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Infidelity   Listen
noun
Infidelity  n.  (pl. infidelities)  
1.
Lack of faith or belief in some religious system; especially, a lack of faith in, or disbelief of, the inspiration of the Scriptures, of the divine origin of Christianity. "There is, indeed, no doubt but that vanity is one of the principal causes of infidelity."
2.
Unfaithfulness to the marriage vow or contract; violation of the marriage covenant by adultery.
3.
Breach of trust; unfaithfulness to a charge, or to moral obligation; treachery; deceit; as, the infidelity of a servant. "The infidelity of friends."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Infidelity" Quotes from Famous Books



... prosperity, but the internal strength of the Empire and the character of the emperor sadly degenerated. He became effeminate, and committed crimes which sullied his fame. He executed his oldest son on mere suspicion of crime, and on a charge of infidelity even put to death the wife with whom he had lived for twenty years, and who was the mother of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... imported, and that its indulgence here did not characterize us? It was only in appearance that, while we did not enjoy the wit we delighted in the coarseness. And how coarse this travesty of the old fable mainly is! That priest Calchas, with his unspeakable snicker his avarice, his infidelity, his hypocrisy, is alone infamy enough to provoke the destruction of a city. Then that scene interrupted by Menelaus! It is indisputably witty, and since all those people are so purely creatures of fable, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... what is true or untrue, in the moral world, depends, in a considerable degree, upon the practice of good or evil; hence it is, that the judgments of the mind are modified by the inclinations of the heart, and that virtue opens the way to faith, and vice is the author of infidelity. ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... philosophical subjects, he thought in terms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The watchwords of modern life were so many red flags to him, — science the enemy of religion, German philosophy a denial of the depravity of man, democracy the product of French infidelity and of false humanitarianism, industrial prosperity the inveterate foe of the graces of life. To use Lanier's words, he "failed to perceive the deeper movements underrunning the times." Defeated in a long war and inheriting ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... that only in doing so could she be happy. She did not think much of Coupeau because she was conscious of no shortcomings toward him. But she thought of her friend at the forge, and it seemed to her that this return of her interest in Lantier, faint and undecided as it was, was an infidelity to Goujet and to that tender friendship which had become so very precious to her. Her heart was much troubled in these days. She dwelt on that time when her first lover left her. She imagined another day when, quitting Adele, he might return to her—with that ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... Mind-healing. If the uniform moral and spiritual, as well as physical, effects of Christian Science were lacking, the premium would go down. That it continues to rise, and the demand to increase, shows its real value to the race. Even doctors will agree that infidelity, ignorance, and quackery have never met the growing wants of humanity. Christian Science is no "Boston craze;" it is the sober second thought of ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... friend had reproached him, before he left France, with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his family, he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, that 'he had pawned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier's banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, he must be a Jacobite; but when that was done, he would again ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... be seeing your mother soon, Kate," he would say wistfully, holding his daughter's hand. Kate was involuntarily touched by such words, but she was ashamed for him, too. Where was all his hard-won, bravely flaunted infidelity? Where his scientific outlook? ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... have ever seen. His ancestors have served the Orchha State in the same station for seven generations; and he tells me that he hopes his posterity will serve them [sic] for as many more, provided they do not forfeit their claims to do so by their infidelity or incapacity. This young man seemed to have the respect and affection of every member of the little communities of the villages through which we passed, and it was evident that he deserved their attachment. I have rarely seen any similar signs of attachment to one of our own native officers. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... other mediator and intercessor, by whom we may have access to God the Father, than Jesus Christ, in whose only Name all things are obtained at His Father's hand. But it is a shameful part, and full of infidelity, that we see every whore used in the churches of our adversaries, not only in that they will have innumerable sorts of mediators, and that utterly without the authority of God's word (so that, as Jeremy saith, "The saints ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... Essayists and Reviewers are to be dealt with[17]. Some respectable persons, I doubt not, will think my treatment of them harsh and uncharitable. I invite them to consider that we do not expect blasphemy from Ministers of the Gospel,—irreligion from the teachers of youth,—infidelity from the Professor's chair: nor are we called upon to tolerate it either. I have the misfortune to concur entirely with the verdict pronounced by the Bishop of Exeter on the subject of 'Essays and Reviews.' Let those who feel little jealousy for GOD'S honour measure out in grains ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... he professed half in jest and half in earnest a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and yet more in private and sober discussion, he not only gravely disclaimed and reproved infidelity, but both by actions and words implied his conviction that a conversion to religious enthusiasm might befall himself or any other man. He had more than tolerance—he had indulgence and respect for extravagant and ascetic notions of religious duty. He grounded that feeling, not on their soundness ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... the hellish part of my passionate nature. I believed that McKenzie was leading her a life of dishonor, and it made my blood boil to even think of it. Death, I swore, should be his reward for this infidelity, and mounting my horse I set out in hot ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... question, if it was ever perpetrated. Adultery, reason would perhaps have informed her, was a more pernicious evil to society; but to a religious mind, what sound is so horrible as sacrilege? Of vows made to God or to man, the former must weigh the heaviest. Moreover, the sin of infidelity in the married state, is not a little softened to common understandings, by its frequency; whereas, of religious vows broken by a devotee she had never heard; unless where the offence had been followed by such examples of divine vengeance, such miraculous punishments ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... those who betray confessions. Then, applying this to the guilty priest, he condemned him to be burnt alive in a public place;—in anticipation, said he, of burning in hell, where he would assuredly receive the punishment of his infidelity and crimes. The sentence was executed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... which Richard was chiefly exposed, proceeded not so much from the zeal of his open enemies, as from the infidelity of his pretended friends. Scarce any nobleman of distinction was sincerely attached to his cause, except the duke of Norfolk; and all those who feigned the most loyalty were only watching for an opportunity to betray and desert him. But the persons of whom he entertained the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... owe, apparently, to Christian teachings! Is Emerson superior to Epictetus, in an ethical point of view? Was Franklin a great philosopher, or Jefferson a great statesman, because they were surrounded by Christian examples? May there not be the greatest practical infidelity, with the most artistic beauty and native reach of thought? Milton justly ascribes the most sublime intelligence to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled by the fires of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... go on, coquetting during the whole dinner, and committing an infidelity with every new dish; until, in the end, he was so overpowered by the attentions he had paid to fish, flesh, and fowl; to pastry, jelly, cream, and blancmange, that he seemed to sink within himself: his eyes swam ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... sepulchres, looking well outwardly, but within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness: and He warned His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, and the leaven of the Sadduces, which is infidelity, and the leaven of the Herodians, which ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark

... father's soul, specially in a churchyard, where a right hardy man heretofore durst not to have passed by night but his hair would stand upright. Well, thanks be to God, this wretched and cowardly infidelity, since the preaching of the Gospel, is in part forgotten, and doubtless the rest of these illusions will in a short time, by God's grace, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... Alfred's infidelity, Julia's sweet throat began to swell hysterically, and then her bosom to heave and pant: and, after a piteous struggle, came a passion of sobs and tears so wild, so heart-broken, that Edward blamed himself bitterly for ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... and heathen Siegfried saga should dwindle away with the progress of civilization and under the influence of Christianity was but natural. The character of the valkyrie Brynhild who avenges upon Sigurd his infidelity to her, yet voluntarily unites herself with him in death, as heathen custom demanded, is no longer intelligible. She recedes into the background, and after Siegfried's death, though she is still ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... are no better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best; yet the instances of infidelity are much less frequent than one would at first suppose. In fact, one vice is set over against another; and thus, something like a balance is obtained. The women have but little virtue, but then the jealousy of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... about his head, while the patient, far from subdued, waved the only free but much enveloped hand that he possessed, beating time to the air that he was literally shouting and in whose rather bald verse the station master's wife was accused of the grossest infidelity. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government lies in what ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... the failure of Reconstruction was due to unwise judicial interpretation need not be considered. It is anachronistic and does not agree with the views now generally accepted by historical students. But what he says of the infidelity of Waite and Bradley can be refuted directly from the Supreme Court Reports. As to the appointment of these justices, there is no evidence that it was because of any specially strong nationalistic position on their part. Bradley, if chosen for any particular ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... sound and discriminating. He could appreciate the vast learning and stately grandiloquence of Gibbon, and the widely different style of Robertson. Nor is it greatly to his discredit that his disgust at what he considers Hume's needless parade of scepticism and infidelity, which did honour to his heart, blinded him in a great degree to the historian's unsurpassed acuteness and insight, and (to borrow the eulogy of Gibbon) "the careless inimitable felicities" of his narrative. He was among the first to recognize the peculiar genius of Crabbe, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... needles; I am resolvd to meet her in revolt, Hug infidelity with as strong a faith As she can possible; and if mans mallice Can passe a womans, my dispight shall winne Preheminence. I will inquire out one By nature framd in scorne of bewty, and In your perfidious daughters presence give her That heart which ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... prisoner too. I can now feel how little one may fear death, dying in a certain cause. Palmyra is now dead, and I care no more for life. And if Gracchus is to die too, how much rather would I die with him, than live without him. And this is not as it may seem, infidelity to Calpurnius. I love him better than I ever thought to have loved anything beside Palmyra and Gracchus. But my love for these is from my infancy, and is in reason stronger than the other. The gods make it ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... sent Hermes but the Archduke Ernestus, beloved of the three Graces, favourite of the nine Muses, and, in addition to these advantages, nephew and brother-in-law of the King of Spain, to the relief of the suffering provinces. The Netherlands, it was true, for their religious infidelity, had justly incurred great disasters and misery; but benignant Jove, who, to the imagination of this excited Fleming, seemed to have been converted to Catholicism while still governing the universe, had now sent them in mercy a deliverer. The archduke would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... might say, with his blood; his life grew out of them. So much of the world was certain,—but outside? It was rather vague there: Yankeedom was a mean-soiled country, whence came clocks, teachers, peddlers, and infidelity; and the English,—it was an American's birthright to jeer at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... peoples. (2) Each nation is responsible to God according to its opportunity and enlightenment. (3) God judges people according to their acts, not according to religious creeds or ceremonies. (4) Though a merciful God, Jehovah will and must finally punish willful and continuous evil doers. (5) Sin is infidelity to God and brings pain to his heart. (6) All punishment is administered to the end that the sinful may repent and be forgiven. (7) Jehovah loves men and demands that they love him in return. (8) Repentance is the only way of escape from doom. (9) God ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... discipline, which too often closes the heart against the common charities of life, he could not, like the benevolent Las Casas, rise so far above its fanatical tenets as to regard the heathen as his brother, while in the state of infidelity; and, in the true spirit of that school, he doubtless conceived that the sanctity of the end justified the means, however revolting in themselves. Yet the same man, who thus freely shed the blood of the poor ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... unhappily, but not for you, with your calmness of temperament; with your serenity of soul. I do beseech you not to marry without love, merely from a feeling of duty, self-denial, or the like. All that is sheer infidelity, and moreover a matter of calculation—and worse still. Trust my words. I have a right to say this; a right for which I have paid dearly. And ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... as a domain to its lord, and a lord is not deprived of honor in being prodigal and neglectful. He merely gambles away his own property, and nobody has a right to call him to account. Founded on feudal society, royalty is like an estate, an inheritance. It would be infidelity, almost treachery in a prince, in any event weak and base, should he allow any portion of the trust received by him intact from his ancestors for transmission to his children, to pass into the hands of his subjects. Not only according to medieval traditions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... anti-slavery God." To such straits are men reduced by fanaticism. It is here worthy of remark, that most of the early abolition propagandists, many of whom commenced as Christian ministers, have ended in downright infidelity. Let us then hear no more of this charge, that the defenders of slavery have changed their ground; it is the abolitionists who have been compelled to appeal to "a higher law," not only than the Federal Constitution, but also, than the law ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... original and wisest men of the age. It will be remembered by my professional readers that Z——, although esteemed in England one of her first surgeons, acquired an unenviable notoriety through the publication of certain physiological lectures, in which the doctrines of materialism and infidelity were supported, it must be allowed, with all the eloquence and power of a first-rate mind. With my own settled views of Christianity, early inculcated by a beloved mother—now, alas! no more—I could not but regard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... war. His wife Faustina, who accompanied him into Asia, died suddenly at the foot of the Taurus, to the great grief of her husband. Capitolinus, who has written the life of Antoninus, and also Dion Cassius accuse the empress of scandalous infidelity to her husband and of abominable lewdness. But Capitolinus says that Antoninus either knew it not or pretended not to know it. Nothing is so common as such malicious reports in all ages, and the history of imperial Rome is full of them. Antoninus loved his wife, ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... "thy thoughts are blasphemy; thy lamentations are foolishness; thy mind is darkened by the glooms of a most barren dejection. Away! vain Sceptic, with the syllogisms of infidelity. The glory of the immortal WILL evades thy comprehension in the depths of infinitude. When in its natural brightness, the spiritual being of man reflects that glory as in a mirror. Thine is blurred by sensuality. Tranquillity is denied thee, because of the concupiscence of thy ambition. A profligate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... expressed opinions so utterly atheistical as to draw forth severe menaces from the reigning King of Prussia, Frederic William the Second: 'Surely, gray hairs and irreligion make a monstrous union; and the spirit of proselytism carried into the service of infidelity—a youthful zeal put forth by a tottering, decrepid old man, to withdraw from desponding and suffering human nature its most essential props, whether for action or suffering, for conscience or for hope, is a spectacle too disgusting to leave room for much sympathy with merit of another kind.' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... caste penalties for the offence. Some of the primitive tribes care nothing about the chastity of unmarried girls, but punish unfaithful wives rigorously. Among the Maria Gonds a man will murder his wife for infidelity, but girls are commonly unchaste. Another rule sometimes found is that an unmarried girl becoming with child by an outsider is put out of caste for the time. When her child, which does not belong to the caste, has been born, she must make it over to some outside family, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... into Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power, and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference, showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the divine process of arousing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... required a sacrifice of every wish, hope, and feeling unconnected with itself, and which was expressed in the language of prayer and of adoration. It was that love which was neither to be chilled by absence, nor wasted by time, nor quenched by infidelity. No caprice in the object beloved entitled her slave to emancipate himself from her fetters; no command, however unreasonable, was to be disobeyed; if required by the fair mistress of his affections, the hero was not only to sacrifice ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... Always he was going manana. He loved the dark-eyed Apache girl so well that he could not leave her. He hated himself for his infidelity to his Virgin, to his people. He was weak and false, a sinner. But he could not go, and he gave himself up to love of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... sweet little woman breaking her heart over something which, as far as he knew, didn't exist. But he must continue to play his part, no matter at what cost. Evidently, she had heard something for which there might be some basis of truth. She might even have proofs of his brother's infidelity, and ready to produce them. Too sweeping a denial might still further complicate matters, arouse suspicion, and end in exposure. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... how dreadful it was. She had carried the wailing Cecily in her arms night after night in the weeks which followed the crushing knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But she had carried a heavier burden than the child—the burden of poverty, of desertion, of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... day of account? If thou art a man of spirit, turn thy face away from begging charity from thy fellow-creature; and keep not repeating thy rosary of a thousand beads. Being without divine knowledge, a dervish, or poor man, rests not till his poverty settles into infidelity; for he that is poor is well-nigh being an infidel:—nor is it practicable, unless through the agency of wealth, to clothe the naked, and to liberate the prisoner from jail: how then can such mendicants as we are aspire to their dignity; or what comparison ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Paine. "It is a false, wicked, and seditious libel," shouted loyal gentlemen. "It abounds in unanswerable truths, and principles of the purest morality and benevolence; it has no object in view but the happiness of mankind," answered the reformers. "He is the scavenger of rebellion and infidelity."—"Say, rather, 'the Apostle of Freedom, whose heart is a perpetual bleeding fountain of philanthropy.'" The friends of the government carried Paine in effigy, with a pair of stays under his arms, and burned the figure in the streets. The friends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... which instructed him "to resist to the utmost any attempt that might be made to bring about a separation of Canada from the British dominions." But while Lord Elgin, as the representative of the Queen, was compelled by a stern sense of duty to condemn such acts of infidelity to the empire, he did not conceal from himself that there was a great deal in the economic conditions of the provinces which demanded an immediate remedy before all reason for discontent could disappear. He did not fail to point out to Lord Grey that it was necessary to remove ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... yesterday you swore you lov'd me, and I poor easy Fool believ'd; but your last Night's Infidelity has undeceiv'd my Heart, and render'd you the falsest Man that ever Woman sigh'd for. Tell me, how durst you, when I had prepared all things for our Enjoyment, be so great a Devil to deceive my languishing Expectations? and in your room send ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... of the established religion of their country has no tendency to dispose men for the reception of another; but that, on the contrary, it generates a settled contempt of all religious pretensions whatever. General infidelity is the hardest soil which the propagators of a new religion can have to work upon. Could a Methodist or Moravian promise himself a better chance of success with a French esprit fort, who had been accustomed to laugh at the popery of his country, than with a believing Mahometan or Hindoo? Or ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... time, had been hoping for aid from this quarter. Many went out of the Church temporarily, hoping that the scales would drop from the eyes of the preachers ere long; but others never returned-were driven to infidelity and bitter hatred of the Christian Church. Dr. Albert Barnes said: "That there was no power out of the Church that would sustain slavery an hour if it were not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... complained in his report for 1867 that in those counties in which the southern sympathizers predominated, the people were either wholly negligent or bitterly opposed to their public school right. Three classes of opposers were enumerated;[18] those who believed that the public schools tended to foster infidelity, those who believed that the State, the county or a municipal body had no right to tax for educational purposes, and those who regarded as unnecessary any education beyond reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. In March of the year 1866, four months after the constitution of 1865 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... French aggression, but against a power whose origin was to be traced to a contempt not only of time-honored political customs, but also of Christianity itself. Revolutions and republicanism became associated with infidelity. It was natural, therefore, that Christians should acquire the notion that every approximation toward democracy would involve danger to the church; especially as the church and state were united, and the king ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... 'Infidelity in a woman is much worse than in a man. If a man really suspects his wife, he must leave her, that's all; then let her justify herself ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... Dr. Greatrex,' Mr. Blenkinsopp answered resignedly. 'I'm sure I hope so, for his own sake, as well as for his pupils'. Still, in these days, you know, when infidelity and Radicalism are so rife, one ought to be on one's guard against atheism and revolution, and attacks on Property in every form; oughtn't one, Doctor? These opinions are getting so rampant all around us, Property itself isn't safe. One really hardly knows what people are coming to nowadays. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force, and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Her love has been tried out of existence. Remember she had everything to contend with: drunkenness, gambling, infidelity— what was there to go on loving in ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from the first is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me: my antidote against the last is my long and deep-rooted ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... on. She detected him in another infidelity, and reproached him bitterly; but she had no longer the strength to break with him. Nevertheless, this time she had the sense to make a struggle. She implored him, on her very knees, to show her a little mercy in return for all her love. "For pity's sake, leave me!" she cried. "You ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... impressions, in his own house, upon the hearts of those whom they meet there face to face. Might they not communicate personally what they communicate through the press? For example, why should not Robert Hall have preached his sermons on Infidelity and on the Death of the Princess of Wales, perhaps the two most magnificent discourses in the language, in an English Cathedral? Why should not the beautiful astronomical discourses of Thomas Chalmers have been delivered in St. Paul's ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to build in; and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, but by another question—do you mean to build as Christians or as Infidels? And ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... their time in doing nothing but swilling ale and smoking, like the beasts that perish' (speaking, we may presume, in a remotely analogical sense); and in some of the alehouse corners the drink was flavoured by a dingy kind of infidelity, something like rinsings of Tom Paine in ditch-water. A certain amount of religious excitement created by the popular preaching of Mr. Parry, Amos's predecessor, had nearly died out, and the religious life of Shepperton was falling back towards low-water mark. Here, you perceive, was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... and he scolded Congress, urging upon it a compromise—not to pacify seceding States, but to save border States. "The cry of 'No compromise' is false in morals," he declared; "it is treason to the spirit of the Constitution; it is infidelity in religion; the cross itself is a compromise, and is pleaded by many who refuse all charity to their fellow-citizens. It is the vital principle of social existence; it unites the family circle; it sustains the church, and upholds nationalities.... But the Republicans complain that, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... management of the exchequer the services of two men of experience; and to place them in a condition to exercise perfect independence of mind and action it was provided that their removal should only take place for actual incapacity or infidelity to the trust, and to be followed by the President with an exposition of the causes of such removal, should it occur. It was proposed to establish subordinate boards in each of the States, under the same restrictions and limitations of the power of removal, which, with the central board, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... (bk. v., p. 167, 168), who rarely rejects a good story of intrigue, especially if there be a dainty bit of treachery connected with it, adopts unhesitatingly the popular rumor of Marshal Damville's infidelity to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... criticised Mr. Wilson for not having consulted the Senate. That the Senate has no right to ask about the details of a treaty before the President sends it in for ratification is a constitutional axiom which Mr. Lodge, with his customary mental infidelity, caressed at one ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... strange that those good people who value female purity so highly that they would reform every roue in Christendom to secure it, have little or nothing to say about the chief cause of hymeneal infidelity,— loveless marriages. No woman who really loves her husband can be untrue to him. Duty and inclination point the same way. But if a woman does not love her husband she will, in nearly every instance, love someone else. She may never ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... upon what ought to be a truth. Posterity may dig it up, and profit by it. The experiment, so far as its original projectors were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the town paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly afield. Alas, what faith is requisite to bear up against ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... legitimate, indeed, but most decided. The books so cautiously put out of sight—like all such—had caught the attention of the son; whereupon his mother had given him so terrible an account of French infidelity, and such a fearful story of Voltaire's dying remorse,—current in orthodox circles,—as had caught strong hold upon the mind of the boy. All Frenchmen he had learned to look upon as the children of Satan, and their language as the language of hell. With these sentiments very sincerely entertained, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... world be a worse mind than for a man to delight and take comfort in any commodity that he taketh by sinful means. For it is the very straight way toward the taking of boldness and courage in sin, and finally to falling into infidelity and thinking that God careth not or regardeth not what things men do here nor of what mind we be. But unto such-minded folk speaketh holy scripture in this wise: "Say not, I have sinned and yet there hath happed me none ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... we find that for the next half century the minds of all classes were on the alert—some in sympathy with, many more in bitter antagonism against Deistical speculations. In his later writings, Toland went much further in the direction of infidelity, if not of absolute Atheism, than he did ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... series of improbable deaths which had culminated in her husband's accession to the throne, and how she had been crowned Queen-Consort. And then he knew that three or four years afterwards she had sued for and obtained a Bull of Separation from the Pope, on the plea of her husband's infidelity and cruelty. The infidelity, to be sure, was no more than, as a Royalty, if not as a woman, she might have bargained for and borne with; but everybody remembers the stories of the king's drunken violence that ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French Revolution was the dominating emotion. To the Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce infidelity, looseness of morals, and political chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames, "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." So thinking and feeling, they had witnessed the triumph of ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... morality, you have a deep and an abiding interest. When Intemperance spreads abroad his murky "wings with dreadful shade contiguous," and fills the land with tears of blood—you look over this frightful aceldama and mourn at the soul-chilling spectacle. When infidelity and licentiousness exhale their pestiferous breath, to poison the moral atmosphere and destroy the rising hope of our country, by undermining the virtue of our youth; the Christian's heart is pained, and every effort is put forth to stay the march of desolation. In short, whatever tends ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... Madame Vanel. "Such is my nature. I do not forgive neglect—I cannot endure infidelity. When I leave any one who weeps at my abandonment, I feel induced still to love him; but when others forsake me and laugh at ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... shocking documents in our own possession. Of these the principal and most certain is the testimony of Innocent Smith's gardener, who was present at the most dramatic and eye-opening of his many acts of marital infidelity. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... holding the scourge of power in his right hand and a bible (translated by authority) in his left, doth necessarily cause the bible and the scourge to be associated ideas, and so produces that temper of mind which leads to Infidelity—Infidelity which judging of Revelation by the doctrines and practices of established Churches honors God by rejecting Christ. See 'Address to the People', p. 57, sold by Parsons, Paternoster Row. Note to line 235. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... definition of faith, they say that the sin against the Holy Ghost, which has alarmed and puzzled so many in all ages, is nothing else but unbelief; and that the expression, "it shall not be forgiven, neither in this world nor that which is to come," means only that a person dying in infidelity would not be forgiven, neither under the former dispensation by Moses, (the then present dispensation, kingdom, or government, of God,) nor under the gospel dispensation, which, in respect of the Mosaic, was a kind of future world, or kingdom ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... that rents begin to come down, night takes on the aspect of an American Venetian carnival. Steamboats outlined in electric lights pass like phosphorescent phantoms up and down the Hudson River, which reflects with the blurry infidelity of moving waters light for light, deck for deck. Running strings of incandescent bulbs draped up into festoons every so often by equidistant arc-lights follow the course of the well-oiled driveway, which in turn follows the course of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... penitence. Rashi replied: "Let us be careful not to take measures for isolating them and thereby wounding them. Their defection was made under the menace of the sword, and they hastened to return from their wanderings." Elsewhere Rashi objects to recalling to them their momentary infidelity. A young girl was married while she and her bridegroom were in the state of forced apostasy. Rashi declared the union to be valid, for "even if a Jew becomes a convert voluntarily, the marriage he contracts is valid. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... necessary for me in this presence to dwell upon the value of culture. I wish rather to have you notice the gulf that exists between what the majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledge concerning which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid a minister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the ability to read Chaucer assist a shop-keeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness and light" of his lovely career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs and the Mice" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralised despotism of the Roman empire would have been renewed on Continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British islands." [Alison's Life of Marlborough, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... and I am compelled to say I believe not one of them. But when we pass from the evidence of truth, in which they are so wanting, to the evidence of fraud and collusion by which many are so characterized, we shall have less wonder at the general spread of infidelity in times somewhat later, on all subjects not susceptible of ocular demonstration. Where a system claimed to be received as a whole, or not at all, it is hardly to be wondered at that when some portion was manifestly wrong, its own requirements should ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... you all about it that afternoon, only our intercourse is broken off to please a rival. Suppose I gave you a rival, and used you for her sake as you use me for his, what would you say? That would be a worse infidelity than sending for a detective, would ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... you should know, if you do not know it already, that their Majesties have for long been at war against the Moor, and purpose to take what remains of his kingdom from him, and make it Christian, as they have already taken Malaga, and purified it by blood and fire from the accursed stain of infidelity." ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... us. We believe every word of what they say to be true, but ... (suppressed by censor). Did you ever hear that a husband conscious of his honour and respectability told the whole world about the infidelity of his wife who left him because he ill-treated her? No, because the husband knows that it is his shame and not hers. And if Czecho-Slovak brigades are to-day fighting against Austria-Hungary it is only a proof that there is something very wrong with Austria, that Austria ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a vengeance have I known thus produced; prodigies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment; and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and admiration, which is the natural ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... to the Minister, can you conceive that he is to be captivated by a Person of her Age? Would your Holiness but reflect on the Nature of Zeokinizul's Scruples. It must be some enchanting Beauty which can transport him to commit an Infidelity which he accounts no small Crime. And you are for seducing him by Liamil, who has as few Charms as any Court Lady, and who, besides, is under conjugal Engagements. How shocking will the Idea of this ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... crafty. The only persons who attempt to hint even a suspicion of the truth of the secrets divulged in the "Awful Disclosures," are editors of Newspapers: some of whom are ever found on the side of infidelity and vice; men always reproaching religion; and directly calumniating, or scornfully ridiculing the best Christians in the land; and profoundly ignorant of Popery and Jesuitism, and the ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... every day convinces me that he has outlived the brief delusion, and longs for liberty, but dares not ask it. Ah! that pricks pride! But it is so. I have watched with jealous vigilance and let no sign escape me; because in his infidelity to you lay my chief hope. Has he not grown melancholy, cold, and silent? Does he not seek Babie and, of late, shun you? Will he not always yield his place to me without a token of displeasure or regret? Has he ever uttered reproach, warning, or command to ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... penalty of disobedience (xxviii.). In chs. xxix,, xxx., which are of a supplementary nature, Moses briefly reminds the people of the goodness of their God, and warns them of the disaster into which infidelity will plunge them, though—so gracious is Jehovah—penitence will be followed by restoration. In a powerful conclusion he sets before them life and death as the recompense of obedience and disobedience, and pleads with them to choose life. [Footnote 1: Ch. xxvii., ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... not so much against a separation—which may take place by mutual consent, or without that, by grievous infidelity or cruelty of one party—as against a divorce a vinculo, which is a dissolution of a marriage in the lifetime of the parties, enabling each of them validly and lawfully to contract with some other. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... work, in this age of infidelity, without at least stating what was known of the Bible? Why should we not bring the "cloud of witnesses" of the ruins we have already described? The discovery of the Assyrian and Babylonian historic records running contemporaneously with Scripture narratives have afforded innumerable points ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... two develop incompatibility, after being convinced it is irreconcilable the only thing to do is to sever the tie. This is often heart-breaking if caused by the infidelity of one party, and always humiliating, especially to the girl. To spare her as much as possible, the man assumes the breaking-off was her act. He never allows himself to speak of her save in terms of the most perfect respect. The presents, letters, pictures, are returned, and Cupid retires discomfited. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... nations have been the subject of those ancient histories which have been preserved and yet remain among us; and withal of so many tragical poets, as in the persons of powerful princes and other mighty men have complained against {13} infidelity, time, destiny, and most of all against the variable success of worldly things and instability of fortune. To these undertakings these great lords of the world have been stirred up, rather by the desire of fame, which plougheth up the air and soweth in the wind, than by the affection of bearing ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... made a better reparation for the folly or injustice with which he might be charged, by writing another poem, called the Progress of a Freethinker, whom he intended to lead through all the stages of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish sophistry used for that purpose; and, at last, to dismiss him by his own hand into ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... rectory gate on this most unwelcome of intruders! She had never felt so vindictively anxious to see the last of any one in her life. There was in her a vehemence of antagonism to the man's manner, his pessimism, his infidelity, his very ways of speaking and looking, which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the court in that case was whether certain conduct on the part of the husband amounted in law to connivance at the infidelity imputed by him to his wife. For one hundred years a statute has been in force in Massachusetts (which, however, is only a reenactment of what had long previously been recognized here as unwritten law) providing ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of mediocre or perhaps humble station. Ah! now that she was free and rich, if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he would believe in her strange and constant truth; now, his infidelity could be forgiven,—forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow! And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in your way? She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and much too intellectual for popular digestion. The orthodox brand it as intolerably heretical and terribly unscriptural; the multitude of human beings;—like "Oyster Nan" who couldn't live without "running her vulgar rig"—consider it downright infidelity, the companion of rationalism, and the "stepping Stone to atheism." Still there are many good people who are Unitarians; many magnificent scholars who recognise its principles; and if "respectability" is any proof of correctness—this age, in the obliquity of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... light,—through these, many from Egypt and India and Scythia, from Scandinavia and from the aboriginal forests of America, have for unnumbered ages passed from a world of bewildering error to the heaven of their hopes. To the eye of sense and to shallow infidelity, this may seem absurd; but the foolishness of man is the wisdom of God to the salvation of His erring children. Happy, indeed, are the initiated! Blessed are the poor in spirit, the Pariah, and the slave,—all they whose eyes are veiled with overshadowing sorrow! for only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... narrative of them in the 'New Life'; nor is it necessary, if we allow due place to the poetic and allegoric interpretation of events natural to Dante's genius. In the last part of the 'New Life' he tells of his infidelity to Beatrice in yielding himself to the attraction of a compassionate lady, in whose sight he found consolation. But the infidelity was of short duration, and, repenting it, he returned with renewed devotion to his only love. In the 'Convito' he tells us ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... level it is a cautionary tale about the consequences of marital infidelity; at another it is a story of a woman betrayed, treated as a pretty bauble for the gratification of men, and cast aside when she has served her purpose, or a butterfly trapped in a net woven by uncaring fate. Her end is rather too contrived for modern taste, but, even today, characters who ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette

... loving another man, but he did not name whom: and Othello wept, and Desdemona said, "Alas! the heavy day! why do you weep?" And Othello told her, he could have borne all sorts of evils with fortitude—poverty, and disease, and disgrace; but her infidelity had broken his heart: and he called her a weed, that looked so fair, and smelled so sweet, that the sense ached at it; and wished she had never been born. And when he had left her, this innocent lady was ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... were maintained in Sarawak, the worst abuses were purged out, as for instance, the death penalty for conjugal infidelity, and the sufficiency of a fine in extenuation of a murder. As for the Dayaks who formerly were cheated by Malay traders and robbed by Malay chiefs, they were permitted to enjoy absolute safety. Both Raja ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... to the minds of men and women. As no method of contraception is infallible, the wife who allows or adopts it may find herself in the truly horrible position of being secretly or openly suspected of infidelity. Again, when a family has been limited to one or two children and these die, the parents may find themselves solitary and childless in old age; and mothers thus bereaved are often the victims of profound and lasting melancholy. ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... is infidelity to logic and to facts. The question here is not simply one of a small number of accidents which have happened during thirty centuries through the introduction of one, two, or three machines; it is a question of a regular, constant, and general ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... [Footnote 3: Infidelity is constantly changing its ground. In the 18th century, the skeptic very generally took the position of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and maintained that the light of reason is very clear, and is adequate to all the religious needs of the soul. In the 19th century, he is now passing to the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... instead of threatening him with endless burnings therefor;—or for not being disposed to receive, even truth, without cautious and thorough examination, you have painted christianity in such beautiful colours that infidelity itself finds but little cause to oppose it. Should these letters therefore ever come before the public you must be prepared for the gathering storm. For should you be able to reconcile revelation with the above proposition, if reason be not fully convinced of its truth, it will find nothing ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... who robbed the poor and gave only to the accursed Brahmins and their foul gods. He would dwell lovingly upon the feats of courage of the Rajputs, lamenting that such fine men should be excluded from heaven, dying as they did such glorious deaths, sword in hand, because of their mistaken infidelity; they were souls lost because of being led away from a true god, the one god, Allah, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... one of the most sensational cases that ever—But I see that you do not recall it. You must have been abroad at the time. I don't believe I ever knew of a case being quite so admirably handled by the press as that one was. She got it after a bitter and protracted fight. Infidelity. Nothing so rotten ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of slavery. The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation, will be denounced as incendiary? The night of that infidelity, which denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the land, to be broken only by the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... lately apprized of her infidelity, it now comes out to have been of so long continuance, that he has no room to believe the boys to be his: yet how fond did he use ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... with such rotten inconsistency woven into its life. It was this shoddy in the garment of our Goddess of Liberty, which has occasioned the rent which those needles there"—pointing to some bayonets—"must mend. And it is this shoddy of contradiction and infidelity which makes many a man's prosperity, seemingly substantial at first, promising warmth and wear, fall suddenly to pieces, and leave his soul naked to the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... probably, both from its ability and power and from its faults, to be for modern France what the work of Strauss was for Germany, the standard expression of an unbelief which shrinks with genuine distaste from the coarse and negative irreligion of older infidelity, and which is too refined, too profound and sympathetic in its views of human nature, to be insensible to those numberless points in which as a fact Christianity has given expression to the best and highest thoughts that man can have. Strauss, to account for ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... bit ashamed of myself, yet relieved at having done with that particular hypocrisy, I unpinned the two facsimiles of drawings from off my study screen and put them in a portfolio. A slight sense of profanation ensued; not so much of infidelity towards those two dear friends, nor certainly of irreverence towards Mr. Watts or the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones, but referable to the insistence with which I had clamoured for those portraits, the delight experienced at their arrival, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... the minister of the Free College Church without being "built up" in all the Christian graces. He is an uncompromising foe to the Scarlet Lady, to the materialistic tendencies of the present day, to looseness and infidelity, of every kind, in religious matters; and some would perhaps object that his sermons are too strongly impregnated with the Confession of Faith, the Deed of Demission, and the Shorter Catechism. But he is on this account all the more entitled to rank as a living embodiment of the principles and ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... oaths where not enforced by law, and the prevalence of male unchastity and the practice of dueling among Christian communities—have no pertinency whatever to his argument, since they only prove the predominance of religious infidelity and indifference in countries nominally Christian, which no one denies; while the exceptions to this rule, which occur almost wholly among Christians, prove the very view he controverts. It is Christian opinion making itself felt through legislation that is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... be single-minded like Harber to appreciate his terrible distress of mind. The facile infidelity of your ordinary mortal wasn't for Harber. No, he had sterner stuff ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... Howard, the fifth of Henry's wives, was not only guilty of antenuptial slips, but of unfaithfulness to the royal bed. It is so necessary to establish the fact of her infidelity, in order to save the King's reputation,—for he could not with any justice have punished her for the irregularities of her unmarried life, and not even in this age, when we have organized divorce, could such slips be brought forward against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... elements of it ought to be avoided. Gross indeed is the beast, for he is unworthy of the name of man; nasty indeed is the wretch, who can even entertain the thought of putting himself between a pair of sheets with a wife of whose infidelity he possesses the proof; but, in such cases, a man ought to be very slow to believe appearances; and he ought not to decide against his wife but upon the clearest proof. The last, and, indeed, the only effectual safeguard is, to begin well; to make a good ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... charge of Agrarianism is the more serious, as it implies the other. A man may be irreligious, and yet a great stickler for property, because a great owner of it,—or because he is by nature stanchly conservative, and his infidelity merely a matter of logic. But if there be any reason for charging a man with Agrarianism, though it be never so unreasonable a reason, his infidelity is taken for granted, and it would be labor lost to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... we frankly avow our infidelity as regards the metre, we as frankly confess our admiration of the high qualities of "Miles Standish." In construction we think it superior to "Evangeline"; the narrative is more straightforward, and the characters are defined with a firmer touch. It is a poem of wonderful picturesqueness, tenderness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... another year and a half. Partly in misery, partly in growing eagerness after knowledge, I gave myself to my studies with more diligence. Mr Forest began to be pleased with me, and I have no doubt plumed himself on the vigorous measures by which he had nipped the bud of my infidelity. For my part I drew no nearer to him, for I could not respect or trust him after his injustice. I did my work for its own sake, uninfluenced by any desire to please him. There was, in fact, no true relation ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... represent the Prussian officer as an angel in the house, for we have long since learned to know him as a devil in the field. And it is almost as futile to picture his prodigious self-conceit, his vile taste in dress and furniture, his conjugal infidelity, his habit of treating his women-folk as menials, since these vices are human and venial in comparison with what the War has revealed. Anyone might easily hazard the conjecture that the murderers of Belgium had never entertained too fastidious a respect for womanhood; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... religious topics, I shall equally attend. Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The already published objectionable passages have been much commented upon, but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Thus adultery becomes, as we have seen, accepted as an institution under the name of service; and, like all other social institutions, developes a morality of its own—a morality within immorality, of faithfulness within infidelity. The lady must be true to her knight, and the knight must be true to his lady: the Courts of Love solemnly banish from society any woman who is known to have more than one lover. Faithfulness is the first and most essential virtue of mediaeval love; a ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... 10:4] Neglect to worship the true God, unbelief, scepticism, superstition, Infidelity, and atheism are a transgression of ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he can be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... shapes his life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better for his passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment Book unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who look upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... was nothing terrible about her infidelity. Her soul had no part in her infidelity; she still loved Laevsky, and that was proved by the fact that she was jealous of him, was sorry for him, and missed him when he was away. Kirilin had turned out to be very mediocre, rather coarse though handsome; everything ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... not a sham, we must meet the question as it has never been met before. Infidelity has no surer or more deadly weapon than that which it wields to-day against our professions of love for the souls of our fellow-men, while we content ourselves with expressions only of that love. It is ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... disloyalty, did not he know it, feel it in every nerve? Did he not read tacit reproaches in every beam of her deep tranquil eye? Did he not fancy some allusion to it, in every tone of her low sweet voice? Did he not tremble at every air of heaven, lest it should waft the rumor of his infidelity to the chaste ears of her, whom alone he loved and honored? Did he not know that one whisper of that disgraceful truth would break off, and forever, the dear hopes, on which all his future happiness depended? And was it not most ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... the Holy of Holies. Her union with the man she loved seemed to her to be of equal significance with the union with God. But when she saw that this bond had been broken, the world was plunged into an abyss immeasurably remote from God. And it was not her husband who seemed to her to be guilty of infidelity; nor did she look upon her sister as being the guilty one; it was she herself who had been unfaithful and guilty in their eyes. She had not stood the test; she had been tried and found wanting; her strength ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... in volume at each successive balloting, until the climax was reached that gave General Garfield the coveted prize. For some time there was much bitterness, and interchange of compliments more emphatic than polite. Within the party charges of infidelity to promises were rife. But the second sober thought of a wise conservatism, which is ever evidence and measure of a people's civilization, tempered strife and assuaged the pangs of disappointment. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... does it take a young lady to resent an infidelity? A calendar month, I suppose; or, in extreme cases, a year and a day. By-the-bye, the pretty widow, Mrs. Creighton, has thrown off her weeds, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... law about it. This took with many; but was cried out upon by others as an attempt against the Church. Yet the argument was managed with so much learning and skill, that none of either side ever undertook to answer it. After that, he wrote against infidelity, beyond any that had gone before him. And then he engaged to write against Popery, which he did with such an exactness and liveliness, that no books of controversy were so much read and valued, as his were. He was a great man in many respects. He knew the world ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... church because the vicar in his sermon on unbelief preached against me. He said that those who rejected Christianity had no right to enter a church; that by doing so they insulted God and man; and that their only motive was to parade their bitter scornful infidelity before the world, and that they cherish a malignant hatred towards the faith which they have cast off, and much more in the same strain. Every person in the congregation had his or her eyes fixed on me, to see how ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... one account, Darnley privately assured his uncle George Douglas of his wife's infidelity; he had himself, if he might be believed, discovered the secretary in the Queen's apartment at midnight, under circumstances yet more unequivocally compromising than those which had brought Chastelard to the scaffold. Another version of the pitiful history represents Douglas ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... their escape, to the left wing of the army, then under the command of general Winchester, who was duly informed of the circumstances of their adventure. An officer of the Kentucky troops, general P., the second in command, without the slightest ground for such a charge, accused Logan of infidelity to our cause, and of giving intelligence to the enemy. Indignant at this foul accusation, the noble chief at once resolved to meet it in a manner that would leave no doubt as to his faithfulness to the United ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... and his numerous contributions to scientific periodicals, have aided to establish his reputation as a sound scholar and tasteful writer, as easily understood by the ordinary reader as by the student of geological lore. Moreover, his religious instincts have kept him free from that scepticism and infidelity into which scientists like himself are so apt to fall, as the result of their close studies of natural science; and his later works have all been written with the object of reconciling the conclusions ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... tried to discover, whether the truth of Christianity imposed any obligation upon him. He had cast off his unbelief, and looked upon it now as a singular folly. But his belief was almost as vague and as fruitless as his infidelity had been. Perhaps, a little, his bitter dissatisfaction with the world and human things, or rather his despondent view of them, was mitigated. If there was, as he now held, a Supreme Orderer of events, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... were, and honoured and despised according to their true merits. Yes, said Isaiah, we shall be delivered from our wicked king and princes, from the heathen Assyrian armies, who fancy that they are going to sweep us out of our own land with fire and sword; from our own sins, and ignorance, and infidelity, and rashness. We shall be delivered from them all, for The righteous King is coming. Nay, He is here already, if we could but see. His goings-forth have been from everlasting. He is ruling us now—this wondrous Child, this Son of God. Unto us a Child is born already, unto ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... been needlessly discouraged by the indifference of the occupied and the sneers of the calloused. Let us not be so chary of our sympathy. Faith in most young men is a much safer hazard than infidelity. For all things strong and pure and helpful to the world may be possible of those young fellows who must, in any event, very soon possess ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge



Words linked to "Infidelity" :   fidelity, quality, disloyalty, unfaithfulness, falseness, faithfulness, inconstancy



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