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Abstemious   Listen
adjective
Abstemious  adj.  
1.
Abstaining from wine. (Orig. Latin sense.) "Under his special eye Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain."
2.
Sparing in diet; refraining from a free use of food and strong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions. "Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious."
3.
Sparingly used; used with temperance or moderation; as, an abstemious diet.
4.
Marked by, or spent in, abstinence; as, an abstemious life. "One abstemious day."
5.
Promotive of abstemiousness. (R.) "Such is the virtue of the abstemious well."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abstemious" Quotes from Famous Books



... devoted to the virtue of mortification. Put away the comforts of eating and drinking, the extravagance of living, personal luxuries. Live simply and like a poor man. Be simple in dress, but be well dressed. Be abstemious at your table. Especially guard against over indulgence in drink. Abstemiousness in drink is a very commendable virtue. Deny yourself many things that are unnecessary. Do not yield to all the promptings of the ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... least; and if any unfortunate stranger tumbles in and breaks his neck, on a dark night, it is ten chances to one that the jury of inquest return for a verdict, that "the deceased came to his death in consequence of intoxication," although he may be the most abstemious water-drinker that ever the sun shone upon. Such was, ten or eleven years ago, to my certain knowledge, the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... and when his wife put the climax upon everything by drinking out of her sister's glass he could contain himself no longer. "I never saw you touch spirits before," he said, determined that his friend should know that his wife was an abstemious woman. ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris

... on, the abstemious Hun had obviously made a halt. The litter of bottles was appalling. There was a perfect wall of them for about a quarter of a mile. The proportion of bottles to the number of men estimated to occupy four hundred yards (1000) ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... who had mastered the Vedas, and permitted Amba, the eldest daughter of the ruler of Kasi to do as she liked. But he bestowed with due rites the two other daughters, Ambika and Ambalika on his younger brother Vichitravirya. And though Vichitravirya was virtuous and abstemious, yet, proud of youth and beauty, he soon became lustful after his marriage. And both Ambika and Ambalika were of tall stature, and of the complexion of molten gold. And their heads were covered with black curly hair, and their finger-nails were high and red; their hips were ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... observation which I have often made, upon reading the lives of the philosophers, and comparing them with any series of kings or great men of the same number. If we consider these ancient sages, a great part of whose philosophy consisted in a temperate and abstemious course of life, one would think the life of a philosopher and the life of a man were of two different dates. For we find that the generality of these wise men were nearer an hundred than sixty years of age at the time of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... orchard. At one of the central tables a very stumpy little priest sat in complete solitude, and applied himself to a pile of whitebait with the gravest sort of enjoyment. His daily living being very plain, he had a peculiar taste for sudden and isolated luxuries; he was an abstemious epicure. He did not lift his eyes from his plate, round which red pepper, lemons, brown bread and butter, etc., were rigidly ranked, until a tall shadow fell across the table, and his friend Flambeau sat ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... narrow baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully hospitable. It would ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... which pertain to good housewifery as in those matters which are generally thought to transcend these humble occupations. Like Solomon's virtuous woman she "looked well after the ways of her household." Methodical, careful of minutes, simple in her tastes, abstemious, and therefore enjoying evenly good health in spite of her delicate constitution—this is the secret of her accomplishing so much. Yet all this foundation of exactness and diligence was so "rounded with leafy gracefulness" that she never ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... any unnecessary labours, and might have indulged in luxuries which might almost have been considered as necessaries to one whose appetite was not strong. He could well have afforded such innocent indulgence, for he was a man of good fortune. He was, however, remarkable for his abstemious habits; and having been led, when high sheriff of his county, to look into the state of Bedford jail, he was so shocked with the miserable condition of the prisoners and their being crowded together in a place filthy, damp, and ill-ventilated, that he set himself to make a tour ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... verily believe that what has happened, although it came upon me like coup de tonnerre, and has given me a great deal of bile, and my stomach I find weakened from that cause, more than from any other,—for I'm more and more abstemious every day,—yet I now see that all will end well, and that in the meantime neither you (n)or Lady C(arlisle) will make yourselves uneasy by placing things before you in ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... known to preach a sermon without previously swallowing a raw egg—albeit he was gifted with good lungs and a powerful voice,—and was, generally, extremely particular about what he ate and drank, though by no means abstemious, and having a mode of dietary peculiar to himself,—being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a patron of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive organs, and therefore were maintained by him to be good and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... as ever, with the direct, searching look in them that they have ever worn. He stands five feet nine and one-half inches high, weighs one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and has not varied as to weight in a quarter of a century, although as a young man he was slim to gauntness. He is very abstemious, hardly ever touching alcohol, caring little for meat, but fond of fruit, and never averse to a strong cup of coffee or a good cigar. He takes extremely little exercise, although his good color and quickness of step would suggest to those who do not know better that he is in the best ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... perhaps, that he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew the long climbs and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes in quest of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it. Abstemious, frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's table were given him grudgingly. He often went hungry rather than ask the bread he had failed to earn. How his great frame was nurtured in those days he never knew; perhaps the giant mountains recognized some kin in ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... studie these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live as students ought to do—viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to ride abroad in grey coats ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... recently, at any rate, still adhered to Indian sugar. Drugs are not forbidden, but they are not usually addicted to them. Tobacco is forbidden to the Jains, but both they and the Hindus smoke, and their women sometimes chew tobacco. The Bania while he is poor is very abstemious, and it is said that on a day when he has made no money he goes supperless to bed. But when he has accumulated wealth, he develops a fondness for ghi or preserved butter, which often causes him to become portly. Otherwise his food remains simple, and as a rule he confined ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... those who, after long and pertinacious fastings, think by such means to enter more profoundly into the speculation of celestial mysteries. You may very well remember how my father Gargantua (whom here for honour sake I name) hath often told us that the writings of abstinent, abstemious, and long-fasting hermits were every whit as saltless, dry, jejune, and insipid as were their bodies when they did compose them. It is a most difficult thing for the spirits to be in a good plight, serene and lively, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... passions are an appetite for—chocolate candy! For eleven months of the year," he hurried on a bit huskily, "for eleven months of the year,—eleven months,—each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed tea or coffee. In the twelfth month,—June always,—I go way, way up into Canada,—way, way off in the woods to a little log camp I own there,—with an Indian who has guided me thus for ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... or change. The first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to have been one of the best of the tribe: Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or the jollity of the college. But his knowledge of the world was confined to the university; his learning was of the last, rather than the present age; his temper was indolent; his faculties, which were not of the first rate, had been relaxed by ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... Let one poor wreath adorn thy early bier, That scarce allowed thy modest youth to claim Its living portion of thy certain fame! Oh! Mrs. Bennet! Mrs. Norris too! While memory survives we'll dream of you. And Mr. Woodhouse, whose abstemious lip Must thin, but not too thin, his gruel sip. Miss Bates, our idol, though the village bore; And Mrs. Elton, ardent to explore. While the clear style flows on without pretence, With unstained purity, and unmatched sense: Or, if ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... well-drunk at a draught mingled with water. But she, when she had brought her basket with the accustomed festival-food, to be but tasted by herself, and then given away, never joined therewith more than one small cup of wine, diluted according to her own abstemious habits, which for courtesy she would taste. And if there were many churches of the departed saints that were to be honoured in that manner, she still carried round that same one cup, to be used every where; and this, though not only made very watery, but unpleasantly ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... between the character and habits of our American base-ball professionals and those of the English professional cricketers, taking them as a class. One of the London players warmly complimented the American players on their fine physique as athletes and especially commented on their abstemious habits in contrast, as the paper stated 'with our beer-drinking English professional cricketers.' In fact, the visit of the baseball players has opened old John Bull's eyes to the fact that we are not as neglectful of athletic ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... recital for me. The habit of taking alcoholic drinks with the idea that they lead to a more fiery performance is a dangerous custom that has been the ruin of more than one pianist. The performer who would be at his best must live a very careful, almost abstemious life. Any unnatural excess is sure to mar his playing and lead to his downfall with the public. I have seen this done over and over again, and have watched alcohol tear down in a few years what had taken decades of hard practice and earnest study to ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... from the ground, he made the calculation in the sand. Eighteen days, and twenty miles a day—three hundred and sixty miles. More than enough to take him to freedom. It could be done! With prudence, it could be done! He must be careful and abstemious! Abstemious! He had already eaten too much, and he hastily pulled a barely-tasted piece of meat from his mouth, and replaced it with the rest. The action which at any other time would have seemed disgusting, was, in the case of this poor ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... modest; his habits, as to sleep, food, and exercise, abstemious and regular. Meditation in the forest, or reading in his closet, seemed to constitute, together with attention to his scholars, his sole amusement and employment. He estranged himself from company, not because society afforded no pleasure, but because studious seclusion ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... In regard to the pleasures of the table he was temperate, almost abstemious. He was always religiously inclined and joined the Church before he died,—perhaps, however, out of loyalty to his wife, whom he adored, rather than from theological convictions. But whatever he deemed his duty, he made every sacrifice to perform. Although ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... "Ah! very abstemious," murmured Father; "perhaps he is a vegetarian as well, sounds like it, and they are always the most difficult people ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... manufacture, and had thus attained the chief object of his ambition—the object which had engaged his talent for order and persevering application. For his easy leisure caused him much ennui. He was abstemious, and had none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's time first with indulgence and then with the process of getting well from its effects. He had not, indeed, exhausted the sources of knowledge, but here again his notions ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... with a handful of population, although she might be enormously wealthy, to compete on fair and equitable terms with a mighty continent like India, with immense natural resources, with her teeming populations, the soberest and most abstemious populations known to any part of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... question of Temperance. During the first twenty years of his ministry he had not felt called upon to take up any strong position on this question, although personally he had always been one of the most abstemious of men. But about the year 1864 he had, without taking any pledge or enrolling himself on the books of any society, given up the use of alcohol. He had done so largely as an experiment—to see whether ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... the finer attributes of his class. His character was unimpeachable; he was abstemious, and unless his fiery temper was aroused by the sight of some supposed lack of seamanship on the part of his men or boys, or the idea of imposition on himself or his owner, he might have been considered religious, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... Before he could be restrained, he leaped from the raft and sunk below the waves. The other two men sickened. First one, then the other died. The captain, though the oldest of all, kept his senses and his strength. He was a calm, even-tempered, abstemious man. Still, as he sat on the chest in the middle of the raft, of which he and I were the only occupants, he spoke encouragingly and hopefully to me. I listened, but could scarcely reply. I felt a sickness overcoming me. I thought death was approaching. I sank down ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... perfect sanity. His methods at the dinner table, if at all unusual, erred on the side of restraint rather than of extravagance; he gave indications of a certain curious personal refinement; and in the matter of wine he was almost incredibly abstemious. It was the first time that Jewdwine had come to close quarters with his disciple, and with some surprise he saw himself going through the experience without a shock. Either he had been mistaken in Rickman, or Rickman had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Jones was an abstemious man, as a rule, but he had a highly strung nervous system and it had been worked up. The unaccustomed whiskey and soda had taken him in its charge, comforting him and conducting his steps, and now the bar keeper, a cheery person, combined with ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... He said not a word, and the darkness gathered round the boys in the narrow chamber. They thought not of descending or of asking for food, even after their day's hunting in the hills. They were hardy, and seasoned to abstemious ways, and had no room for thoughts of such a kind. Silence was settling down upon the castle, and they had no intention of leaving their room again that night. Dark thoughts were their companions as they undressed and made ready for bed; and hardly were they ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... he was very abstemious always, while he took nothing in the middle of the day except a glass of wine and a biscuit. Under these circumstances it is not very surprising that the healthy appetites of his little friends filled him with wonder, and even with alarm. When he took a certain ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... eat at stated times, and cannot be persuaded to partake of anything in the intervals. If it be not their hour for eating, they will refuse the choicest viands, and will sit at your table fasting, despite every temptation you can offer them. They are also very abstemious in their diet, and gluttony is the very rarest of vices. I do not believe there is another nation in Europe that eats so sparingly. In the morning they take a cup of coffee, generally without milk, sopping in it some light brioche. Later in the day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... by force, among the warlike and untutored sons of the forest. Accommodating himself with ease to the nomadic life of the tribes; contrasting his gay and lively temperament with the solemn taciturnity and immoveable phlegm of the savage; dazzling him with the splendour of his religious ceremonies; abstemious in his diet, and coinciding in his recklessness of life; equally a warrior and equally a hunter; unmoved by the dangers of canoe navigation, for which he seemed as well adapted as the Red Man himself; the enterprising Gaul was everywhere feared and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... Pascal, "each in his cave, solitary, abstemious, showed forth in its strength the principle of Devotion, leaving ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... the eyes of our holy father upon you as a striking example of the benefits of abstemious living, showing that the days of miracles are not yet past in the Church, as some skeptics would have us believe. He seemed to study you attentively. I have no doubt he will honor you with some more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... Shah are simple. He is, unlike most Persians of high class, abstemious as regards both food and drink. Two meals a day, served at midday and 9 p.m., and those of the plainest diet, washed down by a glass or two of claret or other light wine, are all he allows himself. When on a hunting-excursion, his favourite ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... village was all against him. Had he been an abstemious man, there is no doubt but the village market-place would have been a square, or a triangle, an oval, a circle, or—well, some definite shape. As it was, it had no definite shape. It was not even irregular. It was nothing—just ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... also a bad one, though different from the preceding. The patient was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been unable to go underground for several years. He was a staid, sober man, and an abstemious liver, but it was evident that his life on earth was drawing to a close. He had been employed chiefly in driving levels, and had worked a great deal in very bad air, where the candles could not be made to burn ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... that I had in view in adopting my abstemious way of life was to save a little money to buy books. I had become an author too, and had thoughts of publishing a number of works, and I wanted to be able to do so without having to go into debt. Then I wanted ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... paper whilst on the other side of a screen a big operation is in progress. But for many cases this method is unsuitable, and without chloroform we should indeed have been at a loss. The Belgians are an abstemious race, and they took it beautifully. I am afraid they were a striking contrast to their brothers on this side of the water. Chloroform does not mix well with alcohol in the human body, and the British working man is rather fond of ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... old person of Rye, Who went up to town on a fly; But they said, "If you cough, you are safe to fall off! You abstemious old person of Rye!" ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... were telling or asking about other brothers and their wives and belongings. They speak rather quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are very abstemious. One speaks near me—"You knew so and so? Good horseman—wasn't he? Curious seat—do you remember the way he rode with his toes out?" "Yes, yes—ha, ha!—it was funny! He led a column with me at Abu Lassin. Very sad his death, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... behold him thoughtful, grave, ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh-meats and strong drink; abstemious even beyond the genius of the place, and almost in spite of the remonstrances of his great-aunt, who, though strict, was not rigid; water was his habitual drink, and his food little beyond the mast and beech-nuts of his favorite groves. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... grateful placemen bless their useful king! But while you quaff the nectar of my favor I mean somewhat to modify its flavor By just infusing a peculiar dash Of tonic bitter in the calabash. And should you, too abstemious, disdain it, Egad! I'll hold your noses till you ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... Be abstemious—in eating and drinking at your own expense; but when you feed at another person's, consume as much as you can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... saith, use anything but cresses with their bread; not but that, should nature require anything more agreeable, many things might be easily supplied by the ground, and plants in great abundance, and of incomparable sweetness. Add to this strength and health, as the consequence of this abstemious way of living. Now, compare with this those who sweat and belch, being crammed with eating, like fatted oxen; then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most attain it least; and that the pleasure of eating lies ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... his antithesis, was a short, rosy-cheeked, apoplectic-looking subject, with a laugh like a suffocating wheeze, and a paunch like an alderman; his quick, restless eye, and full nether lip denoting more of the bon vivant than the abstemious disciple of Aesculapius. A moment's glance satisfied me, that if I had only these to deal with, I was safe, for I saw that they were of that stamp of country practitioner, half-physician, half-apothecary, who rarely ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... Individuals whose labor is active, require more air than sedentary or idle persons, because the waste of the system is greater. On the same principle, the gormandizer needs more of this element than the person of abstemious habits. So does the growing lad require more air than an adult of the same weight, for the reason that he consumes more food than a person of mature years. Habit also exerts a controlling influence. A man who works in the open air suffers more ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... her possibilities, but nothing more—nothing of what Varley brought with him. And before three months had gone, she knew that no man had ever interested her as Varley had done. Ten years before, she would not have appreciated or understood him, this intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose pleasures belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and who had come to be so great a friend of him who had been her best friend— Father Bourassa. Father Bourassa had come to know the truth—not from her, for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... empty, and returned a day or two afterwards laden with the products of the southern orchards. On the return journey the wagons were full to overflowing. Not so the drivers, who were an exceedingly temperate and abstemious people, too parsimonious to leave much of their specie at the Royal Oak. It was doubtless for this reason that mine host Lapierre regarded, and was accustomed to speak of them with a good deal of easy contempt, not ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... abstemious, he had drunk rather freely to-night, and that with an odd haste of thirst. Now he touched his champagne tumbler, intimating to Bates, the house-steward—sometime the Brockhurst under ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart and body in the members of the order, which otherwise might have lain open to too many timorous, merely abstemious, men and women. Many things had been suggested, swordplay and tests that verged on torture, climbing in giddy places and the like, before this was chosen. Partly, it is to ensure good training and sturdiness ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... ever more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... by which he found his mind at once gratified and restored. He played on the organ, and sang, or his wife sang for him. From his music he returned with fresh vigor to his books or his composition. At six he admitted the visits of his friends; he took his abstemious supper, of olives or some light thing, at eight; and at nine, having smoked a pipe and drank a glass of water, he retired. Yet in the midst of this clock-like regularity his labors were broken by frequent unfruitful seasons. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... scandalised. "My father was singularly abstemious in eating and drinking," she said stiffly. "Why do you ask such ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... disposition, beloved and respected by all his neighbours and tenants, and "passing rich with 'sixty' pounds a year." In his domestic he was elegant, hospitable, and even sumptuous, for the time and country in which he lived. He was however naturally of an abstemious and recluse disposition. He abounded in singularities, which were pardoned to his harmlessness and his virtues; and his temper was full of sensibility, seriousness, and melancholy. He devoted the greater part of his time to study; and he boasted that he had almost a complete collection of ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... do him honour, as he was guilty of the meanest flattery and servility to ingratiate himself with men in power. Yet, as a general, he was indefatigable in his duties, and of unquestionable valour; abstemious in his diet, and plain in his dress. On attaining to the imperial dignity he appears to have laid aside every vice except avarice. His elevation neither induced him to assume arrogant and lofty airs, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... hilarity, expressing the wish that a couple of thousand more of his troops had been killed, "French at heart" as they were. He refused to see Yolande, after thus forcibly obtaining the means of so doing, and sent her to the castle of the Sire of Rochefort for safe-keeping. Abstemious as he had been all his life, never taking wine without water, the strong Burgundy in which he now suddenly ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... triumphant at the Papal Court, but, unfortunately, religion was neglected. Though in his personal life Leo X. could not be described as a deeply religious man, yet he was mindful of his vows of celibacy, attentive to the recitation of the divine, office, abstemious, and observant of the fasts of the Church. As a secular ruler he would have stood incomparably higher than any of the contemporary sovereigns of Europe, but he was out of place considerably as the head of a great religious organisation. Worldliness and indifference ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... abstemious youth," he addressed the clerk, "I am tempted to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack you off with another for the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... generous in the aid which he administered to men of genius and talent, who often found a comfortable asylum under his roof. In his domestic economy he was frugal without being parsimonious. His hospitable board was ever ready for the reception of his friends; and, though he was himself abstemious in his diet, he seems to have been a lover of good wines, of which he received always the choicest varieties out of the Grand Duke's cellar. This peculiar taste, together with his attachment to a country life, rendered ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... time to turn a curious eye towards the obscure and half-extinct philosophies of the ancient world. He compared the Stoics with the Epicureans—those Epicureans who had given their own version to the simple and abstemious utilitarianism of their master. He asked which was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure—to bear all or to enjoy all; and, by a natural reaction which often happens to us in life, this man, hitherto so earnest, active-spirited, and resolved on great things, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... good as the greater number of those who apply for admission—he was pleased to express his astonishment at my perseverance, and delight at my success. When, too, in addition to this, he discovered, upon a minute inquiry from my employers and others, that I was abstemious, and indulged in no excesses of any kind, his interest in me increased, as I thought, who had been accustomed to nothing of the sort, beyond all reasonable measure-and I soon had occasion to perceive that it was no idle curiosity that ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... Marlborough; the other, the small, dark, pinched, but fiery Prince Eugene. On the spotless white cloth was spread a frugal meal of bread, butter, cheese, and lettuce; a jug of milk, another of water, and a bottle of cowslip wine; for the habits of the family were more than usually frugal and abstemious. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Johnson, holds his dinner as the most important business of the day. Cargill did not act up to this definition, and was, therefore, in the eyes of his new acquaintance, so far ignorant and uncivilized. What then? He was still a sensible, intelligent man, however abstemious and bookish. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... weather-beaten and decrepit old creatures, with faces and forms very much like a pair of antiquated nut-crackers. He occupies only two or three rooms plainly furnished, and apparently lives in the simplest and most abstemious style. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... in shaping the life of India by his personal influence and by the weight of his religious character. Everywhere he was greatly beloved. He earned considerable sums as a reporter and author in aid of his mission, and he lived in a most abstemious manner in order to devote as much money as possible to his work.[5] In this devoted service he continued until his death, which ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... coarse word applied to the utmost satisfaction of vehement appetites and passions; as, to glut a vengeful spirit with slaughter; we speak of glutting the market with a supply so excessive as to extinguish the demand. Much less than is needed to satisfy may suffice a frugal or abstemious person; less than a sufficiency may content one of a patient and submissive ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... be worth trying? When vinegar is applied to the lips, it renders them instantly pale, by promoting the venous absorption; if the whole skin was moistened with warmish vinegar, would this promote venous absorption in the lungs by their sympathy with the skin? The very abstemious diet on milk and vegetables alone is frequently injurious. Flesh-meat once a day, with small wine and water, or small beer, is preferable. Half a grain of opium twice a day, or a grain, I believe to be of great use at the commencement of the disease, as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... rest, if the maitre d' hotel, with a number of unnecessary footmen, do not satiate me with their important attentions. Five or six sous would then procure me a more agreeable meal than as many livres would have done since; I was abstemious, therefore, for want of a temptation to be otherwise: though I do not know but I am wrong to call this abstinence, for with my pears, new cheese, bread and some glasses of Montferrat wine, which you might have cut with a knife, I was the greatest of epicures. Notwithstanding my expenses were ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... was a man of great physical and moral strength, of fearless independence, and of, in his son's opinion, "a natural faculty" equal to that of Burns; and Margaret Aitken was "a woman of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Frugal, abstemious, prudent, though not niggardly, James Carlyle was prosperous according to the times, the conditions of his trade, and the standard of Ecclesfechan. He was able, therefore, to give such of his sons (he had a family ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... might bedazzle the eyes and ensnare the understanding of the holy man. On a sudden it came unto the fiend that by no corporeal allurement would he be able to achieve his miserable end, for that by reason of an abstemious life and a frugal diet the Friar Gonsol had weaned his body from those frailties and lusts to which human flesh is by nature of the old Adam within it disposed, and by long-continued vigils and by earnest devotion and by godly contemplations and by divers proper studies ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... as most conducive to health; but it would be more beneficial to mankind if we could show them that a pleasant and varied diet was equally consistent with health, as the very strict regimen of Arnard, or the miller of Essex. These, and other abstemious people, who, having experienced the greatest extremities of bad health, were driven to temperance as their last resource, may run out in praises of a simple diet; but the probability is, that nothing but the dread of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... D'Alton was able to go out again, and, as during her husband's stay at Orchard Beach she was particularly abstemious, she was able to associate with the ladies in the hotel, and made several acquaintances, who, seeing that she had the dress and manners of a lady, interchanged calls with her and invited her to visit them in Montreal. On her return to her home, however, these ladies received her but coldly, and ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... years of his life, he had but one answer,—that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... and nothing else mattered. If it rained and we must wait, we took out our musical instruments, built up the fire and soothed our troubled souls with harmony. This is better than tobacco or whiskey for the purpose. In fact, Young is so abstemious that even tea or coffee seem a bit intemperate to him, and are only to be used under great physical strain; and as for profanity, why, I had to do all the swearing for ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... undertakings, and whose luxury and expense and revelry gave him no concern. For though in peace he vented himself in his pleasures, and, when there was nothing to do, ran headlong into any excesses, in war he was as sober and abstemious as the most temperate character. The story is told, that once, after Lamia had gained open supremacy over him, the old man, when Demetrius coming home from abroad began to kiss him with unusual warmth, asked him if he took him for Lamia. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the general rolled himself in his blankets, and lay down under a tree or in a fence corner. He could sleep anywhere, in the saddle, under fire, or in church; and he could compel sleep to come to him when and where he pleased. He cared as little for good quarters as a mountain hunter, and he was as abstemious as a Red Indian on the war-path. He lived as plainly as the men, and often shared their rations. The majority of the cavalry were better mounted, and many of his officers were better dressed. He was not given to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... time finished her cordial—it was not the first she had taken that day; and, though a woman of strong brain, and cautious at least, if not abstemious, in her potations, it may nevertheless be supposed that her patience was not improved by the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... knowledge which from a printer's boy made that great man the first philosopher, and one of the first statesmen of his age. Few are fitted by nature to go as far as he did, and it is not necessary to lead so perfectly abstemious a life, and to be so rigidly saving of every instant of time. But all may go a good way after him, both in temperance, industry, and knowledge, and no one can tell before he tries how near he may ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious life is the one that is most conducive to long life. There is no race that is ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... which are essential to the comfort of the girl-model, and they are cigarettes and sweets. These are their only indulgences, for, obviously, if you are depending for your livelihood on your personal figure, self-denial and an abstemious life are compulsory. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... perspiration was visible. To those whose sensations were delicate, this could not but be disgusting; and it was doubtless not very suitable to the character of a philosopher, who should be distinguished by self-command. But it must be owned, that Johnson, though he could be rigidly ABSTEMIOUS, was not a TEMPERATE man either in eating or drinking. He could refrain, but he could not use moderately. He told me, that he had fasted two days without inconvenience, and that he had never been hungry but once. They who beheld with wonder how much he eat upon all ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... work in order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers—abstemious male workers—was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been so is sufficiently attested by the universally inadequate ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... temple, at the age of three years, to perfect herself in that school of virtue; the daughters of the Congregation, in imitation of that act, consider themselves pupils of Mary during their novitiate. The Blessed Virgin was abstemious and mortified in her food, and in all the other necessaries of life; the Sisters should follow her example and mortify themselves in eating, drinking, sleeping, speaking, and clothing, using nothing but what is absolutely necessary, each one ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... ease and speedy remedy by it. It is a wonder to relate that prodigious temperance of some hermits, anchorites, and fathers of the church: he that shall but read their lives, written by Hierom, Athanasius, &c., how abstemious heathens have been in this kind, those Curii and Fabritii, those old philosophers, as Pliny records, lib. 11. Xenophon, lib. 1. de vit. Socrat. Emperors and kings, as Nicephorus relates, Eccles. hist. lib. 18. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... he pass'd a hotel, he bethought him that one little glass of spirits would perhaps be just the thing. He drank, and hour after hour wore away unconsciously; he drank not one glass, but three or four, and strong glasses they were to him, for he was habitually abstemious. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... are not all so abstemious as my father and those you saw with him," Guy laughed. "Listen. You can hear songs and loud laughter from many of the tents, ay, and might hear quarrels too did you listen long enough. But those you saw were all men high in the confidence of the duke. They have fought together ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... the health of the ladies. The pedant and the tyrant drank like old topers, who can absorb any amount of liquor—be it wine, or something stronger—without becoming actually intoxicated. Matamore was very abstemious, both in eating and drinking, and could have lived like the impoverished Spanish hidalgo, who dines on three olives and sups on an air upon his mandoline. There was a reason for his extreme frugality; he feared ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... following my instructions, stood behind my chair, and seldom moved except to refill Ferrari's glass, and occasionally to proffer some fresh vintage to the Duke di Marina. He, however, was an abstemious and careful man, and followed the good example shown by the wisest Italians, who never mix their wines. He remained faithful to the first beverage he had selected—a specially fine Chianti, of which he partook freely without its causing the slightest flush ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... comparatively young man who has suffered from syphilis and been addicted to alcohol are more liable to atheromatous degeneration leading to this form of gangrene than are those of a much older man who has lived a regular and abstemious life. This form of gangrene is much more common in men than in women. While it usually attacks only one foot, it is not uncommon for the other foot to be affected after an interval, and in some cases it is bilateral from the outset. It must clearly be understood that any form of gangrene may ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... is curious to find our poet out of humour with Flanders on account of the high price of wine, which was not an indigenous article. In the latter part of his life, Petrarch was certainly one of the most abstemious of men; but, at this period, it would seem that he drank good liquor enough to be concerned ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... some three years since —— of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid! I remember gravely consulting you how we were to receive her—for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected; and your no less serious replication in the matter; how tenderly you advised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... proposition of Mr. Waddington to uncork another bottle, as I was very much shocked to see one of the most intelligent and truly able men in the country, reduced to a mere idiot by the effect of wine. Mr. Waddington, who was naturally an abstemious man, agreed with me, and, as we had previously given a general invitation to Clifford to dine with us twice a week, we now came also to a resolution, that, in future, we would not be deprived in ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... a short time, his lordship spoke of his conversation as I could have wished. Dr Johnson had said, 'I have done greater feats with my knife than this;' though he had eaten a very hearty dinner. My lord, who affects or believes he follows an abstemious system, seemed struck with Dr Johnson's manner of living. I had a particular satisfaction in being under the roof of Monboddo, my lord being my father's old friend, and having been always very good to me. We were cordial together. He asked Dr Johnson ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... to its simplest elements. Abstemious to a degree impossible in a more northern climate, the Italian worker in town or village demands little beyond macaroni, polenta, or chestnuts, with oil or soup, and wine as the occasional luxury; and thus a woman who works fourteen or even fifteen ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... at that time there was quite a brilliant group of disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married women here have always been great gossips. Well—you may as well know it—it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary, who are the most abstemious of men—he drank and gambled and had too much to do with those ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... has not paused, for instance, beside Tacca's famous bronze boar in the Florentine market-place without noting an incident of this kind? If we ourselves are too dainty to place our own aristocratic lips where our fellow-mortals have pressed theirs, not so are the abstemious descendants of the ancient Romans, the Italians, whose minds remain untroubled by any ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... been imaged there as some rather snubbed and subdued, but quite trained and tactful poor relation, of equal, of the properest, lineage, only of aspect a little dingy, doubtless from too limited a change of dress, for whose tacit and abstemious presence, never betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine, a room in the attic and a plate at the side-table were decently usual. It was amusing, in such lightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to speak for the Princess, so unfortunately ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... Oxford we are told the effect of his example was so strong that men who followed him there ten years later declare "that undergraduates drank less in the forties because Gladstone had been so courageously abstemious in the thirties." ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... country in a hardy manner, I am so much predisposed to the sthenic state, that I may consider the state of my excitement, as generally, indeed almost always, above the point of health: and unless I live in the most temperate, and even abstemious manner, the excitement is extremely liable to overstep the bounds of predisposition, and fall into sthenic disease. I have had several attacks of this kind of disease; and indeed, I never remember to have laboured under any disease of ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... who rest on their own works, and hence pass a carefully abstemious life, are thus minded, that God must bring them to heaven for their works' sake; they are puffed up, become proud, abiding in their own opinion and blindness, like the Pharisees, Luke xviii. Of whom also Mary speaks, in the Magnificat, where she ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... Abstemious, very, when prices are high, He learns to be merry without any pie; An expert at poker, with money to spare, A down and out broker who plays solitaire; An orator forceful, a whale to invent, O Sammy's resourceful, a versatile gent, Though late in the race, Sam, we wish ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... the value and benefits to be derived from an actively cultivated brain in making a long life one of comfort and of usefulness to its owner. The brain and spirits need never grow old, even if our bodies will insist on getting rickety and in falling by the wayside. But an abstemious life will drag even the old body along to centenarian limits in a tolerable state of preservation and usefulness. The foregoing list can be lengthened out with an indefinite number of names, but it is sufficiently long to show what good spirits and an active brain will do to lighten ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... neat French place he got a dinner at the same price with wine, but it was not so abundant; and March inquired in fruitless speculation why the table d'hote of the Italians, a notoriously frugal and abstemious people, should be usually more than you wanted at seventy-five cents and a dollar, and that of the French rather less at half a dollar. He could not see that the frequenters were greatly different at the different places; they were mostly Americans, of subdued manners ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Rettel caused to be served up; and not only did he call upon the Herr Administrator to join him in his encomiums, but he also asked him pointedly what he thought of various ways of dressing dishes. The Herr Administrator replied somewhat dryly that he was a temperate and abstemious man, accustomed from his youth up to the greatest frugality. At noon, for dinner, he was satisfied with a spoonful or two of soup and a little piece of beef, but the latter must be cooked hard, since so cooked ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... very like him. In other respects they differ. John was clothed like the prophets; Jesus wears the common garb. John dwelt in the wilderness, and on the banks of the Jordan; but Jesus frequents the cities and villages. John was stern in manner, and abstemious in food; Jesus is neither. He is gentle and social; often seen at the feasts of the publicans, and associating ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous

... see exactly what must have happened. Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... requires his Attendants to be so.] And as he is abstemious in his eating, so in the use of women. If he useth them 'tis unknown and with great secrecy. He hath not had the Company of his Queen this twenty years, to wit, since he went from Candy, where he left her. He allowes not in his Court Whoredom or Adultery; and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... all times an abstemious man—contented himself with a couple of glasses of wine after dinner, and, the moment that the conversation took a general turn, rose from the table, excusing himself upon the plea that he had several matters to attend to in connection with the expedition. As he rose ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... eating, too much drinking, Too much ev'rything but thinking; Solely bent to laugh and stuff, And trample upon base Enough. Oh, right is thy instructive praise Of the wealth of Nature's ways! Right thy most unthrifty glee, And pious thy mince-piety! For, behold! great Nature's self Builds her no abstemious shelf, But provides (her love is such For all) her own great, good Too-Much,— Too much grass, and too much tree, Too much air, and land, and sea, Too much seed of fruit and flower, And fish, an unimagin'd ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... far resembled him that both at school and college he had been a rather careful and abstemious boy. Probably the spectacle of his mother's adventures had revealed to him very early the humiliations of the debtor. At any rate, during his four years abroad he had never exceeded the modest yearly sum he had reserved ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in his power he attended the ceremony of the salut at the parish church; and on festivals particularly solemnized by any community of the towns in which he resided, he usually assisted at the divine service in their churches. He was very abstemious in his diet; and considered systematic sensuality as the ultimate degradation of human nature. He never was heard to express so much disgust, as at conversations where, for a great length of time, the pleasures of the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... immigrants, at any rate many of them, belong to those races and classes which at home are by no means averse to drinking, and indeed to drunkenness in its most disgusting forms; what induces these people, when they get here, to become so persistently abstemious?' ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... never possess the books he needed, or command the time, if his appetite for luxuries was gratified. In his circumstances, the most marked self-denial was necessary, to gain his object. At the same time, he believed it would make him more healthy to be abstemious. There was not an iota of ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... dress was always a plain, gray uniform, with cavalry boots reaching to his knees, and a broad-brimmed gray felt hat. He seldom wore a weapon, and his only mark of rank was the stars on his collar. Though always abstemious in diet, he seemed able to bear any amount of fatigue, being capable of remaining in his saddle all day and at his ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... quite against the college regulations for students to live in the town, but as I never touched a card, was totally abstemious and "moral," and moreover in rather delicate health, I was passed over as an odd exception. Once or twice it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor Dodd interfered and saved me. While in Princeton for more than four years, I never once touched ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... usual magnificence of his predecessors, in all that met the public eye,—his general style of living, equipage, and the number and pomp of his retainers; but he relaxed nothing of his own personal mortifications. He maintained the same abstemious diet, amidst all the luxuries of his table. Under his robes of silk or costly furs he wore the coarse frock of St. Francis, which he used to mend with his own hands. He used no linen about his person or bed; and he slept on a miserable ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... by one of our English servants; was helped twice, and observed, that he hoped he should not shock us by eating so much: "But," added he, "the truth is, that for several months I have been following a most abstemious regime, living almost entirely on vegetables; and now that I see a good dinner, I cannot resist temptation, though to-morrow I shall suffer for my gormandize, as I always do when I indulge in luxuries." He drank three glasses of champagne, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... casually from tin cups near the summit of the Cascades, had been a part of the store of that great dreamer and most abstemious of men, James J. Hill, laid in for the use of that other great dreamer and idealist, Albert, when he was his guest. While ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the young nuns in the refectory, would have satisfied the most fastidious epicure. But I doubt if any epicure could have enjoyed it half as well as did these abstemious young women, whose appetites were only let loose on certain high ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... we are allowed to doctor ourselves as we best can. What with the salubrity of the climate, and our abstemious fare, we are enabled, with the aid of a little Turlington balsam, and a dose of salts, perhaps, to overcome all our ailments. Most of us also use the lancet, and can even "spread a plaster, or give a glister," when necessary; but the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... of the lotus lily. A kind of beer brewed from rice is a usual drink; samshu is a spirit distilled from the same grain and at dinners is served hot in small bowls. Excellent native wines are made. The Chinese are, however, abstemious with regard to alcoholic liquors. Water is drunk hot by the very poor, as a substitute for tea. Tea is drunk before and after meals in cups without handle or saucer; the cups are always provided with a cover. Two substantial meals are taken during the day—luncheon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... but on entirely different grounds. She had looked forward to Mysa making a brilliant match, which would add to her own consequence and standing. On ceremonial occasions, as the wife of the high priest, and herself a priestess of Osiris, she was present at all the court banquets; but the abstemious tastes and habits of Ameres prevented her from taking the part she desired in other festivities, and she considered that were Mysa to marry some great general, or perhaps even one of the princes of the blood, she would then be able to take that position ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... hearth-rug, absolutely and weirdly alike, and arrayed on this occasion in garments of identical hue and cut. This was a favourite device of theirs when about to meet a new young man; it usually startled him considerably. If he was not a person of sound nerve and abstemious habits, it not infrequently evoked from him some enjoyably regrettable expression of surprise and alarm. I knew all the tricks in their repertoire, and waited interestedly to see ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong, but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find that he followed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after prescribing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most succulent and the most unwholesome of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Creoles, as well as all the superior class of people in Lima, are exceedingly temperate in drinking. Water and a kind of sweet wine are their favorite beverage; but the lower classes and the people of color are by no means so abstemious. They make free use of fermented drinks, especially brandy, chicha, and guarapo. The brandy of Peru is very pure, and is prepared exclusively from the grape. On the warm sea coast, the use of this liquor is not very injurious; there, its ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... made a success of every affair in life with the lamentable exception of his marriage. Of late his forehead had grown lined, and those business friends who had known him for a man of abstemious habits had observed in the City chophouse at which he lunched almost daily that whereas formerly he had been a noted trencherman, he now ate ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer



Words linked to "Abstemious" :   abstemiousness, strict, austere, abstentious, gluttonous, ascetic, spartan



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