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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



... that you may the better know them from those that are the natives of Mansoul, I will give you this brief schedule of the names of the chief of them; and they are these that follow:- The Lord Fornication, the Lord Adultery, the Lord Murder, the Lord Anger, the Lord Lasciviousness, the Lord Deceit, the Lord Evil-Eye, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. Revelling, Mr. Idolatry, Mr. Witch-craft, Mr. Variance, Mr. Emulation, Mr. Wrath, Mr. ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... unexpected when it is remembered that endogamy is the prime law of most Hindu castes; and this, too, in a land where immorality and adultery are so prevalent. Other sources of Hindu castes are mentioned. Some, like the Mahrattas, have behind them national traditions, and a history to which they refer and of which they are proud. Others, still, have, by migrating from the home of the mother caste, severed their connection ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Beauclerk, who had married the Duke's sister, after she had been divorced for adultery with him from her first husband Viscount Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... in the Ninth Kind of Abuse: The King ought to restrain theft, punish deeds of adultery, cause the wicked to perish from off the face of the earth, refuse to allow parricides and perjurers ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... testify with thankfulness that they never knew the sins of gambling, drunkenness, fornication, or adultery. In all these cases abstinence has been, and continues to be, liberty. Restraint is the noblest freedom. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him; on the contrary, self-restraint has been liberty, strength ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... family is threatened by divorce,—rather that the family is threatened by the conditions for which divorce is nowadays obtained and which were formerly not reasons for divorce. In many countries adultery on the part of the man, cruel and abusive treatment, chronic intoxication, and desertion were not grounds for divorce. These to-day are the grounds for divorce, and in the opinion of the writer they should invalidate a ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... another adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson, had gathered a 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 in his worst ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... Babylon were notorious for lewdness and accomplishment in crime and iniquity; loaded with riches, they spared no pains and withheld no means in the production of all that gratified their lusts and fed their passions. In Babylon there was a certain well known temple in which adultery was legalized by compulsory law for the purpose of increasing the public revenue. The ancient Pagan religions sanctioned and practiced the most detestible licentiousness. Cato commended young men for visiting ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... Sunday, and he is sure to feast upon Friday. He can better afford you ten lies than one oath, and dare commit any sin gilded with a pretence of sanctity. He will not stick to commit fornication or adultery so it be done in the fear of God and for the propagation of the godly, and can find in his heart to lie with any whore save the whore of Babylon. To steal he holds it lawful, so it be from the wicked and Egyptians. He had rather ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

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

... for the reason that it is easier to get an uncontested decision when the charges are not severe, and also for the reason that State laws vary and that which best fits the law will be put forward as the principal cause. Divorce laws in the United States generally recognize adultery, desertion, cruelty, drunkenness, lack of support, and crime as legitimate grounds for divorce. In the five years from 1902 to 1906 desertion was given as the ground for divorce in thirty-eight per cent of the cases, cruelty in twenty-three per cent, and adultery in fifteen ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... drawing of the Ancient. But there is a weakness in the character of Iago regarded as a purely instinctive and malignant criminal; indeed it is a weakness in the consistency of the play. On two occasions Iago states explicitly that Othello is more than suspected of having committed adultery with his wife, Emilia, and that therefore he has a strong and justifiable motive for being revenged on the Moor. The thought of it he describes as "gnawing his inwards." Emilia's conversation with Desdemona in the last ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... brief, for you will read the entire romance. I shall limit 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 ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... of Italy the parishes and dioceses are, if possible, still worse served than in this country. Some of the Bishops there, after having done duty in the National Guards, worn the Jacobin cap, and fought against their lawful Prince, now live in open adultery; and, from their intrigues, are the terror of all the married part of their flock. The Bishop of Pavia keeps the wife of a merchant, by whom he has two children; and, that the public may not be mistaken as to their real father, the merchant received a sum of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Dr. Corren to preach before him; who justified the king's proceedings, and gave Peyto the appellations of a rebel, a slanderer, a dog, and a traitor. Elston, another friar of the same house, interrupted the preacher, and told him that he was one of the lying prophets, who sought to establish by adultery the succession of the crown; but that he himself would justify all that Peyto had said. Henry silenced the petulant friar; but showed no other mark of resentment than ordering Peyto and him to be summoned before the council, and to be rebuked for their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... pull'd down an English dictionary; when (if you'll believe me! he found my definition of stylish living, under the word "insolvency;" a fighting crop turn'd out a "dock'd bull dog;" and modern gallantry, "adultery and seduction." ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... the Duc de Chaulieu. "You have no notion how difficult it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... every 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 ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... to their spiritual import, remain; that is, whatever is signified by the outward figures, although the outward part has been done away. Thus that a man should separate from his wife and send her away, because of adultery, is a figure and type which even now is spiritually fulfilled; for thus also has God rejected the Jews when they would not believe on Christ, and has chosen out the Gentiles. So, also, He does still; if any one will not walk in the faith, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... 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 ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... association of ideas he recalled a passage from an ancient Roman history—which he had read, when in the second form, during a certain course of study, and which had impressed itself on his mind—a few lines concerning a lady who was convicted of adultery and accused of having set fire to Rome. "So true it is," ran the historian's comment, "that a person who violates the laws of chastity is capable of any crime." He smiled inwardly at this recollection, reflecting that the moralists, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... be witnessed in the parish church at times that could not have been made more impressive by the Auld Lichts themselves. Here sinful women were grimly taken to task by the minister, who, having thundered for a time against adultery in general, called upon one sinner in particular to stand forth. She had to step forward into a pew near the pulpit, where, alone and friendless, and stared at by the congregation, she cowered in tears beneath his denunciations. In that seat she had ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... very true; but, sir, though many break this law and go unpunished, our godly Company should not wink at known adultery. ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... 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

... unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining the same opinions as himself upon ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... I yet say than this. If there were a Christian man who had among those infidels committed a very deadly crime, such as would be worthy of death, not only by their laws but by Christ's too (as manslaughter, or adultery, or other such thing); and if when he were taken he were offered pardon of his life upon condition that he should forsake the faith of Christ; and if this man would now rather suffer death than ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... narrator of a marriage, or sacrifice, or solemn procession, he says he has heard most of all that before, bids the narrator cut it short and come to the point; but if his visitor tell him of the violation of some girl, or the adultery of some married woman, or the disputes and intended litigation of brothers, he doesn't go to sleep then, nor pretend want ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... partners after death, it may be expedient to add the following circumstances. I. That all those married partners who are merely natural, are separated after death; because with them the love of marriage grows cold, and the love of adultery grows warm: nevertheless after separation, they sometimes associate as married partners with others; but after a short time they withdraw from each other: and this in many cases is done repeatedly; till at length the man is made over to some harlot, and the woman ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... commanding appearance, striking carriage, of strong, extreme intellectual vigor, and mental grasp akin to rapacity, but with an extraordinary deficiency in moral sense. She was divorced from her husband on the ground of adultery and other IMMORALITIES. The evil trait was in the blood, for one of her sisters murdered her own son, and a brother murdered his own sister, As Richard Edwards, his grandfather, had 5 sons and 1 daughter, by a second wife, but none of ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... year 1632, with the important word "not" omitted in the seventh commandment—"Thou shalt not commit adultery"—was printed by the Stationers' Company. Archbishop Laud made a Star-Chamber matter of the omission, and a heavy fine was laid upon the Company for their neglect. And in another later edition, in Psalm xiv. the text ran, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God." For the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... common, and may occur for a variety of reasons, such as adultery, barrenness, incompatibility of temperament, &c. The rule amongst the Khasis is that both parties must agree, but amongst the Wars, especially the people of Shella, the party who divorces the other without ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... is 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 ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... their tacit approval, took possession of the government of the archbishopric. They declared that the banishment of the archbishop must be construed as the vacation of his see, although their action might better be called a spiritual adultery—for, while the spouse of this church was still living, the cabildo intruded their presence in order to abuse her; and, although in reality they were but sons and subjects, they had the audacity to occupy their father's marriage-bed. At the head of this action was the dean, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... 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

... brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him "Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such be stoned; but what sayest thou?"—[St. John, Chap, viii; 3, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... meant to preserve our personal purity, and to guard the holy estate of marriage. It forbids adultery and all impurity. It commands chastity and purity in ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... had preserved Mme. Bourjot from adultery, a pride which, it may be said, was aided by circumstances. When she was young, Mme. Bourjot, who was of a spare build and southern type, had features which were too pronounced to be pleasing or beautiful. When she was about ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... understood and practiced it. They had a great horror of Christian marriage, and endeavored to defend their views by the Scriptures. Had not Christ said: "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart;"[1] i.e., was he not guilty of a crime? "The children of this world marry," He says again, "and are given in marriage; but they that shall be accounted worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead, shall neither be married, nor take wives."[2] ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... volume, p. 182., a portrait of Zattina by Palma il Vecchio, holding in her hand "una zampina dorata;" and at p. 263. several sacred subjects by Titian among which is specified one of the Virgin surrounded by Saints, and another of the woman taken in adultery, with "multi ritratti" by the same. Again, at p. 288., a head of a lady, supposed to be the mother of the artist Nadelino da Murano, one of the most talented pupils of Titian; and at p. 328. a painting by Andrea Schiavone, and some designs ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the lines ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... too distasteful when I thought of you—and I was always thinking of you. My mind was at peace—I had perfect faith in you. We had a daughter; and if a fear or a doubt entered my mind, I told myself that the sight of her cradle would drive all evil thoughts from your heart. The adultery of a childless wife may be forgiven or explained; but that of a mother, never! Fool! idiot! that I was! With what joyous pride, on my return after an absence of eighteen months, I showed you the treasures I had brought back with me! I had two hundred thousand francs! I said to you as I embraced ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... with faded wall-paper and a prosaic snuff-coloured carpet. On a rickety table in the window was his desk, and a portfolio full of blue foolscap, but he had done what he could to make the place habitable; his Oxford pictures were on the walls—Hoffman's 'Christ speaking to the Woman taken in Adultery,' hanging over the mantelpiece—it had always been a favourite of his. I remember that, as he read the description of Lynwood and his wife, I kept looking from him to the Christ in the picture till I could almost have fancied that each face bore the same expression. Had this ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... was forced to admit to himself that he was not invaded by a very lively sense of guilt. He made a conventional effort to see his act in the light of a grave fault—whatever was attached to the charge of adultery—but it failed before the conviction that the whole thing ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Pyrrhus's land why tell, or of Idomeneus, that won To ruined house; of Locrian men cast on the Libyan shore? Mycenae's lord, the duke and king of all the Argive war, There, on the threshold of his house, his wicked wife doth slay. —Asia o'ercome—and in its stead Adultery thwart the way!— Ah, the Gods' hate, that so begrudged my yearning eyes to meet My father's hearth, my longed-for wife, and Calydon the sweet! 270 Yea, and e'en now there followeth me dread sight of woeful things: My lost companions wend the air with feathery beat of wings, Or wander, fowl ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... anonymous letter. He was accused in basely insulting terms of being Frau Reinhart's lover. His arms fell by his sides. He had never had the least thought of love or even of flirtation with her. He was too honest. He had a Puritanical horror of adultery. The very idea of such a dirty sharing gave him a physical and moral feeling of nausea. To take the wife of a friend would have been a crime in his eyes, and Lili Reinhart would have been the last person in the world with whom he could have been tempted to commit such an offense. The poor ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... stronger guard even: his name. It menaced him in each solution of the problem of his future 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 trail of viperous ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... 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

... The 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

... have violated the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken the alliance which should have endured forever: all commit sin, and scarcely is there one to be found who does the work of the Lord. Injustice, calumny, lying, treachery, adultery, and the blackest crimes have deluged the earth. The brother lays snares for his brother; the father is divided from his children; the husband from his wife: there is no tie which a vile interest does ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... the elect of God," runs the instrument, "but owes his elevation to his own unblushing fraud and corruption. He has ruined the Church—he has distracted the State; he has embittered the life of a pious and peaceful monarch, upheld a perjured rebel, and scattered everywhere discord, jealousy, and adultery. For this, here in final council at Mayence, we have resolved to depose, expel, and, if he disobey our command, to doom to eternal condemnation a monster who preaches the pillaging of churches and assassination, who ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... which persons were summoned before the tribes, were, bad conduct of a magistrate in performance of his duties, neglect of duty, mismanagement of a war, embezzlement of the public money, breaches of the peace, usury, adultery, and some other crimes. The "Comitia Tributa" were used as courts of appeal, when a person protested against a fine imposed ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... women as Margaret of Burgundy, 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 ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val himself could have held a more conservative view. He, take advantage of a cripple? He commit a breach of hospitality? He sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's wife? What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had never been to his taste. Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura, have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of which Val accused him he knew himself to ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... therefore the son that is born to thee shall die by death. And Nathan returned to his house. And for this sin David made this psalm: Miserere mei deus [Have pity on me, O God!], which is a psalm of mercy, for David did great penance for these sins of adultery and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... he had laid for her—and from that moment, rigidly denying her misconduct on her oath before God, the wretched creature was brought on the rack of his questioning to almost every admission but that of adultery. At last Sally had left the court. She could bear the strain of it ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... despicable it may be, however prejudicial to the social contract, however deserving of public reprobation; whereas we have the express words of our Lord to the doctrine that "whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." On the strength of these texts, I have surely as much right to believe in these doctrines which have caused so much surprise, as to believe in original sin, or that there is a supernatural revelation, or that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... satisfied, [659]he shall be hanged. He [660]that commits sacrilege shall lose his hands; he that bears false witness, or is of perjury convicted, shall have his tongue cut out, except he redeem it with his head. Murder, [661] adultery, shall be punished by death, [662]but not theft, except it be some more grievous offence, or notorious offenders: otherwise they shall be condemned to the galleys, mines, be his slaves whom they have offended, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Journal of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... attacks the cancer was the result of a homosexual assault and in his intervals he elaborated theories as to the origin of cancer; it came from friction, therefore coitus could produce it, it might be the result of adultery or cancer of the breast could come from a man rubbing his penis on the breasts of a woman; the cancer germs might come from semen if one believed in cancer and in germs. Life both as vital force and in the biological sense he identified with semen. Psychic activities too ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... her part of the compact at the altar of God, whereas he faces instant disgrace and punishment for the slightest failure to observe its last letter. For a few grave crimes of commission, true enough, she may be proceeded against. Open adultery is a recreation that is denied to her. She cannot poison her husband. She must not assault him with edged tools, or leave him altogether, or strip off her few remaining garments and go naked. But for the vastly more various and numerous crimes of omission—and in sum ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... roughly handled): avarice, then, has got the better of a man, good wrestler though he be, and he has done some avaricious act. Or there has been a passing lust; it has not brought the man to fornication, nor reached unto adultery—for when this does take place, the man must at all events be kept back from the criminal act. But he "hath seen a woman to lust after her"; he has let his thoughts dwell on her with more pleasure than was right; he ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... that which in others would be looked upon with horror and detestation, is little regarded in them by their masters; such as the frequent separation of husbands from wives, and wives from husbands, whereby they are tempted to break their marriage covenants, and live in adultery, in direct opposition to the laws of God and men, although we believe that Christ died for all men without respect of persons. How fearful then ought we to be of engaging in what hath so natural a tendency to lesson our humanity, and of suffering ourselves to be inured to the exercise ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with" her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story (the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M. Paulin Paris, that she was "tres sujette a etre enlevee," but in itself (unless we admit the Peacockian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... you share it with me? Believe me that the love which is nursed through shame and sorrow is of a deeper and holier nature than that which is reared in pride, fostered in joy. But, if not shame, it is guilt, perhaps, which you dread? Are you then so innocent now? The adultery of the heart is no less a crime than that of the deed; and—yet I will not deceive you—it is guilt to which I tempt you!—it is a fall from the proud eminence you hold now. I grant this, and I offer you nothing in recompense but my love. If you loved like me, you would feel that it was something ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Ranny's wife, Respectability, the enduring soul of the Randalls and the Ransomes, could never lift up its head superbly any more. All infamies and all abominations that could defile a family were summed up for John Randall in the one word, adultery. It was worse than robbery or forgery or bankruptcy; it struck more home; it did more deadly havoc among the generations. It excited more interest; it caused more talk; and therefore it marked you more and was not so easily forgotten. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... frank 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 ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... husband might have been so jealous as to meditate killing his wife; but when her child was born, although he knew it to be a bastard, he gave it the same love and care as his own. There were exceptions, but one might cite on the opposite side innumerable cases where, despite the most open adultery, the husband has taken his wife's offspring for his own. It was well that this was so, for adultery was so habitual that were bastards not made welcome, there would have been much suffering by children, innocent themselves. Here, as in ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... curse Thine enemy 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 ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of the discourse was particular enough: It was about a prophet's story or parable of an ewe-lamb taken by a rich man from a poor one, who dearly loved it, and whose only comfort it was: designed to strike remorse into David, on his adultery with Uriah's wife Bathsheba, and his murder of the husband. These women, Jack, have been the occasion of all manner of mischief from the beginning! Now, when David, full of indignation, swore [King David would swear, Jack: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... out for friends who hold in honour Adultery and clap their hands at incest, Low, lawless traitors, steep'd in infamy, The fit protectors of a knave ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... attacked the manner in which Homer and Hesiod, the most famous poets of Greece, had represented the gods: they had attributed to them everything which in man's eyes is outrageous and reprehensible—theft, adultery and deception of one another. Their accounts of the fights of the gods against Titans and Giants he denounced as "inventions of the ancients." But he did not stop at that: "Men believe that the gods are born, are clothed ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... on this young man, the disciples saw in them 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 ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and therefore of a formal divorce I must doubt-and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided, till future search into the Hanoverian chancery shall clear up a point ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... the author are plainly with the champion of 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 standpoint accepts tacitly the assumption that happiness is ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... us," Pete went on. "You know they say the Wilmington 'Blue' brought bad luck to everybody who owned it. Anyway, battle, murder, adultery, rape, rapine, and sudden death have followed it right along the line down through history. Oh, it's been a busy cake of ice—take it from muh! Hope the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... in the myths stories of adultery, robbery, father-binding, and all the other absurdity? Is not that perhaps a thing worthy of admiration, done so that by means of the visible absurdity the Soul may immediately feel that the words are veils and believe the truth ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... Sue this promise out, wait for it, rest not in believing only, rest not in assurance by graces only; there is a further assurance to be had." "I would not give a straw for that assurance," says John Newton, "which sin will not damp. If David had come from his adultery and still have talked of his assurance, I should have despised his speech." "When we want the faith of assurance," says Matthew Henry, "let us live by the faith of adherence." And then the whole truth is in a nutshell in Isaiah and in John: "The effect of righteousness shall be ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... he was the husband of eleven wives. We are not favored with a list of his concubines:[107] we only know that his system placed no limit upon the number.[108] Now, if a prophet claiming direct inspiration could break his own inspired laws for his personal accommodation; if, when found guilty of adultery, he could compel his friend and follower to divorce his wife that he might take her; if upon each violation of purity and decency he did not shrink from the blasphemy of claiming a special revelation which made God the abettor of his vices, and even represented Him as reproving and threatening his ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... marriage, bigamy, adultery, rape, abortion, seductive arts and obscenity. The theatre, the circus and gambling were unsparingly denounced, and soothsayers and jugglers, pagan festivals and customs, and pagan oaths ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... haste and brought him a book wherein he might read, whilst she made ready the food. He took the book and, beginning to read, found therein moral instances and exhortations, such as restrained him from adultery and broke his courage to commit sin and crime. After awhile, she returned and set before him some ninety dishes of different kinds of colours, and he ate a mouthful of each and found that, while the number was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... morals by exposing vice in opposition to virtue." A contributor to one of the two papers, Le Mauricien, attacked the production of the play, and held up to ridicule the police authorities, who were supposed to be vested with censorial powers. He also criticized the author as a Negro glorifying adultery. The Negroes of the island became indignant and several answers were evoked. Remy Ollier presented a strong defense for Dumas. Another vigorous defense was prepared by Evenor Hitie, a writer of history. These articles ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... the world stood still. Her peril there in Paris as the wife of an intriguer at Coblenz was blotted out, together with every other consideration—thrust out of a consciousness that could find room for nothing else beside the fact that she stood acknowledged by her only son, this child begotten in adultery, borne furtively and in shame in a remote Brittany village eight-and-twenty years ago. Not even a thought for the betrayal of that inviolable secret, or the consequences that might follow, could she spare in this ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... al; ("letters") adresi. adhere : aligxi, algluigxi al. adjourn : prokrasti. admit : allasi, konfesi. adopt : alpreni, fil (-in) -igi. adore : adori, amegi. adult : plenkresk'a, plenagx'a. adulterate : falsi. adultery : adulto. advantage : utilo, profito, bonajxo. advertise : anonci, reklami. advice : konsilo. affair : afero. affected (to be) : afekti. affiliate : aligxi, filiigxi. afternoon : posttagmezo. again : re-, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... sickened me of him and his jobs. I tried to read the stuff; to read it conscientiously, to read myself to sleep with it. I was under obligations to old Cal and I wanted to do him justice, but the thing was impossible. I fathomed a sort of a plot. It dealt in fratricide with a touch of adultery; a Great Moral Purpose loomed in the background. It would have been a dully readable novel but for that; as it was, it was intolerable. It was amazing that Cal himself could put out such stuff; that he should have the impudence. He was not a fool, not ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... has been censured for the toleration of theft and adultery. Among that race of barbarians these habits were too general to admit of total prevention or universal punishment. By vesting all property in the commonwealth, instead of encouraging theft, he removed the possibility of the crime; and, in a nation where licentiousness was ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... 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 their tendency to change their meaning as a language ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... their life, apart from the men. Veils were commonly worn, as in modern Mohammedan countries; and it was regarded as essential to female delicacy that women, whether married or single, should converse freely with no males but either their near relations or eunuchs. Adultery was punished with great severity; but divorce was not difficult, and women of rank released themselves from the nuptial bond on light grounds of complaint, without much trouble. Polygamy was the established law; and every Parthian was entitled, besides his chief wife, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... all the merchants of that place. One day, I went for the purpose of paying my respects to the first wazir, and saw a great crowd of people assembled on a plain. I asked some one, 'Why is there such a crowd here?' I learnt that two persons had been caught in the act of adultery and theft; and perhaps they had even committed murder; they were brought here to be stoned ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... committal of the deed; he has been caught red-handed, and Pompilia, preserved almost by miracle, has survived her wounds long enough to tell the whole story. The sole question is, whether the act had any justification; it being pretended by Guido that his wife had been guilty of adultery with the priest Caponsacchi, and that his deed was a simple act of justice. He was found guilty by the legal tribunal, and condemned to death; Pompilia's innocence being confirmed beyond a doubt. Guido then appealed ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... efforts, the obliging damsel who acted as our cicerone could not possibly manage the blinds and sashes of the lofty window in the octagonal room which they adorn, it was impossible to make out to what period of the artist's career they belong. Upon one of them—the 'Woman taken in Adultery'—we got light enough thrown to show that its colouring is admirable. It can hardly have been painted while Watteau was at work in Paris on his endless reproductions of the then popular St.-Nicholas, but ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... how shall a blessing succeed your endeavours in this place, however good in themselves, and however sincere in your design, while these men, who at present are your subjects, under your absolute government and dominion, are allowed by you to live in open adultery?" ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... in a very different strain from the pious historian.(20) "Homer," he says,(21) "and Hesiod ascribed to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among men, yea, they declared that the gods had committed nearly all unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud." "Men seem to have created their gods, and to have given to them their own mind, voice, and figure. The Ethiopians made their gods black and flat-nosed; the Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed." This was spoken about ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... April, 1853: 'It is difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger, pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we find not only reverence of parents, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... 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 ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... but man, and when he is forced to compel women penitents to pour into his ears their every thought, feeling, desire, emotion and act, it kindles the fires of unholy thought upon the altars of his better ambitions and before he knows it he has committed adultery and not only ruined his own soul, but has been the implement in the hands of the devil to destroy the virtue of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... and thank the gods that you are not fettered and your wings clipped. They wish to preserve to you love's delusion, because you are a favorite, and deny you the object adored. Beware of the institution which the French actress, Sophie Arnould, has so wittily called the 'consecration of adultery.' You will agree with me that we have many such little sacraments in our dear Weimar, and I must laugh when I reflect for what purpose those amiable beauties have married, as not one of them love their husbands, but they all ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... forty years which followed the Restoration, the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his character would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and poor, the majority of us know at any rate the Lord's Prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... of the Devil. A young girl who insulted her mother was publicly punished and kept on bread-and-water; and a peasant-boy who called his mother a devil was publicly whipped. A child who struck his mother was beheaded; adultery was punished with death; a woman was publicly scourged because she sang common songs to a psalm-tune; and another because she dressed herself, in a frolic, in man's attire. Brides were not allowed to wear ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... meanest wretch is impressed with a sense of his own comparative merit. He is one of those on whom the tower of Siloam fell not—he is such a one as Jesus Christ found not in all Samaria, who, in his own soul, throws the first stone at the woman taken in adultery. The popular religion of the country takes its designation from that illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I have quoted. Any one who has stript from the doctrines of this person the veil of familiarity, will perceive how adverse their spirit is to feelings ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... all the rooms 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 have had ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... now found a haven in Oxford, was picked up by Browning for a lira (about eightpence), on a second-hand bookstall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, one June day, 1865. Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars of the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed adultery, by a certain Count Guido Franceschini; and of that noble's trial, sentence, and doom. It is much the same subject matter as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets, but subtlety of insight rather than intensity of emotion and situation ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... 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 of setting and settling the country, but asked not for, nor yet ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... asked, "Why do we do thus and thus?" the answer was, "Zeus first did so," or Demeter, or Apollo did so, on a certain occasion. About that occasion a myth was framed, and finally there was no profligacy, cruelty, or absurdity of which the God was not guilty. Yet, all the time, he punished adultery, inhospitality, perjury, incest, cannibalism, and other excesses, of which, in legend, he was always setting the example. We know from Xenophanes, Plato, and St. Augustine how men's consciences were ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... 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 ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... until they are grown up and married. A sort of trial marriage seems to exist; the young men freely visit the olog—indeed, are expected to. If results follow, it is a marriage, and the couple go to housekeeping; otherwise all the parties in interest are free. Marriage ties are respected, adultery being punished with death; but a man may have more than one wife, though usually that number is not exceeded. However, a man was pointed out to us, who maintains in his desire for issue, but without avail, a regular harem, having no fewer ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... xiv are not among them; they were caught up before the tribulation commenced, having been accounted worthy (Luke xxi. 34-36), to escape the things coming on the earth, and to stand before the SON of MAN. Such are not only virgins, undefiled by spiritual adultery with the world, but also wise ones, filled with the SPIRIT: they are not only waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom, but ready for that coming; whereas the unwise have to go and buy oil, and so miss their opportunity. ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor



Words linked to "Adultery" :   fornication, adulterous, adulterer, free love



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