Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Abstention   Listen
adjective
Abstention  adj.  The act of abstaining; a holding aloof.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Abstention" Quotes from Famous Books



... General held at Blois in 1576 proved highly favorable to the League. The chief reason for their overwhelming success was the abstention of the Protestants from voting. In continental Europe it has always been and is now common for minorities to refuse to vote, the idea being that this refusal is in itself a protest more effective than a definite minority vote would be. To an American this seems strange, for it has ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Governor-General of India in March 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of congratulation, his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to violate. He had brought from England the feeling of disquietude in regard to the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... apart, with deliberate purpose, from all fruitless vexations, dull anxieties, sordid designs. To detach oneself, not from life, but from the scum and foam of life; to realise that the secret lay in the middle of it all, and that it was to be discerned not by fastidious abstention, not by a chilly asceticism, but by welcoming all nobler impulses, all spiritual influences; not by starving body or mind, but by selecting one's food carefully and temperately. If a man, Hugh thought, could live life in this spirit, reasonable, kindly, humble, sincere, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of slight social differences between the members. For instance, several castes have been created by the degradation of members of the existing castes on account of their marriage of widows. The Pandarams of South India are held in distinction among the begging castes because of their abstention from meat, alcohol, and widow marriage. Indeed, it is interesting to note that a former caste status has been more frequently lost by, and degradation to a new caste has been consequent upon, the adoption of widow marriage, than through almost any other act. And, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... prime minister. Long after the rise of the cabinet to controlling influence in the state the members of the ministerial body continued supposedly upon a common footing in respect both to rank and authority. The habitual abstention of the early Hanoverians from attendance at cabinet meetings, however, left the group essentially leaderless, and by a natural process of development the members came gradually to recognize a virtual presidency ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Supply. Various questions brought up on Colonial Vote. P. and O. SUTHERLAND championed claims of Singapore for deliverance from arbitrary conduct of Government in levying military contributions. Doesn't often take part in Debate; showed to-night that abstention is not due to lack of debating faculty. Set forth case of his clients in clear business-like speech, which commanded attention of audience, for whom topic itself not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... the Roman proletariat over two thousand years ago. The plebeians, so the story goes, unable to get their economic and political rights, stopped work and withdrew from the city to the Sacred Mount. Their abstention from labor did not mean the going out of street lamps, the suspension of street-car traffic, and the closing of factories and shops, but, besides the loss of fighting men, it meant that no more shoes could be had, no more carpentry work done, and no more wine-jars made until concessions should be ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... because her love kept her faithful to him, and if she had not been in love she might easily have found a cure for her misfortune as her husband allowed her perfect liberty. She grieved bitterly, for she did not know that my brother was impotent, and fancied that the reason of his abstention was that he did not return her love; and the mistake was an excusable one, for he was like a Hercules, and indeed he was one, except where it was most to be desired. Her grief threw her into a consumption of which she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... that which he would not. For though an avaricious man should, for the sake of avoiding death, cast his riches into the sea, he will none the less remain avaricious; so, also, if a lustful man is downcast, because he cannot follow his bent, he does not, on the ground of abstention, cease to be lustful. In fact, these emotions are not so much concerned with the actual feasting, drinking, &c., as with the appetite and love of such. Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to these ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced this reason for abstention from the polls ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... to an almost entire abstention on the part of the writers from figurative language, or at least from all imagery that is not readily recognized as Scriptural. Bread and beef are what men demand for a steady diet. Sweetmeats are well enough, now and then, but only now ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... the 467 who were addressed sent serviceable replies, and these cannot be considered a fair sample of the whole. Abstention might have been due to dislike of publicity, to inertia, or to pure ignorance, none of which would have much affected the values as a sample; but an unquestionably common motive does so seriously—namely, when the person addressed had no noteworthy kinsfolk to write about. On the latter ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster

... revolutionists declared themselves in favor of the principle of absolutely no reelection. Meantime the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court handed down a decision that the action of the Congress in sustaining the President was illegal, since in reality no elections had been held because of the abstention of voters and the seizure of the polls by revolutionists or government forces. "Above the constitution, nothing; above the constitution, no one," he declared. But as this assumption of a power of judgment on matters of purely political concern was equally a violation of the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... Wagner's travail. But, as Wagner's most eminent English interpreter once put it to me at Bayreuth between the acts of Night Falls On The Gods, the master wanted to "Lohengrinize" again after his long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in 1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art) gave him exactly ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... of conservation hampered them in the least. If the water gave out, they argued, they would be thirsty; but it was as well to be thirsty later from lack of water than to be thirsty now from some silly idea of abstention. No white man could have travelled successfully under that system. Nevertheless, the little band held together and arrived in the fringe of hills ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... or against a convention, no convention could be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fully carried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of them voted (against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority in each State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of the conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical majority with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In South Carolina and Louisiana, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... a spectator, but not an indifferent one. Once again mere momentary material interest counseled abstention; precedent was invoked to justify isolation and indifference. The timid, the ignorant, the disloyal, those to whom physical life was more precious than the dictates of conscience, counseled "peace and prosperity." Many began to wonder if America had a soul ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... questioning the mutual advantages of the exchange. But early in the present century a powerful Tortirran demagogue named Pragam began to persuade the people that commerce was piracy—that true prosperity consisted in consumption of domestic products and abstention from foreign. This extraordinary heresy soon gathered such head that Pragam was appointed Regent and invested with almost dictatorial powers. He at once distributed nearly the whole army among the seaport cities, and whenever a Stronagu trading proa attempted to land, the soldiery, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... enough, and, but for certain extravagances and some dangerous dogmas borrowed from other sects, their diffusion among the working-classes of the towns might even have been desirable. Sexual chastity was one of their main postulates, and they also recommended absolute abstention from meat, spirits, and tobacco. But at the same time they desired ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... of sitting at home comfortably, and reading off the week's chronicle of sport while he nursed his leg, the unfortunate gentleman had to be up and away to Fenhurst every Sunday morning, or who would have known that the old cause of his general abstention from Sabbath services lay in the detestable doctrine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... drawbacks. Their position as a privileged class made them hospitable only to those reforms which spared their privileges. But their privileges could not be spared, provided Englishmen allowed rational ideas any decisive influence in their political life; and the consequence of this abstention from ideas was the gradual cultivation of a contempt for intelligence, an excessive worship of tradition, and a deep-rooted faith in the value of compromise. In the interest of domestic harmony they have identified complacent ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... midnight evolutions. I know there are some fellows in the village in receipt of secret service money, and all these poor boys' names are in the Castle archives. But what is worse, this means anti-clericalism, and consequently abstention from Sacraments, and a long train of evils besides. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... efficaciously the defence of the violated law of nations, met at Warsaw; and Napoleon III. presented to them a memorandum by which he engaged to abandon Piedmont in the event of her attacking Venice. But "he presupposed that the German Powers would also confine themselves to an attitude of abstention, and would avoid furnishing a pretext for an Italian attack of Austria." At length, the Piedmontese fleet, under Admiral Persano, succeeded in demolishing the more important portion of the fortifications of Ancona. A ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... was not at the Democratic barbecue, that we attended without reference to our personal politics, and solely for the sake of Judge Piper and the girls; nor did he go to the Agricultural Fair Ball—open to all. His abstention we believed to be owing to his lameness; to a wholesome consciousness of his own social defects; or an inordinate passion for reading cheap scientific textbooks, which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction to his speech. Neither had he the abstraction ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... interdicts is into orders of abstention, of restitution, and of production. The first are those by which the praetor forbids the doing of some act—for instance, the violent ejection of a bona fide possessor, forcible interference with the internment of a corpse in a place where that may lawfully be done, building upon ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... me say rather it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet being the average Perimeter it ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... snapping fire fell upon their faces, which were all a trifle grave. In the case of two of the party, at least, their faces were stamped with a certain quiet resolution and a hint of the forcefulness which comes of rigid and continuous self-denial. Men discover in the bush that abstention from most of the little comforts and amenities of life not infrequently tends to vigor of body and clarity of mind. This, however, is a fact that has been accepted long ago, for it is not, as a rule, the full-fleshed, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... there had been a long discussion, in which Lassalle had persuaded the Minister to adopt universal suffrage. The letters continue with reference to the machinery of the elections, and means of preventing abstention from the poll, for which Lassalle professes to have ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... the adoption of any meridian which had a national character, which has given rise to the motion presented by Mr. JANSSEN, it follows that every measure voted by the Congress tending to the adoption of a national meridian, will be, by the very fact of the abstention of France, an incomplete measure, and which will not answer the purpose sought by the Conference. I hasten to add, in order to avoid all erroneous interpretations which could be given to my words, that it would be the same, if, for instance, the meridian of Paris was proposed, ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... an hour when all but one ceased suddenly from wine; that one, who still continued to drink as he saw fit, was the host. He knew the reason of their abstention; he had heard the trumpet in the harbour that told the hour and proclaimed the fast and vigil, and he felt, as all did, that at last the figure and the presence of which none would speak—the figure and the presence of the Faith—had entered that ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention. The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought by ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... penny for their thoughts, to force them to be as unselective and vulgar as one's self. But one desists, feeling instinctively the refreshment (as of some solitary treeless down or rocky stream) and purification of their fine abstention in this world where industry means cinder-heaps, and statesmanship, philosophy, art, philanthropy, mean ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... assertions of the German statesmen, and of the Kaiser himself, that war had been forced upon them were declared untrue by their associate Italy in the very beginning, and the verdict of Italy was the verdict of the world. Not much was said in the beginning about Italy's abstention from war. The Germans, indeed, sneered a little and hinted that some day Italy would be made to regret her course, but now that the Teuton snake is scotched the importance of Italy's action has been perceived and appraised ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... to no single statesman, but held the reins in his own hand. His ability as a ruler consisted in his tact and moderation in managing the conflicting parties, and in his honest abstention from encroaching on the liberties of the people in rare emergencies; so that his reign was peaceable and tolerably successful. It required no inconsiderable ability to preserve the throne to his successor amid such a war of factions, and such a disposition for encroachments ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... meantime, thanks to the abstention of the free-state people, the pro-slavery party had secured absolute control of the constitutional convention. Yet there was the most absolute assurance by the Governor in the name of the President of the United States that no constitution would be sent to Congress for approval which ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... and still greater influence or production on labor and on business, are social authorities, and who should become legal authorities. In every country where conditions are unequal, the preponderance of a numerical majority necessarily ends in the nearly general abstention or almost certain defeat of the candidates most deserving of election. But here the case is different; the elected, being towns-people (citadins) and not rural, are not of the species as in the village. They read a daily newspaper, and believe that they understand not only local ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... is the opinion which I hear the average player express. If I lived in the backwoods where any guest is welcome, it might be my duty to act differently. But my ways are cast in places where there is no need for social press-gangs, and the highways and hedges are left unsearched. If therefore by abstention I gain a qualified peace for myself, and confer positive benefit on others, I may go my ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... that I cannot embark here upon the history of sales of MSS. in the last hundred years. But my abstention, due to considerations of space, must not be imitated by my readers. Those who deal with modern collections or make collections of their own—a thing still possible for quite modest purses, in spite of the inflated prices which the great books ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... different conditions of life are to be performed throughout life only for the purpose of originating such knowledge. This the Strakra declares in Ve. S. IV, 1, 12; 16; III, 4, 33, and other places. The Vkyakra also declares that steady remembrance results only from abstention, and so on; his words being 'This (viz. steady remembrance meditation) is obtained through abstention (viveka), freeness of mind (vimoka), repetition (abhysa), works (kriy), virtuous conduct (kalyna), ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... other land—a fact which shows how little the romantic imagination tells as against cheapness and comfort of hotels and the notion that a heart strained by climbing is good for the health. And this fact does but make our Sovereign's abstention the more remarkable. Switzerland is not 'smart,' but a King is not the figure-head merely of his entourage: he is the whole nation's figure-head. Switzerland, alone among nations, is a British institution, and King Edward ought not to ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... came to regard even a sign as "puffing." Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must ask and learn. For Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would have been to condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze for unscrupulous self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines's from indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by the more thoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height of Mr. Baines's principles was greater ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... bottle was circulated from hand to hand, the hilarity sensibly increasing with each passage. Their enforced abstention of late made them more than usually susceptible. Their faces were flushed, and their eyes began to be a little bloodshot. They continually forgot that the girl could not speak English, and their facetious remarks to each other were in reality for her benefit. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... demands more than abstention from definitely anti-social actions. It demands from every individual that he shall recognise the precepts of public morality as of superior obligation to those ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... till their power of carrying them into effect should be by this first acquisition secured." But the alarm which the spread of revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some of which were not, indeed, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... that I had already received this impression in Louis Philippe's time, during whose reign it became quite the fashion in France to distinguish oneself in the direction of excessively free and easy manners, and of abstention from courtesy, especially towards ladies. Although it had become better in this respect during the Second Empire, the tone in official and Court society and the demeanor of the Court itself still remained below the standard of the three great eastern Courts. Only in the Legitimist circles aloof ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... these petty provincial struggles; and leave all the public offices to be filled with greedy adventurers, and have been accustomed to consider work of any kind beneath us. The country is paying dearly for it, now. I trust, when the war is over, seeing how the country has suffered by our abstention from politics, and from the affairs of our provinces, we shall put ourselves forward to aid in the ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... the period of digestion, in order to neutralise the acid in the stomach. This gives relief, but does not cure, as the dose has to be repeated after each meal; in course of time the quantity of soda has sometimes to be increased to an alarming extent. Fourth; the abstention from starchy foods and the substitution of an exclusive flesh dietary. In the "Salisbury" treatment, raw minced beef is given. This method often gives immediate relief, but its ultimate effect on the kidneys and ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... been too costly, and debt he abhorred. Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but few and fugitive—he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate quality. It thrilled very sensibly, now, in response to the appeal of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... south—everywhere where he could find suitable premises at a moderate rent. For this was the great characteristic of the management. Modesty, moderation, simplicity. Neither The Orb nor The Sceptre nor yet their parent the Thrift and Independence had built for themselves the usual palaces. For this abstention they were praised in silly public prints as illustrating in their management the principle of Thrift for which they were founded. The fact is that de Barral simply didn't think of it. Of course he had soon moved from Vauxhall Bridge Road. He knew enough for ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... merits of these virtues, truth and alms-giving, kind speech and abstention from injury to any creature, are known (measured) by their objective gravity (utility). Truth is (sometimes) more praiseworthy than some acts of charity; some of the latter again are more commendable than true speech. Similarly, O mighty ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... as a sign of acquiescence. Naroumoff laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... me as you have done," rejoined Jean Jacques. "What do you know of the reasons for the abstention of madame? The soul must enjoy rest as well as the body, and madame has a—mind which can judge for itself. I have a body that is always going, and it gets too little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... occur on shorter fasts, but it is much more difficult to see or feel the results. Many people experience rapid relief from acute headache pain or digestive distress such as gas attacks, mild gallbladder pain, stomach aches, etc., after only one day's abstention from food. In one week of fasting a person can relieve more dangerous conditions such as arthritic pain, rheumatism, kidney pain, and many symptoms associated with allergic reactions. But even more fasting time is generally needed ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... evening, for the first time since the beginning of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that abstention from ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything that might lead up to the subject—this halting on all sides at the boundary of what they might not mention—brought before their minds with still greater purity and clearness ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... rebirth called antarabhava; (3) merit accrues not only by gift (tyaganvaya) but also by the fact of the actual use and advantage reaped by the man to whom the thing was given (paribhoganvaya pu@nya); (4) not only abstention from evil deeds but a declaration of intention to that end produces merit by itself alone; (5) they believe in a pudgala (soul) as distinct from the skandhas from which it can be said to be either different or non-different. "The pudgala cannot be said to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... contact of our every day life with those who are not of our own Faith. Willingly or unwillingly we are bound to leave an impression of our belief in the business and social circles into which our life is cast. Our silence and abstention alone often militate against the Church. Let then the purity and spirituality of our lives, the honesty of our commercial relations, the sanctity of our home, bear witness to the sacredness of our religion and to the seriousness of ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... himself two, in the course of ten days; and the spirit moved him, after long abstention, to indulge in a rambling screed to Tara telling of his quest; revealing more than he quite realised of the inner stress he was trying to ignore. The quest, he emphasised, was a private affair, confided to her only, because he knew she would understand. It hurt more than ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... collective bargaining is to be ostracized. And even those who are disinclined to battle will be forced into the ranks by compulsion. "Those who continue to work will be compelled to quit," says Guerard. The strike is not to be merely a peaceable abstention from work. The very machines are to be made to strike by being rendered incapable of production. These are the methods of the militant ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... spoils you more and more, in order to secure your perfect recovery? Really, dearest Franz, you will cause me the deepest anxiety unless you satisfy me on this point, and every rational person will see that this can be done only by a long and careful cure, together with absolute rest and abstention from every effort and excitement. To speak plainly, you dear people cannot long go on as you do now. Others would be ruined very soon by this kind of thing, which, at last, must become detrimental to you also. Listen, my Franz, come to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... in the parlour pointed only to a little better than three o'clock they were obliged to eat heartily, for fear of giving pain to Uncle Meshach; to drink much was not essential, but nothing could have excused abstention from the solid fare. The repast, actively conducted by the mourning host, was not finished until nearly half-past four. Then Twemlow and the doctor ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... versions of this story Harun's abstention from his bride for a year is attributed to a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... career he was a small and frugal eater, partly because he deprecated extravagance in living, and partly because he considered that the angina pectoris from which he thought he suffered could be best coped with by abstention from a sumptuous or heavy diet. Some days he would almost starve himself, and then in the night Nature would assert herself, and he would have to come downstairs and take whatever he found in the larder. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... human feelings. Then, too, in the early days of January he was goaded to the verge of frenzy by the action of the enemy in shelling the district on the left bank of the river. He had come to credit the Prussians with reasons of humanity for their abstention, which was in fact due simply to the difficulties they experienced in bringing up their guns and getting them in position. Now that a shell had killed two little girls at the Val-de-Grace, his scorn and hatred knew no bounds for those barbarous ruffians who murdered little children and threatened ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... it is prescribed to procreate as many children as possible, and all preventive measures in coitus are severely condemned. Hence, if the woman is very fruitful, the husband has only the choice between complete abstention from coitus (when both conjoints are in agreement) and pregnancies following without interruption. The woman never has the right to refuse coitus to her husband, nor the latter to refuse it to his wife, so long as he is capable of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... O monarch, do thou love all creatures, and display the qualities of truth, sincerity, absence of wrath, and abstention from injury! Thou shouldst thus wield the rod of chastisement, and enhance thy treasury and support thy friends and consolidate thy kingdom thus, practising the qualities of truthfulness and sincerity and supported by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... as to raise a glow in the skin of the scalp. This treatment is best done while the patient sits, and the operator stands behind or beside him. Gentleness of touch there must be, and no irritation of the patient. With abstention from all lessons, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... freedom from the diseases to which others succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the army, I had constructed a theory—on premises that were doubtless as insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon—that drinking water was ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... and eat and drink and enjoy ourselves in moderation. To be sure, we must be always on our guard against slipping into the forbidden extreme, but it is not necessary for this purpose to inflict additional burdens upon ourselves or to practice mortification of the flesh and abstention from food and drink beyond what is prescribed in the Law. For many of the regulations in the Pentateuch have been laid down for this very purpose. The dietary laws, the laws of forbidden marriages, the laws of tithes, the laws prescribing that the corner of the field, the dropped and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... misfortune fallen on the House?" A shrug of the shoulders, a shiver; then the man half rose and faced her. She was startled at his expression. He was facing the most dreadful, not mere thought of ruin to him and his—"Suzuki San is liar and thief. Fifty ryo[u] in hand the promise was for abstention. Now he demands twenty ryo[u] more—the interest on the debt in full." His voice rose to a harsh scream. He laughed despairingly. "Seventy-five ryo[u] interest, for the loan of a month; and that loan forced ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was full —his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books dealt simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other churches in the town less ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... moment to the refusal of food, it would seem that the Earthman's apology in the foregoing narrative is, as too many human apologies are, a mere excuse. The real reason for the midwife's abstention was not that fairy food was distasteful, but that she durst not touch it, under penalty of never again returning to the light of day. A Danish tradition tells of a woman who was taken by an elf on Christmas Eve down into the earth ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... navigators familiar with astronomical calculations. The country which especially attracted the missionaries was China, that enormous and populous empire, which ever since the arrival of Europeans in India, had persevered with the greatest strictness in the absurd policy of abstention from any intercourse whatsoever with foreigners. It was not until the close of the sixteenth century that the missionaries obtained the permission, so often demanded before in vain, to penetrate into the Middle ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... qualities or accidents has given rise to a number of prohibitions or rules of avoidance: people abstain from doing certain things lest they should homoeopathically infect the fruits of the earth with their own undesirable state or condition. All such customs of abstention or rules of avoidance are examples of negative magic or taboo. Thus, for example, arguing from what may be called the infectiousness of personal acts or states, the Galelareese say that you ought not to shoot with a bow and arrows ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... his thanks hastily, and went his way. If there was a thoughtfulness in the generosity of this action, the mode in which it was performed—the measured coldness of the words—the look of impassive examination that accompanied them, and the abstention from anything that savoured of apology for a liberty—were all deeply ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... amount to that," I answered, "assuming that abstention from tobacco were counted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various

... interesting, in any line of study. In this work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress and customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The illustrations are of a high ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... for this in vain. None offered. It was also in vain that he waited to hear that the Queen had worn the necklace. But he does not appear to have been anxious on that score. Moreover, the Queen's abstention was credibly explained by Madame de la Motte to Laporte with the statement that Her Majesty did not wish to wear the necklace until it was ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... soon as bad as ever—no doubt of it. Only he kept clear of that post. The burnt child dreads the fire, and the chances are that admonitions not to climb up on posts had less to do with his abstention from this one than the lesson the post itself had hammered into the back of his head. Exploration of the outer world—of the regions imperfectly known beyond that post—had so far produced no fatal consequences; so ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... months of abstention, and for the last time, I took the Sacrament. This statement will seem strange to my readers, but the ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... a brief space, giving her time to recover her composure, and then continued coldly, with a careful abstention from any ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... word "continence" is taken by various people in two ways. For some understand continence to denote abstention from all venereal pleasure: thus the Apostle joins continence to chastity (Gal. 5:23). In this sense perfect continence is virginity in the first place, and widowhood in the second. Wherefore the same applies to continence understood thus, as to virginity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... that which promotes the neighbor's welfare. Likewise, when we labor, fast, or when we regulate our sexual relations, we are to exercise reason, lest the body should be injured by too much fasting, watching and toil, and also by needless abstention from sexual intercourse. Let everyone take heed to remain within bounds by using reason and discretion. The apostle counsels the married (1 Cor 7, 5) not to defraud each other too long, lest they be ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... eventually become a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each other whenever there entered a new guest "all alone!" And we laughed and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of the fair ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output—again a beautiful word—of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... cries, looking at us scornfully as if it was our suggestion. "Never, while yet breath remains in my body!" What a cheer we give him then; a cheer which seems to imply that, having often betrayed our own mothers for half a crown or so, we are able to realize the heroic nature of his abstention on this occasion. For in the presence of the Hero we lose our sense of values. If he were to scorn an offer to sell his father for vivisectional purposes, we ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... our Lord, "in whom we live, move, and have our being." There is nothing in us or about us, no positive perfection of ours whatsoever, that is not His gift, and a gift that He is not giving continually, else it would be lost to us. We are therefore bound in His regard, not merely to abstention but to act. And first, for inward acts, we must habitually feel, and at notable intervals we must actually elicit, sentiments of adoration and praise, of thanksgiving, of submission, of loyalty and love, as creatures to their Creator, and as vassals to their very good Lord, for He is our ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... tendrils after a stay, or as the sunflower turns to the light. For such wholehearted desire after the one supreme good there must be resolute averting of desire from 'sinners.' In this world full of evil there will be no vigorous longing for good and God, unless there be determined abstention from the opposite. We have but a limited quantity of energy, and if it is frittered away on multifarious creatures, none will be left to consecrate to God. There are lakes which discharge their waters at both ends, sending one stream east ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of 1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer, and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions of the other Powers in regard to Spain ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... careless way in which the chief spiritual food is treated. People go to the Holy Communion when they feel inclined, instead of according to a fixed rule, modifying the rule, just as they would in the case of their meals, by circumstances which may arise; spiritual sickness might dictate abstention from Communion for a while, just as bodily disease might ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter

... Duma met, on August 8th, for the purpose of voting the war credits, the Social Democrats of both factions, Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, fourteen in number,[2] united upon a policy of abstention from voting. Valentin Khaustov, on behalf of the two factions, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... read in a voice deeper and more hurried than usual. When he laid down the Bible and took up the book of prayers he remained standing, as he sometimes did if he had a touch of rheumatism; but he had none now, and his abstention from a kneeling position amounted to a declaration that he was willing to go through the form of family prayers for routine's sake but must really be excused from giving a mind to ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... than ever reinforced in my already-expressed opinion that Mr. Carville was a man of more ability than ambition. There was to me something bizarre in his deliberate abstention from any contact, save books, with the larger intellectual sphere to which he by right belonged. His naive confession of culture showed that he was aware of his latent power, but I was not sure whether he had ever ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... elapsed since Crabbe's last appearance as an author, and he seems to have thought it due to his readers to give some reason for his long abstention from the poet's 'idle trade.' He pleads a higher 'calling,' that of his professional duties, as sufficient excuse. Moreover, he offers the same excuse for his 'progress in the art of versification' being less marked ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... be far better that men should be rewarded for working well than that they should be punished for working badly. This system is already in operation in the civil service, where a man is only dismissed for some exceptional degree of vice or virtue, such as murder or illegal abstention from it. Sufficient pay to ensure a livelihood ought to be given to every person who is willing to work, independently of the question whether the particular work at which he is skilled is wanted at the moment ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... commented upon by critics, I feel regret, although not repentance—namely, on any "anecdotic iconoclasm" where fact refuted fancy, and on my abstention from pronouncing judgments where the evidence was inconclusive. But how can a conscientious biographer help this ungraciousness and inaccommodativeness? Is it not his duty to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, in order that his subject may stand out ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... austerity also were means calculated to promote faith in the sincerity of the priest, and consequently in the truth of their assertions and divine interpretations. The abstention from sexual intercourse was strictly enjoined on all who had received a Magbabya, and observance of the restriction was rigid apparently. The priests and their wives slept in the religious building, but did not cohabit, the men sleeping in one place and the women in another. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... is that in race type Abyssinians are plainly come of sons of Israel, crossed and modified with Coptic, Hamite, and Ethiopian blood. To this day they cling closely as the most orthodox Hebrew, to some of the dearest Israelitish tenets, notably abstention from pork and from meat not killed by bleeding, observance of the Sabbath, and the rite of circumcision. Notwithstanding this the Abyssinians have been Christians since the fourth century of this ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... opposites of truth, yet quivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a little crude,—that very air of being the uncritical and slightly puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... not buy American books any longer, because they can get English works, mere printed rags, but paying nothing to English authors, for a few cents. The rags, of course, fall to pieces, and are tossed into the waste-paper basket, and thus a habit of desultoriness and of abstention from books worth styling books grows and grows, like a noxious and paralysing parasite, over the American intellect. In this way our pleasant vices are made instruments to plague us, and the condition of the law, which leaves the British authors at the mercy of the Aldens and Monros of the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... there! He observed this prohibition faithfully until Dr. Pocock left Beaconsfield in 1919. Dr. Bakewell, who succeeded him advised moderation but only occasionally found it necessary to order total abstention. It was the amount of liquid he feared rather than its nature. When he forbade wine he did so because wine increased the general tendency to absorb liquid. For Gilbert was always unslakeably thirsty. Daily he drank several bottles of Vichy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... states north of the Orinoco many felt must be actively enforced, in view of special interests in the Caribbean. In the Far East the United States claimed an equality of status with the European powers. In the rest of the world, Europe, Africa, the Levant, the traditional American policy of abstention held good absolutely, at least until the ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... them. Could, however, any argument on such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, while the merits of abstention are admitted by ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... he finds that he is not justified in aiding to carry on the race, the eugenist will be content to make himself, in the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's sake," whether, under modern conditions, that means abstention in marriage from procreation, or voluntary sterilization by operative methods.[43] For, as Giddings has put it, the goal of the race lies, not in the ruthless exaltation of a super-man, but in the evolution of a super-mankind. Such a goal can only be reached ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... in the life and the offices of the court, exposed to all the temptations of the world. It is no longer the desert of the penitents of PortRoyal, or the strict cloister of Mother Angelica; Fenelon is for only inward restrictions and an abstention purely spiritual; from afar and in his retreat at Cambrai, he watches over his faithful flock with a tender pre-occupation which does not make him overlook the duties of their position. "Take as penance for your sins," ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... edict, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone," had been followed out there would never have been another stone cast. And one might ask if the world would have been, or could have been, the worse for that abstention. For, whatever else may be true, the venerable practices of justice have ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... so, he could only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget. So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the hope—a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless—that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... just what I am telling you now. This almost general abstention of electors, compared with the eagerness of former times, is but the avowal of the error to which your masquerade has given rise. And what does it prove but the resolution to mix in your carnival no more? We see clearly through it now, I tell you, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... would I better know, Thou Glorious One! The very truth—Heart's Lord!—of Sannyas, Abstention; and enunciation, Lord! Tyaga; and what separates ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... it to be? would he have us represent it as beautiful and gratifying? The answer to this question, I fear, must be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossible to root out of an Englishman's mind the notion that vice is delightful, and that abstention from it is privation. At all events, as long as the tempting side of it is kept towards the public, and softened by plenty of sentiment and sympathy, it is welcomed by our Censor, whereas the slightest attempt ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... living in a tent in the Glen of the White Mountains near to the subject chosen. Here I received a visit from Agassiz, and here we had our last meeting and conversation on nature and art. But the long abstention from painting had left me half paralyzed—the hand had always been too far behind the theory. I now began to question if I had any vocation that way, and, with the passing of the summer, I went back to literature and found a place on the old "Scribner's ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... seemed to like the lack of effusive words. Harry knew that his general had not tasted food. Neither had he. He had actually forgotten it in his keenness for his work, and now he was proud of the fact. He was proud, too, of the comradeship of abstention that it gave him with Stonewall Jackson. As he rode in silence by the side of the great commander he made for himself an ideal. He would strive in his own youthful way to show the zeal, the courage and the untiring devotion that ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of the nation had compelled the other three fourths to abandon the embargo. Whether this be quite a fair statement may be doubted; but there was in it so much of truth as to suggest the possibility, if not of acquiescence in the Orders in Council, at least of such abstention from active resentment as would have been ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... salvation then it were well that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have advocated such self denial had their own countries ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... aboriginal man is far sighted. His wild life, his nomadic nature, his seeking for game, his watching for enemies, his abstention from continued near work, have given him this protection. Humboldt speaks of the wonderful distant vision of the South American Indians; another traveler in Russia of the power of vision one of his guides possessed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... to the Army Boys, who had chafed over the forced inaction and abstention from outdoor sports caused by the severe winter. Now most of the time off duty was spent in the open, and baseball and other games made the banishment from home seem less of a hardship. Company teams were organized and there was a good deal of healthy rivalry between the various nines. The Army Boys ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... rate, that the harvest must be in the far distant future of humanity, while the heart of man remains unchanged. He suspected the mere respectability which satisfies so many reformers. Even virtue seemed to him second-rate and perilous. He was not satisfied with abstention from sin, or with the change from slum to model lodging-house. He held that no man is safe, no man is at the top of his being, no man is fully conscious of life's tremendous greatness until the heart is definitely ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... men attacked the ample venison pasty with a zeal and thoroughness that betokened long abstention from work of a similar nature, and the sack trickled gratefully down parched throats. Morgan and Jeffreys drank to their better fortune, but would not touch the food, pleading that their ordinary dinner time was a full hour off, and that ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... a lesson, and I even went to the deportment class, at which poor old M. Elie, duly curled, powdered, and adorned with lace frills, presided. This was the most amusing lesson imaginable. Very few of us attended this class, and M. Elie avenged himself on us for the abstention of the others. At every lesson each one of us was called forward. He addressed us by the familiar term of thou, and considered us as his property. There were only five or six of us, but we all had to go on the stage. He always stood up with his little black stick in his hand. No one knew ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt



Words linked to "Abstention" :   abstentious, abstain, self-denial, abstinence, sexual abstention, self-discipline



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com