Abstainer Versus Quotes & Sayings

The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it's going to go and where you'll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don't let anyone deter you from that. — Eartha Kitt

An abstainer is the sort of man you wouldn't want to drink with even if he did. — George Jean Nathan

Be proud to act like a normal human being. Keep daylight hours, get a regular job, and mix in the company of people with a fixed sense of right and wrong.
The Abstainer's Handbook (second edition, p. 89) — Matt Haig

In elections in Iceland, I have always been an abstainer. It seems like politics is such a small bundle of self-important people, who don't have much to do with things I'm interested in. — Bjork

His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer. The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men. — Wilkie Collins

We have history, you and I. You just don't know it yet. — Sarah Addison Allen

Champions don't do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they've learned. — Charles Duhigg

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. — Ambrose Bierce

I will not pretend to justify this espionage I carried on, and I will say openly that all these signs of a life full of intellectual curiosity, but thoroughly slovenly and disorderly at the same time, inspired me at first with aversion and mistrust. I am not only a middle-class man, living a regular life, fond of work and punctuality; I am also an abstainer and a nonsmoker, and these bottles in Haller's room pleased me even less than the rest of his artistic disorder. — Hermann Hesse

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. — Ambrose Bierce

Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it. — Shunryu Suzuki

When a critical mass of people have the Bible and apply what it teaches in their lives, a nation is transformed. — Loren Cunningham

Unless I am mistaken, it was Mr. Welch himself (an adamant total abstainer) who persuaded American Protestantism to abandon what the Lord obviously thought rather kindly of. — Robert Farrar Capon

Wine had such ill effects on Noah's health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long. — Will Rogers

The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning — Henry David Thoreau

And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us with contempt, as I supposed Mlle Swann to have done, and that we should think that she can never be ours, sometimes, too, it is enough that she should look on us kindly, as Mme de Guermantes was doing, and that we should think of her as almost ours already. — Marcel Proust

A conversation with a Moderator friend revealed another telling distinction. "I got a sundae from my favorite ice-cream store," she told me, "and it was delicious. But after a while, I could hardly taste it. I let a friend finish it." "I've never left ice cream unfinished in my life," I said. For Moderators, the first bite tastes the best, and then their pleasure gradually drops, and they might even stop eating before they're finished. For Abstainers, however, the desire for each bite is just as strong as for the first bite - or stronger, so they may want seconds, too. In other words, for Abstainers, having something makes them want it more; for Moderators, having something makes them want it less. — Gretchen Rubin

I give nightly praise to my Maker that I never cast a ballot to bring that lazy, disreputable, ill-tempered beast into what was once my home. I'm glad that I had the courage to go on record as opposing that illegitimate, shameless flea-bag that now shares my bed and board. You abstainer, you! — Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread. — Thomas Hood

Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm a recovering abstainer — Dean Cavanagh

Now that I know I'm an Upholder, an Abstainer, a Marathoner, a Finisher, and a Lark, and have spent a lot of time thinking about what is, and isn't, important to me, I'm much better able to shape my habits. — Gretchen Rubin

Like Dr. Johnson, I'm an Abstainer: I find it far easier to give up something altogether than to indulge moderately. And this distinction has profound implications for habits. — Gretchen Rubin

If coming up with ten ideas sounds too hard, then come up with twenty. — James Altucher

Do rhinoceroses cough? — Eugene Ionesco