Quotes & Sayings About Abstinence

If your heart says, "Maybe I shouldn't be doing this," listen to your heart, pray for strength, and get out of the situation immediately. — Jason Evert

If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals. — Leo Tolstoy

If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God. — William Ralph Inge

Look, choosing to wait until marriage makes me feel empowered. But if the same choice cripples you, then it wasn't the right one. — Rachael Allen

As Feministing commenter electron-Blue noted in response to the 2008 New York Times Magazine article "Students of Virginity," on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, "There were a WHOLE LOTTA us not having sex at Harvard . . . but none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for pete's sake. — Jessica Valenti

Jesus today has many lovers of his heavenly kingdom, but few of them carry His cross. He has many friends who ask for consolation, but few who pray for affliction. He has many companions to share His meals, but few to share His abstinence.
We all want to rejoice with Him, but few of us are willing to suffer anything for His sake. Many follow Jesus up to the breaking of the bread, but few go on to the drinking of the chalice of His passion. Many admire His miracles but few follow in the ignominy of His cross. — Thomas A Kempis

What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you go there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. — James C. Dobson

Consider another abstinence product: a gold rose pin handed out in schools or at Christian youth events. The pin is attached to a small card that reads, "You are like a beautiful rose. Each time you engage is pre-marital sex a previous petal is stripped away. Don't leave your future husband holding a bare stem. Abstain."Do we really want to teach our daughters that without their virginity they're nothing but a "bare stem"? — Jessica Valenti

Due to the paucity of intellect people do not realise that it is through the discipline of regulated abstinence that one can really enjoy the world. Your intellect must constantly check and control indiscriminate indulgence. — A. Parthasarathy

Surrender to sensuality paralyzes the powers of the moral person. — Josef Pieper

Taking the pledge will not make bad liquor good, but it will improve it. — Mark Twain

The local Cairo clergy offered to issue a fatwa recognizing Napoleon as the legitimate ruler of Egypt - provided the entire French army formally convert to Islam. Napoleon actually considered the offer, but when it became clear that the muftis' demand included mass adult circumcision and total abstinence from wine, the conversion plan was scrapped. — Tom Reiss

Use, do not abuse ... neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. — Voltaire

When Hamish and I loved each other for a whole year without making love, I did not realize that I had set the mould of my whole life. One could find endless reasons for our abstinence
fear, virtue, ignorance, perversion
but the fact remains that the Hamish pattern was to be endlessly repeated, and with increasing velocity and lack of depth, so that eventually the idea of love ended in me almost the day that it began. Nothing succeeds, they say, life success, and certainly nothing fails like failure. I was successful in my work, so I suppose other successes were too much to hope for. — Margaret Drabble

I was a teenager, we were pretty much fully indoctrinated, thanks to sexual scare tactics. I remember so many public-health commercials with a B-actor in a fake alley background warning us to use protection or telling us the only real safe choice was abstinence. We were highly frightened of sex from day one. There was no free-swinging '90s. — Michael Stipe

His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! — Charles Dickens

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organization that tells girls on college campuses that they should be looking for a husband, not taking women's studies classes. The judge who rules against a rape survivor because she didn't meet whatever standard for a victim he had in mind. The legislator who pushes a bill to limit young women's access to abortion because he doesn't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions. These are the people who are making the world a worse place, and a more dangerous one, at that, for girls and young women. We're just doing our best to live in it. — Jessica Valenti

When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal. — Lao-Tzu

I'm tied of hearing about temperance instead of abstinence, in order to please the cocktail crowd in church congregations. — Vance Havner

I'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse. — Joycelyn Elders

Sex is essentially deep. We become what we do with our bodies, and there is no deeper act than sex. — Dietrich Von Hildebrand

GENERAL MAXIMS FOR HEALTH. Rise early. Eat simple food. Take plenty of exercise. Never fear a little fatigue. Let not children be dressed in tight clothes; it is necessary their limbs and muscles should have full play, if you wish for either health or beauty. Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it. A few days' abstinence, and cold water for a beverage, has driven off many an approaching disease. If you find yourself really ill, send for a good physician. Have nothing to do with quacks; — Lydia Maria Francis Child

The diet is a twisted, noxious thing, all tortured abstinence and short-term fraud. I speak from bitter experience. As a restaurant critic, I eat to live and live to eat. And having a toxic aversion to exercise, there is little to prevent the inevitable bulging of my gut. Hence the need for the occasional diet. — Tom Parker Bowles

His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him
iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "Don't even fucking think about it."
Trez's first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother's grip. "I don't know what you're talking about - "
"Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point," iAm hissed.
Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. "I'm not going to ... " Fuck her came to mind, but God, he couldn't use the f-word around that female, even in the hypothetical. "You know, do anything."
"You actually expect me to believe that."
Trez's eyes flipped over to the doorway she'd disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no credibility on the subject of abstinence — J.R. Ward

Sixty years of virginity tried in vain to dam the waters of instinct as they burst through the granite of good intentions,the rock of irreproachablee conduct. — Rene Crevel

How is it that mankind can engineer condoms to prevent pregnancy and STDs and not be able to invent some sort of emotional safeguard? Is it even possible to abstain from falling in love? — Daria Snadowsky

My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health. — Robert E.Lee

All we are asking for is balance. I would like to think that I could walk into a public library and find not only works by Gloria Steinem but also those of Phyllis Schlafly. I would like to think a teenager could be taught in sex education that a serious alternative to abortion is teenage abstinence, or should pregnancy occur, that adoption might be preferable. I am not trying, as the ad says, to shove religion down anyone's throat. But I do think everyone has a right, and that the Christian voice is being chocked off. — Cal Thomas

The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest. — Wilhelm Reich

It is horrible! It is not the suffering and the death of the animals that is horrible, but the fact that the man without any need for so doing crushes his lofty feeling of sympathy and mercy for living creatures and does violence to himself that he may be cruel. The first element of moral life is abstinence. — Leo Tolstoy

Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger
not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I think our love was all the better for being stretched out by our necessity to study hard to keep up with our work. To have all the time in the world to devote to love may be idyllic for a summer, but linked sweetness long drawn out is the greater luxury. [ ... ] During these summer absences, I longed for her, and wrote to her, and loved her more than ever, abstinence sharpening the appetite. — Robertson Davies

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants. — Dick Cavett

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor. — William Temple

Most cultures traditionally link food and spirituality directly with periodic restrictions and celebrations punctuating the year. Abstinence from particular foods or full-on fasting is part of many religious traditions and holidays. — Marcus Samuelsson

The only way to ensure completely safe sex with a 40-foot long, 6-ton predator is abstinence. — Carrie Sessarego

I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence; the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving of sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn. — Wilfred Thesiger

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. — Joseph Heller

The abstinence-only programs and reclaimed-virginity movement make men and women ashamed of being sexual creatures before or outside of marriage. — Darrel Ray

To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Well, for me, gratuitous abstinence is just as bad as gratuitous sex. — Bianca Sommerland

I would doubt that virtue, to her, means abstinence. It is far more likely to mean courage, compassion, and the integrity to be brutally honest, first with yourself and then with others, and never to run away just because you are exhausted or afraid. — Anne Perry

And we can't discharge that moral responsibility by passing out contraceptives. Contraceptives have been circulating all over Uganda, and it is not clear how many people are using the things. The best contraceptive in this case is abstinence. — Eugene Rivers

Denial of one appetite sharpens the others. — Mason Cooley

We're doing a great disservice to our young people because the only protection is abstinence, as condoms have been proven fallible ... The federal government should not be telling young people to use condoms ... It's also an insult to teenagers, reducing them to the level of a dog that can't control its hormones. — Christine O'Donnell

While one may lose much because of avarice, nothing was ever accomplished by abstinence. — Isuna Hasekura

Chastity, like honesty, is a civic as well as a personal virtue. When a society loses chastity, it begins to destroy itself. — J. William Schickel

Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart. — Elif Shafak

But God's idea of a fast is less about what we're against and more about what we are for. (...) When we hear "fast," we put on a yoke of self-denial. When God said "fast," He meant to take off the yoke of oppression. The Isaiah 58 God is not about the mechanics of abstinence; it is a fast from self-obsession, greed, apathy, and elitism. When it becomes more about me than the marginalized I've been charged to serve, I become the confused voice in this passage: "Why have I fasted and you have not seen it? — Jen Hatmaker

Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage. — Thucydides

Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten. — Junot Diaz

When you're dating, abstinence is a greater expression of love than making love, because you're doing what's best for your beloved, not just what feels good in the moment. — Jason Evert

Moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful. — Xenophon

Atheism is not a religion. Abstinence is not a sex position. — Richard Dawkins

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society. — William Gilmore Simms

It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul. — Benedict Of Nursia

Like I said, biochemically, yes, you're addicted to me and I'm addicted to you. That's what love is. That's how the brain works. And that's okay! We're supposed to feel that way. It's pair bonding! But fine, if you're so worried about the sex, I'll stop fucking you and we can stay married." Abstinence — Leta Blake

Achieving true sobriety goes beyond abstinence. it's also about healing your soul, apologizing for damage you did to other, and seeking forgiveness. — Lou Gramm

Everything about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance. — James Boswell

The careless, the lukewarm Catholics should, above all, dread hell, for he is continually walking on the brink of the infernal abyss. He makes little of the precepts of hearing Mass, of the prescribed abstinence from flesh meat, he scruples not neglecting the religious training of his children, he associates with persons and frequents places that are to him an occasion of sin, he yields to impure thoughts, commits sins of impurity without remorse, gives way to his vindictive feelings against his neighbor, indulges in excess in eating and drinking, neglects prayer and the sacraments. Now is the time for him to be aroused from his life of sin, now is the time for him to give up sin and change his life, for if he defers doing so, it may soon be to late. This may, indeed, be the last warning that God gives him. — Fr. Martin Von Cochem

Abstinence is the worst form of perversion. — Guy De Maupassant

There is a great deal of political pressure to only talk about abstinence, and to deny support for condoms and education on using them. This policy will lead to the unnecessary deaths of many people. — Hillary Clinton

Abstinence-only education - the best STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) and pregnancy delivery system that politicians have ever devised. — Rachel Maddow

Which is recorded of Socrates, that he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul. — Marcus Aurelius

A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty. — Henry Home

Shan stared at his glass, then lifted it under his nose. It was the closest he would knowingly get to tasting the hard liquor. It was not because it would violate the vows of the monks, which he had not taken, but because somehow it felt as though it would violate his teachers who still sat behind prison wire in Lhadrung. — Eliot Pattison

This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence. — Charles Lamb

He was also a vociferous champion of abstinence from hard or spirituous liquors - but then no one's perfect. In — David McCullough

Dear Teens at Starbucks wearing 'Abstain from Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' t-shirts: Doesn't it depend on what my goals are? — John Green

Abstinence. It didn't even sound comfortable — Stephanie Laurens

I was vegetarian, trying to eat from fast-food restaurants without meat. I didn't know how to eat properly and I was starving. I was adrenalized to the eyeballs from performing. I was afraid that I was sick with AIDS. We were playing five shows a week. I even went through a period of abstinence where I didn't drink and stopped having sex. Which is crazy. Maybe I'm answering too many questions at once here, but this is where my mind was at the age of 25. — Michael Stipe

Sometimes being around children was the perfect abstinence program. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Abstinence is approved of God. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Pulpits today are full of preachers telling one-legged people to jump higher and run faster. Musician Rich Mullins once wrote, "I have attended church regularly since I was less than a week old. I've listened to sermons about virtue, sermons against vice. I have heard about money, time management, tithing, abstinence, and generosity. I've listened to thousands of sermons. But I could count on one hand the number [of sermons] that were a simple proclamation of the Gospel of Christ."4 — Tullian Tchividjian

Recommending or insisting on abstinence has been completely ineffective. — Bill Nye

All my heroes, I guess, like John Wayne and all those guys, they drank and they smoked and did all the manly things. It was expected of you. And now abstinence in all kinds of forms is a part of living. It's a pretty - I don't smoke anymore, I quit that 42 years ago — Larry Hagman

Dear Aunt Patty,
Thank you for coming to be part of what definitely ranks in the top five worst days of my life. While your generosity is appreciated, I am returning this gift, as forced bachelorhood necessitates total abstinence from bamboo placemats and matching napkin rings in my daily life.
Sincerely,
Emory
Too much? — Cary Attwell

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. — Herbert Kalmus

You always hold the key of repentance to unlock the prison door. If they throw the word diversity at you, grab hold of it and say, "I am already diverse, and I intend to stay diverse." If the word is tolerance, grab that one, too, saying, "I expect you to be tolerant of my lifestyle-obedience, integrity, abstinence, repentance." If the word is choice, tell them you choose good, old-fashioned morality. — Boyd K. Packer

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted. — Thomas Jefferson

Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins ... — T. Rafael Cimino

Professor Morgulis wrote: "The acuity of the senses is increased by fasting, and at the end of his 31 days' abstinence from food, Professor Levanzin could see twice as far as he could when his fast began. — Hilton Hotema

A virtuous abstinence from the joys of pederasty comes most easily to those who have no taste for it. — Oscar Wilde

Aye, well, he'll be wed a long time," he said callously. "Do him no harm to keep his breeches on for one night. And they do say that abstinence makes the heart grow firmer, no?"
"Absence," I said, dodging the spoon for a moment. "AND fonder. If anything's growing firmer from abstinence, it wouldn't be his heart. — Diana Gabaldon

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms. — Joycelyn Elders

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as "good" - worth talking about, protecting, and valuing - and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further. — Jessica Valenti

Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself. — Mark Twain

In theory, of course, abstinence is a foolproof method of preventing pregnancies and STDs and STIs (sexually transmitted diseases and sexually transmitted infections - you can have the latter without the former), just as starvation is a foolproof method of preventing obesity. But in reality the desires to love physically and to bond socially are fundamental to who we are as human beings; and the sex drive is so powerful, and the pleasures and psychological rewards so great, that recommending abstinence as a form of contraception and STI prevention is, in fact, to recommend pregnancy and infection by default. — Michael Shermer

Well, I think that abstinence has its place as part of a comprehensive health and sex education curriculum. It would be wrong to exclude abstinence from a health curriculum, because there are some potentially very serious ramifications for early sexual activity. — Kerry Healey

Jesus has many lovers of His kingdom of heaven, but he has few bearers of His Cross. Many desire His consolation, but few desire His tribulation. He finds many comrades in eating and drinking, but He finds few hands who will be with Him in His abstinence and fastingBut those who love Jesus purely for Himself, and not for their own profit or convenience, bless Him as heartily in temptation and tribulation and in all other adversities as they do in time of consolation. And if He never sent them consolation, they would still bless and praise Him. — Thomas A Kempis

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture. — Tom Perrotta

? People are still ill from the after-effects of these priestly quack-cures! For example, think of certain diets (avoidance of meat), of fasting, sexual abstinence — Anonymous

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul. — Frances E. Willard

Teenagers, especially girl ones, seem like the perfect canary-in-the-coal-mine characters to me. They capture American culture and its perversion, its hypocrisy - how absorbed we are with youth and beauty and sexualized imagery, for instance, while preaching abstinence and modesty. — Antonya Nelson

Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good. — Tom Perrotta

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there. — William Blake

If you own pornography of any kind, for the love of your future spouse, trash it immediately. — Jason Evert

Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence! Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit! Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification! — Anton Szandor LaVey

Life was pretty perfect. All because a sexy chick broke her abstinence pledge to enjoy a night of fun. One hot roll in bed blossomed into love, marriage, and quite a few baby carriages. I wouldn't have it any other way. — Bijou Hunter

Why ruin a young girl's life when you can make an older women SO very happy ! — Benjamin Franklin