Quotes & Sayings About Continence

As soon as you direct such a question outward to your fellow man and not inward to yourself, you have set yourself on a judgment seat and thereby judged yourself. You have robbed yourself of what you had won by your own continence; you have taken one step forward but ten backward: and then you have reason to weep over your obstinacy, your failure to improve, and your pride. — Tito Colliander

I reached for her, pushing back the fall of hair-it was heavy and thick and smooth to the touch-and tilted her chin so that the moonlight shone on her wet face.
We married each other that night, there on a bed of fallen pine needles-even today, the scent of pitch-pine stirs me-with Henry's distant flute for a wedding march and the arching white birch boughs for our basilica. At first, she quivered like an aspen, and I was ashamed at my lack of continence, yet I could not let go of her. I felt like Peleus on the beach, clinging to Thetis, only to find that, suddenly, it was she who held me; that same furnace in her nature that had flared up in anger blazed again, in passion. — Geraldine Brooks

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet. — Saint Augustine

You (God) have not only commanded continence, that is, from what things we are to restrain our love, but also justice, that is, on what we are to bestow our love. — Saint Augustine

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy. — Ernest Hemingway,

I was taught to read by my grandmother. Central to her method was a tale of unnatural love called 'The Duck and the Kangaroo'. Then, because my grandfather, Senator Gore, was blind, I was required early on to read grown-up books to him, mostly constitutional law and, of course, the Congressional Record. The later continence of my style is a miracle, considering those years of piping the additional remarks of Mr. Borah of Idaho. — Gore Vidal

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet)! — Augustine Of Hippo

For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state. — Meir Soloveichik

He who is chaste in flesh should not be proud, for he should know that he owes the gift of continence to another. — Pope Clement I

The fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence). Against such things there is no law [that can bring a charge]. - GALATIANS 5:22-23 — Joyce Meyer

I understand in retrospect that this was my first introduction to a conflict that dominates all our lives: the endless, irreconcilable conflict between the values of Athens and Jerusalem. On the one hand, very approximately, is the world not of hedonism but of tolerance of the recognition that sex and love have their ironic and perverse dimensions. On the other is the stone-faced demand for continence, sacrifice, and conformity, and the devising of ever-crueler punishments for deviance, all invoked as if this very fanaticism did not give its whole game away. — Christopher Hitchens

What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence! — Karl Kraus

What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. — John Milton

The ethos of redemption is realied in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires. — Pope John Paul II

[C]ontinence is a very important part of yoga. If a handful of people come forward with strong wills, nothing is impossible. One Buddha changed half the globe; one Jesus, three quarters of the world. We all have that capacity. (140) — Swami Satchidananda

For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. — Ignatius Of Loyola

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil? — John Milton

Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps. — Amos Bronson Alcott

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code
monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth
then fiddle with details ... even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365) — Robert A. Heinlein

Many good people, being influenced by the bold spirit of the times, are now seeking surgery for the wife or the husband so they may avoid pregnancies and comply with the strident voice demanding a reduction of children. It was never easy to bear and rear children, but easy things do not make for growth and development. But loud, blatant voices today shout 'fewer children' and offer the Pill, drugs, surgery, and even ugly abortion to accomplish that. Strange the proponents of depopulating the world seem never to have thought of continence! — Spencer W. Kimball

I do not often laugh, sir," answered the unknown. "As you may yourself discover by the expression of my continence. But yet I mean to preserve the right of laughing when I please. — Alexandre Dumas

Great are those two gifts, wisdom and continence: wisdom, forsooth, whereby we are formed in the knowledge of God; continence whereby we are not conformed to this world. — Saint Augustine

Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code. — Robert A. Heinlein

I thought that continence was a matter of our own strength, and I knew that I had not the strength: for in my utter foolishness I did not know the word of Your Scripture that none can be continent unless You give it. — Saint Augustine