Refrain Quotes

#1. An opera singer is like an athlete before a match. An athlete cannot overdo anything. In order to perform at the highest possible level, you need to refrain from activities so as to be able to express this power.

Andrea Bocelli

#2. It's amazing - and poignant - to think that Leonardo (da Vinci)did consider himself as something of a failure. He didn't believe that he had achieved everything he might have done. His notebooks have a repeated refrain: 'Tell me if I ever did a thing.

Ross King

#3. The public is increasingly disgusted with a steady diet of defamation, and prepared to reward those who refrain from it.

Mitch Daniels

#4. Who will in time present pleasure refrain, shall in time to come the more pleasure obtain.

John Heywood

#5. Because we can expect future generations to be richer than we are, no matter what we do about resources, asking us to refrain from using resources now so that future generations can have them later is like asking the poor to make gifts to the rich.

Julian Simon

#6. It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.)

Primo Levi

#7. 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

#8. One who does not join in with the unfolding karmic effects (karma oodai) is a Gnani (Self-realized), and an agnani (non-Self-realized) cannot indeed refrain from joining in with the unfolding karmic effects.

Dada Bhagwan

#9. Your stamina is impressive," he commented. There was a beat of silence and Sin said with a scoff, "I could say something, but I'll refrain.

Santino Hassell

#10. We should not only refrain from thinking about gratifying our desires but also avoid focusing on not gratifying our desires. The way to deal with temptation is not to grit our teeth and make up our minds that we will not do a certain thing. The key is to fill our minds with other things.

David Jeremiah

#11. Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.

Hilaire Belloc

#12. If you will refrain from telling any lies about the Republican Party, I'lll promise not to tell the truth about the Democrats.

Chauncey Depew

#13. She cares about fall's magnificence in the rain
The dipping raindrops' dance assigning thence Indicated rhyme that eases her refrain
Before they met - her paces commence.

Victoria Haugnes

#14. Children are notoriously curious about everything, everything except ... the things people want them to know. It then remains for us to refrain from forcing any kind of knowledge upon them, and they will be curious about everything.

Floyd Dell

#15. Start with a simple request, making it the refrain of your day: 'God, open the eyes of my heart.' This journey must be Spirit-led, every day.

Ann Voskamp

#16. Regrets won't change anything. Don't Reject yourself. Just Refrain from what you did badly; repent and move on.

Israelmore Ayivor

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

James Agate

#18. The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

#19. 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

#20. Here's a suggestion you might want to pay attention to. Try to forget everything you learned on Oprah and if you can't do that, at least refrain from regurgitating that crap at me. It spoils my appetite.

Samantha Young

#21. It is good to exercise patience. But never let your patience be the type that will keep you refrained from acting.

Israelmore Ayivor

#22. If someone in my life could grow with confrontation and feedback, why would I choose to refrain?

Paula Heller Garland

#23. There are a billion songs that I've heard and said, 'I don't even care to have an opinion about it,' but if I have to hear a snippet of the refrain of 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' once, it'll get stuck in my head, and that drives me crazy.

Kurt Braunohler

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

Mahatma Gandhi

#25. I try to refrain from the alarmist statement, really I do. It's bad for the liver and worries the dog, who has plenty enough to worry about as it is.

Christopher Buckley

#26. We must not demonstrate any arrogance, and we must refrain from any irrational or undemocratic behavior.

Chen Shui-bian

#27. In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

#28. After a long run of almost thirty years, you get to the point where you say, 'These are my concerns.' It's not so much this is what I set out to claim - it is a kind of refrain.

Alice McDermott

#29. There's an old blues refrain: I begged for water, you gave me gasoline.

Forrest Gander

#30. 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.

#31. If we truly think of Christ as our source of holiness, we shall refrain from anything wicked or impure in thought or act and thus show ourselves to be worthy bearers of his name. For the quality of holiness is shown not by what we say but by what we do in life.

Gregory Of Nyssa

#32. Charging [creation of new karma] is under 'your' control and discharge [disposal of karma] is in nature's control. Therefore, if you want to charge, charge positively. Whatever you have charged, nature will not refrain from discharging.

Dada Bhagwan

#33. It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still refrain from speaking them aloud.

Orson Scott Card

#34. Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Honore De Balzac

#35. Never forget, the real secret of giving advice is this: Once you've given it, don't concern yourself with whether it is followed or not, and refrain from saying 'I told you so.'

Harvey MacKay

#36. Because I am well read, I know what a terrible cliche it is to shout, "I *hate* you. I never *asked* to be born," so I refrain.

Caitlin Moran

#37. Children and scientists share an outlook on life. 'If I do this, what will happen?' is both the motto of the child at play and the defining refrain of the physical scientist.

James Gleick

#38. We treat them in the same way. Those who kill our women and innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they refrain.

Osama Bin Laden

#39. I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.

Alan Bennett

#40. When the sparrow sings its final refrain, the hush is felt nowhere more deeply than in the heart of man.

Don Williams

#41. 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

#42. Kid ... I must ask you to please refrain from reorganizing the contents of my book without my permission ... ' Noah
'Hmph. If you plan on keeping me locked up in this book, then you can at least keep the thing properly organized.' Death the Kid

Atsushi Ohkubo

#43. If only the ruler and his people would refrain from harming each other, all the benefits of life would accumulate in the kingdom.

Wayne W. Dyer

#44. I'm now requesting you refrain from calling me this early in the morning, before I've had a chance to steel my defenses against hearing you utter the word 'lizard.'"

-- spoken by Dr. Jeri Asheer... to Chris Dixon.

Richard Finney

#45. Those who believe everything they read probably should refrain from reading.

Matt

#46. Keep out of the Sight of Feasts and Banquets as much as may be; for 'tis more difficult to refrain good Cheer, when it's present, than from the Desire of it when it is away; the like you may observe in the Objects of all the other Senses.

Benjamin Franklin

#47. I've always been ... charming." Prince Baldair smiled at her, and she didn't even refrain from rolling her eyes.

Elise Kova

#48. If you want to, you can share my teaching refrain: I can't want you to succeed more than you do.

Tim Gunn

#49. It is proper netiquette to refrain from using all capital letters in internet correspondence. NetworkEtiquette

David Chiles

#50. Refrain from reckless and thoughtless actions. Be as calm and judicious as a mountain.

Choi Hong Hi

#51. Without sanctifying grace it is not possible to refrain long from mortal sin.

Thomas Aquinas

#52. In a nobler age one could have answered such impertinence by jostling his lordship as he stood holding open the door, so that he would have been obliged to demand a meeting. Or did one, even in that age, refrain from jostling people in doorways when a lady was present? Before

Georgette Heyer

#53. I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide
the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.

H.P. Lovecraft

#54. Husbands were to be avoided in the pre-thirty years. There was always time for marriage and children; was the common refrain. You couldn't give up you for them. But what if you wanted them more than you wanted a singular, powerful you? No one ever talked about that.

Kristin Hannah

#55. I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.

Jane Welsh Carlyle

#56. Christian men ought not refrain from the sexual pollutions that surround us because they object to lovemaking; they refrain because they object to the wanton vandalism of it. Our culture is doing to sex what people who chew with their mouths open do to food.

Douglas Wilson

#57. To be just, is not enough to refrain from injustice. Once must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self interest as the driving force of society.

Pedro Arrupe

#58. One is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally. In the hearing of the gods, who hear all, it is conversely unsage to make a simple and direct statement. So what is one to do? The dilema needs a whole volume to itself.

Max Beerbohm

#59. Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

Horace

#60. With increased self-awareness comes focus... We become selective. We refrain from jumping to grab every opportunity that comes on our way...

Assegid Habtewold

#61. Refrain tonight And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; For use alomost can change the stamp of nature

William Shakespeare

#62. 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

#63. The essence of Buddhism is if you can, help others. If not, then at least refrain from hurting others.

Dalai Lama

#64. It is professional snobbery that refrains training rookies.

Aniruddha Sastikar

#65. A threat should never be spoken, your enemy should not be told of your intentions. Either take decisive action or refrain from it, but never threaten

Soke Behzad Ahmadi

#66. The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.

Sydney J. Harris

#67. 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

#68. It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.

John Stuart Mill

#69. The Verse-Refrain form starts with a context before the topic that the Refrain is talking about happens.

Ryan Cayabyab

#70. Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one's own.

Primo Levi

#71. 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

#72. We should refrain from anything that seems to be a final judgment of any person ... the Lord alone has the capacity to judge ... And, in all of this we must remember the command to forgive.

Dallin H. Oaks

#73. For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahamati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh.

Gautama Buddha

#74. I refrain from lots of things I love, like cheese and carbs. I eat plenty of greens every day, my favorite being watercress.

Chloe Sevigny

#75. Whiskey's to tough, Champagne costs too much, Vodka puts my mouth in gear. I hope this refrain, Will help me explain, As a matter of fact, I like beer.

Tom T. Hall

#76. Do what helps others.
Refrain from harming others.
Transcend your own ignorance, clinging, hate, fear and delusion.
This and only this is the dispensation of all the Buddhas.

Paul R. Fleischman

#77. To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

Ben Marcus

#78. the difference between restaurant cooking and home cooking - and often, too, the difference between great flavor and tasteless food - is two things: more heat and more seasoning. His constant refrain as he made his way around the kitchen: "More heat. More salt. More butter.

Shauna Niequist

#79. If policymakers are serious about avoiding a society of TV 'haves and have-nots,' they should refrain from policies that favor pay-TV operators over the providers of our nation's only free and local communications system: over-the-air broadcasting.

Gordon Smith

#80. The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

Pema Chodron

#81. A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.

Seneca The Younger

#82. 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

#83. To refrain and desist from interfering with terminal cancer patients, in their use of Laetrile acquired through the 'Affidavit System.

Luther L. Bohanon

#84. You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.

Gautama Buddha

#85. Generosity knows how to count, but refrains.

Mason Cooley

#86. The best we can do is strive to minimize the amount of harm we cause by living. We need to eat in order to live, and there is no moral or ethical code that dictates that we should refrain from eating and allow ourselves to die for some higher purpose.

Sharon Gannon

#87. This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say, Truly, I have no opinion on the matter, would that merely be another proof she had one?

Ann Leckie

#88. A hopeless exile from his native home, From death alone exempt - but cease to mourn; Let all combine to achieve his wish'd return; Neptune atoned, his wrath shall now refrain, Or thwart the synod of the gods in vain.

Homer

#89. I plead with you to have the courage to refrain from judging and criticizing those around you, as well as the courage to make certain that everyone is included and feels loved and valued.

Thomas S. Monson

#90. When will talkers refrain from evil speaking? When listeners refrain from evil hearing. At present there are many so credulous of evil, they will receive suspicions and impressions against persons whom they don't know, from a person whom they do know
an authority good for nothing.

Augustus William Hare

#91. It was all Mrs. Waddington could do to refrain from hurling a bust of Edgar Allan Poe at her head.

P.G. Wodehouse

#92. 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

#93. The changes in her are like music missing the refrain. The song's transformed, though what's left remains familiar.

Corrine Jackson

#94. I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.

Voltaire

#95. Let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

Seneca The Younger

#96. One should refrain from contempt for the baser specimens of humanity, for whom liberation amounts to shaving the heads of women who have slept with Germans.

Coco Chanel

#97. A hint: perhaps in this case, you should refrain from throwing the book at the audience when you finish.

Annie Barrows

#98. 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

#99. Remember the refrain: We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal.

Lawrence Lessig

#100. That does not mean that we must forego just and fair criticism, or refrain from opposition to policies which are debatable or which do not command our approval.

Bainbridge Colby