Quotes & Sayings About Restraint

Ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot. — Russell Kirk

Elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it may seem superb,-such power and such restraint, combined, are noble,-but a quality carried to excess defeats itself. — Clarence Day

I was much affected by the internal troubles of the Punch family; I thought that with a little more tact on the part of Mrs. Punch and some restraint held over a temper, naturally violent, by Mr. Punch, a great deal of this sad misunderstanding might have been prevented. — Edmund Gosse

I knew these elements were intended for me and me alone. There were no endearments, but I understood in part because of this restraint. He knew how much I hated words like love. — Jeff VanderMeer

When you take the high road you will see things that some people can't. — Shannon L. Alder

The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint; the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him — Charlotte Bronte

The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy. — Winston S. Churchill

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving. — Woodrow Wilson

It is hard to remain iconoclastic when standing waist-deep in the shards of smashed icons. — George F. Will

True evil - conscious, calculating evil - does not seek to destroy life, but rather encourage it. True evil - malicious in every action - cheers life on. True evil - defiled in every pursuit - is not, as Max Andrews proposes, maximally selfish, rather full of restraint and accommodating in every way to the needs of men, mice, mushrooms, and microbes. True evil - debased in every motion - promotes, defends, and even admires life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn. True evil - known only to itself - urges life to grow more complex, more bold, more adventurous and more expressive, for only then is it at its most vulnerable, and when it is at its most vulnerable it is pregnant with possibility. Nothing, after all, can be truly lost or truly broken before it is first acquired, held to the bosom, adored, and cherished. — John Zande

It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. — T.H. White

Sometimes, humanity surprises me with all its lack of control over the primordial urges. These innate urges are the biological traits that make us similar to the rest of the animal kingdom. But the modern qualities that make us superior to all the animals are intellect and self-control. — Abhijit Naskar

He's spent his formative years surrounded by men incapable of restraint when it comes to flirting outrageously with their wives. Each one of them ... is a cocky, arrogant, overconfident bugger." She grinned. "But you won't find men who are more loyal or loving to their wives." Her expression turned serious. "We've all been through a lot. As has Cole. Like us, he knows what's important. And he's been deeply influenced by the men in his life. — Samantha Young

But at the heart of character is the ability to restrain our desires. As a man grows in character, he builds the muscles of self-restraint. — Richard E. Simmons III

I SHALL WIN!" She exclaimed. "You'll see! When the smoke of battle clears away I shall be a rainbow again
and, undying name
an altar of fire that you have tried to dash to hell. I shall weave a rose wreath and hang it round your neck. You will call it a yoke of bondage and curse it
no matter. You are afraid of the light I give you. You crouch in the darkness. Come, take my hand, I will lead you." And her valediction, intimating in its restraint whole words of love and grief and passionate regret, was, simply, Miriam. — T.C. Boyle

Dangerous because your present Administration and its specialized agencies by all accounts know no restraint in hitting out at any perceived enemy of America, and nobody or nothing can protect one from their vindictiveness. — Breyten Breytenbach

When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education ... the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint ... It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold ... they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters. — Alexis De Tocqueville

People who live on their own do tend to witter. We live without restraint, verbal at any rate.' Nigel — Kate Atkinson

Passion ought to be tempered with restraint. — Maya Rodale

We may be entering a new phase of history, a time when we begin to rediscover ... the traditional teaching that power must entail restraint and responsibility, the ancient awareness that we are interdependent with all of nature and that our sense of community must take in the whole of creation. — Donald Worster

People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. — Eric Hoffer

The only time the press doesn't sensationalize information is when one of their own is kidnapped. Interesting how they show restraint then. — Jim Norton

The formal relationship, enforced by the institution, is that one person's word means everything and the other's means almost nothing; one person can command the other to do just about anything, and refusal can result in total physical restraint. — Piper Kerman

Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny. — William Blackstone

With restraint she didn't realize she had, she tore her mouth from his.
He let out a growl of protest, his eyes dark and filled with hunger. The thought of getting devoured by him had all her muscles pulling taut.
"I don't want to be with your brother," she blurted.
She'd come to terms with the fact that when she mated it might be with two males. Unlike some of her friends, she'd adjusted to that part of this culture. But she and Con weren't getting mated and she didn't want to be with anyone else. She needed that to be clear to him.
"Good." The word came out as a rumble. "Do you want to be with anyone else?"
Did he seriously have to ask?
She shook her head.
He nipped at her jaw. "Say it." A soft, dominant demand.
Another rush of heat flooded her at the command in his tone.
"No. Just you."

-Leilani & Con — Savannah Stuart

You have the blood of warriors in your veins. The kind of men who protect what is theirs and love without restraint. I want that love and I want you. (Gabrielle)
It's all yours. You're not getting much out of this deal since all I own is what I can carry in two hands. (Carlos)
Great. That means I get to decorate the house the way I want. (Gabrielle) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Healthy parenting is especially challenging when our own childhoods weren't healthy. It requires energy, attention, and constant restraint. Realize that you need healing. Take time out to nurture yourself. — Vimala McClure

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The danger is one which democracy by itself does not suffice to avert. A democracy in which the majority exercises its power without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered. — Bertrand Russell

libido, or concupiscence, a tending toward certain things in defiance of rational restraint. — Fulton J. Sheen

Dedication to goodness-dedication in response to an inner moral mandate rather than external restraint-was both the antidote to the pain and the source of great happiness. — Sylvia Boorstein

The fine art of restraint, timely practised, is too beautiful, to go against. — Kamini Arichandran

A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb. — Leo Szilard

Mother had the social restraint of an ambassador. — Robert A. Heinlein

I too took the plunge - the vow to observe brahmacharya for life. I must confess that I had not then fully realized the magnitude and immensity of the task I undertook. The difficulties are even today staring me in the face. The importance of the vow is being more and more borne in upon me. Life without brahmacharya appears to me to be insipid and animal-like. The brute by nature knows no self-restraint. Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint. What formerly appeared to me to be extravagant praise of brahmacharya in our religious books seems now, with increasing clearness every day, to be absolutely proper and founded on experience. — Mahatma Gandhi

Honor sometimes means doing something very unwise. Behaving like an idiot is better than dishonor. To this day I blush for having chosen sensible restraint over common decency. — Amelie Nothomb

Quoting God's Word in the present tense infuses our hearts with holy restraint and diffuses our reactions so we don't spew. — Lysa TerKeurst

With the sole aim of liberating themselves from the servitude of religion, which alone could preserve them in society, and, lacking any other restraint, they turned their backs upon the true God of their fathers, Adam and Noah, and descended into a bestial liberty in which, dispersed throughout the great forest of the earth, they lost their language and weakened every social custom. — Giambattista Vico

The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery. — Steven James

In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the status of the triffid was thus made quite clear. But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they quickly became a scourge. — John Wyndham

Restraint is the better part of beauty. — Frances Gray Patton

Sometimes local, state and federal laws so clearly run afoul of the Constitution that the court must step in and strike them down. In most cases, the court performs this admirably and with great restraint. — Mike DeWine

And there was something both frustrating and maddeningly arousing about that. His restraint made something burn low and deep in her belly, and then his mouth, oh God his mouth. He tasted like cinnamon, again, and every now and then he'd pull away, just a little - just enough to make her want to drag him back. Before giving her a teasing lick with that perfect, curling tongue of his. It set all the nerve endings in her upper lip on fire. — Charlotte Stein

I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished. — Djuna Barnes

He ate with all the restraint of a nymphomaniac at an orgy. — Thaddeus White

For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control. — Samuel Smiles

It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave. — Marya Mannes

Self-regulation is not simply a moral characteristic. It is biologically healthy for both your mind and the body. — Abhijit Naskar

A man without equals is a dangerous man indeed. He must exercise the most difficult of attributes, restraint. — Daniel McHugh

What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Restraint never ruins one's health. What ruins it,is not restraint but outward suppression. A really self-restrained person grows every day from strength to strength and from peace to more peace. The very first step in self-restraint is the restraint of thoughts. — Mahatma Gandhi

Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. — William Shenstone

When every one is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before"; and the only reason his prophecy did not come true was the constitutional restraint of the nation-state, while today our only hope that it will not come true in the future is based on the constitutional restraints of the American republic plus the technological restraints of the nuclear age. — Hannah Arendt

Madonna has no equal at getting attention. She often seems to behave like someone who has been under severe restraint and can now say and do whatever she likes without fear of reprisal. She delights in being challenged, in telling more than she planned, in going further than she had intended. She will answer any question because she is genuinely interested in her own reply. A conversation or an interview then can become an opportunity for self-discovery, or just discovery. It's a hearty mix of self-consciousness and self-confidence. It's a type of courage, this free fall into the perplexing public now. — Carrie Fisher

MARIA: But unluckily that iron gate, that Ha, Ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. I cannot get out, as the starling said.
HENRY: And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited. — Jane Austen

There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated. — Henry L. Stimson

In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war; we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint. — Lyndon B. Johnson

It is only rogues who feel the restraints of law. — J.G. Holland

half Scottish, respectable, and imbued with the powerful emotional restraint that those races have inherited somehow (via God knows what route) from the Spartans. It was a matter of self-conquest, refusal to show weakness, refusal to become a burden to others. This inheritance does not diminish one's natural sympathies, it merely makes them harder to express and to receive, and it is a legacy which it is extremely hard to unlearn. — Louis De Bernieres

Addressing global resentment cannot be put off. If we do not learn to use our predominant power with great restraint, we will antagonize the world. — Lee H. Hamilton

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty. — H.P. Lovecraft

I believe that the one thing that has come out of this
extraordinary
meeting this morning is an awareness that we have, perhaps, been careless about the critical relationship between human and pegasus, careless in our resignation that no better bond than what we are accustomed to can exist. The king agrees with you that his daughter and Lrrianay's son suggest a different way. But the king's view, and indeed hope, for that way is diametrically opposed to your own. Bring what the histories can tell us both, and the councils will decide whose concept of the way forward has more merit.
The king is prepared to consider the possibility that your outburst arose from a dedication to the well-being of our country too profound for restraint; but he is only barely prepared so to consider it. You may leave us. Now. — Robin McKinley

It dawned upon me that fasting could be made as powerful a weapon of indulgence as of restraint — Mahatma Gandhi

No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty
a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants. — J.G. Holland

But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America's strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect. — President Barack Obama

Love frees us of all pain, or of any restraint.
Once a circle that ever widens without end.
Various colors it shines in our lives to paint
Excelsis, glorious manifestation to befriend. — Ana Claudia Antunes

Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen. — David McCullough

restraint equals indulgence — Barbara Kingsolver

There is nothing more effective in igniting a man's desire than a woman's passion. To see the fire in your eyes, to feel the fire in your blood as you touch me, it sets me on fire too. Do you imagine I would prefer to kiss a woman who responds only with -- with compliance? No, I would not. No red-blooded man would. Never apologize for passion. Restraint, Julia, has no place in lovemaking. — Marguerite Kaye

Weapons are the tools of violence;all decent men detest them.Weapons are the tools of fear;a decent man will avoid themexcept in the direst necessityand, if compelled, will use themonly with the utmost restraint.Peace is his highest value.If the peace has been shattered,how can he be content?His enemies are not demons,but human beings like himself.He doesn't wish them personal harm.Nor does he rejoice in victory.How could he rejoice in victoryand delight in the slaughter of men?He enters a battle gravely,with sorrow and with great compassion,as if he were attending a funeral — Laozi

Products produced cheaply create ugly work lives and ugly households and ugly communities. Profits produced quickly cannot purchase patience and care. Patience is beautiful. Restraint and care are beautiful. Peace is beautiful. A small, diversified organic farm is beautiful. — Woody Tasch

Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self. — Kafka, Franz

Murder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster. — Louise Penny

I have always had an interest in performers who play against the most obvious of expectations and are able to find something secret, something withheld, and some level of restraint. — Todd Haynes

Self-restraint is feeling your oats without sowing them. — Shannon Fife

Yet Malone, remarkably, was a model of restraint compared with others, such as John Payne Collier, who was also a scholar of great gifts, but grew so frustrated at the difficulty of finding physical evidence concerning Shakespeare's life that he began to create his own, forging documents to bolster his arguments if not, ultimately, his reputation. He was eventually exposed when the keeper of mineralogy at the British Museum proved with a series of ingenious chemical tests that several of Collier's "discoveries" had been written in pencil and then traced over and that the ink in the forged passages was demonstrably not ancient. It was essentially the birth of forensic science. This was in 1859. — Bill Bryson

Humility, which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace; that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption. — Russell Kirk

The rigorousness of restraint is other than the one of the "exactitude" of a loose, indifferent "reasoning" which belongs equally to everyone and whose results are compelling within the sphere of its own claims to certainty. Such results are compelling, however, only because the claim to truth is content with the correctness that comes from deduction and from insertion into a regulated and calculable order. — Martin Heidegger

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint. — Joseph Conrad

Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion? ... Let us show that we can temper together those opposite elements of liberty and restraint into one consistent whole. Let us set an example for the world of a law-abiding America glorying in its freedom as well as its respect for law. — Gerald R. Ford

Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray. — Pope John Paul II

Too many members of Congress are too involved in grabbing what they can for their states or districts without enough emphasis on overall fiscal restraint for the sake of the nation as a whole. We need a new era of fiscal sanity. I am not willing to subject my children and grandchildren to the level of debt that Congress has created. — John Ensign

What are you looking at, Matthias?" The low thrum of her voice vibrated straight through him.
He kept his eyes on the ceiling, whispering softly. "Nothing."
"Matthias, are you praying?"
"Possibly."
"For restraint?" she said sweetly.
"You really are a witch."
"I'm not proper, Matthias."
"I am aware of this." Miserably, keenly, hungrily aware.
"And I'm sorry to inform you, but you're not proper either."
His gaze dropped to her now. "I - "
"How many rules have you broken since you met me? How many laws? They won't be the last. Nothing about us will ever be proper," she said. She tilted her face up to his. So close now it was as if they were already touching. "Not the way we met. Not the life we lead. And not the way we kiss. — Leigh Bardugo

I am so much more than the hint of rage you discern hiding behind my restraint. I am so much more than the words I use. I am bottled heartache and the lies I tell myself when everyone else is asleep. — Nessie Q.

Ours is peculiarly an age of irreverence, and as the consequence, the spirit of lawlessness, which brooks no restraint and which is desirous of casting off everything which interferes with the free course of self-will, is rapidly engulfing the earth like some giant tidal — Arthur W. Pink

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all is inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul - than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. — Joseph Conrad

The simplest things that need self-restraint are the most difficult to replicate. — Irving Stone

It is specially characteristic of the German that the more servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other; restraint and want of restraint - originality, is the angel of darkness that buffets us. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It's hard for me to speak to you as if you were not a tyrant," I say. "You sit here and think you are more civilized than Luna because you obey your creed of honor, because you show restraint." I gesture to the simple house. "But you are not more civilized," I say, "You're just more disciplined."
"Isn't that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulse for stability?" He eats his fruit in measured bites. I set mine on the stone.
"No, it's not. But, I'm not here to debate philosophy or politics."
"Thank Jove. I doubt we'd agree upon much. He watches me carefully.
"I'm here to discuss what we both know best, war. — Pierce Brown

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity. — William J. Brennan

The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual. — Marcia Siegel

We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Self confidence is the ability to exercise restraint in the face of disrespect and still show respect in response. — Simon Sinek

Doesn't civilisation mean keeping your temper when there is no reason for restraint? — Hanif Kureishi

I will not subject you to a restraint, in the manner of scriptures and ancient works, by stating that you should trust what I say, that my words are apocalyptic; and that if you do not believe me, you will become atheists and go to hell. If what I say is not agreeable to your instinct, knowledge, experience and inquiry, reject it. — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

So why has this potentially self-destructive system of economic arrangements lasted? Probably because of habits of restraint, honesty and moderation which accompanied its emergence. — Tony Judt

Youth need guidance, direction, and proper restraint ... Parents, too, have a responsibility in this training not to provoke children to wrath. They should be considerate not to irritate by vexatious commands or place unreasonable blame. Whenever possible they should give encouragement rather than remonstrance or reproof. — David O. McKay

Some problems were generational; you just had to wait for the relevant elders to die off and be replaced with more progressive types. — Iain M. Banks

Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. — H.G.Wells