| Play | Key Line | Modern Text | Original Text |
| Hamlet | Ham III.iv.168 | To the next abstinence; the next more easy; | To the next abstinence. |
| Love's Labour's Lost | LLL IV.iii.293 | And abstinence engenders maladies. | And abstinence ingenders maladies. / And where that you haue vow'd to studie (Lords) / In that each of you haue forsworne his Booke. / Can you still dreame and pore, and thereon looke. / For when would you my Lord, or you, or you, / Haue found the ground of studies excellence, / Without the beauty of a womans face; / From womens eyes this doctrine I deriue, / They are the Ground, the Bookes, the Achadems, / From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. / Why, vniuersall plodding poysons vp / The nimble spirits in the arteries, / As motion and long during action tyres / The sinnowy vigour of the trauailer. / Now for not looking on a womans face, / You haue in that forsworne the vse of eyes: / And studie too, the causer of your vow. / For where is any Author in the world, / Teaches such beauty as a womans eye: / Learning is but an adiunct to our selfe, / And where we are, our Learning likewise is. / Then when our selues we see in Ladies eyes, / With our selues. / Doe we not likewise see our learning there? |
| Measure for Measure | MM I.iii.12 | A man of stricture and firm abstinence, | (A man of stricture and firme abstinence) |
| Measure for Measure | MM IV.ii.78 | He doth with holy abstinence subdue | He doth with holie abstinence subdue |
| The Two Noble Kinsmen | TNK I.ii.6 | And here to keep in abstinence we shame | And here to keepe in abstinence we shame |