"Bigamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... embarrassed, and she took his embarrassment for reluctance to grant her the same status as old Mrs. Marrowbone. It was nothing of the sort. It was merely his doubt whether such an arrangement would be permissible under canon law. It was bigamy, however much you chose to prevaricate. The old lady's appealing voice racked Dave's feelings. "I carn't!" he exclaimed, harrowed. "I've spromussed to be Mrs. Marrowbone's grangson—I have." And thereupon old Mrs. Prichard, perceiving that he was really distressed, hastened ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked by the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris being much more common than is generally supposed; but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more and more tightly about his heart, till reason at length was stifled. When Remonencq computed that the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Charged at Hove with bigamy a soldier stated that he remembered nothing about his second marriage and pleaded that he was absent-minded. A very good plan is to tie a knot in your boot-lace every time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... evidence of madness in anything she has done. She ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she left in the hope of finding a better. There is no madness in that. She committed the crime of bigamy, because by that crime she obtained fortune and position. There is no madness there. When she found herself in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. She employed intelligent means, and she carried out a conspiracy which required coolness ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... made a discovery that amazed himself—a discovery that thousands of men had made before him: that it was possible for him to love two women at the same tune, utterly differently and yet with entire sincerity. He felt as lowered in his self-esteem as if he had committed bigamy. He was dumbfounded at this new twist that his emotions had developed. Without consulting him, they had played a trick on him which forever disqualified him for the larger role of constant lover. He felt himself pushed down to almost the level of a philanderer—a philanderer not much more august ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... cannot understand, Herbert: to be married just like anybody else, and the ring put on, and everything (by the way, I did notice that she does not wear her ring), and that it is as if it had not been. Bigamy one can understand: but how it should mean nothing! And do you mean to say she could marry somebody else, the same as ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... drunken moments produced something worth hearing. There were two men whom it was her habit to revile bitterly in her cups. One of them was Mr. Evelin, whom she abused—sometimes for the small allowance that he made to her; sometimes for dying before she could prosecute him for bigamy. Her drunken remembrances of the other man were associated with two names. She called him "Septimus"; she called him "Darts"; and she despised him occasionally for being a "common sailor." It was clearly demonstrated that he was one man, and not two. Whether he was ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... about arresting you for bigamy? What about Holloway? I fancy at Holloway they have a short method with people who won't take ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... deformity called in the Persian Tales, that was sent to the lady in a coffer? And as to marrying both the girls, it would cost my Lord Hardwicke but a new marriage-bill: I suppose it is all one to his conscience whether he prohibits matrimony or licenses bigamy. Poor Sir Charles Williams ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... recounted the moving story of Jonathan Tinker, "so far as the death of his wife and baby goes. But he hasn't been to sea for a good many years, and he must have just come out of State's Prison, where he was put for bigamy. There's always two sides to a story, you know; but they say it broke his first wife's heart, and she died. His friends don't want him to find his children, and this ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Leicester Assizes Levi Durance, aged thirty-four, a discharged soldier, was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment for bigamy."—Pall Mall Gazette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... regular court, try, sentence, and execute offenders; what these offenders had done,—whether they were thievish interlopers from some other society, or whether they had committed some crime, such as burglary, bigamy, or adultery, or high treason, or whether they had been dishonest office-holders in the society and plundered the common treasury, is a mystery which you can solve as well as I. Certainly you cannot be more puzzled than I ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... have their Rachel; but—there being a prejudice against bigamy—few have even the Patriarch's luck, to marry her at last; for the wife de convenance generally outlives her younger sister; and so, one afternoon, we turn again from a grave in Ephrata-Green Cemetery, somewhat drearily, into our tent pitched in the plains ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... had come to ask Titmouse to dine with him at a tavern in the Strand, where there was to be capital singing in the evening; and also to accompany him, on the ensuing morning, to the Old Bailey, to hear "a most interesting trial" for bigamy, in which Snap was concerned for the prisoner—a miscreant, who had been married to five living women!! Snap conceived (and very justly) that it would give Titmouse a striking idea of his (Snap's) importance, to see ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... recklessly: "Bigamy is an ugly word!—I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,—perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Sir Patrick, very severe. Of course it's bigamy; but still he's very young; and she's very pretty. Mr Walpole: may I spunge on you for another of those nice cigarets of yours? [He changes his seat for the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... however, being extremely anxious to revisit Mrs. Parkinson, in a materialised form after death, will not be satisfied till he has received from his wife a solemn promise that she will not marry again, such a marriage being, in his eyes, nothing more nor less than bigamy. Having received an assurance to this effect from her, Mr. Parkinson dies, his soul, according to the medium, being escorted to the spheres by 'a band of white-robed spirits.' This is the prologue. The next chapter is entitled 'Five Years After.' Violet ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... clause his look implied a superior virtue to his fellow creatures, and was meekly accepted as such. He never held an inquest without introducing some remarks upon uninterned aliens, the military age, Ireland and conscription, soldiers' wives and drinking, the prevalence of bigamy, and other popular war-time topics. In short, Mr. Edgehill, like many other people, had used the war to emerge from a chrysalis existence as a local bore into a butterfly career as a public nuisance. In that capacity he was still good ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the laws. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. Some seized the opportunity to desert their wives and children and acquire new help-meets. While much suffering resulted from the desertion, as a rule, the negro mother alone supported the children better than did the ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... should declare under oath whether or not that suit was in his hands. In this letter of requisition the archbishop did not state the cause for which his illustrious Lordship said he had accused the aforesaid [prisoner, which was] bigamy. The said castellan, moreover, noticed in it certain imperative expressions and the archbishop addressed him as vos [i.e., "you"], [79] in the manner which is customary in the royal decrees. The said castellan sent the prisoner ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... A Original Sinner, An Garston Bigamy, The Out of Wedlock Her Husband's Friend Speaking of Ellen His Foster Sister Stranger than Fiction His Private Character Sugar Princess, A In Stella's Shadow That Gay Deceiver Love at Seventy Their Marriage Bond Love Gone Astray Thou Shalt Not Moulding a Maiden Thy Neighbor's ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... professionally. He had not quite decided whether he would act or not. In his hard commonsense mind he saw next to no possibility of Peggy having a bona fide case. He did not suppose for a moment that William Grant would have run his neck into a bigamy noose; and it would put the young lawyer in a very awkward position with Mary Grant if, after saving her life and posing as her friend, he carried on a blackmailing suit against her. At the same time, he felt that it could ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... handwriting, and it was addressed to me. I opened it and read it. The letter told me that I was deserted, disgraced, ruined. The woman with the fiery face and the impudent eyes was Van Brandt's lawful wife. She had given him his choice of going away with her at once or of being prosecuted for bigamy. He had gone away with ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... but still the desire to free yourself was natural, and you chose this simpler way, without realising that it would lead you into what is considered a crime—bigamy! I quite understand it. The judges will understand too; and therefore I advise you ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... his first wife sued for divorce he was traced to Batesville, Ind. He never replied to her petition for divorce, and she would have won her suit had she not been forced to abandon it on account of lack of money. She was determined, however, to prosecute him for bigamy. ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... drama in Chicago, can enjoy but a temporary success. The former city will always return to its love of standard comedies and SHAKSPEAREAN tragedies, and the latter will sooner or later clamor for its accustomed legs and its favorite dramas of bigamy ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... that fellow she's so happy with—they'd be arrested for bigamy. The best they'd get would be ten years in Siberia. Now you see where you can have a steady ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... count for nothing—all my love, all my years of patient waiting? Oh, you cannot be so cruel as to snatch the cup from my very lips! It is not for the sake of these miserable documents: what is it to me whether Don Giovanni appears as the criminal in a case of bigamy—whether he is ruined now, as by his evil deeds he will be hereafter, or whether he goes on unharmed and unthwarted upon his career of wickedness? He is nothing to me, nor his pale-faced bride either. It is for you that I care, for ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... brother-officer, when the Battle of Waterloo breaks out and Dobbin is slain. Captain Osborne, in the mistaken impression that Amelia has shared her betrayer's fate, marries the beautiful Becky Sharp and is tried for bigamy, but is acquitted, as Becky Sharp is proved to have been already married to an Indian Nabob of the name of Crawley. On the death of Crawley, Becky marries the Marquis of Steyne, becomes deeply religious and dies ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... "Why, that's downright bigamy!" exclaimed Layelah with fresh laughter. "Why, Atam-or, you're mad!" and so she went off again in fresh peals of laughter. It was evident that my proposal was not at all shocking, but simply comical, ridiculous, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... for the future. Mr. Nicholson believes that; and I, who know more of the circumstances than he does, believe also that Mr. James Smith stole away from Darrock Hall in the night under fear of being indicted for bigamy. But if I can't find him—if I can't prove him to be alive—if I can't account for those spots of blood on the night-gown, the accidental circumstances of the case remain unexplained—your mistress's rash language, the bad terms ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... dreamed the brute would do this," said Jaffery. "He couldn't offer her marriage in the ordinary way without committing bigamy, and I know she wouldn't consent to any other arrangement; so he has invented this poisonous plot to get ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke |
