Abstinence Quotes

“It is better to lock up your heart with a merciless padlock, than to fall in love with someone who doesn't know what they mean to you.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign

“Dear Teens at Starbucks wearing 'Abstain from Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' t-shirts: Doesn't it depend on what my goals are?”
― John Green

“Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, 'No thank you' to desert that night. And for what?!”
― Erma Bombeck

“Which is recorded of Socrates, that he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“If being premenstrual is “innocence,” does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as “good”— worth talking about, protecting, and valuing—and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further.”
― Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

“Shan stared at his glass, then lifted it under his nose. It was the closest he would knowingly get to tasting the hard liquor. It was not because it would violate the vows of the monks, which he had not taken, but because somehow it felt as though it would violate his teachers who still sat behind prison wire in Lhadrung.”
― Eliot Pattison, Water Touching Stone

“Look, choosing to wait until marriage makes me feel empowered. But if the same choice cripples you, then it wasn't the right one.”
― Rachael Allen, The Revenge Playbook

“AIDS would have claimed fewer lives if we had publicly recommended what I wish to call ‘The Presumption of Sickness,’ i.e., the principle that whomever we are about to sleep with is HIV-positive until proven HIV-negative.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Sometimes, being told not to do something just makes us want it all the more. Sometimes, a little of what you crave is better than total abstinence.”
― Joanne Harris, The Strawberry Thief

“The wise treat horniness like a hiccup; the foolish, like an asthma attack.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Have you heard of the Children of Mae?”
“The cult?” She knew of a religious group whose members went door to door, preaching the benefits of self-discipline—abstinence, celibacy or monogamy, vegetarianism—pretty much anything fun was prohibited. They had never come to Vesper’s house because her father was a butcher and probably pretty low on their list of possible converts.”
― Colleen Chen, Dysmorphic Kingdom

“Perhaps it’s true that in our sex-saturated culture it does take a certain amount of self-discipline to resist having sex, but restraint does not equal morality. And let’s be honest: if this were simply about resisting peer pressure and being strong, then the women who have sex because they actively want to — as appalling as that idea might be to those who advocate abstinence — wouldn’t be scorned. Because the “strength” involved in these women’s choice would be about doing what they want despite pressure to the contrary, not about resisting the sex act itself.”
― Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

“She would grace his home with her charm and beauty and she would make his bed joyous, all without ever having to shame his hearth with another man's memory of her shamelessness.”
― Dorothy West, The Wedding

“Fornam jeg legemets søte lyst og begjær mot dette eller hint, så skremte forsagelsens fyrste meg med sitt: Avdø her for å leve hisset.”
― Henrik Ibsen, Emperor and Galilean

“A chastity device won't put out the flames of burning flesh.

The Ultimate Guide to Chastity
Removing the Iron Panties”
― Sandra B. James

“Love is the only thing that changes abstinence from a prison into pleasure.”
― jihad eltabey

“If I stop sleeping together for all time it will mean that I have been mistaken. Otherwise why should I stop it? There is a limit to abstaining from it for the sake of my friends”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Who never wanted, ― maddest joy
Remains to him unknown ;
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine.

Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
Desire's perfect goal,
No nearer, lest reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.”
― Emily Dickinson

“There’s gratification in abstaining from the easy choice. Instant gratification can bring more suffering than pleasure. If I do the hard thing, the next time I face a similar situation it’s not that hard anymore.”
― Cecily Wang, No Crying in the Operating Room: My Life as an International Relief Doctor, from Haiti, to South Sudan, to the Syrian Civil War

“Well, that brings us to the point: There is only one way to protect ourselves from the deadly diseases that stalk the human family. It is abstinence before marriage, then marriage and mutual fidelity for life to an uninfected partner.”
― James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future

“The great sexual energy that one has on abstinence can be transformed into art, poetry, dance, and inventions.”
― Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon

“Capitalism, like abstinence, works every time it's tried.”
― Joe DeShon, The Mind of Joe

“For Justine's conception of virtue is a specifically feminine one in that sexual abstinence plays a large part in it. In common speech, a 'bad boy' may be a thief, or a drunkard, or a liar, and not necessarily just a womaniser. But a 'bad girl' always contains the meaning of a sexually active girl and Justine knows she is good because she does not fuck.”
― Angela Carter

“It is not a good idea to be dating during COVID-19.”
― Steven Magee

“From the moment their pact is made, that devil’s contract that will make neither of them happy, there’s no stopping them. At the epicenter of the American earthquake that is VTO lies this very Oriental disorientation. Abstinence: it becomes their rocket fuel, and flies them to the stars.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“You have spent 94 years
in the hall of abstinence.”
― Gail Martin

“I was told that even if I had years of sobriety, I would always be an addict, and I believed it. Since my identity was that of an addict, didn’t that mean abstinence from drugs was contrary to my identity and doing drugs was in alignment with it? This confused me because if I believed this philosophy, it meant I would never heal from my disease; I would only go into remission. It also meant that the harder I tried to abstain from drugs, the more I was fighting against who I really was.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose