Refrains Quotes & Sayings

There are Atheists in foxholes
Atheists in hurricanes
There are Atheists in all the roles
Denied by your refrains
Atheists are your fellow citizens
People who love and laugh and cry
Atheists are your relatives and friends
Don't insult them with a lie
Atheists in many foxholes served
And some have had to die
Give Atheists the thanks deserved
Don't dismiss them with a lie
Atheists are all around you
They work, they help, they care
And no matter what you think is true
Atheists are everywhere
And no matter what you think is true
They do not want your prayer — Edwin Kagin

If we all got what we deserved we'd all be dead. And yet somehow God refrains from smiting us. Whatever you ought to have done then, dying won't undo it now. — Rosamund Hodge

I had turned my mind from my survival just as a man suffering from a deadly sickness manages by a thousand tricks never to look at death squarely; or rather, as a woman alone in a large house refrains from looking into mirrors, and instead busies herself with trivial errands, so that she may catch no glimpse of the thing whose feet she hears at times on the stairs. — Gene Wolfe

For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell. — Michael Ondaatje

There are books, that one has for twenty years without reading them, that one always keeps at hand, that one takes along from city to city, from country to country, carefully packed, even when there is very little room, and perhaps one leafs through them while removing them from a trunk; yet one carefully refrains from reading even a complete sentence. Then after twenty years, there comes a moment when suddenly, as though under a high compulsion, one cannot help taking in such a book from beginning to end, at one sitting: it is like a revelation. Now one knows why one made such a fuss about it. It had to be with one for a long time; it had to travel; it had to occupy space; it had to be a burden; and now it has reached the goal of its voyage, now it reveals itself, now it illuminates the twenty bygone years it mutely lived with one. It could not say so much if it had not been there mutely the whole time, and what idiot would dare to assert that the same things had always been in it. — Elias Canetti

What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things. — Samuel Butler

Generosity knows how to count, but refrains. — Mason Cooley

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature
the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. — Rachel Carson

A giraffe is so much a lady that one refrains from thinking of her legs, but remembers her as floating over the plains in long garb, draperies of morning mist her mirage. — Isak Dinesen

One is not a great one because one defeats or harms other living beings. One is so called because one refrains from defeating or harming other living beings. — Gautama Buddha

Do not be deceived by a man's eloquence; rather whoever fulfils trusts and refrains from impugning people's honour is a real man. — Umar

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Mostly, we think that a self-expressive person is egotistical. That may be true but what about someone who refrains from expressing himself to protect his ego from bruised? — Assegid Habtewold

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms. — Arthur Rimbaud

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer. — John Maynard Keynes

To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth
demands. — Joseph Goebbels

If a man can control his body and mind and thereby refrains from eating animal flesh and wearing animal products, I say he will really be liberated. — Gautama Buddha

A man ranks lowest on the credibility index; if he refrains to appreciate the creative instinct of his acquaintances jealously, but likes the similar nature works of others especially famous persons. — Anuj

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains. — Miguel Ruiz

Such events cannot be ignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them. If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet. Though — Herman Melville

If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet. — Herman Melville

Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the sentimental air is never thicker than at Christmas. The Incarnation is messy, dirty, and resonates with the crucifixion. We need a new wave of carol writing that can gradually swill out the nonsense and catch the piercing, joy-through-pain refrains of the New Testament. — Jeremy Begbie

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability. — Oliver Sacks

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world. — Hilary Mantel

When the superior programmer refrains from coding, his force is felt for a thousand miles. — Eric S. Raymond

Much of my experience with language was formed in the church, which has an oral tradition. There are lots of repetitions in prayers and song refrains. There's a sense of incantation, that if you call not once and not twice but for a third time, the spirit appears. — Alice McDermott

Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution. — Jean Lorrain

It is indeed surprising that a man inspite of his belief in the Fire of Jahannum is still able to laugh, and inspite of his belief in Maut he is able to be happy. Inspite of believing in the Reckoning, he commits evil deeds. Inspite of believing in Taqdeer, he grieves. Inspite of observing the world with its changes, he feels contented with it. Inspite of believing in Jannat, he refrains from righteous deeds. — Moses

For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains. — John Milton

[Duration is] the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former state. — Henri Bergson

It is professional snobbery that refrains training rookies. — Aniruddha Sastikar

To pleasant songs my work was once given, and bright were all my labors then; / But now in tears to sad refrains I must return. — Deborah Harkness

It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books. — William, Saroyan

The heart desires, the hand refrains. The Godhead fires, the soul attains. — William Morris

I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning. — Edward Hirsch

The Hawk hired fifty harpers and jesters and taught them new songs. Songs about the puny fairy fool who had been chased away from Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea by the legendary
Hawk. And being such a legend in his own time, his tales were ceded great truth and staying power. The players
were delighted with the epic grandeur of such a wild tale. When they had rehearsed to perfection the ditties and
refrains portraying the defeat of the fool, the Hawk sent them into the counties of Scotland and England. Grimm
accompanied the group of players traveling to Edinburgh to help spread the tale himself, while Hawk spent late hours by the candle scribbling, crossing out and perfecting his command for when the fool came. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he would reach for his set of sharp awls and blades and begin carving toy soldiers and dolls, one by one. — Karen Marie Moning

Whoever desires Paradise, proceeds towards goodness; whoever fears Hell, refrains from the impulses of passions; whoever believes firmly in death, detests wordly life; and whoever recognises the worldly life, the trials and tribulations (of life) become slight for him. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean. — Aristotle.

It was a time when I imagined getting married in a simple, wishful way. The time when someone promised to take care of you, promised they would notice if you were sad, or tired, or hated food that tasted like the chill of the refrigerator. Who promised their lives would run parallel to yours. My mother must have known and stayed anyway, and what did that mean about love? It was never going to be safe - all the mournful refrains of songs that despaired you didn't love me the way I loved you. — Emma Cline

The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing. — Henrik Ibsen

How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting. — Karl Kraus

The big difference between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses, and the warrior refrains. Victims repress because they are afraid to show the emotions, afraid to say what they want to say. To refrain is not the same thing as repression. To refrain is to hold the emotions and to express them in the right moment, not before, not later. That is why warriors are impeccable. They have complete control over their own emotions and therefore over their own behavior. — Miguel Ruiz