Definition of Refrain

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Refrain

To hold back; to restrain; to keep within prescribed bounds; to curb; to govern.

To abstain from

To keep one's self from action or interference; to hold aloof; to forbear; to abstain.

The burden of a song; a phrase or verse which recurs at the end of each of the separate stanzas or divisions of a poetic composition.

Related Definitions:

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Refrain Quotations

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
Mark Twain

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?
William Shakespeare

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

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.
Marcus Aurelius

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

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

We treat them in the same way. Those who kill our women and innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they refrain.
Osama bin Laden

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

When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack.
Jack Henry Abbott

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.
Horace

Refrain Translations

refrain in French is refrain
refrain in Italian is ritenere, ritornello, ritornello
refrain in Spanish is estribillo

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