"Incest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother's door; it is her conduct that has put out the light of her son's life. She who had been to him the type of all excellence, she whom his father had idolized, has within a month of his death married his uncle, and is living in habitual incest—for as such, a marriage of the kind was then unanimously regarded. To Hamlet's condition and behaviour, his mother, her past and her present, is the only and sufficing key. His very idea of unity had been ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... have a high place accorded to them, and frequently choose their own lovers or husbands—customs suggestive of the matriarchate. Thus what was once a general practice was later confined to the royal house or told of divine or heroic personages. Possibly certain cases of incest may really be exaggerated accounts of misunderstood unions once permissible by totemic law. Caesar speaks of British polyandry, brothers, sons, and fathers sharing a wife in common.[758] Strabo speaks of Irish unions with mothers ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... protested his obedience, and did not obey. The Pope fulminated against him in the Bull Maleficus pastor, in which the venerable pontiff was accused of being a disobedient member of the Church, a heretic, or one smelling of heresy, a keeper of concubines, a committer of incest, a corrupter of the people, an old woman and a meddling old fool, and was ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... chamber; It was I who caused the dagger to be given you which pierced your Sister's bosom; and it was I who warned Elvira in dreams of your designs upon her Daughter, and thus, by preventing your profiting by her sleep, compelled you to add rape as well as incest to the catalogue of your crimes. Hear, hear, Ambrosio! Had you resisted me one minute longer, you had saved your body and soul. The guards whom you heard at your prison door came to signify your pardon. But I had already triumphed: My plots had already ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... husband, dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling, and the explanation of the matter. Overcome by his entreaties, she answered: "The man to whose fold this ram belongs, has an adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest with his own grandson." The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected countenance, replied: "You deliver, indeed, an oracle supported by too much truth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as the ignominy you have published ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... reconciliations, after which Anne's influence seemed (p. 344) as secure as ever. But by January, 1536, the imperial ambassador and others were counting on a fresh divorce. The rumour grew as spring advanced, when suddenly, on 2nd May, Anne was arrested and sent to the Tower. She was accused of incest with her brother, Lord Rochford, and of less criminal intercourse with Sir Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton, and Mark Smeaton. All were condemned by juries to death for high treason on 12th May. Three ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... marvellous that a man who did not refrain from doing deeds of incest and murder, should be so scrupulous about violating an oath that ought never to have been sworn? You have thought that you were bound to go through with your engagement, because you had pledged yourself, although you know that ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... apart from the social instincts, excepting in so far as the rule is grounded on the judgment of the community. How so many strange superstitions have arisen throughout the world we know not; nor can we tell how some real and great crimes, such as incest, have come to be held in an abhorrence (which is not however quite universal) by the lowest savages. It is even doubtful whether in some tribes incest would be looked on with greater horror, than would the marriage of a man with a woman bearing the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Incest. The Church is to deliver the sinner to Satan (the severest form of excommunication). St. Paul mentions a previous warning not to associate with immoral ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... declare to us under what odious imputations the Christians lay, how general was the belief that these imputations were well-grounded, how sincere was the horror which the belief inspired. The multitude, convinced that the Christians were atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no crime, displayed against them a fury so passionate as to embarrass and alarm their rulers. The severe expressions of Tacitus, exitiabilis superstitio—odio humani generis convicti,[217] show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... incest received no punishment, but the guilty man was deported to an island.[94] If the incest involved adultery, the woman was of course ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... example, the crime of unlawfully knowing a girl under the age of sixteen years, even with consent. Assume that with her invitation the man committed himself. Go further, and establish the sin of incest. The latter sin ought to be totally ignored in dealing with ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... enough that delicate modesty, like a woman's, which had made it almost impossible for the Colonel to mention the affair, did not seem to trouble her. To live with another man's wife was in the Colonel's eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than many kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension of the powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw in it merely a weakness that threatened to become a family disgrace. When she found after an hour's ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... virtue for a supper or a glass of beer—though afterwards they claim it was champagne—all take delight in contemplating that you, or any other good looking royal woman, are Frankenstein's succuba or worse. Didn't they accuse your grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, of incest with her son and gave him to the cobbler to thrash the immorality ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... chiefs, nor have they anything to say in the council. A chief would be deposed for any conduct causing general disgust or dissatisfaction, such as incest (marrying within his gens) or lack of generosity. Though crime in the abstract would not tend to create dissatisfaction with a chief, yet if he murdered, without sufficient cause, one whose kindred were numerous, a fight between the two bodies ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... were particularly active in disseminating libels upon Napoleon; they charged him in their books and pamphlets with murder, arson, incest, treason, treachery, cowardice, seduction, hypocrisy, avarice, robbery, ingratitude, and jealousy; they said that he poisoned his sick soldiers, that he was the father of Hortense's child, that he committed the most atrocious cruelties in Egypt and Italy, that he married ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... must not have their children like this, nor even Brothers their Sisters; it is through awful called 'Incest' in fact. The Clergyman would say we were cursed—but that is all nonsense. We know better; it's their business to call ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... consent Adultery. Mother, sister, daughter, C.K. consent immaterial; Incest. grand-daughter born in wedlock or not Females ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... happened; upon which the old man took his youngest daughter by the hand, and gave her to the wise prophet immediately for his wife, who without further ceremony took the damsel and deflowered her. Thus for some time they continued in acts of incest and adultery, until that period which made the fatal discovery, and introduced the bloody scene of blind fanaticism ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... bonds of despotism, as the sun thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face—to sow the "Necessity of Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, he strove to lay bare the very substance of the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... fights stoutly against them; but in sleep it escapes the observation of people and the law, and, being as far as possible removed from fear or modesty, gives every passion play, and excites its depravity and licentiousness, for, to borrow Plato's expression,[217] "it attempts incest with its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and abstains from no action whatever," and enjoys lawlessness as far as is practicable in visions and phantasies, that end in no complete pleasure or satisfaction, but can only stir up and inflame the passions ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... she had rather die, than so haynously transgresse the law. Howbeit, hee deliuered her vnto him, although they both refused as much as they could. Wherefore carying them to bed, they constrained the youth, lamenting and weeping, to lie down and commit incest with his brothers wife. To be short, after the death of their husbands, the Tartars wiues vse very seldome to marrie the second time, vnlesse perhaps some man takes his brothers wife or his stepmother in marriage. They make no difference betweene the sonne of their wife ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... marriages of consanguinity. Bowdich, indeed, assures us that a man may not look at nor converse with his mother-in-law, on pain of a heavy, perhaps a ruinous fine; "this singular law is founded on the tradition of an incest." ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head; Oh horrible Oh horrible, most horrible: If thou hast nature in thee beare it not; Let not the Royall Bed of Denmarke be A Couch for Luxury and damned Incest. But howsoeuer thou pursuest this Act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy Soule contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to heauen, And to those Thornes that in her bosome lodge, To pricke and sting her. Fare thee well at once; The Glow-worme showes the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... yields while the other is still suspicious, where lassitude denies such couples the filial caresses whose apparent youthfulness seems new, and the maternal candors whose gentleness and comfort impart, in a sense, the engaging remorse of a vague incest. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... it who comprehends the necessity of never revealing it. If Œdipus, in place of slaying the Sphynx, had conquered it, and driven it into Thebes harnessed to his chariot, he would have been King, without incest, calamities, or exile. If Psyche, by submission and caresses, had persuaded Love to reveal himself, she would never have lost him. Love is one of the mythological images of the grand secret and the grand agent, because it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... art of murder and of theft, Guilty of perjury and subornation, Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift, Guilty of incest, that abomination; An accessory by thine inclination To all sins past, and all that are to come, From the ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... omitted rite, an error in the ceremonial tribute paid to the marble idol, was held a deeper sin than adultery, incest, or blood shedding. And the bare thought of the vengeance due for a broken oath would often times keep sleepless, with mere dread, the eyes of men who could have slumbered calmly on the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... me, Cecile: I felt for you a friendship dating from childhood, one of those fraternal friendships which impart to the love which springs from them a disquieting appearance of incest.'" ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... than happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister, the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a most disagreeable[37] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... putting the case as strongly as I please. I will suppose a prince limited by laws like ours, yet running into a thousand caprices of cruelty like Nero or Caligula. I will suppose him to murder his mother and his wife, to commit incest, to ravish matrons, to blow up the senate, and burn his metropolis, openly to renounce God and Christ, and worship the devil. These and the like exorbitances are in the power of a single person to commit without the advice of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and girls as a thing good in itself, though it allows it as a thing to be expected and excused; but intercourse within the limit which restrains from marriage, where two members of the same division are concerned, is a crime, is incest.... (2) The feeling, on the other hand, that the intercourse of the sexes was natural where the man and woman belonged to different divisions, was shown by that feature of native hospitality which provided a guest with a temporary wife." Though now denied ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... you say that you have not legislated personal virtue in America?" he asked. "You have laws, I believe, against theft and murder, and slander and incest, and perjury ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... believing that the gallant, under cover of a marriage with her stepdaughter, purposes to lead her astray, and where she goes through a delightful farce of answering her scruples before the bewildered man—the scene that for some far-fetched reason led Macaulay's mind to the incest in the Oedipus Rex—is perhaps the best comedy of situation in the piece. But the scene of defamation between the Froths and Brisk is notable as (with the Cabal idea in The Way of the World) the inspiration of the Scandal Scenes in Sheridan's play. When ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Promiscuity. Reformatory Movements. Incest. Relative harmfulness of such unions. Natural aversion. ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... against the tyranny of England.' Wallop defended the Government; the causes of the rebellion were not to be laid at the door of England at all. They were these, 'the great affection they generally bear to the Popish religion, which agreeth with their humour, that having committed murder, incest, thefts, with all other execrable offences, by hearing a mass, confessing themselves to a priest, or obtaining the Pope's pardon, they persuade themselves that they are forgiven, and, hearing mass on Sunday or holyday, they think all the week after they may ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... diary made during the month of October, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' by Gouverneur Morris. 'Surely it is not the usual order of Divine Providence to leave such abominations unpunished. Paris is, perhaps, as wicked a spot as exists. Incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine, oppression, baseness, cruelty, and yet this is the city which has stepped forward in the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... women or the maids. We are strict observers of the law of good fellowship; none among us covets the good that belongs to another. We live free and secure from the bitter plague of jealousy; and though incest is frequent amongst us there is no adultery. If a wife or a mistress is unfaithful, we do not go ask the courts of justice to punish; but we ourselves are the judges and executioners of our wives and mistresses, and make no more ado about killing and burying ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... away the eternity of punishment only, and not punishment itself; everyone must be punished or rewarded according to his works. He who will be soiled by a parricide or an incest will bear a chastisement different in pain and length to him who has not committed them; equality in expiatory suffering, in reparative pain, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans |
