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Adultery   Listen
noun
Adultery  n.  (pl. adulteries)  
1.
The unfaithfulness of a married person to the marriage bed; sexual intercourse by a married man with another than his wife, or voluntary sexual intercourse by a married woman with another than her husband. Note: It is adultery on the part of the married wrongdoer. The word has also been used to characterize the act of an unmarried participator, the other being married. In the United States the definition varies with the local statutes. Unlawful intercourse between two married persons is sometimes called double adultery; between a married and an unmarried person, single adultery.
2.
Adulteration; corruption. (Obs.)
3.
(Script.)
(a)
Lewdness or unchastity of thought as well as act, as forbidden by the seventh commandment.
(b)
Faithlessness in religion.
4.
(Old Law) The fine and penalty imposed for the offense of adultery.
5.
(Eccl.) The intrusion of a person into a bishopric during the life of the bishop.
6.
Injury; degradation; ruin. (Obs.) "You might wrest the caduceus out of my hand to the adultery and spoil of nature."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adultery" Quotes from Famous Books



... Isaiah's prophecy: 'With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.' It is to be remembered, too, in estimating the probability of our text belonging to these Temple-sayings at the Feast, that the section which separates it from them, and contains the story about the woman taken in adultery, is judged by the best critics to be out of place here, and is not found in the most valuable manuscripts. If, then, we suppose this allusion to be fairly probable, I think it gives a special direction and meaning to these grand words, which it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... from 1585. Under date 1717, Feb. 2nd, occurs the following entry: "Robert Willy, of Upper Toynton, did penance in the parish church of Lower Toynton, for the heinous and great sin of adultery." A note in the baptismal register states that on July 18th, 1818, Bishop George (Tomline) confirmed at Horncastle 683 candidates, among them being five from Low Toynton. Confirmations were not held so frequently then as they ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... when one thing is directed towards the attainment of another thing as its end, it—and this especially holds good in morals—is, so to speak, drawn into the species of that towards which it is thus directed, thus: "He who commits adultery in order to steal" says the Philosopher,[416] "is rather a thief than an adulterer." Now it is clear that that knowledge which is prudence is directed to the acts of the moral virtues as its end, for prudence is "the right mode of procedure in our actions;"[417] hence, too, the ends ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... city of Prato a statute no less censurable than harsh, which, making no distinction between the wife whom her husband took in adultery with her lover, and the woman found pleasuring a stranger for money, condemned both alike to be burned. While this statute was in force, it befell that a gentlewoman, fair and beyond measure enamoured, Madonna ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... every inch a King! When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes! I pardon that man's life; what was thy cause? Adultery;— Thou shalt not die; die for adultery! No! The wren goes to it; and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son Was kinder to his father than my daughters Got between the lawful sheets; To it luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.— Behold ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... and has virtually admitted that the new religion was admirably fitted to promote the good of the community, he mentions that the members of the Church were bound by solemn obligations to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery; to keep their promises, and to avoid every form of wickedness. When such was their acknowledged character, it may appear extraordinary that a sagacious prince and a magistrate of highly cultivated mind concurred in thinking that they should be treated with extreme rigour. We have here, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... were arrested for the crime of "miscegenation"—perhaps it is only a misdemeanor in Maryland—and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, the penalty of extra-judicial death not extending so far North. The same month a couple, one white and one colored, were arrested in New Jersey for living in adultery. They were found guilty by the court, but punishment was withheld upon a promise that they would marry immediately; or, as some cynic would undoubtedly say, the punishment was commuted ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... Chaulieu, solemnly. "Adultery is, indeed, an atrocious crime. I am sure I would most conscientiously cry out with the honest preacher, 'Adultery, my children, is the blackest of sins. I do declare that I would rather have ten virgins in love with me than one ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... adultery was abandoned close by the monastery of Rahen and Mochuda fostered the child until he became a bishop, though no one knew his name or his progenitors. Mochuda said:—"This child's name is Dioma and his father is Cormac of the race of Eochaidh Eachach." All thereupon magnified the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... cannot forget, I insisted. Do not forget, but for the present this leads you no whither; this chapter has ended; dismiss it and turn to those other things. You are not only Stephen Stratton who fell into adultery; in these silences he is a little thing and far away; here and with me you are Man—Everyman—in this round world in which your lot has fallen. But Mary, I urged, to forget Mary is a treason, an ingratitude, seeing that she loved me. But the stillness did not command me to forget ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... deteriorate.... Naturally there were differences,—"squabbles," as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or indicated, were infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, than adultery. It never entered her mind that either she or her husband could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever care for any other woman than her. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the publicity and scandal of such an affair; and that the moment when his grand views might possibly be realized was not the fit time to entertain France and Europe with the details of a charge of adultery. I spoke to him of Hortense and Eugene, to whom he was much attached. Reflection, seconded by his ardent affection for Josephine, brought about a complete reconciliation. After these three days of conjugal misunderstanding their happiness was never afterwards ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... this, plain and solemn manner, I must and will tell you, that there is not a profane oath which you have uttered, nor a lie which you have told, nor a sabbath which you have broken, nor a single act of adultery, fornication, theft, or any wickedness of which you have been guilty; in a word, there is not an evil you have committed, nor a duty you have omitted to perform, but what is noted down in the book of God's remembrance, and will be produced against you in the day ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson

... to the indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Pres to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... be apprehended for adultery, if [found] with another man's wife in mutual grasping of hair or with recent love-marks, or when both ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... moral evil differs in no respect from ours, but they consider themselves amenable only to inferior beings, not to the Supreme. Evil- speaking—lying—hatred—disobedience to parents—neglect of them—are said by the intelligent to have been all known to be sin, as well as theft, murder, or adultery, before they knew aught of Europeans or their teaching. The only new addition to their moral code is, that it is wrong to have more wives than one. This, until the arrival of Europeans, never entered into their minds ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... last I had myself to fight against, and then I gave in. Why, I had been dead and buried more than twenty years—why don't you laugh at that?—and had been imposed upon all that time by this miserable nameless outcast, myself! whose father's name was Adultery and his mother's Sin. That was a parentage to be proud of, wasn't it? And yet, I swear before God, I'm better contented it should be so, than to be the son of an honest marriage, with such a woman as ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... to. She is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear by my truly. She rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Dalilah; and calls her own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers them not to learn on the virginals,[56] because of their affinity with organs, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... Mary the leaving Murray in actual possession of the royal power as the price of her return. Neither however would listen to terms which sacrificed both to Elizabeth's self-interest. The Regent persisted in charging the Queen with murder and adultery. Mary refused either to answer or to abdicate in favour of her ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... sways a sceptre, made of a dead man's bone bleached in the moonlight, over a countless multitude of shivering ghosts.7 But the Norse moralists plunge to a yet darker doom those guilty of perjury, murder, or adultery. In Nastrond's grisly hail, which is shaped of serpents' spines, and through whose loop holes drops of poison drip, where no sunlight ever reaches, they welter in a venom sea and are gnawed by ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... can judge it only by outward manifestations. But Christ knew what was in man. Hence He could legislate for man's thoughts, as well as his deeds. Hence He says: "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Even the law of the Ten Commandments legislated against adultery only as an outward ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... and merciful words of absolution. And Helen rose from her knees and slipped out from beneath the frayed and greasy curtain a free woman, the guilt of her adultery wiped off by those awful words, as, with a wet cloth, one would wipe writing off a slate leaving the surface of it clean in every part. Precisely how far she literally believed in the efficacy of that most solemn rite she would not have found it easy to declare. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... myself to citing four scenes, or rather four tableaux. The first will be that of the fall with Rodolphe; the second, the religious reaction between the two adulteries; the third, the fall with Leon, which is the second adultery, and finally the fourth, the death of ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat idol sacrifices. And I gave her time to repent, and she would not repent of her fornication. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and those, who commit adultery with her, into great affliction, unless they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence; and all the congregations will know that I am he, who searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... ran a streak of madness, of which he himself was totally unaware. And now, when he had completed arrangements to his own satisfaction, here came this Jesuit telling him that such a course of action savoured of adultery, and would probably end in the eternal separation of Mordaunt ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... an expression they knew—"Jesus, looking on him, loved him." Their talk was of eternal life; and, no doubt to his surprise, Jesus asked the youth if he had kept the commandments; how did he stand as regarded murder, theft, adultery? The steady gaze followed the youth's impetuous answer, and then came the recommendation to sell all that he had and give to the poor—"and, Come! Follow me!" At this, we read in a fragment of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" (preserved ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... afford? As no other has the right to her love, so no other man has any right to her absolute confidence. As she becomes an adulteress the day that she gives her body to another man, is she any the less an adulteress, the day that she gives her confidence and trusts her soul to a stranger? The adultery of the heart and soul is not less criminal than the adultery of the body; and every time the wife goes to the feet of the priest to confess, does she not become ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... laws. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. Some seized the opportunity to desert their wives and children and acquire new help-meets. While much suffering resulted from the desertion, as a rule, the negro mother alone supported the children better than did ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... hedonism, who maintains that pleasure is the supreme good in life, or rather the only good, that the prostitute is better than the nun, for the one makes men happy, the other is dedicated to a painful and shameful celibacy; that the law against adultery is a sort of sacrilege; that women should be common and should go naked; and that it is irrational to die for one's country or for any other ideal. . . . It is noteworthy that the representative of the Christian ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... case, and perhaps of the American character, in two cases out of three a divorce is granted for fault of the husband.[1] And in the second place, because a false cause is given in a great majority of cases. In England until recently the rule was absolute that a woman could not get a divorce for adultery alone, but there had to be cruelty besides; while the man could be divorced for the first-named cause. No such rule has ever prevailed in any State of this country. Desertion and failure to support, on the other hand, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... under the influence of lewd women or resort to self-abuse. The man who has no control over his mind and allows impure thoughts to be associated with the name of every female that may be suggested to his mind, is but committing adultery in his heart, just as guilty at heart as though ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... succeed in obliterating from the walls of our churches by refusing to enter any building where they are publicly classed with a man's house, his ox, and his ass, as his purchased chattels. In this morality female adultery is malversation by the woman and theft by the man, whilst male adultery with an unmarried woman is not an offence at all. But though this is not only the theory of our marriage laws, but the practical morality of many of us, it is no longer an avowed morality, nor does its ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... I think, find that it can fairly be stated thus. The old tragedies of marriage, though not love stories, are like love stories in this, that they work up to some act or stroke which is irrevocable as marriage is irrevocable; to the fact of death or of adultery. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... part of her husband, Angus, which was never proved. She professed to believe that James IV. had survived Flodden three years, and was alive when she married Angus. Angus had been unfaithful, but that was no ground for divorce by canon law; and she herself was living in shameless adultery with Henry Stewart, who had also procured a divorce to be free to marry his Queen. No objection was found at Rome to either of these divorces; but neither Angus nor Margaret Mortimer had an Emperor for a nephew; no ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... of the wine and was drunken." The Holy Ghost, when it hath to do with sin, loves to give it its own name; drunkenness must be drunkenness, murder must he murder, and adultery must bear its own name. Nay, it is neither the goodness of the man, nor his being in favor with God, that will cause him to lessen or mince his sin. Noah was drunken; Lot lay with his daughters; David killed Uriah; Peter cursed and swore in the garden, and also dissembled ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... communities of Europe. The conduct of individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living. Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were more cases of adultery considered ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... within as outside. By night the prisoners are herded together in hundreds from six to six in the wretched old dungeon-like rooms. Nothing apparently is prohibited, and prisoners may indulge with impunity in anything from cigarettes to adultery, for which they ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... the charges brought against the House of Borgia some testimony exists; for many others—and these are the more lurid, sensational, and appalling covering as they do rape and murder, adultery, incest, and the sin of the Cities of the Plain—no single grain of real evidence is forthcoming. Indeed, at this time of day evidence is no longer called for where the sins of the Borgias are concerned. Oft-reiterated assertion has usurped the place of evidence—for a lie sufficiently ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... congregation. Being made governor of this plantation, Underhill sent letters to the Massachusetts magistrates, breathing reproaches and imprecations of vengeance. But meanwhile it was discovered that he had been living in adultery at Boston with a young woman whom he had seduced, the wife of a cooper, and the captain was forced to make public confession, which he did with great unction and in a manner highly dramatic. "He came {346} in his worst clothes (being accustomed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Popes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries] [he says] instituted a system of persecution.... The person who authorizes the act shares the guilt of the person who commits it.... Now the Liberals think persecution a crime of a worse order than adultery, and the acts done by Ximenes [through the agency of the Spanish Inquisition] considerably worse than the entertainment of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... feeling that every form and kind of spurious marriage, such as bigamy, polygamy, illegal divorce and remarriage, seduction, adultery, and bastardy, besides constituting sometimes cause for civil action, might with good results be lifted into offenses against the State. National development depends not upon the individual but upon the family unit, and ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... comprises all sins, even those against the Holy Ghost, so divine grace is held out to all sinners. The Montanistic doctrine of the unforgivableness of the "three capital sins" (apostasy, murder, and adultery) was already condemned as heretical during the life-time of Tertullian. The sinner can obtain forgiveness only by receiving the sacrament of Penance or making an act of perfect contrition.(545) Justly, therefore, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... stations have a special following of women on their journeys. There it is that our dear Madame Bavoil's shrewd remark finds justification. Many a country-woman who has the Cure of her own parish to dinner dares not tell him the tale of her adultery, because he could too easily guess the name of her lover, and because the propinquity of a priest living on intimate terms in her house would be inconvenient; so she takes advantage of an excursion to Paris ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... Third Richard might have paused in reply to a too curious layman's question of what was meant by "Murder"; and can also conceive a Bishop at the court of the Second Charles hesitating as to the significance of the word "Adultery"; and farther, in the present climacteric of the British Constitution, an elder of the Church of Glasgow debating within himself whether the Commandment which was severely prohibitory of Theft might not be mildly permissive of Misappropriation;—at no time, nor under any conditions, can I conceive ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... For you all together in the assembly, and in the court, convicted him of informing, and he was fined ten thousand drachmae. 66. This has been sufficiently proved by you all. Being a man of this sort, he endeavored to seduce and betray the free-born wives of the citizens, and he was taken in adultery. Death is the punishment for this. That I am speaking the truth, ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... Chambre au Tabac for punishing smokers, was instituted in 1634, and not abolished till the middle of the eighteenth century. Even in Switzerland, war was waged against the American herb: to smoke, in Berne, ranked as a crime next to adultery; and in 1653, all smokers were cited before the Council at Apenzel, and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the {74} Christians were in the habit of meeting together on a certain day; that they then united in a hymn of praise to their God, Christ; and that they bound one another—not to commit crimes, but to refrain from theft, from adultery, to be faithful in performing their promises, to withhold from none the property intrusted to their keeping; and then separated and afterward assembled at ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... 16, and part, if not all, of Ch. III. 6-18. The general theme is a historical retrospect—Israel's early loyalty to her God, and her subsequent declension to the worship of other gods, figured as adultery; along with a profession of penitence by the people, to which God responds by a stern call to a deeper repentance and thorough reform; failing this, her doom, though vaguely described as yet, is inevitable. The nation is addressed as a whole at first ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... devotion—would the blessed Mary help to save her, even though she should commit this great sin? Would the mild-eyed, sweet Saviour, who had forgiven so many women, who had saved from a cruel death the woman taken in adultery, who had been so gracious to the Samaritan woman at the well—would He turn from her the graciousness of His dear eyes, and bid her go out for ever from among the faithful? Madame Zamenoy would tell her so, and so would Sister Teresa, an old nun, who was ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... in the highest places in the land. If we are to credit an old tradition, a poem in which Chaucer narrates the amours of Mars and Venus was written by him at the request of John of Gaunt, to celebrate the adultery of the duke's sister-in-law with a nobleman, to whom the injured kinsman afterwards married one of his own daughters! But nowhere was the deterioration of sentiment on this head more strongly typified than in Edward ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... foreseen all this disturbance, was not at all surprised when his governor told him what had happened, and conjured him to restore the woman to the right owner, with many pathetic remonstrances touching the heinous sin of adultery, the distraction of the unfortunate husband, and the danger of incurring the resentment of an arbitrary government, which, upon application being made would not fail of espousing the cause of the injured. He denied, with great effrontery, that he had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... simpleton. But he was not content with calling him a blockhead; he represented him as a profligate man, who, while libelling the princes and pretending to be the champion of God's ordinances, himself practised open adultery, committed acts of violence and insolent tyranny, and incited men to incendiarism in his opponents' territories. He would let the Duke scream himself hoarse or dead with his calumnies against John Frederick and the Evangelicals, and simply answer him by saying, 'Devil, thou liest! Hans ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... Mason is by his tenure obliged to obey it, it follows, that all such crimes as profane swearing or great impiety in any form, neglect of social and domestic duties, murder and its concomitant vices of cruelty and hatred, adultery, dishonesty in any shape, perjury or malevolence, and habitual falsehood, inordinate covetousness, and in short, all those ramifications of these leading vices which injuriously affect the relations of man to God, his neighbor, and himself, are proper subjects ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... measures, removing boundaries, adultery, insincerity are denounced in the incantation texts,[1604] and in accord with this standard, we see in the records of lawsuits and agreements between parties[1605] clear indications of the stringent laws that prevailed in order to protect citizens against ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... what incomparable manufacturer of toys, must it have been who succeeded in endowing the human mask with its suppleness, its marvellous elasticity! How interesting to observe the face of this great seigneur surprised in the very planning of his adultery, with cheeks flushed in the anticipation of promised delights, calming down at a moment's notice into the serenity of conjugal tenderness; how fine the devout obsequiousness, the paternal smile, after the Franklin method, of Jenkins, in the presence of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... of Krishna's love-making reflects this bias. The physical charms of the cowgirls are minimized and it is only the beauty of Rukmini which is stressed. It is clear, in fact, that however much the one tradition involved a break with morals, the second tradition shrank from countenancing adultery and it was this latter tradition which commanded the authors' approval. Finally, on one important issue, the Purana as a whole is in no doubt. Krishna's true consort is Rukmini. That Krishna's nature should be complemented by a cowgirl is not so much as even considered. The cowgirls are shown ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... the indigenous tribes of Sarawak are firmly persuaded that were the wives to commit adultery while their husbands are searching for camphor in the jungle, the camphor obtained by the men would evaporate. Husbands can discover, by certain knots in the tree, when the wives are unfaithful; and it is said that in former days many women were killed by jealous husbands on no ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... all this is told to incline you to thankfulness; and to incline you the more, let me tell you, and though the prophet David was guilty of murder and adultery, and many other of the most deadly sins, yet he was said to be a man after God's own heart, because he abounded more with thankfulness that any other that is mentioned in holy scripture, as may appear in his book of Psalms; where there is such a commixture, of his confessing of his sins ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... helped to eat. Though a cannibal feast was a rare orgie, putrid food was a common dainty. Without the cringing manner of the Oriental, the Maori had his full share of deceitfulness. Elaborate treachery is constantly met with in the accounts of their wars. If adultery was rare, chastity among the single women was rarer still. The affection of parents for young children was requited by no kindness on the part of youth for old age. Carving never rose higher than grotesque decoration. The attempts at portraying the human face or form resulted ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... University, and would abstain from pandering and fornication, on pain of paying five marks on conviction. In this case four acted as sureties, singly and jointly. In 1452 Robert Smyth, alias Harpmaker, suspected of adultery with Joan Fitz-John, tapestry-maker, dwelling in the corner house on the east side of Cat-strete, abjured the society of the same Joan, and swore that he would not come into any place where she was, whether in the public street, market, church, or chapel, on pain of paying forty ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... the country there are some buildings of wonderful structure, having inscriptions in unknown characters; but the natives know nothing respecting their origin. The natives of Monomotapa believe in one God, whom they name Mazimo, and have no idols. Witchcraft, theft, and adultery are the crimes most severely punished among them. Every man is permitted to have as many wives as he pleases or can maintain. The monomotapa has a thousand, but the first wife commands over all the rest, and her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... journey to the abyss; Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought Vengeance upon the proud adultery." ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... "tattooing"). Among them the struggle for life does not exist in its more brutal forms. They take care of the sick and feeble, the children, and the old people. Cannibalism is unknown amongst them; they punish murder and theft. They are honest, and, moreover, are monogamous, and punish adultery, which is rare among them. Their religion is remarkably simple. It is limited to reverence for a Supreme Being, without any offering of sacrifice, and they do not worship ancestors nor exhibit the superstitions known as "animism." It has been argued that these characteristics, taken together, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... on one floor, and all the indecent propinquities that their novels described. It amused Newland Archer (who had secretly situated the love-scenes of "Monsieur de Camors" in Mrs. Mingott's bedroom) to picture her blameless life led in the stage-setting of adultery; but he said to himself, with considerable admiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepid woman would ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... Gut'—or the 'Bay of Biscay,' with no gale at all—how it would enliven and introduce them to a few of the sensations!—to say nothing of an illicit amour or two upon shore, in the way of essay upon the Passions, beginning with simple adultery, and compounding it as they ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... meantime they lodged Marius in the house of a woman named Fannia,[129] who was supposed not to be kindly disposed towards him on account of an old grudge. Fannia had a husband whose name was Tinnius, and on separating from him she claimed her portion, which was considerable. The husband charged her with adultery, and Marius, who was then in his sixth consulship, presided as judge. But on the trial it appeared that Fannia had been a loose woman, and that her husband, though he knew it, took her to wife, and lived with her a long time; accordingly, Marius being disgusted ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... I dare say the woman's husband and your brother see to that among them. Oh, that my boy, Hugh, as he used to be, should have brought us all to this! But there's no knowing what they won't do among them. Reform, indeed! Murder, sacrilege, adultery, treason, atheism;—that's what Reform means; besides every kind of nastiness under the sun." In which latter category Miss Stanbury intended especially to include bad printer's ink, and paper made ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... I left the grounds by the little gate of the lower terrace and went to the punt, in which I hid to be alone with my thoughts. I tried to detach myself from the being in which I lived,—a torture like that with which the Tartars punish adultery by fastening a limb of the guilty man in a piece of wood and leaving him with a knife to cut it off if he would not die of hunger. My life was a failure, too! Despair suggested many strange ideas to me. Sometimes I vowed to ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... bears you witness that you are not a swearing Christian, or rather a swearing infidel. Well, but are you clear in the point of adultery, fornication, or uncleanness? Does not the guilt of some vile sin, which you have wickedly indulged in time past, and perhaps are still indulging, mark you for the member of a harlot, and not the member ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... places, I would certainly not advise them to emigrate into the Malay forest for it would be like condemning them to death by starvation as there they would find no sort of tool or material with which to do their work. There are no suicides, murders, robberies, adultery, coveted legacies and suppressed wills, forgeries, lost women and illegitimate children, there are no ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... five deadly sins are: the slaying of a Brahman, the drinking of wine, theft, adultery with the wife of one's teacher, and association with one guilty of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... recognition of this truth, and a solemn agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with themselves, and not to live together for a moment after complete accord had ceased to exist between them. The new adultery was ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... deities of rain, harvest, trees, the sea, etc., are called anitos, and worshiped and invoked accordingly; they intercede for the people with the great Bathala. These Moros are governed by chiefs, who enact and administer such laws as seem necessary for the preservation of good order—adultery, murder, and theft being the chief crimes, which are punished by a system of fines, or by the enslavement of those who are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... the traffic among [women] of the second rate! I mean the freed-women: after which Sallustius is not less mad, than he who commits adultery. But if he had a mind to be good and generous, as far as his estate and reason would direct him, and as far as a man might be liberal with moderation; he would give a sufficiency, not what would bring upon himself ruin and infamy. However, he hugs ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... came to him quickly, his brain had been clarified by that sleep, horrible though it had been. He thought steadily now, the facts all arranged before him. His wife had told him, almost with vindictive pride, that she had been guilty of adultery. He did not at present think of Morris ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... making as great a fool of himself, as the Devil did at Shrewsbury the other day; who, in the midst of the interlude of Doctor Faustus, whilst some, according to the custom on such occasions, were committing adultery with their eyes, some with their hands, others making assignations for the same purpose, and doing various other things profitable to your kingdom, made his appearance to play his own part; by which blunder, he drove every ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... commit adultery, for the first crime the Male shall lose his Privities, and the Woman have her right eye bored out, if after that she was again taken in the act, she should die ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... Spirit descends "in bodily form as a dove." The writers interpret the narrative for their readers: Matthew takes Jesus' ideal of the indissoluble marriage-tie, as it is given in Mark, and allows, in the practical application of the ideal, divorce for adultery; he adds to Jesus' word about telling one's brother his fault "between thee and him alone" further advice as to what shall be done if the brother be obdurate, ending with "Tell it unto the Church." John substitutes ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... obtain with all nations who have a religion. From the first Table they know that God is to be acknowledged, hallowed and worshipped. From the second Table they know that a man is not to steal, either openly or by trickery, nor to commit adultery, nor to kill, whether by blow or by hatred, nor to bear false witness in a court of justice, or before the world, and further that he ought not to will those evils. From this Table a man knows the evils which he must shun, and in the measure that he knows them and shuns them, God conjoins ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Manston? Was she wise in her request? Holding her present belief, and with no definite evidence either way, she could, for one thing, never conscientiously marry any one else. Suppose that Cytherea were Manston's wife—i.e., that the first wife was really burnt? The adultery of Manston would be proved, and, Mr. Raunham thought, cruelty sufficient to bring the case within the meaning of the statute. Suppose the new woman was, as stated, Mr. Manston's restored wife? Cytherea ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... is none the worse: At Church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend: Honour thy parents; that is, all From whom advancement may befall: Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive: Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it: Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat: Bear not false witness; let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly: Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... order to know whether what a man does befits him as a man to do, the first thing to examine is that which he mainly desires and wills in his action. Now the end is more willed and desired than the means. He who steals to commit adultery, says Aristotle, is more of an adulterer than a thief. The end in view is what lies nearest to a man's heart as he acts. On that his mind is chiefly bent; on that his main purpose is fixed. Though the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... worst clothes (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and neatness) without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes; and standing upon a form, he did, with many deep sighs and abundance of tears, lay open his wicked course, his adultery, his hypocrisy, his persecution of God's people here, and especially his pride (as the root of all which caused God to give him over to his other sinful courses) and contempt of the magistrates.... ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... opinions were divided. Authority, Law of Nations, and Religion thought Duessa guilty, but Pity, Danger, Nobility of Birth, and Grief pleaded in her behalf. Zeal then charges the prisoner with murder, sedition, adultery, and lewd impiety; whereupon the sentence of the court is given against her. Queen Mercilla, being called on to pass sentence, is so overwhelmed with grief that she rises and leaves the court.—Spenser, Faery Queen, v. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... notice at once the height of His morality—the depth of His mercy. He demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most loyal of His disciples shrank appalled: "Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." ... "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her." From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank—"If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... people prefer to conceal, the weakness of statistics becomes obvious. All figures which touch upon sexual subjects are nothing but the roughest guesses. No one would take a census of prostitution, illegitimacy, adultery, or venereal disease for a statement of reliable facts. There are religious statistics, but who that has traveled among men would regard the number of professing Christians as any index of the strength of Christianity, or the church attendance ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... that honour. Then, again, I am the wife of others. Therefore, good betide thee, this conduct of thine is not proper. Do thou remember the precept of morality, viz., that persons should take delight only in their wedded wives. Thou shouldst not, therefore, by any means bend thy heart to adultery. Surely abstaining from improper acts is ever the study of those that are good. Overcome by ignorance sinful men under the influence of desire come by either extreme infamy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... and profanity were visited in the Huguenot camp produced but a slight impression, compared with that made by the punishment of death inflicted by a stern judge at Orleans, just before the proclamation of peace, on a man and woman found guilty of adultery. Almost the entire court cried out against the unheard-of severity of the sentence for a crime which had never before been punished at all. The greater part of these advocates of facile morals had even the indiscretion to confess that they would never ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... guilty of adultery, for the first offense is punished by having her hair cropped; for repeated offenses her left ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... court negatives the appeal and defence of the said Arnauld du Thill; and as punishment and amends for the imposture, deception, assumption of name and of person, adultery, rape, sacrilege, theft, larceny, and other deeds committed by the aforesaid du Thill, and causing the above-mentioned trial; this court has condemned and condemns him to do penance before the church of Artigue, kneeling, clad in his shirt only, bareheaded and barefoot, a halter on his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... down.... The American public will forget all about German crimes once Germany is victorious." "Nothing succeeds like success." "There is always a reason for success," etc. Which cynical acceptance proves that we have already "committed adultery in our hearts." ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... the Christian Church is determined by that of our Lord, who on the one hand numbered a reclaimed prostitute among His intimate friends, and on the other taught that whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart. The Church, therefore, differs from the world, first in holding that what is wrong for women is equally wrong for men, that there is one and the same standard in these matters for both sexes, namely, absolute sexual purity; and secondly, in extending ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... by the name of Lucre, To have committed adultery with Mercatore the merchant and Creticus the lawyer. Thou art also indicted for the robbery of Mercatore: Lastly and chiefly, for the consenting to the murder of Hospitality. What sayest thou, art thou guilty ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... Until the evidence of Lieut. Hownam it was generally thought that proofs of her guilt were wanting, but since his admission that Bergami slept under the tent with her all unprejudiced men seem to think the adultery sufficiently proved. The strenuous opposers of the Bill, however, by no means allow this, and make a mighty difference between sleeping dressed under a tent and being shut up at night in a room together, which the supporters of the Bill contend would ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... books of the Old Testament, though Uzzah is stricken dead for touching the ark, and the subjects of King David afflicted with pestilence because their ruler took a census of his people, Jehovah is above all things a righteous God, who punishes bloodshed, adultery, and social oppression. So in Greece the Furies pursue the homicide and the perjurer, till the name of his family is clean put out. Herodotus tells us how the family of Glaucus was extinguished because he consulted the oracle of Delphi about an act of embezzlement ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... with great severity, did not keep the convent accounts accurately, suffered sundry roofs to get out of order, and that she was much under the influence of the chaplain, Master Bryce. Some years before this she had been charged with adultery; this she seems to have denied with oaths, and finally, when she could brazen it out no further, she confessed to adultery and perjury and resigned her office, the only thing she could do; but the most remarkable part of the story is still to come: the sisters being ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... dominions, he got to a place within four miles of Wittemburg, and many people purchased indulgences. While Dr Martin was seated in the confessional, many of these poor dupes came to him and acknowledged themselves guilty of excesses. 'Adultery, licentiousness, usury, ill-gotten gains'—still they would not promise to abandon their crimes, but trusting to their letters of indulgence obtained from Tetzel, showed them, and maintained their virtue. Dr Martin replied, 'Except ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston

... life. He could do little without smirching that honored name. He might take his own life. But that would be to punish the innocent and to reward the guilty. His wealth would become the gilding of adultery, and her joy would become perfect in his death. Imagine him asleep in the grave, while she laughed over his ashes, crying to herself: always a fool. He might kill her, or him, or both; a short punishment for a long treason, and then ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... that now they can distinguish Kospelov's vodka from Smirnov's No. 21, blindfold. Thirdly, in former days, people here made love to other men's wives in secret, from the same motives as thieves steal in secret and not openly; adultery was considered something they were ashamed to make a public display of. Laevsky has come as a pioneer in that line; he lives with another man's wife openly. . . . ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the estate. It is reported that Hector wished Allan out of the way, whom he thought only to stand in his way from being laird, since he was resolved not to own my Lord Lovat's daughter's children, being all bastards and gotten in adultery. The reason why they entertained such thoughts of him was partly this: Hector going to Ellandonnan (where he placed Malcolm Mac Eancharrich constable) called such of the country people to him as he judged fit, under pretence ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... of polygamy, therefore, does not appear; yet when a man seduces a woman, it should I think, be termed a LEFT-HANDED marriage, and the man should be LEGALLY obliged to maintain the woman and her children, unless adultery, a natural divorcement, abrogated the law. And this law should remain in force as long as the weakness of women caused the word seduction to be used as an excuse for their frailty and want of principle; nay, while they depend on man for a subsistence, instead of earning it by the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... whose memory the poet Stesichorus had rendered infamous. She has been Lucretia, the patrician lady violated by the kings. She was Delilah, who cut off the hair of Samson. She was that daughter of Israel who surrendered herself to he-goats. She has loved adultery, idolatry, lying and folly. She was prostituted by every nation. She has sung in all the cross-ways. She has kissed every face. At Tyre, she, the Syrian, was the mistress of thieves. She drank with them during the nights, and she concealed assassins amid the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of very evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the meaning given was: "To be unfaithful to conjugal vows." Even then she could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she set herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was convalescent. When she was able to walk from one room to another, she wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that she had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that held ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little hesitation in confessing to him. The fault of love lay not in itself, but in abuse. This is not said of adultery, which was always an offense because it disturbed the institution of marriage and rotted the foundation ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... her romances are dazzling rehabilitations of adultery, and in reading their burning pages it would seem that there remains only one thing to be done—namely, to break the social chains in order that the Lelias and Sylvias may go in quest of their ideal without being stopped by morality and the laws, those importune customs lines ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... purgatory nothing was required but money offered for them by the living. 'The moment the money tinkles in the box, the soul springs up out of purgatory.' A special tariff was arranged for the commission of particular sins, as, for example, six ducats for adultery. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... Lepidus was driven from Italy, he made his escape into Sardinia, where he fell sick and died of vexation, not at the state of affairs, as they say, but from finding some writing by which he discovered that his wife had committed adultery. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... most innocent and gentle pastime is the abomination of decent people; and, with that happy faculty of judging others by themselves,—a mark of broad, comprehensive minds,—they run up a list of grievances, among which swindling and adultery are common trifles. Peeping out from their hole in the curtain, swelling with the nobleness of their occupation, and filled with honest indignation at your goings on, they see, with a clairvoyance which puts Hume in the background, all the errors of omission and commission your guilty hands and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... conscience, to violate the bed of his unsuspecting friend, whenever he could assure himself that his crime would escape detection; for then, where would be the evil and misery, the prevention of which was the real ultimate object of the prohibition of adultery? The thief, in like manner, and even the murderer, might find abundant room for the innocent exercise of their respective occupations, arguing from the primary intention and real objects of the commands, by which theft and murder ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... (90) By nature he was not disposed to commit such evil-doing as his relation to Bath-sheba involved. God Himself brought him to his crime, that He might say to other sinners: "Go to David and learn how to repent." (91) Nor, indeed, may David be charged with gross murder and adultery. There were extenuating circumstances. In those days it was customary for warriors to give their wives bills of divorce, which were to have validity only if the soldier husbands did not return at ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... could, if he liked, excel. (It recalls Anatole France's Le Lys Rouge, showing that he, too, the scholar and intellectual par excellence, could an he would produce patterns in plain and fancy adultery with the best.) Whelpdale's adventures in Troy, U.S.A., where he lived for five days on pea-nuts, are evidently semi-autobiographical. It is in his narrative that we first made the acquaintance of the American phrase now so familiar about ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... Courtier, "but that attitude of mind—you used to have it yourself—which decrees either living death, or spiritual adultery to women, makes my blood boil. You can't deny that those were the alternatives, and I say you had the right fundamentally to protest against them, not only in words but deeds. You did protest, I know; but this present decision of yours is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... "damn" at that time had no such awful meaning as has grown into it in our day through the wide-spread influence of the theory which I am criticizing. It simply meant what the Greek word meant. I find an interesting illustration of this in the Wycliffe Bible in the passage about the woman taken in adultery. Jesus saith, "Woman, hath no man damned thee?" "No man, Lord." "Neither do I damn thee." That is to say the English word Damn at that time only meant "condemn." But words are dangerous things if not carefully watched, owing to ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... preparation for marriage criticism of conception of intermediate views of moral results of sexual, in relation to chastity the problems of Abyssinia, prostitution in sexual initiation in Achilleus and Nereus, legend of Adultery Africa, chastity on West Coast of Alcohol, as a sexual stimulant in pregnancy in relation to the orgy Alexander VI and courtesans Ambil anak Marriage America, divorce in marriage in prostitution in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Further, Jerome gives as another reason, "lest the Mother of God should be stoned by the Jews as an adulteress." But this reason seems to have no weight, for if she were not espoused, she could not be condemned for adultery. Therefore it does not seem reasonable that Christ should be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... mother. The organiser and companion of her flight was a young priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, who was a canon at Arezzo. Guido followed them, caught them at Castelnuovo, a village on the outskirts of Rome, and caused both to be arrested. They were confined in the "New Prisons" at Rome, and tried for adultery. The result was a compromise—they were pronounced guilty, but a merely nominal punishment ("the jocular piece of punishment," as the young priest called it) was inflicted on each. Pompilia was relegated for a time to a convent; Caponsacchi was banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... respect like a true and sincere penitent. Benson showed the same easiness and sweetness of temper which he had always been remarkable for, even to the last moment of his life. He expressed, indeed, much sorrow for his having lived deliberately in a continued course of adultery with two women who both of them averred that they had been lawfully married to him. He frankly confessed his own guilt, and that the sentence of the Law was just, dying, as far as we are able to judge, in a composed ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... and, if they do, they'll be ashamed of it: farmers cheat and are not ashamed of it: they have all the sensual vices too of the nobility, with cheating into the bargain. There is as much fornication and adultery among farmers as amongst noblemen.' BOSWELL. 'The notion of the world, Sir, however is, that the morals of women of quality are worse than those in lower stations.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, the licentiousness of one woman of quality makes more noise ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... society the old laws and practices were harsh, but not without a certain stamp of high-mindedness. Stealthy adultery was punished with death; open elopement was properly considered virtue in comparison, and compounded for a fine in land. The male adulterer alone seems to have been punished. It is correct manners for a jealous man to hang himself; a jealous woman has a different remedy—she bites her rival. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... solemnity. The ceremony was, however, injured by a misfortune; after the gospel the incense was carried round, and the chaplain who bore it was married; Doctor Weston, who was afterwards deprived of the deanery of Windsor for adultery, darted forward and snatched the censer out of the chaplain's hand. "Shamest thou not to do thine office," he said, "having a wife, as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as thou."[82] Nor was scandal the worst part of it. Elizabeth had been ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... considerable row on, and he finds himself in hot water. When you see him you had better ask him about it; and as he is technically the keeper of your conscience you really have a concern in the matter. What has he been doing? Oh, merely drawing the usual invidious distinction between adultery treated seriously and adultery treated as a joke. Under this latter and more popular form it is now occupying with success half the theaters in Jingalo. And if you want to see the deeps open, and understand what they contain,—well, there you have your cue: follow it! Only do ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... The events pass by in one straight, continuous line, the dramatic personages are characterized almost solely by their actions, the language is a mere sketch. The Queen murders the Lady Mayoress, and on her death-bed confesses a double adultery; she commits perjury by denying the murder and calls upon Heaven to sink her into the depths of the earth if she had spoken falsely. "That she 'sunk at Charing-crosse' before it was erected to her memory, is a sufficiently remarkable circumstance in Peele's ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... man called Roger Delane in Canada," said Ellesborough, in the same monotonous voice. "She divorced him—for cruelty and adultery—two years ago. A few days since he waylaid her in the dark, and threatened her. I didn't know this till she wrote to me to-day. She said that she was afraid of him—that she thought he was mad—and I came over at once to see how I could protect ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Adultery" :   adulterer, adulterous, criminal conversation, extramarital sex, free love, fornication



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