Abstinence Quotes

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.

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.

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.

Love is the only thing that changes abstinence from a prison into pleasure.

The great sexual energy that one has on abstinence can be transformed into art, poetry, dance, and inventions.

Sixty years of virginity tried in vain to dam the waters of instinct as they burst through the granite of good intentions,the rock of irreproachablee conduct.

There is more food in a pennyworth of bread than in a gallon of ale.

First, if you are a homosexual or feel that inclination, keep yourself pure. If you are unmarried, you should practice abstinence from all sexual activity. I know this is difficult, but really what God is asking you to do is pretty much the same thing that he requires of all single people. That means not only keeping your body pure, but especially your mind. Just as heterosexual men should avoid pornography and fantasizing, you, too, need to keep your thought-life clean. Resist the temptation to rationalize sin by saying, “God made me this way.” God has made it very clear that He does not want you to indulge your desires, but to honor Him by keeping your mind and body pure. Finally, seek professional Christian counseling. With time and effort, you can come to enjoy normal, heterosexual relations with your spouse. There is hope.

William Lane Craig

In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women's domain further promotes the notion that it's women's morality that's on the line when it comes to sex, men just can't help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.

Jessica Valenti

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

I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.

Look, choosing to wait until marriage makes me feel empowered. But if the same choice cripples you, then it wasn't the right one.

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!... except of course when they are alone.

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

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

As Feministing.com commenter electron-Blue noted in response to the 2008 New York Times Magazine article “Students of Virginity,” on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, “There were a WHOLE LOTTA us not having sex at Harvard . . . but none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for pete’s sake.

Jessica Valenti

I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.

Jacqueline Carey

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

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

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

Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.

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