I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning.

Edward Hirsch

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

Aleister Crowley

Much of my experience with language was formed in the church, which has an oral tradition. There are lots of repetitions in prayers and song refrains. There's a sense of incantation, that if you call not once and not twice but for a third time, the spirit appears.

Alice McDermott

After a long run of almost thirty years, you get to the point where you say, 'These are my concerns.' It's not so much this is what I set out to claim - it is a kind of refrain.

Alice McDermott

An opera singer is like an athlete before a match. An athlete cannot overdo anything. In order to perform at the highest possible level, you need to refrain from activities so as to be able to express this power.

Andrea Bocelli

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Aristotle

That does not mean that we must forego just and fair criticism, or refrain from opposition to policies which are debatable or which do not command our approval.

Bainbridge Colby

We must not demonstrate any arrogance, and we must refrain from any irrational or undemocratic behavior.

Chen Shui-bian

I refrain from lots of things I love, like cheese and carbs. I eat plenty of greens every day, my favorite being watercress.

Chloe Sevigny

Eric Clapton's scales - when he comes off a high note and it's time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it's unbelievable.

Chris Rea

I try to refrain from the alarmist statement, really I do. It's bad for the liver and worries the dog, who has plenty enough to worry about as it is.

Christopher Buckley

You needn't love your enemy, but if you refrain from telling lies about him, you are doing well enough.

E. W. Howe

I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning.

Edward Hirsch

'Liberty Brass' is a small machine that unfolds in a single unpunctuated wave, which is interrupted by the rotating sign, the refrain. Each part is meant to do its work in relentless progression.

Edward Hirsch

If you want people to take action,you must refrain from giving them the answers.

Eliyahu Goldratt

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

Erica Jong

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Evelyn Waugh

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.

Germaine Greer

I consider anybody who weighs over 200 pounds fat, and time was when I could not refrain from telling such people so.

Gloria Swanson

If policymakers are serious about avoiding a society of TV 'haves and have-nots,' they should refrain from policies that favor pay-TV operators over the providers of our nation's only free and local communications system: over-the-air broadcasting.

Gordon Smith