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Continence   Listen
Continence

noun
1.
The exercise of self constraint in sexual matters.  Synonym: continency.
2.
Voluntary control over urinary and fecal discharge.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Continence" Quotes from Famous Books



... expected to affect the practicable increased production of merchantable goods; from which it follows that it will act to depress the prices of these goods; from which it follows that if a profitable business is to be done in the conduct of productive industry a greater degree of continence than before will have to be exercised in order not to let prices fall to an unprofitable figure; that is to say, the permissible output must be held short of the productive capacity of such industry by a wider margin than before. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... that of the solitary philosopher I observed a depression where another form had lain, and in it a jade hairpin such as is worn by my junior beauties. Petrified with amazement at the display of such reserve, such continence, such august self-restraint, I perceived that, lost in my thoughts, I had had an unimagined companion and that this gentle reminder was from her gentle hand. But whom? I knew not. I then observed Lo Cheng the Court Artist in attendance and immediately despatched him to make secret ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... up into his face for some while. "You would do that! You would sell Marian to Umfraville—[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog—to that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the money! Why, Harry, what a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... was at the time of Vi[s']wamitra's advancement to the rank of a Sage, and whilst he was still a Kshatriya, that Indra, jealous of his increasing power, sent the nymph Menaka to seduce him from his life of mortification and continence. The Ramayana records his surrender to this temptation, and relates that the nymph was his companion in the hermitage for ten years, but does not allude to the birth of ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... himself the pleasures of love; it was also from a desire of popular applause that certain ancient priests renounced the same pleasures, and often, as Boindin pleasantly observes of them, without any other recompense for their continence than the perpetual temptation it occasions,... 'The cause,' says Cardinal Richelieu, 'why a timorous mind perceives an impossibility in the most simple projects, when to an elevated mind the most arduous seems easy, is, because, before the latter the mountains sink, and before the former mole-hills ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... laying the foundation of your fortune here, my boy. Heavens! when I was in that bronze shell I was astonished only at my continence in not bursting. You have grown,—you have shot up and filled out. I register my thanks to your grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor degree, to Captain Jasper Welsh. Between that man Rippenger and me there shall be dealings. He flogged you: let that pass. He exposed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length, laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... often desirable in any planet's history, yet among simians it will be apt to come from second-rate motives. Greed, selfishness or fear-thoughts will be the incentives, the bribes. Contrivances, rather than continence, will be the method. How audacious, and how disconcerting to Nature, to baffle her thus! Even into her shrine they must thrust their bold paws to control her. Another race viewing them in the garlanded chambers ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... lust to be gratified. But in vain did vice descend from the abode of the gods armed with their sacred authority; the moral instinct refused to admit it into the heart of man. While the debaucheries of Jupiter were celebrated, the continence of Xenocrates was revered; the chaste Lucrece adored the shameless Venus; the bold Roman offered sacrifices to Fear; he invoked the god who mutilated his father, and he died without a murmur at the hand of his own father. The most unworthy gods were worshipped by the noblest men. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... less in such pleasures. This is what Augustine means by the words quoted, which do not exclude intensity of pleasure from the state of innocence, but ardor of desire and restlessness of the mind. Therefore continence would not have been praiseworthy in the state of innocence, whereas it is praiseworthy in our present state, not because it removes fecundity, but because it excludes inordinate desire. In that state fecundity would have ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... pains these misguided savages took to unfit themselves for the business of war by abstaining from food, denying themselves rest, and lacerating their bodies, we shall probably not be disposed to attribute their practice of continence in war to a rational fear of dissipating their bodily energies by indulgence in ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... man does not see that the Highest Judge will return to him nothing else than what he receives from him, since every sin is justly punished and every good rewarded. Christ embraced voluntary poverty and was a lover of continence; the wretched man who has made himself a follower and lover of falsehood does just the contrary; not only does he fail to be content with what he has, or to refrain through love of virtue, but he robs other people. Nor does he remain content in the state of marriage, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... precise reason that these men hate him. He makes sex the centre of everything. One need not be deceived by the fact that Dante worships "purity," while Voltaire, Goethe and Nietzsche are little concerned with it. This very laudation of continence is itself an emphasis upon sex. These others would play with amorous propensities; trifle with them in their life, in their art, in their philosophy; and then, that dangerous plaything laid aside would, as Machiavel puts it, "assume suitable attire, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... House Committee on Military Affairs proved receptive, appreciative, in fact responsive, might not the ends of justice better be subserved by leaving to the parent the duty of personally and privately correcting the son? and, in consideration of the post commander's wisdom and continence, pledging the influence of the Military Committee to certain delectable ends in the major's behalf? Long had Flint had his eye on a certain desirable berth in the distant East—at the national capitol in fact—but never yet had he found statesman or soldier inclined ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... of this is based, has added to this broad criterion the division of a life into four stages, to each of which appropriate virtues are assigned: the Student Period, with its virtues of perfect continence, industry, frugality, exertion; the Household Period, with its virtue of duties appropriate to the position, the earning and enjoying of wealth, the gratification of desires; the Retirement Period, with the virtues of the renouncing of worldly gain and ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant

... people laugh he would often make use of the most disgusting expressions. He had no taste whatever for women, and no inclination towards the pleasures of the flesh; but this was only owing to a deficiency in his natural temperament, and yet he claimed for himself the virtue of continence. On that score, everything appeared to him food for merriment, and when he had drunk rather too much, he would ask questions of such an indecent character that they would bring blushes on everybody's countenance. Yet the brute ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... of sin, we now do what we like!" said Sextus. "Pertinax, I pledge you continence for this one night! Good Galen, may Apollo's wisdom ooze from you like sweat; for all our sakes, be you the arbiter of what we drink, lest drunkenness deprive us of our reason! Comites, let us eat like warriors—one course, and ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... of sexual morality as against the single standard of the savage. It can hardly be claimed that the average white man is continent, or even much more continent than the average Esquimau, but he has forced continence upon the greater part of his women, reserving a dishonoured remnant for his own irresponsible use. And there are signs that some of those who nowadays inveigh against the white man's double standard are in reality desirous of substituting, not the single standard of the Christian ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Asnam made with him a stable and abiding covenant, the covenant of the sons of kings, that he would keep the plighted faith and never play him false, but [93] would bring him the damsel with all continence. Then the King of the Jinn delivered him the mirror and said to him, "O my son, take this mirror whereof I bespoke thee, and now depart." Accordingly Zein ul Asnam and Mubarek arose and calling down blessings upon ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... the luxurious Friar devoured their charms: Had his Penitents consulted those Interpreters, He would have needed no other means of expressing his desires. For his misfortune, they were so strongly persuaded of his continence, that the possibility of his harbouring indecent thoughts never once entered their imaginations. The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish Ladies: ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham saint who has thrown away her mask, and who, after long fasting, continence and privation, finds at length the means of glutting herself, and wallows more than any other in the sewer of obscenities ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... and annihilates it. Nothing is purely true, and thus nothing is true, meaning by that pure truth. You will say it is true that homicide is wrong. Yes; for we know well the wrong and the false. But what will you say is good? Chastity? I say no; for the world would come to an end. Marriage? No; continence is better. Not to kill? No; for lawlessness would be horrible, and the wicked would kill all the good. To kill? No; for that destroys nature. We possess truth and goodness only in part, and mingled ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... that the vow of chastity is the most startling exception to the natural condition of man which society makes necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest's profession; he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to physical sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to the misery whose wounds are laid bare to their eyes, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... had told me, rain, thunder, and lightning are rare phenomena in these regions; but when they do occur, it is with that violence which characterises the storms of the tropics. The elements, escaping from their wonted continence, rage in fiercer war. The long-gathering electricity, suddenly displaced from its equilibrium, seems to revel in havoc, rending ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... found in her a ready second; for keeping strictly to Father Hilarion's distinction between a right Creed and a form or ceremony for pious observance, the former essential to salvation, the latter merely helpful to continence in the Creed, it was with her as if Christ in glorified person stood there under the baldacchino. What wonder if, from indignation at the madness of the assembly, the insensate howling, the blasphemous rage, she passed to exaltation of spirit, and fancied the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... wrangling openly with the rival sent by some other sect—compare this impotency with the success that follows the devoted sons of the Church, impressing their proselytes with the mysterious virtue of their continence, the self-denial of their lives, the unity of their dogma and their rites; and then recognise the wisdom of these great churchmen who created a priesthood after this manner in the days when every priest was as ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... to hear her. Whilst she speaks, She throws upon a man so sweet a look That it were able to raise one to a galliard. That lay in a dead palsy, and to dote On that sweet countenance; but in that look There speaketh so divine a continence As cuts off all lascivious and vain hope. Her days are practis'd in such noble virtue, That sure her nights, nay, more, her very sleeps, Are more in heaven than other ladies' shrifts. Let all sweet ladies break their flatt'ring glasses, And ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... everything, natural or supernatural, Shelby's party reaped abundantly where it had sown with niggard hand. The governor's personal deserts were more solid, the public recognizing his retarding ratchet as the cause of the machine's continence and the lowered tax-rate. Apparently the Legislature bore him no ill will for his curbing hand. A quiet word had issued from the Boss that the governor's vetoes must stand, and Shelby's one pet measure, the appointment of a commission to deal with the improvement of the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Apsara Ghritachi, who had come before, standing on the bank after her ablutions were over. And it so happened that a wind arose and disrobed the Apsara standing there. And the Rishi beholding her thus disrobed, felt the influence of desire. Though practising the vow of continence from his very youth, as soon as he felt the influence of desire, the Rishi's vital fluid came out. And as it came out, he held it in a pot (drana), and of that fluid thus preserved in a pot was born a son who came to be called Drona (the pot- born). And Drona studied ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... our amber cup with the same persistent, almost sullen, self- continence. But, I thought, I must see your eyes, Mistress, for once; so called to mind my encounter with the wild young Baglione of the morning. Smiling as easily as I could, I accosted her with "Madonna, I am the bearer of compliments to you, if you choose to hear them." ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... be forced into a life of unnatural continence which further aggravates her ill health and produces constant discord? Shall she go on having children who come into being with a heritage of ill health and poverty, and who are bound to become public burdens? Or would it be the better policy to let motherhood ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... workmanship consists in continence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity; and if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more of Art than you do now, and less of Engineering. What is taking place at this very hour,[40] among ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... freedom of speech was sometimes curtailed. But the fact that such a restriction should have been noticed, suggests that it was exceptional.[7] One good effect followed, let us admit. The virtuousness of continence was not treated as a superstition by those who vindicated it as Turgot did, but discussed like any other virtue; and was defended not as an intuition of faith, but as a reasoned conclusion of the judgment. It was permitted to occupy no solitary and mysterious ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted as it is by so many lacunae, the power of Eabani over the beasts of the field seems to have depended on his continence. From the moment in which he yields to his passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns. This explains ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... ushered in with singing. Like lacrosse it was prescribed as a remedy for sickness or in consequence of dreams, and the sufferer in whose behalf the game was played was borne to the cabin in which it was to take place. Preliminary fasting and continence were observed, and every effort made that superstition could suggest to discover who would be the lucky thrower and who could aid the caster by his presence at the contest. Old men, unable to walk thither, were brought up on the shoulders ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis

... Celibacy, as practised by Sannyasis in India, has a strictly spiritual significance although it certainly has much as everything to do with Personal Magnetism. To the average man I would say: "Strive for CONTINENCE, chastity and control in this direction." Do not emasculate, as that would be a waste of force. The stronger this force, the better. All Sannyasis learn consciously or unconsciously to transmute this energy into mental and spiritual force and generally their minds dwell on a plane ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... very lightly and continence and chastity are not in their sight virtues. A child born to an unmarried woman is no impediment to her marriage. If it is a male child it is, in fact, an advantage. Love does not enter into the Indian's marriage relationship. It is a mating for convenience. Gifts are made to the girl's father ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... Contemptible malestima. Contend batali. Content kontentigi. Contentedness kontenteco. Contention kontrauxstaro. Contentious malpacula. Contentment kontenteco. Contents enhavo. Contest disputi. Contest disputo. Continence sindetenemo. Continent (geog.) kontinento. Contingent (milit.) kontingento. Contiguity apudeco. Contiguous apuda. Continue (to last) dauxri. Continue (go on) dauxrigi. Contortion (of face) grimaco. Contour konturo. Contraband kontrabando. Contract kontrakto. Contract, make ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... a convalescent, and indeed, was always rising from a little malady that attacked him at certain times; and, later on, he would have been his own executioner, had he determined to observe his canonical continence. Add to this that he was a Tourainian, id est, dark, and had in his eyes flame to light, and water to quench all the domestic furnaces that required lighting or quenching; and never since at Azay has been such ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... guardian of the Amra (probably the mango) tree," is famous in Buddhist annals. See the account of her in M. B., pp. 456-8. She was a courtesan. She had been in many narakas or hells, was 100,000 times a female beggar, and 10,000 times a prostitute; but maintaining perfect continence during the period of Kasyapa Buddha, Sakyamuni's predecessor, she had been born a devi, and finally appeared in earth under an Amra tree in Vaisali. There again she fell into her old ways, and had a son by king Bimbisara; but she was won over by Buddha to virtue ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... praised or advocated puritanical art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion—it was the fullness of passion in the life of a Britomart. But the mid-age and old age of nations is not like the mid-age or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... elegance, and generosity, and so wealth when not sordid or arrogant, the opposite of plutocratic. Arete was capacity, capability, and practical efficiency,—executive ability. Aidos was the opposite of "cheek." Sophrosyne was continence, self-control. Kalokagathie contained notions of economic, aesthetic, and moral good, fused into a single concept.[423] The eleutheros was the gentleman endowed with all admirable qualities.[424] The Greeks proved that people could sink very low while talking very nobly. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... first learn to feel their need of salvation, so that we may be sure of giving it only to those who really want it. Especially let the unmarried postpone it. The risks of the age of puberty are extreme. Let people have married or be anyhow steeled in continence before they are admitted to baptism. It would appear from the homilies of Aphraates (c. 340) that in the Syriac church also it was usual to renounce the married relation after baptism. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses, insists on "the longing for the heavenly polity, on the goodly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Schafer method of artificial respiration. How to deal with choking, burning, poison, grit in eye, sprains and bruises, as the examiners may require. Generally the laws of health and sanitation as given in "Scouting for Boys," including dangers of smoking, in continence, want of ventilation, and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... few were free from the grosser vices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meet at night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and shrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoined temperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. and Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and Gregory were only ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... his last years as "of good complexion; more muscular and bony than fat or fleshy in his person: healthy above all things, as well by reason of his natural constitution as of the exercise he takes, and habitual continence in food and sexual indulgence." His temperance and manual industry and his "extraordinary blamelessness in life and in every action" had been his source of preservation. He was miserly, suspicious, quarrelsome ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... her husband. The Holy Ghost descended at the same moment on this man, and he became so changed, that he said to his wife in a mild tone of voice, "Madam, let us serve God and work out our salvation." He passed thus many years with her in continence, with which she had inspired him, and they died most ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... the foregoing observations, I may quote the following narrative, written by a man of letters: "From puberty to the age of 30 (when I married), I lived in virgin continence, in accord with my principle. During these years I worked exceedingly hard—chiefly at art (music and poetry). My days being spent earning my livelihood, these art studies fell into my evening time. I noticed that productive power came in periods—periods of irregular ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle clamorously, and just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with youth-like continence; without intoxication, and, which happens especially rarely, without the least shadow of mutual affronts, or jealousy, or unvoiced mortifications. Of course, such a benign mood had been helped by the sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet exhalations of the grasses and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... "Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind,—these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... As though priests are not men! We judge indeed that the things which we maintain concerning human nature in general pertain also to priests. Does not Paul here command those who have not the gift of continence to marry? For he interprets himself a little after when he says, v. 9: It is better to marry than to burn. And Christ has clearly said Matt. 19, 11: All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. Because now, since sin [since the fall of Adam], these two things ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... its work, is in cooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and urging itself; you know the Bacchic chorus of old men in Plato's Laws. To the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest nature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest natures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you have to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm—quiet, above everything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... their tender minds with red-hot irons. Our public-school education is so nearly universal, that if the entire body of the teachers seriously undertook to instruct all American youth in regard to this most important aspect of life, why should they not in time train their pupils to continence and self-direction, as they already discipline their minds with knowledge in regard to many other matters? Certainly the extreme youth of the victims of the white slave traffic, both boys and girls, places a great responsibility upon the educational ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... the eave where they had found her. She said, moreover, that the soldier, without robbing her of her honour, had taken from her everything she had, and made off, leaving her in the cave, a thing that still further surprised everybody. It was not easy for us to credit the young man's continence, but she asserted it with such earnestness that it helped to console her distressed father, who thought nothing of what had been taken since the jewel that once lost can never be recovered had been left to his daughter. The ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... works, when performed, deserve a reward; but grace, which is a free gift, precedes good works and is a necessary condition of them."(1232) The Fourth Lateran Council reiterated this doctrine: "Not only virgins and those who practice continence, but the married also, who please God by having the right faith and performing good works, deserve to obtain eternal happiness."(1233) The Tridentine Council goes into the matter at length in the sixteenth Chapter of its Sixth Session, where we read inter alia: "And for this reason life eternal ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... not like the fool, But like the bard, who freely sings In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule, And finds in them, not bonds, but wings. Postponing still their private ease To courtly custom, appetite, Subjected to observances, To banquet goes with full delight; Nay, continence and gratitude So cleanse their lives from earth's alloy, They taste, in Nature's common food, Nothing but spiritual joy. They shine like Moses in the face, And teach our hearts, without the rod, That God's grace is the only grace, And all grace ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... through chinks in the roof and making the flames of our resin torches flicker weirdly. During the meal my uncles had rallied me very much on what they called my virtue; they had treated my shyness in the presence of women as a sign of continence; and it was especially in this matter that they urged me to evil by ridiculing my modesty. While parrying these coarse gibes and making thrusts in the same strain, I had been drinking enormously. Consequently, my wild imagination had become inflamed, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel, which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... The continence which procured for Alonzo, who succeeded to the precarious throne of the Christians, in the Asturias, about 795, the epithet of the Chaste, was not universal in his family. By an intrigue with Sancho Diaz, Count ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... a perfect beauty, is what the French call a beau corps de femme, or, in plain English, a very desirable woman, and such as few ministers of L'n. B————te's years would choose to dismiss unsatisfied. This is not the age of continence, and I am persuaded that any man who sees and converses with the amiable Madame Very, if he do not envy the Minister the nocturnal sacrifice, will, on contemplating the elegance of her arrangements, at least allow that this spot of ground has not ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... is perfect purity, which cannot be too carefully guarded and protected by parents, teachers, and all caretakers. The law for youth is perfect continence—a pure vestalate alike in both sexes. No indulgence is required by one more than the other—for both nature has made the same provision. The natures of both are alike, and any—the least—exercise of the amative function is an injury to ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... say that Manuel and the King's sister dispensed with marriage: others accuse Dom Manuel of exhibiting a continence not very well suited to his exalted estate. It is certain, in any event, that he by and by returned into Poictesme, with a cold in his head to be sure, but with fresh glory and much plunder and two new fiefs to his credit: and at Storisende Dom Manuel ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... comfortless, he slept; his lady whilome retiring to her forecastle boudoir; beguiling the hours in saying her pater-nosters, and tossing over and assorting her ill-gotten trinkets and finery; like Madame De Maintenon dedicating her last days and nights to continence and calicoes. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... virtue, continence, corroded the heart? Why did people who, through predilection, went to churches, regard those who didn't with such an insistent animosity? Why did the church itself seek to obliterate—as though they were a breathing menace—all who stood outside its doors? There was something ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... firm and lasting possession; after the first license of his youth, Basil the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.[334] That Cowley had read The Jealous Lovers, published in 1633, is by no means unlikely, for he was certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished Amyntas. This he ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... of the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view that, in my opinion—formed, it is true, from the very few data accessible on such points, still a positive opinion—friendships of a close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when under the immediate ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... With holy tales thei devise How meritoire is thilke dede Of charite, to clothe and fede The povere folk and forto parte The worldes good, bot thei departe Ne thenken noght fro that thei have. Also thei sein, good is to save 470 With penance and with abstinence Of chastite the continence; Bot pleinly forto speke of that, I not how thilke body fat, Which thei with deynte metes kepe And leyn it softe forto slepe, Whan it hath elles al his wille, With chastite schal stonde stille: And natheles I can noght seie, In aunter if that I misseye. 480 Touchende ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... Substance.*—Aside from the fact that only the discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an end to the sexual excitement, there are other essential facts which bring the sexual tension into relation with the sexual products. In a life of continence the sexual activity is wont to discharge the sexual substance at night during pleasurable dream hallucinations of a sexual act, this discharge coming at changing but not at entirely capricious intervals; and the following interpretation of this process—the nocturnal ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... be traced in the teaching of Jesus. It is implied in what he says about prayer. There is a want of faith, a half-heartedness about men's prayers; they pray as Augustine says he himself did: "Give me chastity and continence, but not now" (Conf, viii. 7, 17). That is not what Jesus means by prayer—the utterance of the half-Will. Nor is it this sort of surrender to God that Jesus calls for—no, the question is, how thoroughly is a man going to put himself into God's hands? Does he ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... arouse the soul with the taste of power, and to start off on journeys for itself. But the great inspired utterances, like the Bible,—what would they gain by being cast in the moulds of metrical verse? In all that concerns art, viewed from any high standpoint,—proportion, continence, self-control, unfaltering adherence to natural standards, subordination of parts, perfect adjustment of the means to the end, obedience to inward law, no trifling, no levity, no straining after effect, impartially attending ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... sex, and as a man is valued according to the quantity of his wives; polygamy, even among civilized residents, is carried to a greater excess than elsewhere. Female chastity is not insisted on as in the Mandingo and Soosoo districts, but the husband contents himself with the seeming continence of his mistresses. Sixty or seventy miles south of Ayudah, the adulterous wife of a chief is stabbed in the presence of her relations. Here, also, superstition has set up the altar of human sacrifice, but the divinity considers the offering of a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... who by this time had come to regard myself as the only philosopher remaining in the whole world, and had ceased to fear any further disturbance of my peace, began to loosen the rein on my desires, although hitherto I had always lived in the utmost continence. And the greater progress I made in my lecturing on philosophy or theology, the more I departed alike from the practice of the philosophers and the spirit of the divines in the uncleanness of my life. For it ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... interdicted.[1] Everything which attaches man to earth, everything which draws him aside from heaven, was to be avoided. Although several of the disciples were married, there was to be no more marriage on becoming a member of the sect.[2] The celibate was greatly preferred; even in marriage continence was recommended.[3] At one time the master seems to approve of those who should mutilate themselves in prospect of the kingdom of God.[4] In this he was consistent with his principle—"If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... however, seems to have committed a pious fraud on his good people. Being importuned by his council to marry, he espoused the daughter of the powerful Earl Godwin; to whom he privately disclosed a vow of perpetual continence under which he had bound himself: but offered to raise her to the regal seat (and she was accordingly publicly crowned as queen), on condition that he should be allowed without molestation to ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... lowest. There can be no disputing that our present civilization does discourage much of the innate bestiality of man; that it helps people to a measure of continence, cleanliness and mutual toleration; that it does much to suppress brute violence, the spirit of lawlessness, cruelty and wanton destruction. But on the other hand it does also check and cripple generosity ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs? But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent of life and death, one is struck rather with the degree of continence they manifest in speech; and how in such wild ebullition, there is still a kind of polite rule struggling for mastery, and the forms of social life never altogether disappear. These men, though they menace with clenched right-hands, do not clench one another by the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... to extravagance, abstemiousness to intemperance, dignity to frivolity, and continence to lust; so that by these evils was Methuselah grievously tormented, and it repented him full sore that he had lived to see such exceeding wickedness upon earth. But in the midst of all these follies did Methuselah maintain an upright and godly life, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... interesting, if space and the architectural plan of this volume permitted, to trace the growth of the sentiment which demands chastity; noting, in the first place, how married women were compelled, by the jealous fury of their masters, to practise continence; how, very much later, virginity began to be valued, not, indeed, at first, as a virtue having a value and charm of its own, but as a means of enhancing the market value of brides. Indifference to masculine ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... 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: ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... November, and cultivate con amore, to the last year of my existence. So far, I am, indeed an epicure, but in all other things, I am the most moderate of men. I might vie with Pythagoras for sobriety, and even with the great Scipio for continence."—Poor Foscolo! these dreams were far, very far from being realized. Within a short time after, his cottage, and all its beautiful contents, came to the hammer, and were distributed. A wealthy gold-smith now inhabits the dwelling of the poet of Italy. It is but justice to his ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various

... a most virtuous Roman lady, he comforts her upon the death of her husband, who, he says, was only gone a little before her to glory; and he sets before her the divine mercy, which by this means calls her to a more heroic practice of all virtues in the state of widowhood,—especially continence, plainness in dress, furniture, and diet, profuse alms-deeds, and holy prayer, the exercise whereof ought to be her most assiduous employment. Herein he warns her that vanity and pride are our most dangerous enemies, against which we must diligently ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... of the nation is indicated by the fineness of its customs; its courage, continence, and self-respect by its ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... become strong; he may not have as much opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material cares; but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation, his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession of the password, which is CONTINENCE. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... sacred prostitution must be regarded as the outcome of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when sexual passion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and institutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to current ideas of propriety. Appropriated ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... Preceptor, "I think, possessed you both. How oft have I preached to you caution, if not continence? Did I not tell you that there were enough willing Christian damsels to be met with, who would think it sin to refuse so brave a knight 'le don d'amoureux merci', and you must needs anchor your affection on a wilful, obstinate Jewess! ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... he neither desired nor solicited this damsel, of this unique fact he can find but one explanation, it is that Jeanne was holy, res divina. When Jean de Novelompont and Bertrand de Poulengy describe their sudden continence, they employ identical forms of speech, affected and involved. And then there comes a king's equerry, Gobert Thibaut, who declares that in the army there was much talk of this divine grace, vouchsafed to the Armagnacs[67] and denied to English and Burgundians, at least, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... remorse, not to make himself known to the other. Meanwhile the War has happened along and given everyone who needed it an opportunity of redeeming his Past, and, as the hero is getting old and has had a nasty crash in an aeroplane, it seems possible that an era of comparative continence has really set in. At this juncture we part with him—I without a pang; my landlady, I well know, with a sigh for his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." This must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the food—which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator, Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... asketh. For no less reason unmarried persons ought to be delayed, because they are exposed to temptations, as well virgins that are come to maturity, as those that are in widowhood and have little occupation, until they either marry or be confirmed in continence. They who know the weight of baptism will rather dread its attainment than ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen



Words linked to "Continence" :   self-discipline, self-denial, control, continency, restraint, continent



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