Refrain Quotes - Page 4

• Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing.

  Honore de Balzac

  Kindness, Heart, Character

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• I am a very shy person who is just close to himself. So I would refrain from talking about my personal life.

  N. T. Rama Rao Jr.

  Talking, Shy, Persons

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• There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculate or encourage polygamy... And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.

  Wilford Woodruff

  Teaching, Law, Land

  Wilford Woodruff, Reid Larkin Neilson, Jan Shipps (2011). “In the Whirlpool: The Pre-manifesto Letters of President Wilford Woodruff to the William Atkin Family, 1885-1890”, Arthur H Clark

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• Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Destiny, Men

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1835). “Democracy in America”, p.447

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• Who doesn't know that the first law of history is not to dare to say anything false, and the second is not to refrain from saying anything true?

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Inspirational, Motivational, Law

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• My earnest prayer is that you will have the courage required to refrain from judging others, the courage to be chaste and virtuous, and the courage to stand firm for truth and righteousness. As you do so, you will be ‘an example of the believers’ (1 Timothy 4:12), and your life will be filled with love and peace and joy.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Prayer, Judging, Joy

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• It is a bigger miracle to be patient and refrain from anger than it is to control the demons which fly through the air.

  John Cassian

  Air, Miracle, Patient

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• A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner; yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Powerful, Self, Profound

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• If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.

  Herman Melville

  History, May, Individual

  Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.165, Penguin

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• New Year's resolution: To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.

  James Agate

  New Year, Witty, Years

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

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• So I cradle this average violin that knows
  Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
  The possibility of free declamation anchored
  To a dull refrain.

  John Ashbery

  Music, Average, Dull

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

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• "Who are we to say what is right and what is wrong?" is the common refrain under the doctrine of pure pluralism. Clearly, society cannot long survive if this principle is pushed to its logical conclusion and everyone is free to write his own laws.

  Benjamin Hart

  Christian, Religious, Writing

  Benjamin Hart (1988). “Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty”

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• What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Jesus, Done, Christianity

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2011). “The Will to Power”, p.177, Vintage

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• All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Worry, Support, Challenges

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• Virtue also depends on ourselves. And so also does vice. For where we are free to act we are also free to refrain from acting, and where we are able to say No we are also able to say Yes; if therefore we are responsible for doing a thing when to do it right, we are also responsible for not doing it when not to do it is wrong, and if we are responsible for rightly not doing a thing, we are also responsible for wrongly doing it.

  Aristotle

  Acting, Vices, Doe

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.62, Wordsworth Editions

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• The good refrain from sin from the pure love of virtue.

  Horace

  Sin, Virtue, Pure Love

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• Nature is a tenacious recycler, every dung heap and fallen redwood tree a bustling community of saprophytes wresting life from the dead and discarded, as though intuitively aware that there is nothing new under the sun. Throughout the physical world, from the cosmic to the subatomic, the same refrain resounds. Conservation: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

  Natalie Angier

  Nature, Law, Ideas

  Natalie Angier (2008). “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Some authors state that the last stage in this chain of measurements involves "consciousness," or the "intellectual inner life" of the observer, by virtue of the "principle of psycho-physical parallelism." Other authors introduce a wave function for the entire universe. In this book, I shall refrain from using concepts that I do not understand.

  Asher Peres

  Book, Intellectual, Lasts

  "Quantum theory: concepts and methods" by Asher Peres, Springer, (p. 26-27), 1995.

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• We're not all the same. A common liberal refrain is that differences between individuals are statistically more significant than those between cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. I don't see why the fact of inter-individual differences would nullify inter-group variance. That's liberal logic for you.

  Ilana Mercer

  Individual Differences, Groups, Facts

  "Update V: The Kindness Of (Caucasian) Strangers (On Brotherly Love)". barelyablog.com. January 31, 2010.

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• An unlucky rich man is more capable of satisfying his desires and of riding out disaster when it strikes, but a lucky man is better off than him...He is the one who deserves to be described as happy. But until he is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate.

  Solon

  Men, Desire, Riding

  "The Histories Bk. 1". Book by Herodotus, trans. Robin Waterfield, ch. 32, pp. 15-16.,

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• The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned.

  Confucius

  Men, Thinking, Small Acts

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• Just as the grammarian makes one study grammar,
  A Buddha teaches according to the tolerance of his students;
  Some he urges to refrain from sins, others to do good,
  Some to rely on dualism, other on non-dualism;
  And to some he teaches the profound,
  The terrifying, the practice of enlightenment,
  Whose essence is emptiness that is compassion

  Akkineni Nagarjuna

  Compassion, Essence, Practice

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• I must not refrain from saying that India can gain more by waiving the right of punishment.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Punishment, India, Gains

  Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, V. Geetha (2004). “Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace”, p.158, Tara Publishing

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• You have heard me say, a great many times, that there is not that man or woman in this Church, and there never was and never will be, who turn up their noses at the counsel that is given them from the First Presidency, but who, unless they repent of and refrain from such conduct will eventually go out of the Church and go to hell, every one of them

  Brigham Young

  Men, Church, Firsts

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• Exercising during the cold and flu season will help people stay in shape, and most likely fight off colds or reduce the number of days a person is ill. The cold season should not be an excuse for the average person to refrain from exercising - working out at the gym, a brisk walk in the park or a jog through the neighborhood.

  Michael Flynn

  Exercise, Fighting, Average

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