"Self-restraint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sprang down the bank, crossed the streamlet by a plank bridge, and ran into the cottage, where she found Mrs Laidlaw in the passage, with eager eyes, but labouring under powerful self-restraint. ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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, once ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... 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
... was just the sort of thing she had been hoping for, but with the self-restraint peculiar to her, unusual in one so young, she said nothing till her aunt directly addressed her, after reading aloud ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... him lean, and association with British officers had given him an air of being frankly at his ease even when really very far from feeling it. He had the natural Oriental gift of smothering excitement, added to a trick learned from the West of aggressive self-restraint that is not satisfied with seeming the opposite of what one is, but insists on extracting humor from the situation and on calling attention to ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... bench where they were used to talk, She sat down, and waited until she could control the least tremor of her voice. Then she turned upon him her noble eyes, the exquisite passionate tender light of which no effort of the will could curtain in. Nor could any self-restraint turn aside the electrical energy of her words:"I thought I should not let you go away without saying something more to you about what has happened lately with Amy. My interest in you, your future, your success, has caused me ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... looked up my family record and given a provisional consent, and Papa Schuyler had cabled a reluctant blessing, I did not feel capable of any further self-restraint. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... conduces to the propagation of the species, the former instinct, as the primary and more fundamental, is capable of overmastering the latter. In short, the savage is willing to restrain his sexual propensity for the sake of food. Another object for the sake of which he consents to exercise the same self-restraint is victory in war. Not only the warrior in the field but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome their enemies. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... refrain from interfering in matters of state importance. His influence had thus far been wielded only to secure his own position. Perhaps his keen instincts, rather than his intelligence, warned him against too deep an interference in political matters. To this self-restraint he owed his long continuance in power, for though the situation was well known all over Russia, it was regarded rather in the light of a joke. Rasputin's power was underestimated, perhaps; he was more or less regarded as the pet poodle ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... crashed to the floor as Grell, the last remnants of his self-restraint gone, leapt to his feet. Sir Hilary Thornton sprang between the two men. Foyle also had risen, and though his face was impassive the blue eyes were sparkling and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Irish policy with the Boers she will turn them into a race of assassins or law breakers. They are now the very reverse of that. They have shown a higher regard for the sacredness of human life than we have to-day in America. They have shown more self-restraint, more respect for personal rights, have dealt more fairly with their opponents than we did in our revolution. They are the superiors of both ourselves and the English and they are inferior to us and ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... announcement—did not change the comforting fact that she had nothing to explain and nothing for which to be pitied. If her friends, after the manner of young ladies, had hinted at the subject and sought to find a meaning in Colonel French's friendship, she had smiled enigmatically. For this self-restraint, whatever had been its motive, she now reaped her reward. The announcement of her aunt's engagement would account for the colonel's attentions to Graciella as a mere courtesy to a young relative ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... glorious insurrection for Right would thus be beforehand deprived of its natural leaders—the Representatives of the People. We should decapitate the popular army. Temporary delay, on the contrary, would be beneficial. Too much zeal must be guarded against, self-restraint is necessary, to give way would be to lose the battle before having begun it. Thus, for example, we must not attend the meeting announced by the Right for noon, all those who went there would be arrested. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of modified (or unmodified) false pretences, succeed at times in beating the bookmakers; we have then an outer circle, composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... 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 Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... the Montreal press attributed this wise and magnanimous self-restraint to fear for his own safety. But he was not to be moved from his resolve by the paltry imputation; nor did he even care that his friends should resent or refute it ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... One less habitually under self-restraint than this warrior would probably have now aimed his meditated blow; but Chingachgook knew there were more Iroquois behind him on the rift, and he was a warrior much too trained and experienced to risk anything unnecessarily. He suffered the Indian at the bow of the canoe to push ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... you choose, Patty," said Clarissa, "or I'll be true. But you can't have me both at once." Patience said nothing further then. The lesson of self-restraint which she desired to teach was very ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... crushing disaster which seemed hopelessly to have wrecked the cause of Italian independence. Although he believed, with Mazzini, that there was only room for two kinds of Italians in Italy, the friends and the enemies of Austria, he showed remarkable self-restraint, and adopted a policy of conciliation towards foreign Powers, whilst widening the liberties of his own subjects until all over the land Italians came to regard Sardinia with admiration, and to covet 'liberty as it was ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... 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? ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... society of strong, pure, restful, earnest souls, in whom the passion of deepest emotion is transfigured by habitual calm. The brown and golden harmonies he loved, are gained without sacrifice of lustre: there is a self-restraint in his colouring which corresponds to the reserve of his emotion; and though a regret sometimes rises in our mind that he should have modelled the light and shade upon his faces with a brusque, unpleasing hardness, their pallor dwells within ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... shawl belonged, most palpably, to a German lady three feet ahead of him, but gripping it triumphantly, he bounded over the six feet which separated him from the Eversham-Beecher triangle and with marvelous self-restraint he touched Miss Eversham on ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 exercised ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 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 ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... in Wall Street at which he was so clever. Throughout the civilized world nowadays, and especially in and near the great capitals of finance, there is a class of men and women of small capital and of a character in which are combined iron self-restraint, rabbit-like timidity, and great shrewdness, who make often a not inconsiderable income by gambling in stocks. They buy only when the market is advancing strongly; they sell as soon as they have gained the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... little closer to her, and the strength of the man was manifest in his intense self-restraint. His words were measured, his tone quiet. Yet both somehow gave evidence of the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ungoverned affections. In that early career of unbridled desire for excitement and pleasure, nowhere do we see a sense of duty, a respect for the opinions of the good, a reverence for religious institutions, or self-restraint of any kind; but these defects were partly covered over by his many virtues and his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the man of the world—one to whom many climes and many people were familiar—he had begun to discover for himself that this great middle class was really the backbone of the whole civil structure about him, its self-restraint, sanity, and cleanliness marking the normal in the tide-gauge of the city's activities; the hysteria of the rich and the despair of the poor being ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... She took another stitch. The self-restraint of her New England mother was upon her then. Burr Gordon, betrothed to Dorothy Fair, loving her not, yet still noble enough and kind enough to have perilled his life to save hers, should know nothing of the greater sacrifice ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... permit and even encourage them to draw upon him liberally; it is only a partial failure of the crop, or some intimation of the negro's intention to shirk his obligations, that induces his country factor to preach the virtue of self-restraint, or moralize upon the advantages ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... born in your ancestors. Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it's a million years older. Don't fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you. To-day your mind was full of self-restraint that did not altogether restrain. You couldn't forget yourself. You couldn't FEEL only, as Bo did. You couldn't be ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... for a second or two, only gulped with desperate effort at self-restraint. Then, at length, in a muffled voice, "Don't let him take me away!" she besought him shakily. "You—you—you've ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... in the society of the Austins, outward, stoical conformers to the world, 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine, you at least were no one else's; but I will not—pardon me, I can not—endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another's. Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me from your presence; it was by chance that I met you at the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and 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
... great self-restraint to avoid bitterness toward the Government, but even when Congress refused his wife's petition for the restoration of the mementos of Washington, taken from her home in Arlington during the war, he refrained from making any public protest and his ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... 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 a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Peter kissed her eyelids very gently and let her go. Harmony was trembling, but with shock and alarm only. The storm that had torn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint left her only shaken. He was still very close to her; she could hear him breathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength that was left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his arms ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... She tried to judge fairly as to whether she or Evelyn would on the whole be the best for him. She estimated herself, and she estimated Evelyn, and she estimated the man. Wollaston Lee was a man of a strong nature, she told herself. He was capable of self-restraint, of holding his head up from his own weaknesses forever. Maria reasoned that if he had been a weaker man she would have loved him just the same, and in that case Evelyn would have been the one to be sacrificed. She thought that a girl like Evelyn would not have been such a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... principle laid down by the judges "that it is a privilege inseparably connected with the sovereignty of the King to dispense with penal laws, and that according to his own judgment," was applied by James with a reckless impatience of all decency and self-restraint. Catholics were admitted into civil and military offices without stint, and four Catholic peers were sworn as members of the Privy Council. The laws which forbade the presence of Catholic priests in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... piebald beard with waxen resignation, were not to be found in this shop-front, which exhibited nothing but a small pile of toilet remedies and a few lengths of hair of graduated tints. It was doubtful, perhaps, whether such self-restraint on the part of its proprietor was the result of a distaste for empty show, or a conviction that the neighbourhood did ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Irishmen were organised and drilled in every county. The English garrison was becoming day by day more slack and contemptible. What traitors there were were known and marked. The dawn was in the sky. A little more patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more self-restraint, and the hour of Ireland's ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... lady for her world-mending mission, had forgotten to give her a pleasant voice. Now if there was one thing in the world which made Snarley "madder" than anything else could do, it was the high-pitched, strident tones of a woman engaged in argument. The consequence was that his self-restraint broke down, and before the lady had said half the things she had meant to say, or come within sight of the splendid offer she was going to make on behalf of the Earl of Clodd, Snarley had spoken words and ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... his lips to protest, and checked himself, in despair of producing the slightest effect. Pedgift Senior bowed in polite acknowledgment of his client's self-restraint, and took instant advantage of it ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... who abandoned all his property to the State that he might be free to devote himself to thought, was the first and best teacher of Pericles. Under his tutorship—better, the companionship of this noble man—Pericles acquired that sublime self-restraint, that intellectual breadth, that freedom from superstition, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... to stand there under the curb of self-restraint and listen, but as yet he achieved it. And in the same quiet, yet thrilling voice she continued: "Your coming here brought a transformation. The fog lifted and I've been living the life of a lotus-eater—but now I've got to go back into the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Educational Department, the father of General Armstrong, President of the Hampton University in Virginia, deserve, perhaps, the chief credit for this work. They were the organizers who supplemented the labors of the missionaries; and, fortunately for the native people, they were all men of honor, of self-restraint, of goodness of heart, who knew how to rule wisely and not too much, and who protected the people without destroying their independence. What they have done would have given them fame had it not been done two thousand miles from the nearest continent, and at least ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... written with admirable good taste and judgment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and 'nay' of life. It is a graceful and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "when there are no more daily collisions. Dear Barbara, if I am particularly anxious to train this poor girl up at once in affection and in self-restraint, it is because my whole life—ever since I grew up—has taught me what a grievous task is left us, after we are our own masters. If our childish faults—such as impetuosity and sullenness—are not corrected on principle, not for convenience, while ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the 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 ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... an author, is demonstrated by his self-restraint, in refusing to make "copy" out ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... of his vocation upon his dark favorite, he always devoted the rest to feasting his comrades. If liquor was not to be had—and this was usually the case—strong coffee was substituted. As the men of that region are by no means remarkable for providence or self-restraint, whatever was set before them on these occasions, however extravagant in price, or enormous in quantity, was sure to be disposed of at one sitting. Like other trappers, Rouleau's life was one of contrast and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... intercepted, afraid lest his mission should miscarry, and angered by the pain, Mariano lost the power of self-restraint which he had hitherto exercised so well that night. He rushed at the interpreter and hit him a blow on the forehead that caused him ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... great king," pursued the Demon, in a dry tone of voice, "to wish you joy. After so many failures you have at length succeeded in repressing your loquacity. I will not stop to enquire whether it was humility and self-restraint which prevented your answering my last question, or whether Rajait was mere ignorance and inability. Of course I suspect the latter, but to say the truth your condescension in at last taking a Vampire's advice, flatters me so much, that I will not look too narrowly ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... no further than such lines. The question remains whether dramatic realism is in itself an altogether desirable thing, and whether Swinburne in particular does not lose more than he gains by such self-restraint. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... worthier, with no black shadow at his heels. Very touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him. If be could not train him in high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to those fearful straits. "But he'll be a very different young man from what I was," was his final thought. "Thanks to his ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to the taunt flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and you have not attained" ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... I am hard, I am suspicious—wicked. I am a savage, with no more self-restraint than I ever had. What sort of a figure must I cut in his eyes—and in yours? Tell me! Am I not ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably no one English word—and certainly not SINCERITY—adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but "covereth all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... foresee the next step in the drama before us. Many a genius of far greater self-restraint and moral earnestness has found the routine of business almost intolerably irksome. With high notions of his own ability, and with a temper rebellious to all restraint, Poe soon broke away from his new duties, and started out to seek his fortune. He went to Boston; ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... were constantly catching the colds of foolish exposure or indigestion and letting them develop into fevers, bad attacks of rheumatism, stomach trouble, backache all regarded by them as by their neighbors as a necessary part of the routine of life. Those tenement people had no more notion of self-restraint than had the "better classes" whose self-indulgences maintain the vast army of doctors and druggists. The only thing that saved Susan from all but an occasional cold or sore throat from wet feet was eating little through being unable to accustom herself to the fare that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... faults and defeats named by the teacher. Here inattention by far led all others. Defects of sense and speech, carelessness, indifference, lack of honor and of self-restraint, laziness, dreamy listlessness, nervousness, mental incapacity, lack of consideration for others, vanity, affectation, disobedience, untruthfulness, grumbling, etc., follow. Inattention to a degree that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... this truth: we have, by careful training of the modern sailor, added to the traditional bravery of the class a quality, not lacking, but never properly developed, in the old type, that is, the dignity of coolness and self-restraint, the perfect control of men in the supreme moments of ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... disagreeable to him, 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 ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... have been afraid; her husband had his own strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any passionate feeling ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his eyes full of tears, "Oh, senor, if you only knew what news you have given me and how it comes home to me, making me show how I feel it with these tears that spring from my eyes in spite of all my worldly wisdom and self-restraint! That brave captain that you speak of is my eldest brother, who, being of a bolder and loftier mind than my other brother or myself, chose the honourable and worthy calling of arms, which was one of the three careers ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... profound impression which one side of his character had made upon her during the five months they had been together. A complete stranger to the ferment of the lad's imagination, she had been a constant and chafed spectator of his daily life. The strong self-restraint of it had been one of the main barriers between them. She knew that she was always jarring upon him, and that he was always blaming her recklessness and self-indulgence. She hated his Spartan ways—his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wife of a French ambassador sits on the captain’s right. A turn of the diplomatic wheel is taking the lady to Madrid, where her position will call for supreme tact and self-restraint. One feels a thrill of national pride on looking at her high-bred young face and listening as she chats in French and Spanish, and wonders once more at the marvellous faculty our women have of adapting themselves so graciously and so naturally to difficult positions, which ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... God had planted, and which no rage of man could trample out—let us believe, I say, that that sight taught at last to the buccaneers of the old world that there was a purer manliness, a loftier heroism, than the ferocious self-assertion of the Berserker, even the heroism of humility, gentleness, self-restraint, self-sacrifice; that there was a strength which was made perfect in weakness; a glory, not of the sword but of the cross. We will believe that that was the lesson which the Norsemen learnt, after many a wild and blood-stained voyage, from the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and probably had some notion of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... make a large part of his 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
... movement of either of the two girls had escaped his notice, and Cordula's bold interference in behalf of the reckless Swiss knight, who now seemed to have ensnared his future sister-in-law also, increased the envy and jealousy which tortured him until he was forced to exert the utmost self-restraint in order not to tell the countess to her face that he, at least, was far from being deceived by such a fable. Yet he succeeded in controlling himself. But as he forced his lips to silence he gazed with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... scowl Ellen made off, an effort of masterly self-restraint alone enabling her to refrain from ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... right," said Hazel, with a certain effort of self-restraint. "Let our sufferings make us gentle, not savage. That poor bird is lost like us upon this ocean. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... according to the temper of readers. And we are sure that not merely the priests, or men of education amongst Mr O'Connell's followers, but even the peasantry, must in their hearts perceive how indispensable is a general habit of self-restraint and abstinence from abusive language to the effect of any individual insult These were not the causes of public indignation. Not what Mr O'Connell said, but what he did, kindled the general wrath. To see him marching ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... dove-colored dress with white trimmings. The parasol shows the color of her hat 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
... 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 the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... 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. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... or a bastard, then,' said the marquis, who had not been brought up in a school of which either self-restraint or respect for ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... troubles, I could not. The core and root of them being my father's share in the rest. And I was not alone; and I had a certain consciousness that if I allowed myself to go to my little Bible for help, it would unbar my self-restraint, with its sweet and keen words, and I should give way again before Margaret and Theresa: and ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ideals of their joint physical life unless there is the same openness and understanding and sympathy on this point as on all others." [Footnote: Ideals of Home, by Gemma Bailey (National Mission Paper, No. 43).] There must be mutual consideration and self-control: the need for self-restraint and continence does not disappear with the entry upon marital relations: it ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... first Session; doing more for future success in Parliament by his silence than he could have effected by half a dozen brilliant perorations. A crisis was rapidly approaching when a man gifted with eloquence, who by previous self-restraint had convinced the House that he did not speak for speaking's sake, might rise almost in a day to the very summit of influence and reputation. The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of Wellington, who had gradually squeezed out of his Cabinet every ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... it from the aspect of the class itself, would such emigration be of any enduring value? It is not merely more favourable circumstances that are required by these crowds, but those habits of industry, truthfulness, and self-restraint, which will enable them to profit by better conditions if they could only come to possess them. According to the most reliable information there are already sadly too many of the same classes we want to help in countries supposed to be the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... first 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 ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... 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 of the most severe type. Yet all the time the tears ran down his weather-beaten ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... those naturally possessed of fluency must of course find it hard to restrain the tide of words that is perpetually flowing up to the lips; but if they desire to converse agreeably, the effort must be made, and self-denial must be attained. The benefit derived by an over-fluent talker from self-restraint will be quite commensurate with the effort, no less than with the added pleasure of the listener, for he will gain in the power of accurate thought every time that he resists the inclination ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... away. Watching him, Sidwell was beset with conflicting impulses. His assurance had allayed her worst misgiving, and she approved the self-restraint with which he bore himself, but at the same time she longed for a passionate declaration. As a reasoning woman, she did her utmost to remember that Peak was on his defence before her, and that nothing ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... body of men who, in an early stage of this world's history, bound themselves by a rule of life the essential precepts of which were self-culture and self-restraint. The Brahmans of the present India are the result of 3000 years of hereditary education and temperance; and they have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct from the surrounding population. Even the passing traveller in India marks them out, alike ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... B, C, and D of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, United States Infantry, were stationed at Fort Brown, Brownsville, Texas, where they were forced to exercise very great self-restraint in the face of daily insults from the citizens. On the night of the 13th occurred a riot in which one citizen of the town was killed, another wounded, and the chief of police injured. The people of the town accused ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... into the disastrous attitude which we had all such good reason to deplore. It seemed cruel that all the most beautiful instincts of her being, her affection, her unselfishness, even her modest reserve and womanly self-restraint, should have been used to injure her; but that is exactly what had happened. And now the difficulty was: how to help her? How to rouse her from the unwholesome form of self-repression which had brought about her present morbid state ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... that gifts are not to be trained, or that it is undesirable to teach and practise a certain self-restraint. No doubt buffoonery has often masqueraded as originality; and the great results which have undoubtedly attended ministries in which extremely bad taste and irreverence have been prominent have not been in consequence of these things, but in spite of them, and by the power of a passion for souls ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... ominous clouds were rushing towards it—clouds heavy with snow. I watched these clouds as I drove recklessly, desperately, over the winter roads. I had just missed the desire of my life, the one precious treasure which I coveted with my whole undisciplined heart, and not being what you call a man of self-restraint, I was chafed by my defeat far beyond the bounds I have ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... breath beat upon his face; then the last atoms of self-restraint fled away from him like sparks before a fierce night wind. A fiery madness coursed through his veins as he caught her to him. Her lips were fevered with sleep. For a moment the caress seemed real; it was the climax of his hopes, the attainment ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... The essentials of thought and knowledge are contained in a very few books, and the most toilsome drudge who ever preached a sermon, drove a rivet, or swept a floor may become perfectly educated by exercising a wise self-restraint, by resolutely refusing to be guided by the ambitious advice of airy cultured persons, and by mastering a few good books to the last syllable. Mr. Ruskin is one of our greatest masters of English, and his supremacy as a thinker is sufficiently ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... freely obeying those whom the laws of his 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
... brother-in-law of Walpole. Just now Walpole and he are friends as well as connections; the time came when Walpole and he were destined to quarrel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remarkable forbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was an honest and respectable man, blunt of speech, and of rugged, homespun intelligence, about whom, since his day, the world is little concerned. Such name as he had is almost absorbed in the more brilliant ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... possible show of what small wits they possessed, she was surprised to find one who seemed to think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the background. She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more, perhaps, than he really had. She was piqued, too, at his very modesty and self-restraint. Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her, spread out his peacock's train for her eyes; and try to show his worship of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours? And yet this modesty awed her into respect of him; for she could ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience' sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... here, where she is one of the nurses, they would not use language at any time which they would not have their mothers hear. That very man you speak of, who swore so last night, believes himself dying from his effort at self-restraint. This is not true, for he would have died anyhow, but his death is hastened by his effort. He has been in agony all day. Opiates make him worse, so there is no use of giving them. But I can tell you, no man in your Confederacy ever did a braver thing than he is doing ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... existence. Everything in James's reign was calculated to increase the stability and good order which are the best guarantees of national life; even his severities cultivating a sense of security in the weak and a wholesome consciousness of the necessity of self-restraint in the strong. For the first time for many generations the nobles were kept within bounds, and exceptional cruelties became if not impossible, yet of so certain discovery and punishment that lesser tyrants at least must have trembled. The law that might makes right fell into ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... there was a grave forcefulness in his manner which almost astonished her. He evidently for once had suffered his usual self-restraint to relax, and she felt it was almost a pity that he had not done ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... about whose good qualities she had been descanting at various times for several days past. The poor girl shuddered as the light broke in on her, and a feeling of dismay at her helpless condition, and being entirely in the power of these savages, almost overcame her, but her power of self-restraint did not fail her. She laughed, blushed in spite of herself, and said she was too young to look at the matter ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the scrutiny of the Spaniard's eyes, it was no longer necessary for me to maintain that painful self-restraint which had cost me so severe an effort in order that I might not by look or gesture arouse the ghost of a suspicion as to my intentions; so, while I continued to mechanically wave the boat to the right or the left, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... to all appearance, had been waiting very patiently while the cutlets were being broiled, commenced the repast with some show of self-restraint. This, however, wholly forsook him before it was finished. He ate voraciously, consuming more than the four young hunters together. This, however, he did not do without making an apology for his apparent greed; stating that he had been nearly two ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 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 nobleness in ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... the American system of union under the control and direction of a free people, educated to self-restraint, can not fail to extend popular institutions and to enlarge the peaceful ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... whatsoever he may not find, he will find the very excellences after which our young poets strive in vain, produced by their seeming opposites, which are now despised and discarded; naturalness produced by studious art; daring sublimity by strict self-restraint; depth by clear simplicity; pathos by easy grace; and a morality infinitely more merciful, as well as more righteous, than the one now in vogue among poetasters, by ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and, 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... is, that life and property were not secured to the Anglo-Saxon by the State, but by the loyal union of his fellow-citizens; the Saxon guilds are unmatched in the history of their times as evidences of self-reliance, mutual trust, patient self-restraint, and orderly love of law among ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... I had seen the 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 me, but what could he hope for against ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... attend at all to the well-being of his children, and his wife 'has no taste for anything of the kind.' So, as I said, Belle grows up a spoiled child. She has never been subject to control, and has not the slightest idea of self-restraint. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... to the war, and 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 ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... out—who can tell?—and I self-sacrificed! Just as criminals in Germany are teased, and watched, and cross-examined, year after year, incessantly, into a sort of madness; and worn out with the suspense, the iteration, the self-restraint, and insupportable fatigue, they at last cut all short, accuse themselves, and go infinitely relieved to the scaffold—you may guess, then, for me, nervous, self-diffident, and alone, how intense was ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... before known an obstacle to a wish which I have not contended against, if not conquered: and, weakened as I am with the habitual indulgence to temptation, which has never been so strong as now;—but no! I will—I will deserve this attachment by self-restraint, self-sacrifice." ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Dutch fashion, and there were flowers. Dorothy Roden's manner was that of a woman; no longer in her first girlhood, who had seen en and cities. She was better educated than her brother; she was probably cleverer. She had, at all events, the subtle air of self-restraint that marks those women whose lives are passed in the society of a man mentally inferior to themselves. Of course all women are in a sense doomed to this—according ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... 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 had never ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... points so directly the reverse. If his patron were an example of irregularities and licentiousness, it is beyond the reach of ill-nature and credulity combined to hold it probable that he would have extolled him for self-restraint, for steady moral and mental discipline, for manliness at once and virtue, for delighting in ancient lore, and promoting its free circulation far and wide with the sole purpose and intent of sowing virtue and discountenancing vice. Such an effusion would have savoured rather ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... 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 the last of these days, it happened that ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Dumbleton, the 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
... 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
... person a cultivated person; and this culture consists mainly in kindness and gentleness of manner, in self-restraint, and in unobtrusiveness The real reason for every true rule of good manners is some moral reason. The true reason why we are forbidden by good manners to do certain things is that the doing of such things gives pain or causes inconvenience to some one. Why do the rules of good manners forbid ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... once, and had great necessity of self-restraint not to toss it contemptuously and indignantly ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... 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
... indeed animate, that it is in verity a human being, body and spirit; that it is of importance; that its value is inestimable, having reference to this world and the next. Hence they in every way neglect its interests. They eat and drink, they walk and ride; they will practise no self-restraint, but will indulge every caprice, every passion, utterly regardless of the unseen, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... Quoth he, "Nay, by Allah, I said but the truth to thee and I am not of those on whom presence imposeth For these three months nature hath not moved thee to take the lute and sing thereto, and this is naught save a rare thing and a strange. But all this cometh of strength in the art and thy self-restraint." Then he bade her sing; and she said, "Hearkening and obedience." So she took the lute and tightening its strings to the sticking- point, smote thereon a number of airs, so that she confounded Ishak's wit and for delight he was like to fly. Then she returned to the first mode ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... authoritative in their majesty of effect, it is almost impossible to say whether the abstraction or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to the choice, or the incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how far the result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent self-restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In their bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and shade, and drawing, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... on the verge of tears, which nothing but the most passionate self-restraint could have kept in, could not help a passing sensation of amusement at these words. "Not too much of that either," she said, softly, with a tremulous smile. "But patience carries the lilies of the saints," said Lucy, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 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 ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the pathos of her quiet resignation: he felt how mean and unmanly it would be to give way to that rebellious rage which was burning in his veins. Three years under the orders of ofttimes brutal petty officers had taught him a measure of self-restraint; the two further years of hard, unceasing toil under foreign climes, the patient amassing of florin upon florin to enable him to come back and claim the girl whom he loved, had completed the work of changing an irresponsible, untrammelled child of these Hungarian ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 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 ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... weeping,—so sorely had she been tried by the adventures of the night. She has told me since that she thought me cold and distant upon that journey. She little guessed the struggle within my breast, or the effort of self-restraint which held me back. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the over-emphasis of a tragic actor is the very thing which best appeals to the gallery. But Hall Caine does not address himself to the vulgar and the careless. He is eager to leave his reputation to his peers and to posterity. With every year of ripening power his capacity for self-restraint has grown. When it has come of age in him, there will be nothing but fair and well. There has been no man in his time who has shown a deeper reverence for his work, or a more consistent increase in his command of it. His method is large and noble, in ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... eye 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 language ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... arrogance (lack of self-restraint). 10. Ampius. Titus Ampius Balbus, aPompeian general. 11-12. Sullam nescisse litteras (i) S. had not profited by the teachings of History, or (ii) S. was without ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... made his exit, and went home to write the foregoing sketch of the scene. Certainly throughout so irritating an interview he had conducted himself with creditable self-restraint and moderation, yet with his closing sentence he had sent home a dart which rankled. He soon heard that his lordship "took great offense" at these last words, regarding them as "extremely rude and abusive," and as "equivalent to telling him to his face that the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... finest young officers in Egypt, or indeed, in the service. We're rather proud of him. Lately he's been employed on a special mission, which he has carried out extremely well. Few others could have done it, for a man of great audacity and self-restraint was needed: a combination hard to find. He has been in the Balkans. And since, has had a particularly delicate task intrusted to him, to be conducted with absolute secrecy. No 'kudos' to be got out of it ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... May's life had been so trying as this last. It seemed like her first step away from the aspirations of youth, into the graver fears of womanhood. With all the self-restraint that she had striven to exercise at Coombe, it had been a time of glorious dreams over the two young spirits who seemed to be growing up by her side to be faithful workers, destined to carry out her highest visions; and the boyish devotion ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cozy party of four. Lucy was quite unchanged—pretty, foolish, and gentle as ever. George showed the full five years' increase of age, and seemed to have acquired a somewhat painful control of his temper. Instead of the old petulant outbursts, there was at times an air of nervous, irritable self-restraint, which I found the less pleasant of the two. But it was in Alan that the most striking alteration appeared. I felt it the moment I shook hands with him, and the impression deepened that evening with every hour. I told ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... at Helen's endurance and at her self-restraint. She was always ready to interpose gently when hot shot began to fly, and could generally bring about a laugh and a temporary ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... boys," 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
... judgment upon him who have made a nation, and made it with purer hands. It was well for English statesmen and philanthropists, inheritors of a world-wide empire, to enforce the ethics of peace and to plead for a gentlemanlike frankness and self-restraint in the conduct of international relations. English women had not been flogged by Austrian soldiers in the market-place; the treaties of 1815 had not consecrated a foreign rule over half our race. To Cavour the greatest crime would have been to leave ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... 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 an idiot for ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... 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 ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the notion we form of the mores of that time. All the writers repeat them. "In the Agricola, and in Seneca's letters to Marcia and Helvia, we can see that, even at the darkest hour, there were homes with an atmosphere of old Roman self-restraint and sobriety, where good women wielded a powerful influence over their husbands and sons, and where the examples of the old republic were used, as Biblical characters with us, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... salary of an attendant to watch the room. Here indeed is a blessing in disguise. This idea that the children must be watched all the time, that they cannot be left alone a minute, is fatal to all teaching of honor and self-restraint and self-help. It will take time and determination and tact, but I know that it is possible to train the children—not the untrained city slum children perhaps, but the average town children—to behave like ladies and gentlemen left almost entirely ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... agreed, with more than usual self-restraint. "But it's one trouble on another. Oh, it's more than ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... expression indicated, though by the simplest means, is exactly the natural expression, and is recognised as such immediately. Some forms of our existing life will never have a better chronicler. His wit is good-natured, and always the wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense of responsibility and self-restraint; he delights in agreeable things; he imparts some pleasant air of his own to things not pleasant in themselves; he is suggestive and full of matter; and he is always improving. Into the tone as well as into the execution ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... be blind to the defects of her character, and she feared they might yet be productive of great unhappiness to herself. Her mind was open to the reception of every image that brought pleasure along with it; while, in the same spirit, she turned from everything that wore an air of seriousness or self-restraint; and even the best affections of a naturally good heart were borne away by the ardour of her feelings and the impetuosity of her temper. Mary grieved to see the graces of a noble mind thus running wild for want of early ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to greet their youthful sovereign. The ceremony was conducted with great harmony: happiness and cheerful good humour prevailed among the enormous multitude which thronged the streets; and courtesy and self-restraint were everywhere conspicuous. The coronation was succeeded by a series of fetes and banquets, and many weeks elapsed before the metropolis had ceased to hold festivals in its remembrance. In a word, the utmost enthusiasm for the youthful sovereign prevailed on every hand, and gave promise ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils which he ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... husky whisper of the corn." Yet I am disposed to think that, like many another finished artist, he has passed through stages of various practice, and has exercised much self-restraint before attaining to that naturalness which, as Goethe reiterates, is the last crown of art-discipline. From sundry indications I conclude that passages of his Fleet-street Eclogues were written independently at different ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... quite silent for several moments. He was, in reality, passionately angry. Self-restraint, however, had become such a habit of his that there were no indications of his condition save in the slight twitchings of his long fingers and a tightening at the corners of his lips. She, however, recognised ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opening out of his father's bedroom; but Cosmo had a feeling of inexhaustible wealth in them—partly because his father had not yet allowed him to read everything there, but restricted him to certain of the shelves—as much to cultivate self-restraint in him as to keep one or two of the books from him,—partly because he read books so that they remained books to him, and he believed in them after he had read them, nor imagined himself capable of exhausting them. But the range of his taste was certainly ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald |
