Refrain Quotes - Page 3

The commandment to refrain from placing blame on our parents, deeply imprinted in us by our upbringing, skillfully performs the function of hiding essential truths from us.

Alice Miller

Truth, Parent, Essentials

Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.61, Macmillan

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Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

John F. Kennedy

Religious, Attitude, Believe

Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

Milan Kundera

Fashion, Reading, May

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To you who think you are lost or without hope, or who think you have done too much that was too wrong for too long, to every one of you who worry that you are stranded somewhere on the wintry plains of life and have wrecked your handcart in the process, we call out "Jehovah's unrelenting refrain, "My hand is stretched out still" (Isaiah 5:25: 9:17,21). "...His mercy endureth forever, and His hand is stretched out still. His is the pure love of Christ, the charity that never faileth, that compassion which endures even when all other strength disappears".

Jeffrey R. Holland

Compassion, Thinking, Hands

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Love, and do what you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry out, do it out of love. If you refrain from punishing, do it out of love.

Saint Augustine

Silence, Cry, Ifs

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Living apart and at peace with myself,I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.

Henry Miller

Acceptance, Simple, Hands

Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute.

Czeslaw Milosz

Running, Spring, Lying

Czeslaw Milosz, “Forget”

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Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence; the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

William Shakespeare

Angel, Giving, Devil

'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 4, l. 160

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There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.'

Nathan Myhrvold

Song, Party, Eight

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Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Men, Long, Morality

"Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook B 12, 1799.

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Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

Erica Jong

Inspiring, Mothers Day, Would Be

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I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.

Margaret Sanger

Children, Machines, Function

Margaret Sanger (1916). “What Every Girl Should Know”

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Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.

John Paul Stevens

Majority, Speak, Individual

John Paul Stevens, University of Chicago. Law School (1992). “The Bill of Rights: a century of progress”

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If a man can control his body and mind and thereby refrains from eating animal flesh and wearing animal products, I say he will really be liberated.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhist, Animal, Men

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Before he bent his head, I knew what he was going to do. Touch his lips to mine. Oh, and I wanted him to... I stilled, hardly daring to breathe. The old refrain of cant and shouldn't sank beneath the weight of new worlds like please and yes.

Ann Aguirre

World, Weight, Lips

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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.

H. L. Mencken

Freedom, Agency, Government

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Never say anything to hurt anyone. Moreover . . . refrain from double talk, from shrewd and canny remarks that are designed to advance our interests at someone's disadvantage. We are to turn our back upon evil, and in every way possible, do good, help people and bring blessings into their lives.

Norman Vincent Peale

Inspirational, Motivational, Hurt

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He was a man who would never ask for sympathy. He was a man who sought only to do what was right. Such people appear in the world, every world, now and then, like a single refrain of some blessed song, a fragment caught on the spur of an otherwise raging cacophony. Imagine a world without such souls. Yes, it should have been harder to do.

Steven Erikson

Song, Blessed, Men

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What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is liveable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some.

Judith Butler

Important, Cease

Judith Butler (2004). “Undoing Gender”, p.8, Psychology Press

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I've lost track of where friendship ends and falling begins. (this is the foolish refrain of the hopelessly devoted.) there are times I want to kiss you midsentence. undo the not-doing with one gesture.

David Levithan

Fall, Kissing, Track

David Levithan (2008). “The Realm of Possibility”, p.55, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

Warrior, Four Agreements, Victim

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...William wondered why he always disliked people who said 'no offense meant.' Maybe it was because they found it easier to to say 'no offense meant' than actually to refrain from giving offense.

Terry Pratchett

People, Giving, Easier

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Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Men, Numbers, Trying

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Well, thanks for not shooting anyone, I guess", said Marcus. "My contribution was to somehow refrain from peeing myself. You can thank me later.

Dan Wells

Shooting, Thanks, Said

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True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.

John Donne

Love, Time, Writing

John Donne (1993). “Selected Poems”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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