abstention from evil deeds but a declaration of intention to that end produces merit by itself alone; (5) they believe in a pudgala (soul) as distinct from the skandhas from which it can be said to be either different or non-different. "The pudgala ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... People do not buy American books any longer, because they can get English works, mere printed rags, but paying nothing to English authors, for a few cents. The rags, of course, fall to pieces, and are tossed into the waste-paper basket, and thus a habit of desultoriness and of abstention from books worth styling books grows and grows, like a noxious and paralysing parasite, over the American intellect. In this way our pleasant vices are made instruments to plague us, and the condition of the law, which leaves the British authors ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... pecuniary emulation, that any inclination in this direction is practically overborne and any incentive to diligence tends to be of no effect. The most imperative of these secondary demands of emulation, as well as the one of widest scope, is the requirement of abstention from productive work. This is true in an especial degree for the barbarian stage of culture. During the predatory culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought with weakness and subjection to a master. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to persuade her. He believed that she had a very sweet reason behind her abstention. She had had Robin all to herself for many months; perhaps she thought the father ought to have his turn now, perhaps to-day she was handing over her little son to his father for the education which always ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... which they dared not avow till their power of carrying them into effect should be by this first acquisition secured." But the alarm which the spread of revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some of which were not, indeed, unwarranted by precedent, but others ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... secretarial staff. Thrift had become with him more than a habit. It was a positive obsession. It revealed itself in such petty meannesses as a perpetual cadging for matches or small change and a careful abstention from any offer of hospitality. Never in the whole course of his service had Bruce Wright heard of Mr. Jeekes taking anybody out to lunch or extending any of the usual hospitalities of life. He was not a little surprised, therefore, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... wholehearted desire after the one supreme good there must be resolute averting of desire from 'sinners.' In this world full of evil there will be no vigorous longing for good and God, unless there be determined abstention from the opposite. We have but a limited quantity of energy, and if it is frittered away on multifarious creatures, none will be left to consecrate to God. There are lakes which discharge their waters at both ends, sending one stream east to the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... faced her. She was startled at his expression. He was facing the most dreadful, not mere thought of ruin to him and his—"Suzuki San is liar and thief. Fifty ryo[u] in hand the promise was for abstention. Now he demands twenty ryo[u] more—the interest on the debt in full." His voice rose to a harsh scream. He laughed despairingly. "Seventy-five ryo[u] interest, for the loan of a month; and that loan forced on this Cho[u]zaemon by Ito[u] Kwaiba! Kibei has squandered everything. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... streets, or to sit in the St. Stephen's Green Park. She knew every bird in the Park, those that had chickens and those that had had chickens, and those that never had any chickens at all—these latter were usually drakes, and had reason on their side for an abstention which might otherwise have appeared remarkable, but they did not deserve the pity which Mary lavished on their childlessness, nor the extra pieces of bread with which she sought to recompense them. She loved to watch the ducklings swimming ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens |
