Abstinence is approved of God. [ Chaucer ]
Abstinence is the surety of temperance. [ Plato ]
Too much is a vanity; enough is a feast. [ Quarles ]
Against diseases here the strongest fence.
Is the defensive virtue, abstinence. [ Herrick ]
Lean abstinence, pale grief, and haggard care,
The dire attendants of forlorn despair. [ Pattison ]
His life is paralleled
Even with the stroke and line of his great justice;
He doth with holy abstinence subdue
That in himself which he spurs on his power
To qualify in others. [ William Shakespeare ]
Abstaining is favorable both to the head and the pocket. [ Horace Greeley ]
Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason. [ South ]
Abstinence is many times very helpful to the end of religion. [ Tillotson ]
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult. [ Samuel Johnson ]
The more a man denies himself, the more shall he obtain from God. [ Horace ]
Use, do not abuse: neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. [ Voltaire ]
Abstinence is whereby a man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully take. [ Elyot ]
Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason. [ Rousseau ]
By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigor to resolution. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor. [ Sir W. Temple ]
Never add artificial heat to thy body by wine or spice until thou findest that time hath decayed thy natural heat. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]
A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty. [ Lord Kames ]
To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be, not a virtue, but the groundwork of a virtue. [ Johnson ]
Adam knew no disease so long as temperance from the forbidden fruit secured him. Nature was his physician; and innocence and abstinence would have kept him healthful to immortality. [ South ]
Let there be an entire abstinence from intoxicating drinks throughout this country during the period of a single generation, and a mob would be as impossible as combustion without oxygen. [ Horace Mann ]
We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, Drink, and away;
but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory. [ Tuckerman ]