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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



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

... manager's wife, she ran off to the nearest pub, and did not return until she was horribly intoxicated, and staggered on to the stage calling him the vilest names, accusing him at the same time of adultery, and pointing out the manager's wife as his paramour. There were shrieks and hysterics, and Dick had great difficulty in proving his innocence to the angry impresario. He spoke of his honour and a duel, but as the lady in question was starring, the benefit of the doubt had to be granted ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... Go, look you 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 ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... and of earth, the God by whom all things consist, i.e. in him from whom they have received the commandments which they have written in their hearts commandments, which they observe in faith and in the expectation of the world to come. For this reason they do not commit adultery, nor practise unchastity, nor bear false witness, nor covet that with which they are entrusted or what does not belong to them, etc. Compare how in the Apocalypse of Peter definite penalties in hell are portrayed for the several forms ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... of idleness which absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to feel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of dexterously leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without letting her think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse himself in leading some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte without letting him think that he had left the shadows of St. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the 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

... sacrifices, the Easterners follow the practices of the Shudras; the Southerners are fallen; the Vahikas are thieves; the Saurashtras are bastards. They that are defiled by ingratitude, theft, drunkenness, adultery with the wives of their preceptors, harshness of speech, slaughter of kine, lustful wanderings during the night out of home, and the wearing of other people's ornaments,—what sin is there that they do not incur? Fie on the Arattas and the people of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... 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

... that voyce, I do well remember: Is't not the King? Lear. I, euery inch a King. When I do stare, see how the Subiect quakes. I pardon that mans life. What was thy cause? Adultery? thou shalt not dye: dye for Adultery? No, the Wren goes too't, and the small gilded Fly Do's letcher in my sight. Let Copulation thriue: For Glousters bastard Son was kinder to his Father, Then my Daughters got 'tweene the lawfull sheets. Too't Luxury pell-mell, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... 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 ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... 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, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... the searching of them, and shuts out their light from the soul; and which, by the confession of your own selves, turns men in this gospel land into heathen. He has written his commandment against adultery, and He cannot, therefore, approve of a system, which induces this crime, by forbidding marriage. The following extract from an opinion of the Attorney General of Maryland, shows some of the consequences of this ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... name, neglect of His Word, etc.; and sins against the second table, dishonor of parents, disobedience of government, coveting of another's possessions, etc. Granted that I have not committed murder, adultery, theft, and similar sins in deed, nevertheless I have committed them in the heart, and therefore I am a transgressor of all the commandments ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... that they were used to come together on a stated day before it was light, and to sing in turn, among themselves, a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath—not to anything wicked—but that they would not commit theft, robbery, or adultery, nor break their word, nor deny that anything had been entrusted to them when called upon to restore it. After this they said that it was their custom to separate, and again to meet together to take their meals, which were in common and of a harmless nature; but that they had ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... race, sacrificed to their unruly wills and affections, their passions and desires. If as Goldwin Smith says in his rough, incisive way, "There is not much union of heart in marriage, I do not see that there would be any more union of heart in adultery." ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... and merciful words of absolution. And Helen rose from her knees and slipped out from beneath the frayed and greasy curtain a free woman, the guilt of her adultery wiped off by those awful words, as, with a wet cloth, one would wipe writing off a slate leaving the surface of it clean in every part. Precisely how far she literally believed in the efficacy of that most solemn ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

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

... persons would hereafter also arise, it is necessary to know and teach that if saints who still have and feel original sin, and also daily repent and strive with it, fall in some way into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be completed, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it do what it wishes, the Holy ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... his wife in the act of adultery he may put both man and woman to death upon the spot, without being liable to any bangun. If he kills the man and spares his wife he must redeem her life by payment of fifty dollars to the proattins. If the husband spares the offender, or has ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... 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 and shaped ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... the 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 omission ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... lips. Here are they who hated their brethren while life endured, or struck a parent or entangled a client in wrong, or who brooded [610-643]alone over found treasure and shared it not with their fellows, this the greatest multitude of all; and they who were slain for adultery, and who followed unrighteous arms, and feared not to betray their masters' plighted hand. Imprisoned they await their doom. Seek not to be told that doom, that fashion of fortune wherein they are sunk. Some roll a vast stone, or hang outstretched ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... to regulate their own lives at their own will, and then they lay down certain prohibitions, for example, not to pick and steal, not to break into another man's house, not to strike a man unjustly, not to commit adultery, not to disobey the magistrate, and so forth; and on the transgressor they impose a penalty. [3] But the Persian laws try, as it were, to steal a march on time, to make their citizens from the beginning incapable of setting their hearts on any wickedness or shameful ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... practise of it; this mightily augments & multiplies y^e sin. Againe, some si[n]es of this nature are simple, others compound, as y^t is simple adultrie, or inceste, or simple sodomie; but when ther is a mixture of diverce kinds of lust, as when adultery & sodomie & [p]^{r}ditio seminis goe togeather in y^e same acte of uncleannes, this is capitall, double, & trible. Againe, when adultrie or sodomie is co[m]ited by [p]fessors or church members, I fear it coms too ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... well, divorcing Juno, and place her in my couch, and take Lycaon for his father-in-law? But if the wrong done to your injured foster-child affects you, drive the seven Triones away from your azure waters, and expel the stars received into heaven as the reward of adultery, that a concubine may not be received into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... above related concerning the state of married 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 Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... name of the reigning family in Russia—derived (if we overlook the adultery of Catherine II., admitted by herself in her memoirs) from Peter III., the husband of Catherine II., and Prince of Holstein-Gottorp. Pougatchew, the pretended Peter III., was a Cossack, who placed himself at the head of a Russian peasant rising in 1773. ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... affinis, si forte coeire nequibis, Si parochi, et duplicis desit praesentia testis, Raptave si mulier, parti nec reddita tutae; Haec facienda vetant connubia, facta retractant.'"—From Essay on Scripture Doctrines of Adultery and Divorce, by H. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... of good works, by nakedness; error and misery, by drinking a cup of his or her wine that causeth it; propagating any religion for gain, by exercising traffick and merchandize with that people whose religion it is; worshipping or serving the false Gods of any nation, by committing adultery with their princes, or by worshipping them; a Council of a kingdom, by its image; idolatry, by blasphemy; overthrow in war, by a wound of man or beast; a durable plague of war, by a sore and pain; the affliction or ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

... be said for Balzac in comparison with the more recent school, who have turned to account all the most refined methods of breaking the ten commandments and the criminal code; the fault of the so-called sensation writer is, not that he deals in murder, bigamy, or adultery—every great writer likes to use powerful situations—but that he relies upon our interest in startling crimes to distract our attention from feebly-drawn characters and conventional details. Balzac does not ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the excellent M. Moinet as a "bon petit coeur,'' is enveloped in the political ordure slung by venal pamphleteers at the masterful men of her race. My friend Rafael Sabatini, than whom no man living has dug deeper into Borgia history, explains the calumniation of Lucretia in this fashion: Adultery and promiscuous intercourse were the fashion in Rome at the time of Alexander VI. Nobody thought anything of them. And to have accused the Borgia girl, or her relatives, of such inconsiderable lapses would have been to evoke mere shrugging. But incest, of course, was ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts. It was blindness to that which set men stoning the woman taken in adultery. They forgot what they were made of. This stupidity, this unreasonable idealism of the common mind, fills life to-day with cruelties and exclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But we are born impure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... smoking keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness—well, God was Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... 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, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... represented to him the dangers to be apprehended from the publicity and scandal of such an affair; and that the moment when his grand views might possibly be realized was not the fit time to entertain France and Europe with the details of a charge of adultery. I spoke to him of Hortense and Eugene, to whom he was much attached. Reflection, seconded by his ardent affection for Josephine, brought about a complete reconciliation. After these three days of conjugal misunderstanding their happiness was never afterwards disturbed ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

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

... by intelligence alone, nor even by wisdom alone, but by a life conjoined to them. A man's life is his love, and love is manifold. In general there are love of good and love of evil. Love of evil is love of committing adultery, taking revenge, defrauding, blaspheming, depriving others of their possessions. In thinking and doing such things the love of evil finds its pleasure and joy. Of this love there are as many derivatives, which are affections, as there are evils in which it can find expression. And there ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

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

... For, as it is recorded in the proceedings of the senate, when Caius Laetorius, a young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the senators for a lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged, besides his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon his coming into the world; and entreated that (74) he might find ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... it has taken to niggle this Miniature! The Christ seemed to me only a wayward Boy: the Jews, Jews no doubt: the Temple I dare say very correct in its Detail: but think of even Rembrandt's Woman in Adultery at the National Gallery; a much smaller Picture, but how much vaster in Space and Feeling! Hunt's Picture stifled me with its Littleness. I think Ruskin must see what his ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... York. Faustus was present when Doctor Shaw, by the command of the Protector, informed the astonished people from the pulpit, that the yet living mother of the duke and the deceased king had admitted various lovers; that the late king was the offspring of such adultery; and that no one of the royal line, except the Protector, could boast of a legitimate birth. He saw those noblemen executed who would not accede to the execrable plot; and the Devil conducted him into the Tower at the very moment when Tyrrell and his assistant murdered the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... 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 ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... shed out blood, the Greek word is equivocal to sharp and swift, and he that translated sharp feet erred, and a book that hath sharp feet is false, and must be amended; as that sentence unkind young trees shall not give deep roots oweth to be thus, the plantings of adultery shall not give deep roots.... Therefore a translator hath great need to study well the sentence, both before and after, and look that such equivocal words accord with the sentence."[208] Consideration of the connotation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

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

... position. They were practically without any defence. They were ignorant, poor, and half-starved. Thriftless, like their landlords, they ate up in the autumn what harvests they gathered, and begged for their winter's support. Adultery and incest were common and bred a body of lawless creatures, who herded together like wild beasts and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... drives out another: but, above all things, the man thus afflicted should be advised what madness love is: for of all the perturbations of the mind, there is not one which is more vehement; for (without charging it with rapes, debaucheries, adultery, or even incest, the baseness of any of these being very blamable; not, I say, to mention these) the very perturbation of the mind in love is base of itself, for, to pass over all its acts of downright madness, what weakness do not those very things which are looked ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

... have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery; [5:28] but I tell you, that every one who looks on a woman to desire her inordinately, has already committed adultery with her in his heart. [5:29]But if your right eye offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is better for you that one of your ...
— The New Testament • Various

... take my sense amiss; 'Tis what concerns my soul's eternal bliss; Since, if I found no pleasure in my spouse, As flesh is frail, and who (God help me) knows? Then should I live in lewd adultery, And sink downright to Satan when I die: Or were I cursed with an unfruitful bed, The righteous end were lost for which I wed; 120 To raise up seed to bless the powers above, And not for pleasure only, or for love. Think not I dote; 'tis time to take ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... 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 ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... fault of that indecent sun, Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay, But will keep baking, broiling, burning on, That howsoever people fast and pray, The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone: What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... would only have Abana and Pharpar,—yet only so was his skin made whole again, and soft like an infant's. So also did David the king come into tasting of the bliss of a true repentance by the terrible gateways of shameful adultery and blood-thirst." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... 1861, constables (Europeans) acted frequently as informers, and in one instance the Acting Registrar General,—in other words, the "Protector,"—played the role of informer. He took a European constable with him to a native house and caused him to commit adultery there, and on this evidence prosecuted the woman for keeping an unregistered brothel. During this year, an inspector named Johnson presented a woman with a counterfeit dollar, and because she accepted the money she was condemned ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

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

... in morals as to use the criminatory language of this hall in drawing and assembling rooms would be misplaced and ridiculous. Every one knows that in common society palliating names are given to vices. Adultery in a lady is called gallantry; the gentleman is commonly called a man of good fortune, sometimes in French and sometimes in English. But is this the tone which would become a person in a court of justice, calling these people to an account for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Laconians. A law is a written 146 contract among citizens, the transgressor of which is punished. A custom or habit, for there is no difference, is a common acceptance of a certain thing by many, the deviator from which is in no wise punished. For example, it is a law not to commit adultery, and it is a custom with us [Greek: to me demosia gynaiki mignusthai]. A mythical belief is a tradition 147 regarding things which never took place, but were invented, as among others, the tales about Cronus, for many are led to believe them. A dogmatic ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... cross, when turning to his mother he said, "Woman, behold thy son," and to the Disciple John, "Behold thy mother," and "from that hour that Disciple took her to his own home." without having his heart smote within him! We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse with ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Haverstocks the night. I think there's to be some sort of a discussion, but I'm not sure. Mrs. Haverstock is a great woman for discussions, but I will say this for her, she doesn't humbug herself over them. She told me once that it was better to talk about adultery ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

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

... 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, He suffers him to be excluded from the ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... Si quid, etc.: if a woman act reprehensibly or disgracefully, he punishes her; if she has drunk wine, if she has done something wrong with a stranger, he condemns her. If you surprise your wife in the act of adultery, you may with impunity kill her without any form of judgment; but if she caught you in adultery, she would not dare touch you, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

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

... to the marriage covenant is the social scourge of all races, "the pestilence that walketh in darkness, . . . the destruction that wasteth at noonday." 56:18 The commandment, "Thou shalt not com- mit adultery," is no less imperative than the one, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... goes into the mouth desecrates a man, but that which comes out of it,—such as sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured observations; and let them consider, if there be such things (which we have all heard of) as Pious Treachery, Innocent Adultery, &c., whether there may not be also such a thing ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... had fallen a victim to a dreadful fate. How had the King extolled her shortly before his marriage as a mirror of purity, modesty and maidenliness! hardly two years afterwards he accused her of adultery under circumstances which, if they were true, would make her one of the most depraved creatures under the sun. If we go through the statements that led to her condemnation, it is difficult to think them complete fictions: they have been upheld quite recently. If on ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... beyond the letter of the law.' I know what ticklish ground I am treading on here; but, though it is as lawful for a woman to take a second husband as for a man to take a second wife, the cases are different, and widely different, in the eye of morality and of reason; for, as adultery in the wife is a greater offence than adultery in the husband; as it is more gross, as it includes prostitution; so a second marriage in the woman is more gross than in the man, argues great deficiency in that delicacy, that innate modesty, which, after all, is the great charm, the ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... in the Harvard Law School, Mr. Webster was counsel in a very interesting divorce case where Choate was upon the other side. The parties were in high social position and very well known. Mr. Choate's client, who was the wife, was charged with adultery. I did not hear the closing argument, but my classmates who did reported that Mr. Webster spoke of the woman with great severity and argued the case with a scriptural plainness of speech. He likened the case of the husband bound to an adulterous wife to the old Hebrew punishment ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... sometimes eaten. The children are very much petted and loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are killed, the others are sold as slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no idols, no authority of any description; the oldest man in the family is the judge. In cases of adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes to the negoria (the community). The soil is kept in common, but the crop belongs to those who have grown it. They have pottery, and know barter-trade—the custom being that the merchant gives them the goods, whereupon they return ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

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

... much safer 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 upon himself ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... theft, adultery, uncleanness, lying, covetousness, hatred, anger, malice, want of love to ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... he expressed a most virtuous horror of adultery, for if he had committed it, it would not have been able to bear that testimony to himself, which was so sweet to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... marriages. The chief wife of the king, called putriz in their language, determines nobility and the right to the succession—to which her children are preferred, even when they are younger than the children of other mothers. Not even the slightest theft is pardoned, but adultery is easily excused. At daybreak, those appointed for this duty sound (by law) large timbrels in the streets of the settlements, in order to awaken married people, whom, on account of human propagation, they judge worthy of political care. The majority of crimes are punished by death. In other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

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

... the happiness of Valeria. Her estates were confiscated, her eunuchs and domestics devoted to the most inhuman tortures; and several innocent and respectable matrons, who were honored with her friendship, suffered death, on a false accusation of adultery. The empress herself, together with her mother Prisca, was condemned to exile; and as they were ignominiously hurried from place to place before they were confined to a sequestered village in the deserts of Syria, they exposed their shame and distress to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... of folly, gods of war and of peace, gods of good and of evil, gods of pleasure, gods of cruelty and wrath, whose thirst must be satiated with torrents of blood. These gods fight and quarrel with one another. They lie, steal, commit adultery, murder, and other crimes. They pour out their curses when they cannot succeed in their wicked plots, and invent all kinds of lying tales to ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... solution they are embarrassing, since advice is impossible for moral people. The truly good must advise him or her either to keep quiet or to quit. But to say "Keep quiet!" is to say "Don't disturb the adultery," while to say "Quit!" is to say "Commit divorce!" which is far worse, according ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... disqualification by bribery), for blackmailing accusations, bribery, false entry of another as a state debtor, false testimony to the service of a summons, conspiracy to enter a man as a state debtor, corrupt removal from the list of debtors, and adultery. They also bring up the examinations of all magistrates, and the rejections by the demes and the condemnations by the Council. Moreover they bring up certain private suits in cases of merchandise and mines, or where a slave has slandered a free man. It is they also who cast lots to ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle

... Duke was fruitlessly endeavouring to bring James to fresh friendship a sudden blow at home weakened his power. At the close of the year Catharine Howard was arrested on a charge of adultery; a Parliament which assembled in January 1542 passed a Bill of Attainder; and in February the Queen was sent to the block. She was replaced by the widow of Lord Latimer, Catharine Parr; and the influence of ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... ravages than they do in society, especially in those countries where, morality being as yet held in some esteem, the jealousy of lovers, and the vengeance of husbands every day produce duels, murders and even worse crimes; where the duty of an eternal fidelity serves only to propagate adultery; and the very laws of continence and honour necessarily contribute to increase dissoluteness, ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law, are become fashionable and familiar—adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind, the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have boldly thrown off the mask, and stalk through the colony in the open face of the sun, so that it is no uncommon thing to hear a person say, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... 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 must probably have ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... aforementioned to undertake the attack upon Commodus, and she not only caused his destruction, but was herself detected and put out of the way. Commodus killed also Crispina, because he was angry with her for some act of adultery. Previous to their execution both women had keen banished to the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

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

... trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder and commit adultery and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not, and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say, "We are delivered to do all these abominations?" Is this house which ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... 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 generally indulged, it ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... 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

... of Gasp, where a lapse in this regard was counted a disgrace. (See Le Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspsie, 417, where a contrast is drawn between the modesty of the girls of this region and the open prostitution practised among those of other tribes.) Among the Sioux, adultery on the part of a ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... kiss, I can not conceive how that tradition came about. The only explanation which one could imagine, namely, his unwillingness to kiss that sort of mouth, is proved to be false by the facts concerning his favorites. For this and for his adultery some complaints were lodged against him, but at this time he was himself released without formal accusations and succeeded in begging off Pallas and Burrus. Later on he did not come ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... this, thy good sweet grog which thou givest me out of thy kind heart. Ta|pa|! When I look into thy face and see thy kind eyes, I am young again. I love thee, not alone because thou hast been kind to me in my poverty and paid the fines of my granddaughter when she hath committed adultery with the young men of the village, but because thou hast seen many lands and have upheld me before the teacher, who is a circumcised but yet untatooed dog of a Samoan. A man who is not tatooed is no ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... active partizan, rendered him great service. But, in November 1644, Gordon, now a colonel, suddenly deserted Montrose, aided the escape of Forbes of Craigievar, one of his prisoners, and reconciled himself to the kirk, by doing penance for adultery, and for the almost equally heinous crime of having scared Mr Andrew Cant,[B] the famous apostle of the covenant. This, however, seems to have been an artifice, to arrange a correspondence betwixt Montrose and Lord Gordon, a gallant young nobleman, representative of the Huntley family, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... instance of Allah's power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference. The general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion that the Ghilman or Wuldan, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counter parts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... soul who trusted in Him.' And should it have fallen to my lot to have written her memoirs, I am quite sure it would have been cast aside by those who think with you that memoirs are extravagant. I cannot think because David committed adultery, and the wisest man then living had three hundred wives, and Peter denied his Savior, that all other Christians living in the present enlightened age have done or would do these or like grievous sins. It has been my lot at some periods ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... contrary, during the 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 society that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... shield on the waters. If it floated the mother was innocent; if it sank it was allowed to drown, and she was put to death.[655] Girls whose purity was suspected were similarly tested, and S. Gregory of Tours tells how a woman accused of adultery was proved by being thrown into the Saone.[656] The mediaeval witch ordeal by water is connected with this custom, which ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... aeras of the history of France. Margaret of Burgundy, the Queen of Louis X. and Blanche, the consort of his brother, Charles le Bel, were both of them confined here, after having been tried and convicted of adultery; together with Jane, another princess of the house of Burgundy, the wife to Philip, brother to Louis and Charles. Margaret was shortly after murdered in this castle; when Louis, intent upon a fresh marriage with the princess Clementia of Hungary, found an obstacle to his wishes ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... wrong, and it is very serious. It is as wrong and bad as it can be. There is actually compromise with evil, partnership with the world in its wickedness. The thing is put in the intensest way possible by characterizing it as adultery. No stronger language could be used to tell how He sees the evil they are guilty of. And they are plainly told that He will fight against them. They have made themselves His enemy ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... received an 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 ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... of Jehovah. This law, as thus expressed, Jesus Christ unqualifiedly repeals. "I say unto you that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress, and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery." ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

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

... much embarrassed by the other, who always gave the verdict to the enemies of the Chapter. This wicked schism brought about considerable mischief, and proved abundantly that error is worse in Christianity than the adultery of the Church. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

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

... as a matter of state policy that Napoleon should possess an heir. She also was fully aware that throughout France marriage had long been regarded but as a partnership of convenience, to be formed and sundered almost at pleasure. "Marriage," said Madame de Stael, has become but the sacrament of adultery." The nation, under the influence of these views, would condemn her for selfishly refusing assent to an arrangement apparently essential to the repose of France and of Europe Never was a woman placed in a situation of more terrible trial. Never was an ambitious man exposed to ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... Adultery, especially in the women, is wery vigorously punished in many places of France. In Poictou, as Mr. Daille informed, they ignominously drag them after the taile of a mule thorow the streits, the hangman convoying them, then they sett them in the most publick part of the toune bound be ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... 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

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... 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

... wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman taken in Adultery, with the dapper young Rabbi, offended neither by adultery in general nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to turn upon the excessive hotness or coldness of the water in the tub; the Last Supper ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... "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 tormented by this unceasing contradiction: ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang



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



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