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Self-restraint   Listen
noun
Self-restraint  n.  Restraint over one's self; self-control; self-command.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Self-restraint" Quotes from Famous Books



... departed—that having descended into the vault, ere the stone was rolled to the door of the sepulchre, in order to point out the exact spot where he wished her remains to be deposited, so that hereafter his own might rest by her side, he renounced all self-restraint, and throwing himself upon the ground, gave himself up to his anguish, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... traced back through a series of years. In a specially marked manner the pan-Serb chauvinism showed itself during the Bosnian crisis. Only to the far-reaching self-restraint and moderation of the Austro-Hungarian Government and the energetic intercession of the powers is it to be ascribed that the provocations to which at that time Austria-Hungary was exposed on the part ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... my protection. That one next by birth to Bhimasena, Phalguna, versed in the science of profit and all mortal regulations, is well in heaven. And, O child, those perfections that are recognised in the world as leading to heaven, are established in Dhananjaya even from his very birth. And self-restraint, and charity, and strength, and intelligence, and modesty, and fortitude, and excellent energy—even all these are established in that majestic one of magnificent soul. And, O Pandava, Jishnu never committed any shameful act through poverty of spirit. And in the world, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... the college. Hardy was travelling much the same road himself as our hero, but was somewhat further on, and had come into it from a different country, and though quite other obstacles. Their early lives had been very different; and, both by nature and from long and severe self-restraint and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and demonstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as Tom was too much inclined to do), the moment he had seized hold of the end of a new idea which he felt to be good for him and what he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the tall, brawny man, whose whole bearing bespoke self-restraint, and the calm exercise of authority, and if his attitude towards them was both chivalrous and tender, theirs to him was fondly ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... preceded by an Introduction, remarkably well digested and condensed, giving an account of the text, and of the sources from which Shakspeare helped himself to plots or incidents. We cannot but commend highly the self-restraint which marks these brief and pithy prefaces, and the pertinency of every sentence to the matter in hand. The Germans, (to whom we are undeniably indebted for the first philosophic appreciation of the poet,) being debarred by their alienage from the tempting parliament ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... it; that she is apparelled for the fray, her frock modest but chic, her coiffure adequate . . .'" This was going too fast. She harked back and read, under General Observations, that "It is the hall-mark of a lady to be sure of herself under all circumstances," and that "A lady must practise self-restraint, and never allow herself to ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of flowers should never be countenanced, no matter how abundant the flowers may be. Self-restraint is not inculcated for the sake of saving the flowers so much as for the influence it will have upon the development of the child, although there are parts of the country where one would like to see it ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... time she had ever called him by his Christian name and it went near to toppling down the carefully reared structure of self-restraint. But he made shift to shore the tottering walls ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... went to his head without his knowing it, as rum has a habit of doing; he became cheerfully familiar with the old men and made long strides into their friendship—or thought he did. He did not once mention religion to them at that first meeting, though he had to exercise considerable self-restraint to prevent himself ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the value of the ideas they intend to convey. The word Upani@sad was used, as we have seen, in the sense of "secret doctrine or instruction"; the Upani@sad teachings were also intended to be conveyed in strictest secrecy to earnest enquirers of high morals and superior self-restraint for the purpose ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... household matters that the visitor can be helpful to the homemaker. Many women in poor neighborhoods lead starved, sordid lives, and long for genuine friendliness and sympathy. A friend who would be helpful to them must exercise the same self-restraint that our own friends exercise with us. The friends who encourage us to exaggerate our troubles and difficulties are not our best friends: theirs is a friendship that tends to weaken our moral fibre. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... wifehood when she had read in his noble face something of that which he endeavoured to command and which to no other was apparent, the dignity of his self-restraint had but filled her with tenderness more ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... constant strain. It ought, according to all moral rules, to have been very good for Warrender to be thus forced to self-control, and to exercise a continual restraint over his extremely impatient temper and fastidious, almost capricious temperament. But there are circumstances in which such self-restraint is rather an aggravating than a softening process. During this period, however, Theo was scarcely to be accounted for by the ordinary rules of human nature. His mind was altogether absorbed by one of, if not by the most powerful influence of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... gave the speaker his most serious attention, and heard the narrative with surprise and mortification, somewhat modified by his habitual and dignified self-restraint. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... am astonished at such behavior. Leading juniors—real, live, brand-new juniors—and to display such lack of self-restraint, such disdain of gracefulness and repose! Oh!" her voice changed magically, "oh, you, dear sweet, darling girls, I ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... drunkenness and gambling. Especially were the Greeks frivolous and adepts in this respect, as their poets and other writers attest. What Paul refers to in particular is the lewd conversation uttered in public without fear and self-restraint. This will excite wicked thoughts and give rise to serious offenses, especially with the young. As he states elsewhere (1 Cor 15, 33), "Evil companionships [communications] corrupt good morals." Should there be any Christians forgetful ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... there none now? Let any one set his heart, in these days, to do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression—with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows; perhaps, even, with the print of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... started to seize her in his arms forgetful of lights, streets, passers-by, and all other good reasons for self-restraint. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... Ursel's discretion could not suppress that sigh, but Mary prudently let it pass unnoticed, only honouring in her heart the unselfishness and self-restraint of the man whose long, patient, unspoken hopes had just received ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... appalling end of poor Hall, the merciless severity with which his death had been compassed: why should I expect more gentle usage or other recompense? If ever man had been trapped, I had been; and, beneath all my placid self-restraint, I felt that my life was not worth an hour's—nay, perhaps ten minutes'—purchase. It was as if I had been taken clean out of the world with no man to extend me a helping hand. Roderick, truly, would move heaven and earth to reach ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... country have set over him. A man never feels so able as when he is following the lead of an abler man than himself. Remember this. Make it a point of honour to do your duty earnestly, scrupulously, and to the uttermost; and you will find that the habits of self-restraint, discipline, and obedience, which you, as soldiers, have learned, will stand you in good stead for the rest of your lives, and make you each, in his place, fit to rule, just because you ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... book, which might tell the whole story. With desperate haste that could hardly wait to open the lids, I took it out, wondering at the patience which long self-restraint had bred in me. I was very tired, and stretched my arms across the pillow where Paul's head had lain, to rest one instant. But I must have slept. My hand woke first, and feeling itself empty, grasped at the book. It was gone, and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... characteristic of the poet of Weltschmerz, was not Hoelderlin's greatest fault. And yet if his intense devotion to Susette remained undebased by sensual desires, as we know it did, this was not solely due to the practice of heroic self-restraint, but must be attributed in part to the fact that that side of his nature was entirely subordinate to his higher ideals; and these were always a stronger passion with Hoelderlin than his love. So that Diotima's judgment ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... him. The apostle was too grieved to use harsh language—too grieved, not only at his own disappointment, but also when he thought of Demas's own future. Unconsciously, in this unostentatious exercise of self-restraint, he has left us an impressive lesson in Christian charity, and has shown us the way in which those who fall away from their steadfastness ought to be treated. How many of those hapless delinquents might have been reclaimed, had the high, noble, generous spirit which animated ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... eight sovereigns who reigned during the interval between 561 and 98 B.C. recount mainly the polygamous habits of these rulers and give long genealogies of the noble families founded by their offspring—a dearth of romance which bears strong witness to the self-restraint of the compilers. We learn incidentally that on his accession each sovereign changed the site of his palace, seldom passing, however, beyond the limits of the province of Yamato, and we learn, also, that the principle ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... rationing pledge on the table near the door, and I ask every girl to sign it and to wear the violet ribbon that will be given her. It is the badge of the new temperance cause. The freedom of the world depends at the present time on the food thrift and self-restraint of our civilians, no less than on the courage of our soldiers. Please take some of the leaflets which you will find on the table, and read them. They have been sent here for us ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... self-restraint at last was gone. He made one answer, voicing all his acquaintance with Sam Woodhull, all his opinion of him, all his future attitude in regard ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... with feeling and suggested great self-restraint, Mr. Callice proceeded to tell the story of the latest outrage. How when found that morning the mare was still alive, of the terrible nature of her injuries, and that the perpetrator ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... Nettie was too much overstrained and excited to speak more. A single sudden sob burst from her as she drew her hand out of his, and disappeared like a flying sprite. The doctor saw the heaving of her breast, the height of self-restraint which could go no further. He went back into the parlour like a true lover, and spied no more upon Nettie's hour of weakness. Without her, it looked a vulgar scene enough in that little sitting-room, from which the smoke of Fred's pipe ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... afternoon, some two months after his release from the toils of the sea, Captain Nugent sat in the special parlour of The Goblets. The old inn offers hospitality to all, but one parlour has by ancient tradition and the exercise of self-restraint and proper feeling been from time immemorial reserved for the elite ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... sense of the implied insult offered to her by the wives of her husband's friends only showed itself in a trembling, a very slight trembling, of the hand that rested on my arm. My interest in her increased tenfold. Only a woman who had been accustomed to suffer, who had been broken and disciplined to self-restraint, could have endured the moral martyrdom inflicted on her as this woman endured it, from the beginning of the evening ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. He had no feeling of offence now. She looked so pretty and she spoke so earnestly that it was impossible to be offended with her. Moreover, although he was far from even getting drunk, he felt a dreamy sensation stealing over him which seemed to be sapping his self-restraint and making him utterly careless of what he did or what happened to him so long as it ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... himself, for humiliation came hard to him. Then his voice fell curiously low, terrible in its self-restraint. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... himself go, I take leave to doubt that the Manxman was wholly to blame. There can, however, be no doubt that the author of "The Doctor," of "Catherine Kinrade," of "Mater Dolorosa," described himself accurately as a "born sobber," or that an acquired self-restraint saved him from a form of intemperance by which of late our literature has been somewhat too ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Millicent owed her self-restraint to her calculating common sense. To have had a lover on such a night as this would have been a splendid reward for all her trouble. In her heart she called the man at her side a fool, a pitiful fool, and herself ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... thus have escaped the necessity of fighting altogether; and this, as we have seen, was the one fatal mistake made by Pericles. But, once launched in the conflict, they were sure of an easy victory, if they had only shown a very moderate degree of prudence and self-restraint. And we need not blame the great statesmen too harshly for not foreseeing the wild excesses of folly and extravagance which we shall have to record in the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... entitle me to add, and it is this. It is essential that, in the absence of that guarantee against the too rapid succession of pregnancies which suckling for a reasonable time presents, there should be self-restraint on both sides, lest the inscription on the young wife's grave should be, as I have too often known it, the same as, in despite of poetry and romance, her biographer assigns as the cause of the death of Petrarch's Laura, that ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... situation became so monstrous that he lost his last shred of self-restraint in contemplating it. What if he were really the victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of a ring of holiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind dashes against the solid walls of consciousness? But, no—men were not so uniformly cruel: there were flaws in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... she was coaxed; in vain she was threatened; in vain she was deprived of food; in vain shut up in a dark hole; in vain was the lash held over her. Rugge, tyrant though he was, did not suffer the lash to fall. His self-restraint there might be humanity,—might be fear of the consequences; for the state of her health began to alarm him. She might die; there might be an inquest. He wished now that he had taken Mrs. Crane's suggestion, and re-engaged Waife. But where was Waife? Meanwhile he had advertised the young Phenomenon; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with much, very much, self-restraint; yet eyes and voice could not be so perfectly controlled as language was, and these spoke eloquently of the man's adoration of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the furnace-room, where I knew my father now slept. The fires were burning as brightly as if the following day's harvest had been expected to be abundant. One of the large cauldrons was slowly "walloping" with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint, as if it bided its time to put forth its full energy. My father was not in bed; he had risen in his nightclothes and was preparing a noose in a strong cord. From the looks which he cast at the door of my mother's bedroom I knew too ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... connected with the ranch or their fellow-punchers. To these remarks Jessup replied readily enough, but in a preoccupied manner, until all at once, moved either by something Buck had said, or possibly by a mind burdened to the point where self-restraint was no longer possible, he burst into ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... a companion with all the toys or playthings he possessed than do either alone. His very lessons he would not get unless his brother Frank got his along with him. The reader may thus perceive that he acquired no early habit of self-restraint, no principle of either labor or enjoyment within, himself, and of course could acquire none at all of self-reliance. A social disposition in our amusements is not only proper, but natural, for we believe it is pretty generally known, that he who altogether prefers ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... rather former Senator, Willard met us in the library, and a moment later his daughter Alma joined him. She was tall, like her father, a girl of poise and self-control. Yet even the schooling of twenty-two years in rigorous New England self-restraint could not hide the very human pallor of her face after the sleepless nights and nervous days since this trouble had broken on her placid existence. Yet there was a mark of strength and determination on her face that was fascinating. The man who would trifle with this girl, I felt, was playing ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... Wachner. He admired the wife's self-restraint. Her red face got a little redder. That ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... like a lump of ice upon my lady's heart. She could not wait, she could not contain herself, she lost all self-control, all power of endurance, all capability of self-restraint, and she ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... could never grow stately like the house it inhabited. Whatever might be destined to effect this, for the chance of rendering poorest and most servile aid, he would watch and did watch, in silence and self-restraint, lest he should be betrayed into any presumptuous word that might breathe frost instead of balm upon the buds of her delaying Spring. If he might but be allowed to minister when at length the sleeping soul should stir! If its waking glance—ah! ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... had measured her for his victim verified, if ever man did, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive, unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of her instructor in the English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... words, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' are equally unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean. Hers, like some of her other speeches, are the more moving, from their greater simplicity and because they seem to tell of that self-restraint in suffering which is so totally lacking in him; but there is in them comparatively little of imagination. If we consider most of the passages to which I have referred, we shall find that the quality which moves our admiration is courage or ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... placidity, indisturbance^, imperturbation^, sang froid [Fr.], tranquility, serenity; quiet, quietude; peace of mind, mental calmness. staidness &c adj.; gravity, sobriety, Quakerism^; philosophy, equanimity, stoicism, command of temper; self-possession, self-control, self-command, self-restraint, ice water in one's veins; presence of mind. submission &c 725; resignation; sufferance, supportance^, endurance, longsufferance^, forbearance; longanimity^; fortitude; patience of Job, patience on a monument ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... horror to the very marrow of your bones, and your eyes filled with tears of emotion and anxiety. Masterly was the regular breathing that indicated slumber, and the stiff fingers when she washed her hands and smelt them to see if there were blood upon them. But Mme. Favart, who with artistic self-restraint co-ordinated herself into the whole, without any virtuosity at all, produced no less an effect upon me. As the leading character in Feuillet's Julie, she was perfection itself; when I saw her, it seemed to me as though no one at home in Denmark had ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... of portering would be annihilated. Thirdly, sir, as a philosopher; for as the false coin is odious to the true, so is the irrational and animal asceticism of the monk, to the logical and methodic self-restraint of one who, like your humblest of philosophers, aspires to a life ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... had a delicate and dangerous operation to perform, and needed steady nerves. But the wine was good, and my one or two glasses only made way for three or four. The temptation of the hour were too much for my habitual self-restraint. I took a glass of wine with you, Mr. Elliott, after I had already taken more than was prudent under the circumstances another with Mr. Birtwell, another with General Abercrombie—alas for him! he fell that ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... that you far surpass me in bearing privations; but it would be well for you to learn a little self-restraint. At my time of life it is hard to bear reproaches. I cannot change my way of living, though I confess you deny yourself much ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... so much as with the tip of a finger, the seat occupied by a lady. In those days a gentleman was trained and broken in to the laws of politeness, sometimes pretty hard laws, and taught to understand that a scrupulous self-restraint in public places gives a peculiar zest to the sweet familiarity of the boudoir, and that to lose your respectful awe of a woman, you ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... night-mare." She became afraid of sinking as low as she had done in the autumn; and to avoid this, she prevailed on her old friend and schoolfellow to come and stay with her for a few weeks in March. She found great benefit from this companionship,—both from the congenial society in itself, and from the self-restraint of thought imposed by the necessity of entertaining her and looking after her comfort. On this occasion, Miss Bronte said, "It will not do to get into the habit offrom home, and thus temporarily evading an running away ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... presented by Mrs. Taylor at his entrance greatly astonished Mr. Gryce. There was a calmness in her attitude which one would scarcely expect to see in a woman whom mania had just driven into crime. Surely lunacy does not show such self-restraint; nor does lunacy awaken any such feelings of awe as followed a prolonged scrutiny of her set but determined features. Only grief of the most intense and sacred character could account for the aspect she presented, and as the man to whom the tragedies of life were of daily occurrence took ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... centre of Finiteness into the boundless. Complete Definiteness, on the other hand, throws itself with a bold leap out of the blissful dream of the infinite will into the limits of the finite deed, and by self-refinement ever increases in magnanimous self-restraint ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... rarer gift of sentiment. It is by his possession of sympathy and of sentiment that he has escaped the aridity which suffocates us in the works of so many other Parisian novelists. The South endowed him with warmth and heartiness and vivacity; and what he learnt from Paris was the power of self-restraint and the duty ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... exceptions here than elsewhere. Girls are freer; they fall in love of their own accord oftener than elsewhere; they are very impulsive, full of passion. Love is a very serious matter, and they are not trained in self-restraint. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... undermined that staunch and sturdy virtue! But when Starkad had set eyes on these things, he scorned so wanton a use of them; and, not to give way a whit to foreign fashions, he steeled his appetite against these tempting delicacies with the self-restraint which was his greatest strength. He would not suffer his repute as a soldier to be impaired by the allurements of an orgy. For his valour loved thrift, and was a stranger to all superfluity of food, and averse to feasting in excess. For his ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... forget his duty to the gods, to his parents, to his fatherland, and his friends. Shamelessness, they hold, treads close on the heels of ingratitude, and thus ingratitude is the ringleader and chief instigator to every kind of baseness. [8] Further, the boys are instructed in temperance and self-restraint, and they find the utmost help towards the attainment of this virtue in the self-respecting behaviour of their elders, shown them day by day. Then they are taught to obey their rulers, and here again nothing is of greater value than the studied obedience to authority manifested ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... said Mr. Phillips, "you have a task of self-restraint before you. It is necessary that this great joy of ours should be kept awhile from your mother. She is not strong enough to bear it. But she must see Mary and get accustomed to her as soon as possible. I have a plan. A new nurse is needed ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... Estabrook was not any man. He represented the essence of conventional society. He belonged to a family of well-preserved traditions, a family whose reputation for conservative conduct and manners of cold self-restraint was well known in a dozen cities. They were that particular family, of a common enough name, which was known as the Estabrookses Arbutus. Jermyn had had a dozen grandfathers who, from one to another, had handed down the practice of law to him, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... Christianity,' which is utterly immoral and intolerable. There are those who say, and there have been of late those who have written books to shew, that provided a young man is sufficiently brave, frank, and gallant, he is more or less absolved from the common duties of morality and self-restraint. ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... upon it. Accepting the Platonic psychology, which divided the soul into reason, temper (i.e., will), and desire, he shows how the aim of the Mosaic law about food is to control desire and will, so as to make them subservient to reason. By practicing self-restraint in the two commonest actions of life—eating and drinking—the Israelite acquires it in all things. The hard ascetic who would root out bodily desires errs against human nature, but the wise legislator controls them and curbs them by precepts, so that they ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... butler, stood well to the fore. He never missed a house-match, and no one could guess, looking at his wooden countenance, how the game was going; for he accepted either defeat or victory with a dignified self-restraint. A smart bit of work provoked a bland, "Well played, sir, very well played, sir!" uttered in the same respectful tone in which he requested Lovell, let us say, to go to Mr. Rutford's study after prayers. The fags believed that "Dumber," who had begun his career as boot-boy at the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... time to be found in literature, but also to the very life and temper of the day and generation in which he was so soon to play a conspicuous part. It was a day of almost unbridled passions and lack of self-restraint, and none before had thought to couple reason with the thought of love. For nine years his boyish dreams were filled with this maiden, Beatrice, and not once in all that time did he have word with her. Finally, he says: "On ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... cultured young women. The three were standing under the electric light at the corner, and the young women instead of appearing annoyed at the heathen's twaddle, seemed to be highly amused. Only the greatest exercise of self-restraint kept Mr. Hamshaw from kicking Sago into the middle of the ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... exercised. His reprimand to the porters for the loss of the boy, expressed in a few quiet words, had sent them shivering to their places, cowed and dumb. Animal instinct seemed to tell them of a terrible animal which the self-restraint of that quiet-looking little man, with the pointed beard, alone prevented from ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... couldn't fix. This went on without any break; it was the same down town as it was up home, he acted just as if there was something lying heavy on his mind. But it wasn't until a few weeks back that his self-restraint began to go; and let me tell you this, Mr. Trent"—the American laid his bony claw on the other's knee—"I'm the only man that knows it. With everyone else he would be just morose and dull; but when he was alone with me in his office, or anywhere where we would be working together, if the least little ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... their companion. In those years I had one, -not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I in my own case experienced what difference there is betwixt the self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their parents' will, although, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... bitter grief stirred their hearts, this silent brother and sister, so long accustomed to self-restraint and self-repression, gave no sign. Gently she replaced the covering over the face of the sleeper, and silently they left the room. Not until they again reached the door of Darrell's room was the silence broken; then the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... felt his heart beat faster and faster—his self-restraint slipping away. After all, what did it matter?—it or anything else in the world? She was within reach of his arms, beautiful, compelling, herself as it seemed suddenly conscious of the light which was burning in his eyes. A ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... said the demon, "you were a weak fool when you did that. There's the Coper alongside now; go, get another keg. It is cheap, and you can just take a little drop to relieve that desperate craving. Come, now, be a man, and show that you have powers of self-restraint. You have always boasted of the strength of your will, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... as we have said, displeased and disgusted, as well as puzzled, by much which had occurred; but his heart melted when he realized the sorrow and suffering, which, in spite of unusual self-restraint, was thus laid bare before him. He threw one arm around the boy's neck, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... again overcoming his passion, left his sentence unfinished. Pierre, listening in silence, marvelled at the man's self-restraint, for he remembered the conversation which he had overheard at Cardinal Sanguinetti's. Those figs were evidently a mere pretext for gaining admission to the Boccanera mansion, where some friend—Abbe Paparelli, no doubt—could alone supply certain positive information ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... But, somehow, he was unlucky; his schemes were never successful. In the present instance he was peculiarly unfortunate, for everything went wrong with him. He had got rid of an obnoxious lover, he had coaxed over his son, he had spent an immensity of money, he had undergone worlds of trouble and self-restraint;—and then, when he really began to think that his ward's fortune would compensate him for this, his own family came to him, one after another, to assure him that he was completely mistaken—that it was ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... follow your deliberations with the deepest interest, earnestly desiring that you shall reach just conclusions, and that by the dignity, individual self-restraint, and wise conservatism which shall characterize your proceedings the capacity of the Cuban people for representative ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... his speech about Solon. He told us that the statue of Solon, with his hand concealed in the drapery of his robe, was erected as an illustration of the self-restraint of the orators of that day. (This was in the course of a scurrilous attack upon the impetuosity of Timarchus.) But the Salaminians tell us that this statue was erected less than fifty years ago, whereas some two hundred and ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... the one whose story is told in these pages was devoted and finally sacrificed to dignify their common country in the eyes of his countrymen, and to unite them in a common patriotism; he inculcated that self-respect which, by leading to self-restraint and self-control, makes self-government possible; and sought to inspire in all a love of ordered freedom, so that, whether under the flag of Spain or any other, or by themselves, neither tyrants (caciques) nor slaves (those led by caciques) ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... public, become the more cruelly visible to the visitors of the little alley-way at the rear of the tents. In "A Good Conscience" the satirical note has a still more serious ring; but the same admirable self-restraint which, next to the power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much—from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, a la George Eliot. But he must be obtuse, indeed, to whom this reticence is not more ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... you, sir, for supposing it," answered Wilding, his voice hard with self-restraint; ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... self-sacrifices subservient to the welfare of his fellow-men. In active life nothing avails more than self-denial; and there its trials are varying and multifarious: but ascetics, by placing their favourite virtue in retirement, made it dwindle down into one form only of self-restraint. ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... Viola Leach and the three little Andrews, was on in front, pluming herself upon her victory. The Careys had disappeared down the short cut to the Vicarage. Mavis hardly dared to look at Merle. The latter kept her face turned away and blinked her eyes hard. She had enough self-restraint not to weep openly in the High Street. When they reached their own door however, she bolted through the surgery entrance and, running into the garden, hid herself in the summer-house, whither Mavis, after a word to Aunt Nellie, presently ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... her ladyship agreed, with more than usual self-restraint. "But it's one trouble on another. Oh, it's more than I ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... fusil, je me sens une grande colere contre le gouvernement et le cure de l'endroit. Quand au voleur, il me plait, s'il est energique, car il m'amuse.' It was the energy of self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. The 'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... leaders, as Robinson states, were in no wise cast down by the course of events. Their actual losses had not been great; the temporary confinement of a few of their men did not seriously disturb them; and they considered that by their self-restraint and non-resistance they had put their enemies thoroughly in the wrong, and gained a most valuable vantage-ground for the ensuing Presidential and congressional elections—an estimate which the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... Marie Stuart. At this time the naturalism of the French method was gradually displacing the artificial elocution and academic poses of the Italian school of acting. Madame Ristori seems to have tried to combine simplicity with style, and the passion of nature with the self-restraint of the artist. 'J'ai voulu fondre les deux manieres,' she tells us, 'car je sentais que toutes choses etant susceptibles de progres, l'art dramatique aussi etait appele a subir des transformations.' The natural ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... would be in the fiery heart of the desert together, lost to all her friends whom he hated with a jealous hatred. He helped M'Barka to descend from the carriage: then, as she was received at the tent door by the Agha himself, Maieddine forgot his self-restraint, and swung the girl down, with tingling hands that clasped her waist, as if at ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... been inclined to consider a particularly stupid youth,—was now quite comprehensible to his mind, and he, the cool, self-possessed Englishman, was ready at that moment to outrival Juliet's lover, in his utmost excesses of amorous folly. In spite of his self-restraint, his voice quivered a little as ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... villa, and they followed. Their hearts were filled with delight over the victory; and Vinicius had to use self-restraint to avoid throwing himself on the neck of Petronius, for it seemed now that all dangers ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... ask the population of the town to give a fresh example of self-restraint and greatness of soul which it has already so often shown during ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make up for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... words of counsel to heart, and opened the box in which she had secretly packed his college-books, and where they had lain hidden all this time. But the sight of them, and the associations they called up, made him heartsick and ashamed, and it was only by the exercise of strong self-restraint that he made himself pretend to take some interest in them for his mother's sake. After this he fell into the way of taking long walks in all directions, and did a turn of work here and there as ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... not only looked like regular persons, but so far as my limited powers of observation go, they were among the few painters of Dutch subjects who didn't always paint a windmill or two into the background. It probably took great resolution and self-restraint, but they did it and I respect ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... driving in a buckboard drawn by a pair of half-broken pinto bronchos. The outfit was a rather ramshackle affair, and the driver was like his outfit. Stewart Duff was a rancher, once a "remittance man," but since his marriage three years ago he had learned self-reliance and was disciplining himself in self-restraint. A big, lean man he was, his thick shoulders and large, hairy muscular hands suggesting great physical strength, his swarthy face, heavy features, coarse black hair, keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy brows, suggesting force of character with a possibility of brutality in passion. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... soothing spot had come Stephen in her pain. The long spell of self-restraint during that morning had almost driven her to frenzy, and she sought solitude as an anodyne to her tortured soul. The long anguish of a third sleepless night, following on a day of humiliation and terror, had destroyed ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... no longer; I pant to burst my bonds," cried the impetuous Gaston; and Raymond was in no whit less eager, albeit he had something more of his mother's prudence and self-restraint. ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... over to his intimates, and from them to their friends who wrote the Gospels. He meant too much for them to seek the facile relief of praise. The words of praise die away, yes, and the words of affection too; and their silence and self-restraint are in themselves evidence of their truth; and more winning than words ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... an indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual; for it is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest graces and aptitudes of life have full scope." This does not imply that married life does not call for the exercise of self-restraint and continence, in this as ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... not arrogate to itself the character of a favorite and inspired instrument in the hands of God. It even went so far as to assume that, in working out the inscrutable ways of Providence, character, self-restraint, and moral grandeur were in the long run as potent in effecting results ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams

... I could not help wondering at his natural temperance and self-restraint and courage. I never could have thought that I should have met with a man like him in wisdom and endurance. Neither could I be angry with him or renounce his company any more than I could hope to win him. For I well knew that if Ajax could not be wounded by steel, much less he by money; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... and death going on in everything: truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... seem to trouble its companions, and in a short time a very considerable bag has been obtained. Tradition says that Confucius was fond of sport, but would never let fly at birds sitting; which, considering that his weapon was a bow-and-arrow, must be set down as a marvel of self-restraint. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... obligations. His latest book, Slaves of Freedom, was in process of being adapted for serial use, and its publication would follow. He set the completion of this work as the period when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restraint toward the appointed hour. If he had regrets for a career broken at the very point where it had reached success and was assured of more than competence, he never expressed them. His one regret was the effect of his enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... according to circumstances—which has, of course, the effect of drawing the attention of the young people to the paternal breadth of speech, and of fixing that special breach of decorum on their memory. Sometimes the wife has sufficient self-restraint not to give the word of warning in public, but can nurse her displeasure for a more convenient season; but as soon as they are alone, the miserable man has to pass under the harrow, as only husbands with wives of a chastising spirit can pass under it, and his life is made a burden to him because ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... in his memory. The sullen, ruthless crowd of dour Scots, the grey rugged houses lit up by the glare of the torches, the irresistible storming of the Tolbooth, the abject helplessness of Porteous in the hands of his enemies, the austere and judicial self-restraint of the people, who did their work as those who were serving justice, their care to provide a minister for the criminal's last devotions, and their quiet dispersal after the execution—all this remains unto to-day the most powerful description of lynch law ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... afraid that any one in the house should hear him, she on her part plotting and contriving occasions for meeting unobserved. This went on for a long time, so that some even had children born to them before they ever saw their wives by daylight. These connections not only exercised their powers of self-restraint, but also brought them together with their bodies in full vigour and their passions unblunted by unchecked intercourse with each other, so that their passion and love for ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... sound of her footsteps ceased than David threw off his armor of self-restraint and burst into a passion of sobs, the wilder for their long repression. He didn't hear the patter of little feet on the floor, and not until two mothering arms were about his neck did he see the white-robed figure ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... power of saying a thing in a happier way than any other man; nevertheless, it is carried so far that one understands what M. Guizot meant, when he said that Shakespeare appears in his language to have tried all styles except that of simplicity. He has not the severe and scrupulous self-restraint of the ancients, partly, no doubt, because he had a far less cultivated and exacting audience: he has indeed a far wider range than they had, a far richer fertility of thought; in this respect he rises above them: in his strong conception of his subject, in the genuine ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... interminable, while the grateful feeling for the concession is the less for the more compulsory bond of the association. And to be thus required, in a community which must not be dissolved, and in a series that reaches away beyond calculation, to exercise a self-restraint on their wills and humors in order to please one another, goes so hard against the great principle of human feeling—namely, each one's preference of pleasing himself—that there is an habitual impulse of reaction against the claim. This shows ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... the king, to prevent a meeting of the citizens to condemn his presence in the town—for the meeting was the "Port Bill meeting," adjourned from time to time since the previous May. And on the other side were the citizens, legally protesting and exasperatingly defiant, evidently under perfect self-restraint, determined not ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... once For way and guide, a fluent receptacle 170 That gathers up each petty straggling rill And vein of water, glad to be rolled on In safe obedience; that a mind, whose rest Is where it ought to be, in self-restraint, In circumspection and simplicity, 175 Falls rarely in entire discomfiture Below its aim, or meets with, from without, A treachery that foils it or defeats; And, lastly, if the means on human will, Frail human ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... among the youth; they grew at once rapacious and prodigal; they undervalued what was their own, and coveted what was another's; they set at naught modesty and continence; they lost all distinction between sacred and profane, and threw off all consideration and self-restraint. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... eminence in his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister,—an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look,—as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... back upon the episode I am filled with admiration for the red-haired girl. I consider that she showed extraordinary self-restraint in what must have been a peculiarly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... Hercules Furens is an almost gratuitous diversion in the midst of the talk; and the tameness of a literal (often awkwardly literal) translation is rarely broken by those inrushes of alien genius which are the glory of Browning's Alkestis. Yet the very self-restraint sprang probably from Browning's deep sensibility to the pathos of the story. "Large tears," as Mrs Orr has told us, fell from his eyes, and emotion choked his voice, when he first read it ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... fellow man, let him put him to horse-breaking, and he will soon know the best or the worst of him. Let him watch him handling a wild, unbroken colt, and if he is steadfast of purpose, just, brave, and true-hearted, it will all be revealed; but if he lacks self-restraint, or is cowardly, shifty, or mean-spirited, he will do well to avoid the test, for ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... could be felt by any others—a grief unspeakable—beyond words, and beyond thought. White-haired, and with a face which now seemed turned to stone in the fixedness of its great agony, this figure tottered rather than walked into the room. There was no longer any self-restraint in this woman, who for years had lived under a self-restraint that never relaxed; there was no thought as to those who might see or hear; there was nothing but the utter abandonment of perfect grief—of grief which had reached its height and could know nothing ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... in self-restraint, six grades are specified. (1) God-like virtue, or reason impelling as well as directing. (2) The highest human virtue, expressed by Temperance [Greek: sophrosynae]—appetite and passion perfectly harmonized with reason. (3) Continence [Greek: egkrateia] or the mastery of reason, after ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... and ideal impulse toward mutual order and self-restraint, which is Law, into lust for arbitrary and impudent power to control the acts and even the thoughts of men down to petty personal details; so that human life, at this very moment when it most needs and aspires to enlightened liberty, is crushed back into mechanical conformity with ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... passed. With this change, the interest which many of the Southern white citizens take in the welfare of the negroes has increased. The colored men must base their hope on the results of their own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and business success, as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy which they may receive from their white neighbors of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... penetrating to its deeper significances. Hazlitt and Lamb applied their analogous conception of wit as a lower quality than humour, in the same fashion. Dr. Johnson looked on the other hand for correctness of form, for the subordination of the parts to the whole, for the self-restraint and good sense which common manners would demand in society, and wisdom in practical life. His school cared more for large general outlines than for truth in detail. They would not permit the idiosyncrasy of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... command implicit obedience; and, where there has been long and arduous experience, a rampart of tried conviction and accumulated knowledge, where there is a fair level of general morality, education, courage, and self-restraint, there, if there only, a society may be found that exhibits the condition of life towards which, by elimination of failures, the world has been moving through the allotted space 50. You will know it by outward signs: Representation, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... flag of the colonies a rattlesnake, with the Latin legend, Nemo me impune lacessit—"No one wounds me with impunity." The flag of independence, however, only half told the real meaning of its emblem—the warning, and not the self-restraint. There is a device, to my notion, much more expressive: a rattlesnake rampant, with the Spanish motto, Ni huyes ni persigues—"Thou needst not flee, but thou must not pursue." Or, in other words, "I impose upon no one; no one must impose upon me." That is the real meaning ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... beauty, we observe, on examining the passages cited in evidence, that it is rather the moral quality appertaining to these characteristics that determines them as beautiful; symmetry is beautiful, because harmonious, and inducing order and self-restraint. Aristotle's single pronouncement in the sense of our question is the dictum: there is no beauty without a certain magnitude. Lessing, in his "Laocoon," really the first modern treatise in aesthetics, discusses the excellences of painting and poetry, but deals with visible beauty as if it were a ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... Stairs," first exhibited in 1880. In 1884, following the almost sombre "Wheel of Fortune" of the preceding year, appeared "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," in which Burne-Jones once more indulged his love of gorgeous colour, refined by the period of self-restraint. This masterpiece is now in the National collection. He next turned to two important sets of pictures, "The Briar Rose" and "The Story of Perseus," though these were not completed for some years to come. In 1886, having been elected A.R.A. the previous year, he exhibited (for the only time) at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... then, seemed very urgent for the first few hours of Tryon's journey. Ordinarily a careful driver and merciful to his beast, his eagerness to reach Patesville increased gradually until it became necessary to exercise some self-restraint in order not to urge his faithful mare beyond her powers; and soon he could no longer pretend obliviousness of the fact that some attraction stronger than the whole amount of Duncan McSwayne's note was urging him irresistibly toward his destination. The old town beyond the distant river, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... lines of self-restraint, run to a curious violence in emotion. All day long, shrink from it, ignore it, as he might, a moral storm had been brewing. Now it broke. Not from those two lovers did Julius turn thus in amazement and terror; but from just that from which it is impossible for any one to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... This self-restraint is all the more laudable because Fletcher possessed a rich vein of satirical humour, which he might have employed with telling effect ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... revived, soon became promises and vows. Thereupon the knowledge that he had committed himself, and the conviction that he was henceforth bound to one course in regard to her, wherein he seemed to himself incapable of falsehood, unhappily freed him from the self-restraint then most imperative upon him, and his trust in his own honour became the last loop of the snare about to entangle his and her very life. At the moment when a genuine love would have hastened to surround ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... necessary. In order to avoid the evils of overpopulation, Malthus advised people not to marry, or, if they did, to marry late in life and to limit the number of their children by the exercise of self-restraint. He reprobated all artificial and unnatural methods of birth control as immoral, and as removing the necessary stimulus to industry; but he failed to grasp the whole truth that an increase of population is necessary as a stimulus not only to ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... human spirit. They may show the casket—precious as an indication of the contents, but of little value to those who are bent on finding the jewel within. And I agree that no advanced soul is "controlled" by a discarnate spirit, but rises through aspiration and self-restraint to union with higher intelligences. I can see no light or love in the attitude of those professors of Christianity who denounce all spiritualistic tendencies as anti-Christian. It seems to me that the whole Christian faith is spiritualistic in the widest sense of the word. The Old and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... remarkable that the speech of St. James in Acts xv. and the circular despatched from the Council show several coincidences of style with the Epistle. If these coincidences are due to forgery, the forger has certainly used consummate self-restraint and skill. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... and naturally none of the slovenliness that offends a trained judgment in the work of so many of our writers later, unmistakably clever as they are. In short, he has tone, the last result and surest evidence of an intellect reclaimed from the rudeness of nature, for it means self-restraint. The story of Handel's composing always in full dress conveys at least the useful lesson of a gentlemanlike deference for the art a man professes and for the public whose attention he claims. Mr. James, as we see in his sketches of travel, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... who has the courage and self-restraint to leave his noble creations alive: too many try to ennoble them by death. For my part, if I have to go out of life before you, I would gladly trust you to the hands of Clara, or Rose, or Janet, or most of all Vittoria; though, to ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... should be made to divert the mind of melancholiacs by bodily exercise, walks, conversation, reading, and other recreations; that the desire of esteem is a more powerful principle to appeal to than fear; that the best form of restraint is self-restraint; that patients should be treated as much as possible as rational beings, but that little or no advantage arises from reasoning with them on their particular delusions; that it is desirable to encourage the influence of healthy religious principle over the mind of the insane; ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... realized the mother's life and the self-restraint which had enabled her to accept the inevitable without raising a complaint calculated to betray to the daughter that all was not as it should be with them, I felt such a rush of awe sweep over me that some of my fathomless emotion showed in my face; for Mrs. Ransome's own countenance assumed ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self,—really to human nobleness in many most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is there some human ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... right choice, the vigorous resistance, the honest perseverance might have been; but the worst faults of boyhood have 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 ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on the score of present needs, as I could reckon on a monthly allowance of a hundred crowns, which my adopted father, the good and generous M. de Bragadin, sent me, and I found this sum sufficient in the meanwhile, for with a little self-restraint one can live cheaply at Paris, and cut a good figure at the same time. I was obliged to wear a good suit of clothes, and to have a decent lodging; for in all large towns the most important thing is outward show, by which at the beginning one is always judged. My anxiety was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... something gravely suggestive of essential eccentricity, something unpretentiously breathing of intellectual effort, that could not fail to hit the fancy of this hot-brained boy. The unbroken enamel of courtesy, the self-restraint, the dignified kindness of these married folk, had besides a particular attraction for their visitor. He could not but compare what he saw with what he knew of his mother and himself. Whatever virtues Fleeming possessed, he could never count on being civil; whatever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she threw away her modesty and brawled and rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found little fault with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially. They thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine sister, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... march, rations and forage were drawn from "dumps" which had been placed at intervals along the line. As regards drinking water, this was brought up every day on camels. The supply of water was not too plentiful by any means, and it required a certain amount of care and self-restraint to make it last the appointed time, in fact, strict water-discipline was very necessary among all ranks. It was a tired but wiser Squadron that arrived at Amr! Many were the difficulties that had been overcome, and many the hardships that had been ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... [Sidenote: Thomas a Kempis, c. 1380-1471] Written in a plaintive minor key of {33} resignation and pessimism, it sets forth with much artless eloquence the ideal of making one's personal life approach that of Christ. Humility, self-restraint, asceticism, patience, solitude, love of Jesus, prayer, and a diligent use of the sacramental grace of the eucharist are the means recommended to form the character of the perfect Christian. It was doubtless because all ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... and plumes. Both were young, and (still according to Miss Butterworth) of sensitive temperament and unused to crime; for she was in a fainting condition when carried from the house, and he, with every inducement to self-restraint, showed himself the victim of such powerful emotion that he would have been immediately surrounded and questioned if he had not set his burden down in the vestibule and at once plunged with the girl into the passing crowd. Do you think ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... moment they left Mr. Bentham's office, of a change in the deportment of the young man who walked by his side. A variety of evil passions had developed one at least more tolerable—he was learning the lesson of self-restraint. He did not speak until they reached the corner of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... no teacher could ever find out. Nor was his obedience of that tame, passive sort which comes from indifference and lack of spirit. We all knew him to be resolute, and to be possessed of strong passions. But his power of self-restraint was equal to his power of reticence. He had, indeed, in a very marked degree, qualities which you look for only in those who have had a long schooling in the stern realities of life, and which you find rarely even then. He was as ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... may seem strange, but some explanation of their self-restraint was to be found in Dirk's character. In mind he was patient, very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in carrying them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not give way to them. For two years or more he had ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... concerned, but went on to say that what was blameless as an example in meaner men, was very different in one of his exalted position. The Standard denounced the whole affair from beginning to end. "The Prince of Wales is not as other men. His position demands a sobriety, a self-restraint, and a dignity from which people of less exalted position and lighter responsibilities are absolved." The religious press put no bounds to its denunciation. The Christian World spoke of the matter as an "outrage to the public conscience" and ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... her off on the next train. It is evident from these thrilling recitals that I was not a good mind-reader of woman character; but they were as sweet as angels when I was at home, and evidently the unwonted self-restraint to thus appear reacted very forcibly when the widower ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... than amusement ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is really confidential. It is singular—but many of my readers will know it for a truth—that vast numbers of people, though liberated from all reasonable motives to self-restraint, cannot be confidential—have it not in their power to lay aside reserve; and many, again, cannot be so with particular people. I have witnessed more than once the case, that a young female dancer, at a certain turn of a peculiar dance, could not—though she had died for ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Charley's self-restraint. Before he said good-night, he remarked casually to Charley, "I may want you to do some work at the lumber camp to-morrow. I tried to find Lumley there late this afternoon to give him some orders, but he had gone away. I have asked his wife to have him call me the moment he comes ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... asserted that the District Attorney, had he done his duty, would long ago have brought the Mayor and Town Council before a criminal court as parties to a notorious fraud. His ability, steadfastness, and self-restraint had had a very real effect; his meetings were always crowded, and his hearers were not all Democrats. His courage and fighting power were beginning to win him general admiration. The public took a lively though impartial interest in the contest. To critical outsiders it seemed not unlikely that ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... and self-restraint, at others with stinging contempt and scorn. Jefferson replied with elaborate denials, solemn protests of disinterested virtue, and counter accusations. Hamilton was back at him before the print was dry, and the battle ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... little boy. How their tongues did wag, and many were the visits of protest paid to the rectory. The principal discussion, however, always took place at the regular meetings of the Ladies' Aid Society. This was done most of all for Mrs. Royal's benefit. She knew this, and with much self-restraint she resisted making any reply for some time. But at one meeting, when the criticism became extremely severe, she could stand it no longer. Mrs. Harmon had just been indulging in one of her long dissertations, and finished by asking the rector's ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... imitation. Through the circumstances of their lives they have lacked the courage and conviction, even if opportunity had arisen, necessary for creative work. For the highest achievement in the arts they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion to work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint, which can come only from discipline, from long training, and freedom. Yet I make the claim that woman, from her constitutional femininity, is a compound of all those qualities that genius demands. The channels of woman's ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... days great by showing these same qualities. We must insist upon courage and resolution, upon hardihood, tenacity, and fertility of resource; we must insist upon the strong, virile virtues; and we must insist no less upon the virtues of self-restraint, self-mastery, regard for the rights of others; we must show our abhorrence of cruelty, brutality, and corruption, in public and in ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... community "was under the control of a very dangerous class of roughs, who drank, gambled, and fought continually, and were the terror of all well-disposed citizens."[28] Drunkenness seems to have been a very prevalent vice, probably because whisky was so cheaply produced; and where self-restraint was weak, and vast numbers of the poorest classes from Britain formed the basis of society, drunkenness was accompanied by bestial violence, or even death, in sudden and dreadful forms.[29] But it was the verdict of a Scottish ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... beautiful things and beautiful thoughts tend to develop in us that healthy kind of asceticism so requisite to every workable scheme of greater happiness for the individual and the plurality: self-restraint, choice of aims, consistent and thorough-paced subordination of the lesser interest to the greater; above all, what sums up asceticism as an efficacious means towards happiness, preference of the spiritual, the unconditional, the durable, instead of the temporal, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth century lives before us with its mundane joys, its transitory passions, its voluptuous hours; and in the midst of its warmth and colour a chill creeps upon our senses and we shiver. Browning's artistic self-restraint is admirable; he has his own truth to utter aloud if he should please; but here he will not play the prophet; the life of eighteenth-century Venice is dust and ashes; the poet will say not a word more than the musician has said in his toccata; the ruthlessness of time and death make him a little ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... usefulness to his conqueror as a spiritual dignitary. Beyond all this was the enormous moral influence of a temperate and apparently impersonal policy. Bonaparte, though personally and by nature a passionate and wilful man, felt bound, as the representative of a great movement, to exercise self-restraint, taking pains to live simply, dress plainly, almost shabbily, and continuing by calm calculation to refuse the enormous bribes which began and continued to be offered to him personally by the rulers of Italy. His generals and the fiscal agents ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... son had always hitherto been; of how glad he had been to be a soldier; and he ended with a bitter lamentation that all this should have happened to such a good, brave lad; the boy must have gone clean out of his senses. The old man said it all with the most touching self-restraint. He took great pains to preserve a soldierly bearing, and omitted none of the customary tokens of respect, just as if he had been still clad in his old sergeant's uniform, and standing before an officer ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein



Words linked to "Self-restraint" :   stiff upper lip, temperateness, control



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