Infidelity

“ The dear boy was as dear to her as he was to me. But she lives and hopes; I am in darkness and almost in despair. My father's hard creed drove me into infidelity. My wife's, my friend's tenderer and happier faith calls me back again. ”

“ I just want to say with regard to infidelity, it means nothing more nor less than to disbelieve anything we have a mind to. If we disbelieve in the existence of the Eternal, as an embodiment or personage, we are infidel on that point. If we disbelieve in the efficacy of the blood of the Savior and his atonement, we are infidels on that subject. ”

“ The seamstress was touched. The tears I shed moved her tender heart; and feeling that I gained ground, I became more and more pathetic. "Ah! her infidelity will cause my death: pity, commiserate a wretched husband; I conjure you, do not conceal from me her retreat, and I shall owe you more than life." ”

“ Is it any wonder that infidelity should encrease, where any of these are to be found? That many, comparing their spirit with their profession, should blaspheme that worthy name whereby they are called? ”

“ If, in defiance of his wish, his son should take unto himself a woman, then should he too taste the bitterness of infidelity within the household, then should he too be betrayed and dishonored by his wife. ”

“ Between a man and his Maker, and a woman and her Maker, the cases are to judge; but between a man and his wife infidelity to marriage vows is not as hard on the wife as it is on the husband. I am speaking now, Yanna, as the sin affects daily life. ”

“ After seducing her, I myself have set the example of infidelity; I have bidden her to follow blindly the advice of her friend, although I knew that the advice and the example of M—-M—— would end in her ruin; I had insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink from at tempting? ”

“ And here was a case by which I could infer how little my manor lord was inclined to matrimonial infidelity, and how much more to virtue; he was really glad that the whole float of adulterous parishioners happened to come right by his shore and that he was made the instrument whereby justice could visit and thrash this secret society. ”

“ Now I suggest to any one that he go and visit some of the places where men who thought of Christianity as negativism thinks showed their faith and its fruits. Let him go to the Colosseum and ask the winds that moan over its ruins what they know of the history of infidelity. The winds will hush in that wreck of stupendous magnificence, and with an eloquence gathered from seventeen centuries they will tell him a story that will cause a flow of tears, for much of infidelity is of noble heart. ”

“ The Word has met opposition from its beginning, cunning and subtile as well as open and blatant, from avowed enemy and pretended friend. When infidelity, working under one guise, has been found out, rendered unpopular, and rejected, it has been quick to array itself in novel garments and assume a new name. ”

“ O my Lord, with what rigor didst Thou punish them! A useless glance was checked as a sin. How many tears did those inadvertent faults cost me, through a weak compliance, and even against my will! Thou knowest that Thy rigor, exercised after my slips, was not the motive of those tears which I shed. With what pleasure would I have suffered the most rigorous severity to have been cured of my infidelity. To what severe chastisement did I not condemn myself! Sometimes Thou didst treat me like a father who pities the child, and caresses it after its involuntary faults. ”

“ The wife during her husband’s descent from the tree having arranged her plan, said, “Surely, man, frenzy must have deprived thy brain of the fumes of sense, that having foolishly set up such a cry, and not reflecting upon thy own disgrace (for here, excepting thyself, what male is present?) , thou wouldst fix upon me the charge of infidelity?” ”

“ Saying, "The Prophet, whose words are as a seal,
Said, 'Acquiescence in infidelity is infidelity.'
And again, 'Acquiescence in God's ordinance
Is incumbent on all true believers.'
Infidelity and hypocrisy are not ordained of God ”

“ Indeed, her consternation at his appearance, her evident dismay, not unnatural in an age wherein skepticism and infidelity were marvellously mingled with credulity and superstition, her clear conviction that it was not himself in mortal blood and being, did go far to establish the fact, that she had been deceived either casually or—which was far more probable—by foul artifice, into the belief that her beloved and plighted husband was no longer with the living. ”

“ More than one man has, by accusing his innocent wife of infidelity and by torturing her with baseless suspicions, driven her into the arms of a lover. We are all more or less [390] susceptible to suggestion, and by continually suspecting a wife of a love affair or illicit relation a man may implant the seed of suggestion so strongly that it may grow luxuriantly and the wife may be unable to resist the suggested temptation. And very often the very lover is suggested by the husband. ”

“ Shall incentives to nuptial infidelity be presented to the great body of society for the personal gratification of a few unfortunate members, diffusing dissatisfaction and discontent, where, but for the deceitful hope of divorce, they had never been known? ”

“ O, they will have a fearful reckoning who have supplied fools who deny God with words of blasphemy, and with the scoffings of infidelity, through a prostituted press—who have caught the thoughtless with profane wit, and betrayed the daringly wicked with the hardihood of declared infidelity! ”

“ The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day find in acts of infidelity. ”

“ Enthusiasm indeed when detected, is apt to create infidelity; and infidelity is so shocking a thing, that many rather run into the other extreme, and take refuge in enthusiasm. But infidelity and enthusiasm seem now to act in concert against our established religion. ”

“ Learn for once what men think of unfaithful wives—for may be you are ignorant. The novels you have read in your luxurious, idle hours have perhaps told you that infidelity is no sin—merely a little social error easily condoned, or set right by the divorce court. ”

“ But the mere exemption from infidelity is so small a part of the religious character, that I hope no one will attempt to claim any merit from this negative sort of goodness, or value herself merely for not being the very worst thing she possibly can be. Let no mistaken girl fancy she gives a proof of her wit by her want of piety, or that a contempt of things serious and sacred will exalt her understanding, or raise her character even in the opinion of the most avowed male infidels. ”

“ One half of the triumphs of infidelity are attributable to the flattering promises which it makes to those who have not lived long enough to know that infidelity is nothing but a colossal structure of egotism. The deluding voice says to the young man, "You live in a progressive age, and why are you not progressive yourself? ”

“ Was there ever a foreign court, when foreign courts were in their glory, where men and women were content merely to whisper and giggle behind a rubber-tree in order to appear vicious? It may be said at least that some of our fashionables have learned to be men and women instead of mere simpering marionettes. Still there was originality in being simpering marionettes: Marital infidelity has been the favorite excitement of every rotten aristocracy which the world has ever seen. ”

“ Of course I am perfectly aware that you will try to derive from this mishap some argument intended to triumph over my discomfiture.
I would have you remark, however, that you have no right to seize upon a general fact—for infidelity is inherent in woman's nature—and draw deductions respecting my particular case. All that you can reasonably conclude is that the man who has four wives is bound to be deceived four times as often as the man who has but one wife. ”

“ The hourly clash of angry tempers and selfish desires, brutality and neglect on the part of the husband, met by reproaches from the wife, and yet with all this, and perhaps the vice of intoxication in addition, the wretched pair must drag out a miserable existence till “death do them part.” Happy those countries where divorce is permitted for other, though not slighter causes than infidelity! ”

“ A young lady, who thought herself sole sovereign in the heart of her lover, saw him by chance in the company of another, and, waiting no farther proof of his infidelity, she instantly plunged a dagger in his bosom. ”

“ Which of the two is most likely to set a high value upon her reputation, she whom all beholders admire, or she who is admired, at best, by mere chance? And as to women in the married state, this argument assumes, that, when they fall, it is from their own vicious disposition; when the fact is, that, if you search the annals of conjugal infidelity, you will find, that, nine times out of ten, the fault is in the husband. It is his neglect, his flagrant disregard, his frosty indifference, his foul example; it is to these that, nine times out of ten, he owes the infidelity of his wife ”

“ To the coarse and somewhat stupid barons of the time infidelity was an act of absolute self-abandonment, and they felt in no way jealous of these fine knights who were more in sympathy with their wives than they could ever hope to be. So the lover became an accepted person who had rights which the wife did not conceal and which the husband did not deny. ”

“ Princes and crowned heads were poisoned with infidelity. The French Revolution burst forth like a terrible and destructive volcano. Infidelity became ascendant. Religion was laughed to scorn. The Sabbath was abolished. The goddess of reason was enthroned and worshipped. The baneful influence of infidelity and atheism was spread more or less over a large part of Europe. ”

“ When you declaim upon the too great prevalence of infidelity, you speak a language which implies the insane and monstrous notion that natural belief is dependent upon the will; whereas it is the known and suggested reasons which always naturally determine the assent. ”

“ We go into society as usual, we return from society as usual, and we each enter our own temple of life. The situation was established by you in consequence of your first infidelity, an infidelity which has been followed by many others. ”

“ We talk of infidels sometimes as if they were the rarest people in the world. And I grant that open avowed infidelity is happily not very common now. But there is a vast amount of practical infidelity around us, for all that, which is as dangerous in the end as the principles of Voltaire and Paine. ”

“ I will confess I consider this an extreme concession to the passion of jealousy, and one likely to tear off the roof from many a family of innocent children. Only infidelity leading to supposititious children in the case of the wife, or infidelity obstinately and offensively persisted in or endangering health in the case of the husband, really injure the home sufficiently to justify a divorce on the assumptions of our present argument. ”

“ The husband, too, may be exposed to blackmailing by a wife who refuses divorce or who can prove his infidelity and tries to take from him the children, whom he knows to be exposed to corruption in her hands. But, since society and nature favour the man’s infidelity, while both are against that of the woman, it is in the nature of the case that the wife often has difficulty in proving the husband’s infidelity, while he can prove hers easily. ”

“ It rests upon genuine human traits and tendencies. It is sound, natural and honest. It gives the comedy of the stage a high validity that the bombastic fustian of the stage can never show, all the sophomores to the contrary notwithstanding.
When I speak of infidelity, of course, I do not mean only the gross infidelity of “strong” sex plays and the divorce courts, but that lighter infidelity which relieves and makes bearable the burdens of theoretical fidelity—in brief, the natural reaction of human nature against an artificial and preposterous assumption. ”

“ But, bad as is conjugal infidelity in the husband, it is much worse in the wife: a proposition that it is necessary to maintain by the force of reason, because the women, as a sisterhood, are prone to deny the truth of it. ”

“ Usually all the world is acquainted with the treachery and infidelity of a woman, while it is yet a secret to her husband. But the countess took care that her husband should be the first to learn of his injured honor, her broken faith. She had hoped that he would turn from her in anger, and break the marriage-bond which united her to him. ”

“ Depths of infidelity and unbelief; and yet people wonder that infidelity is increasing. Is it any wonder that infidels are laughing us to scorn? Is it any wonder that at Christian Evidence Societies men get up and say that the Christian system has become effete? No wonder, when that is the state of heart of the Lord's people. ”

“ What is it to you if the pensioners have put the major’s wife in prison? Were they not right? You can never know how angry a man is to the bottom of his soul when he hears of a woman’s infidelity. Do you also mean to go that evil way, that you take such a woman’s part? ”

“ If infidelity be disingenuously dispersed in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination—in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem, in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history, as Mr Paley has well observed—I hope it is fair in me thus to meet such poison with an unexpected antidote, which I cannot doubt will be found powerful. ”