Quotes About Abstinence

As novelist Harry Crews once wrote, I'm the kind of person who—if he can't have too much of something—doesn't want any of it. In

Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

restraint equals indulgence

I'm out of the habit. I've spent years trying not to want. Just, you know, as an endeavor, like quitting smoking.

drink alcoholic beverages ("Be ye not drunk with wine

When you're dating, abstinence is a greater expression of love than making love, because you're doing what's best for your beloved, not just what feels good in the moment.

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

A man who wants to gain power over a woman must follow the example of women and condition his sex drive. If he succeeds in becoming as cold as she, she can no longer bait him with sex into the role of provider. At most she could offer herself as an equal sex partner, as dependent on him as he is on her. If men could abstain from sex at judicious intervals they might even succeed in normalizing the female sex drive - even make women desire them more than the other way around.

I've become immune to desire; I snip the danger of wanting in the bud.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

The best contraceptive is the word no - repeated frequently.

You can say that I cut off on my non-vegetarian food, chocolates and ice cream and nothing else.

Food is like sex: when you abstain, even the worst stuff begins to look good.

bedrock of recovery is abstinence from addictive, mood-altering chemicals. But it is also true that for sobriety to be achieved and maintained, our loved one needs to work through multiple layers of dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors. She must replace unhealthy attitudes and belief systems with new ways of thinking and understanding. And she must acquire new skills for long-term management of a chronic disease.

Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.

Abstinence is a perversion.

Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.

Idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power. And atheism is… precisely not that. Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position

Research—and my own experience—suggests that the less we indulge in something, the less we want it. When we believe that a craving will remain unsatisfied, it may diminish; cravings are more provoked by possibility than by denial.

When it comes to fake food, I'm like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can't indulge occasionally.

I realized that one way to deprive myself without creating a feeling of deprivation is to deprive myself totally.

When it comes to fake food, I'm like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

I won't touch alcohol.

I've tried everything but celibacy, and I really want to know what it feels like to be touched by someone with a mental touch and not a physical touch.