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 forever; 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.

— Anne Brontë

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

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

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

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

— jihad eltabey

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.

— Roman Payne

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

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 Leading.

— Eliot Pattison

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

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 irreproachable conduct.

— René Crevel