Refrained Quotes & Sayings

You have behaved in an exemplary manner until now. Even when you could have gained by doing something wrong, you refrained from doing so. You didn't fall prey to the logic of doing a small wrong for the sake of the greater good; of the ends justifying the means. That takes moral courage. — Amish Tripathi

I sedulously refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves to run away from their masters. — Hiram Rhodes Revels

It is simply not true that "religion" is always aggressive. Sometimes it has actually put a brake on violence. In the ninth century BCE, Indian ritualists extracted all violence from the liturgy and created the ideal of ahimsa, "nonviolence." The medieval Peace and Truce of God forced knights to stop terrorizing the poor and outlawed violence from Wednesday to Sunday each week. Most dramatically, after the Bar Kokhba war, the rabbis reinterpreted the scriptures so effectively that Jews refrained from political aggression for a millennium. Such successes have been rare. Because of the inherent violence of the states in which we live, the best that prophets and sages have been able to do is provide an alternative. — Karen Armstrong

I looked back to see Holmes mincing within my footsteps, his skirt drawn up to reveal the trousers below. Were it not for the threat hanging over us, I would have given out with a girlish giggle at the sight, but I refrained. I passed the gates with the revolver in my hand, but there was no human there, only a scurry in the dustbins. — Laurie R. King

I refrained from writing another one, thinking to myself: Never mind, I will prove that I am able to become a greater scientist than some of you, even without the title of doctor. — Hermann Oberth

As a musician, I have always refrained from criticizing another artist. — Jill Sobule

And so the Red Cyclists duly arrived, accompanied by the Chief Cyclist (in Berlin he would be called General Director to the Messenger Boys). The box in question was big and oblong, and I had taken great pains to provide admonitions such as "Glass!", "Fragile!", "Careful!" and "This side up!" The old egg box contained nothing more than my humble remains, of course, but I had refrained from letting them nail the lid shut because I emphatically wanted to be seen as the beautiful corpse that I was. I also wanted to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings at hand.

"My Burial — Hanns Heinz Ewers

About two hours afterwards Gethryn discovered a suitable retort, but, coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to repartees, refrained from speaking it. — P.G. Wodehouse

Grip's favorite painting didn't contain a single figure. 'Seven A.M.' showed distant trees on one side, and on the other a storefront that time had passed by. So still. Some kind of story could probably be told, but one refrained from asking questions. The light and shadows convinced the viewer to exist in the moment. Hopper had drawn sharp lines where the sun cast shadows on the white walls inside the window, while outside the ground gleamed like warm sand. The hands of an old wall clock suggested that the time was seven. Someone who should have been there was somewhere else. Yet nothing was missing. With the morning light streaming down on the ground and in through the window, time might as well have stopped - so the clock always stood at seven.
Just like that, a place where nothing ever changes. — Robert Karjel

Yes, Harry, you can love, said Dumbledore, who looked as though he knew perfectly well what Harry had just refrained from saying. Which, given everything that has happened to you, is a great and remarkable thing. — J.K. Rowling

Against all expectations, the symptoms of Van Gogh's mental illness are conspicuous by their almost complete absence from his letters. Much as he chose not to paint before he had fully recovered from one of his attacks, so he refrained from writing at times of crisis. Throughout his life, admittedly, his letters bear witness to a man possessed, frequently agitated, enraged, dejected, obsessed, but never deranged, or emotionally or intellectually unstable. — Vincent Van Gogh

have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once. — Anonymous

Cal had told her all girls had it, it was natural as breathing,, it was a sign they were growing up, and they had it until they were in their fifties. At the time, Jean Louise was so overcome with despair at the prospect of being too old to enjoy anything when it would finally be over, she refrained from pursuing the subject. — Harper Lee

Brentford gave the polite smile of a man who talks daily with a living mechanical head about a city in the Arctic Circle governed by hermaphrodite Siamese twins born from a dead woman, and refrained from further comments about the probable and improbable. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

There. But as they were in a public place and as she was dressed like a nun, he refrained. "Come, hurry!" he said — Christopher Buckley

The door is in front of you," he said. She turned her head slightly so that she could keep an eye on him even as she observed the basement door. "Any tricks up your sleeve? A secret password?" "Turning the knob will do it." "How very mundane." Alexandria reached for the door-knob at the same time he did. His arm curved around her, bringing their bodies close so that she smelled his clean, masculine scent and felt the heat of him right through their clothes. Hastily she dropped her hand. As he opened the door, she could have sworn she heard soft, taunting laughter in her ear. When she turned to glare at him, his face was all innocence. Alexandria refrained from kicking his shins and with great dignity walked into the brightly lit kitchen, proud of her self-control. Aidan — Christine Feehan

a girl in her twenties who might have been pretty had she refrained from drawing her eyebrows on with a marker. — Tosca Lee

In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer. — Michel De Montaigne

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people. — Aldous Huxley

Where I would like to discover facts, I find fancy. Where I would like to learn what I did, I learn only what I was thinking. Theyare loaded with opinion, moral thoughts, quick evaluations, youthful hopes and cares and sorrows. Occasionally, they manage to report something in exquisite honesty and accuracy. That is why I have refrained from burning them. — E.B. White

Another time I was working in the laundry, and the Sister opposite, while washing handkerchiefs, repeatedly splashed me with dirty water. My first impulse was to draw back and wipe my face, to show the offender I should be glad if she would behave more quietly; but the next minute I thought how foolish it was to refuse the treasures God offered me so generously, and I refrained from betraying my annoyance. On the contrary, I made such efforts to welcome the shower of dirty water, that at the end of half an hour I had taken quite a fancy to this novel kind of aspersion, and I resolved to come as often as I could to the happy spot where such treasures were freely bestowed. — Therese De Lisieux

A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group. — T. S. Eliot

Was floozy the kind of job that required good references? Matt doubted it, but he refrained from saying so. — Josh Lanyon

Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, man has never refrained from any folly of which he was capable. — Bertrand Russell

Their religion is of the strictest sort, Stephen. Almost everything is forbidden to them except carpets." Stephen watched them as they went mournfully about the market, these men whose mouths were perpetually closed lest they spoke some forbidden word, whose eyes were perpetually averted from forbidden sights, whose hands refrained at every moment from some forbidden act. It seemed to him that they did little more than half-exist. They might as well have been dreams or ghosts. In the silent town and the silent countryside only the hot wind seemed to have any real substance. Stephen felt he would not be surprized if one day the wind blew the town and its inhabitants entirely away. — Susanna Clarke

It was in this atmosphere of boozy wistfulness and dizzy exhaustion that Sylvia- along with Carol LeVarn- took her suitcase to the Barbizon roof and tossed each slip, stocking, sheath, and skirt into the night sky. "We took the elevator to the roof," recalls Carol, who refrained from tossing her own clothes off the Barbizon. "We stood there by the empty pool, which was all lit up. We were laughing. All this absurd phony fun we were having was over ... .We were just kind of giddy. I didn't see it as Sylvia throwing off a false self. It was just fun- a 'good-bye to all that' sort of thing. — Elizabeth Winder

Every time you have with your mouth said well of godliness, and yet gone on in wickedness; or every time you have condemned sin in others, and yet have not refrained it yourselves; I say, every such word and conclusion that hath passed out of thy mouth, sinner, it shall be as a witness against thee in the day of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. — John Bunyan

My other treasure was my virginity, and I'd thought of selling it too, years back, to the steward's hunchback son. I had refrained, holding out -I told myself- for a higher bidder. Now I fancied myself ruler of an impregnable realm. — Sandra Gulland

Flidais clapped her hands in delight.
"Oh, I bet he nearly shat kine!"
That made me laugh - I hadn't heard that expression in a long, long time. I refrained from telling her that the modern expression would be "he had a cow", because I liked the original better.
"Yes, the kine he nearly shat would have fed several clans. — Kevin Hearne

Let there be a child, who should,
not be taught.
Let there be a child, who should,
be refrained from books.
Let him not hear,
don't preach him, dear.
Don't let him read the quotations,
on internet and make them his passion.
Don't tell him stories of successful,
and make them his anthem.
Allow him to grow unto what,
he is to know. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

We were young, she continued, while she had a bad heart. Did we not want to earn our tips, she asked us and, cowed, we refrained from introducing the subject again.
Her bad heart, I noticed, did not force her to abstain from smoking, or from eating large portions of puddings. Every time I heard her opening how she could not carry anything heavy, I thought sourly "except yourself". — Toni Maguire

A single doctor, with the body of a Greek god, sat across from me at a candlelit table, and all I could think about was a greasy-fingered motorcycle mechanic.
I refrained from smacking my own forehead. — Lisa Kessler

When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person. — Cassandra Clare

Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also - and this was the highest proof of his greatness - he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.
Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. — W.E.B. Du Bois

You are too kind." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "But what has marriage to offer me that I don't already have?"
There were many ways to answer that question, but having care for her innocence, Lachlan refrained from the blunt one. One glance at that beautiful face and lush body, and he need look no further for a reason why the lass should be wed: swiving. And lots of it. — Monica McCarty

The tango, by 1914, had been officially declared immoral, and dancers went through its showy steps under threat of being dragged off the floor to jail unless light was visible between the partners and they refrained from doing any demoralizing dance steps, like "snake-wiggling" at the shoulders. — Christine Wiltz

He might have mocked himself if he hadn't been tired of always mocking at what others took seriously. It was easier to mock, of course, but other people refrained, and not always because they lacked the imagination or sense of humor required to mock. Sometimes they refrained because they dared to long for something that was not easily grasped, something that might slip away if one did not pay it the proper respect - prayerful respect, the sort that moved one to remove one's hat by the side of a grave, or to bow one's head to soldiers marching off to war, even while damning the fat MPs that sent them to die. Life was not all for mockery. Nor was laughter. But it was harder to spot the prayerful moments when they called for laughter instead of tears. Tears spelled an end. Laughter could spell a beginning. — Meredith Duran

In retrospect, I didn't really want to be a slut. What I wanted and needed was a therapist who would consent to fucking me, but I doubted my parents' insurance would have covered that. I had a lot to figure out for myself and I did that by making poor decisions that summer. If some wise, authoritative adult could simply have explained why I wanted to do these things and then done some with me, I think I would have refrained from most of my sexual misadventures... — Valentine Glass

It is good to exercise patience. But never let your patience be the type that will keep you refrained from acting. — Israelmore Ayivor

I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture, but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people. — Augustus

Goya's savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god. — Henning Mankell

As a child, I was hyper, I was a clown and I was sensitive. Today I'm all of the above, except I've refrained from bouncing off the walls. — Nadine Velazquez

Politics had never been central to the Christian religious experience. Jesus had, after all, said that his Kingdom was not of this world. For centuries, the Jews of Europe had refrained from political involvement as a matter of principle. But politics was no secondary issue for Muslims. We have seen that it had been the theatre of their religious quest. Salvation did not mean redemption from sin, but the creation of a just society in which the individual could more easily make that existential surrender of his or her whole being that would bring fulfilment. The polity was therefore a matter of supreme importance, — Karen Armstrong

At Yale, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd grown up in Newark. In Newark, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd gone to Yale. — Jeff Hobbs

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European. — Frigyes Karinthy

Was tempted to quote Walden - "Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?" - but refrained. How can I get lonely, I asked, when there's still so much to read? — H.P. Lovecraft

only as idiocy! I hope that you will write to tell me along what curves your mind is moving. For my own part I feel that we are on the verge of amazing things. Long ago I fell back on books as the only permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable achievement of the human race. It saddens me to think that I shall have to die with thousands of books unread that would have given me noble and unblemished happiness. I will tell you a secret. I have never read King Lear, and have purposely refrained from doing so. If I were ever very ill I would only need to say to myself "You can't die yet, you haven't read Lear." That would bring me round, I know it would. You — Christopher Morley

There," he said, pointing. "We'll camp on the westward slope. No fires, and it would be greatly appreciated, Baron, if your men refrained from excessive noise." "I'll do what I can, my lord. But they're not peasants, y'know. Can't just flog them like your lot." "Maybe you should, milord," Dentos suggested. "Remind 'em they bleed the same colour as us peasants. — Anthony Ryan

who was it that had really sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him - not one of them had wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life - him, Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one. It was a system - a concurrence of circumstances. A system of some sort was killing him - Pierre - depriving him of life, of everything, annihilating him. — Leo Tolstoy

I think for more than half of my career, I have refrained from talking to the media. — Kathleen Battle

I would appreciate it if you refrained from neutering any of my pack mates, witch. — Milly Taiden

I got into the ICS in a pleasantly casual fashion. When I went to England my mother had impressed on me the need to appear for the competitive examinations which I had no intention of doing . (my heart was set on a carrier as a photo journalist). After I had refrained from taking my first shot at the exam , my mother lost patience - and also perhaps some of her abounding faith in an only child and sent me all the forms duly filled up for the ICS. She also indicated delicately that if I did not appear, my allowance would die a sudden death. I appeared; much to my surprise, I got in. Even more to my surprise I topped the list of Indian candidates, and ever since then I have had no faith in competitive examination — R.P. Noronha

Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret. — Peter Agre