| 1. | Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison. - from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman |
| 2. | I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on th. - from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman |
| 3. | Nay, ask me if I can refrain from lov. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 4. | I warn you to refrain from provoking me, or I'll ask your abduction as a special favou. - from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte |
| 5. | The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring-. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 6. | He could not refrain from clapping his hands. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 7. | It is not as easy for other types to forgive they often refrain from attempting a reconciliation. - from How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict |
| 8. | She could not refrain from weeping at these words. - from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy |
| 9. | As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. - from Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley |
| 10. | And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother. - from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman |
| 11. | "It will be put to you, gentlemen, when the counsel on the other side refrains from mere interruption and confines himself to reply, that my unfortunate client has no action--no remedy at law--because there were no spoken words of endearment. - from The Best American Humorous Short Stories by Various |
| 12. | And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone, frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural voice rendered lugubrious. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 13. | Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the galleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary lirlonfa, have had their birt. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 14. | No one refrains from cooking food because there are beggars to ask for it, or from sowing seed because there are deer to destroy the corn when it is grown up. - from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana |