Restraint Quotes

“Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.”
― Orson Scott Card

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”
― Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen

“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“What good is power when you're too wise to use it?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“When you give yourself to me, completely, I will bite you. Until then, my love, I will only nibble on you.”~Cole”
― Tina Carreiro, Power of the Moon

“The path of peace is not a passive journey. It takes incredible strength not to open a can of 'whoop-ass', justifiably, when ones button is pushed.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“The world needs someone they can admire from a distance; from a very far distance.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Did someone actually have to do bad things to be a bad boy, or was it all about the potential? If it was the potential that counted, then maybe it was the restraint that was so sexy, knowing that he could do something dangerous and powerful but had the restraint not to.”
― Shanna Swendson, Enchanted, Inc.

“Ask yourself the three things you must always ask yourself before you say anything. 1) Does this need to be said 2) “Does this need to be said by me? 3) Does this need to be said by me now?”
― Craig Ferguson

“Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Even though we are tied down, it doesn’t stop us from flying. In fact, sometimes we dare to fly for the very reason that we are tied. There can be no freedom without restraint. Only one who has restraints knows what it means to have freedom.”
― Abhaidev, The Meaninglessness of Meaning

“I'm sorry I was short with him--but I don't like a man to approach me telling me it for my sake.
"Maybe it was," said Wylie
"It's poor technique."
"I'd all for it," said Wylie. "I'm vain as a woman. If anybody pretends to be interested in me, I'll ask for more. I like advice."
Stahr shook his head distastefully. Wylie kept on ribbing him--he was one of those to whom this privilege was permitted. "You fall for some kinds of flattery," he said. "this 'little Napoleon stuff.'"
"It makes me sick," said Stahr, "but it's not as bad as some man trying to help you."
"If you don't like advice, why do you pay me?"
"That's a question of merchandise," said Stahr. "I'm a merchant. I want to buy what's in your mind."
"You're no merchant," said Wylie. "I knew a lot of them when I was a publicity man, and I agree with Charles Francis Adams."
"What did he say?"
"He knew them all--Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor--and he said there wasn't one he'd care to meet again in the hereafter. Well--they haven't improved since then, and that's why I say you're no merchant."
"Adams was probably a sourbelly," said Stahr. "He wanted to be head man himself, but he didn't have the judgement or else the character."
"He had brains," said Wylie rather tartly.
"It takes more than brains. You writers and artists poop out and get all mixed up, and somebody has to come in and straighten you out." He shrugged his shoulders. "You seem to take things so personally, hating people and worshipping them--always thinking people are so important-especially yourselves. You just ask to be kicked around. I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it--on the inside.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon

“Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“The ideas are louder when there are fewer of them.”
― David C. Day

“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. (Address to Congress on Resigning Commission Dec 23, 1783)”
― George Washington, Writings

“Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“You have less restraint rather than more as you grow older. Think it over and alter yourself, or we shan't have happy lives.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“De som har makt over ordene bør være edru blant de rasende.”
― Per Fugelli

“She is mistress to her personality and well accustomed to reminding her more atavistic inclinations that the world is the world and the odd punch or eye-gouge will not make it any other way.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist

“The power of restraint is the greatest display of power.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In a moment he restrained himself so powerfully that the tempestuous heaving of his breast subsided, as turbulent and foaming waves yield to the sun's genial influence when the cloud has passed.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Ima nešto zadovoljavajuće u patnji koja se ne želi prikazati drugima, a to zadovoljstvo je ubistveno. Neko odjednom prestane da se žali čak i svome lekaru, bolnu grimasu otkriva jedino samome sebi, u ogledalu, a ako posrće, radije bira da se osloni na drvo ili na zid, nego na drugu osobu.

Tako umire čovek, a rađa se – vuk.”
― Vladimir Lenski, Hodnik

“Anger is not strength.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“The majority of people live their lives under two complementary conditions simultaneously: confined to prisons they don't know they exist and confined to prisons they think they exist.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“Why say it, Mr. Cohen? Dammit? Why’d you say it! The pressure! You pinned me! We can’t move anymore!' thought Andrei.

Sometimes you must arrest the tongue to let your heart run free.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“Most of the dictators do allow freedom in the private space. it is their tentacles in the public space that are considered the killers of democracy. if you want to test democracy, go no further than measuring the restraint that people feel in the public space about activities that cause no harm to fellow citizens, the dictator excluded.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Sometimes I feel that every word spoken and every gesture made merely serve to exacerbate misunderstandings. Then what I would really like is to escape into a great silence and impose that silence on everyone else.”
― Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork

“Surely little remained of the Puritan legacy of prudish rectitude, he thought: surely this was now a country of excess, gluttony, lust, and sloth; surely this had grown into a land where obesity reigned and even the poor moved ponderously down the street on big thighs that rubbed fatly together. What had become of the pilgrims' gaunt and stingy oversight? He knew in part it was the visionary genius of enterprising men, but such entrepreneurs were only the tools of a hungry culture. For the descendants of those gray, upright pioneers had cherished cravings for beef patties with ketchup, deep-fried chicken and vats of ice cream, chemically scented and dyed all the colors of the rainbow, and billions upon billions of gallons of soda. Their thirst had never been quite slaked and so they never finished drinking; and this was the market in all its streamlined functionality—which, precisely where the supply and the demand curves crossed, had swiftly produced a nation of paralyzed giants, fallen across their couches much as soldiers on the field of battle, their arteries hard, their softened hearts failing.

The market made a fool of you by giving you what you wanted. But this did not make him resent it; it merely earned his respect. From the day you were born you were called upon to discern what to choose.”
― Lydia Millet, How the Dead Dream

“I had set the first boundary in my life and made it clear that under no circumstance could it be broken. Storrie knew my rule, yet, without the slightest restraint, he was urging, pleading, and begging me to break it. My heart had always been bigger than my brain, and I could not stand the thought of him out in the cold. The more he whimpered and pried at me, the less I could resist.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I can control the restraint of my senses, and I can detach from anyone who hurts me with absolute ease”
― Leo Lourdes, A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being