Swearing

“ Now will I speak of oathes false and great
A word or two, as olde bookes treat.
Great swearing is a thing abominable,
And false swearing is more reprovable.
The highe God forbade swearing at all;
Witness on Matthew: but in special
Of swearing saith the holy Jeremie,
Thou thalt swear sooth thine oathes, and not lie:
And swear in doom and eke in righteousness;
But idle swearing is a cursedness.
Behold and see, there in the firste table
Of highe Godde's hestes honourable,
How that the second best of him is this,
Take not my name in idle or amiss. ”

“ While by no means to be accounted friendly towards the vile excrescences of swearing, the ordinary man of the world is not to be repelled by every street oath, or put to lasting confusion by every passing word of unseemliness. To put it upon no higher ground than that of mere custom, it were too arrogant to assume abhorrence of a practice that is as trite and customary as the incidents of one’s daily rounds. ”

“ One day, when a very good friend was visiting me, I thought I would begin on my course of depravity. The first lesson would be in swearing. When an opportunity presented itself, I uttered a word that I thought was strong enough for an amateur to begin on. It stuck in my throat and nearly choked me. My friend laughed and looked both amused and ashamed. Reader, if you have lived to maturity and never indulged in profanity, you can’t imagine how awkward it will be for you to turn out your first piece of swearing. You can’t do it justice. ”

“ What can a wife and her children think of an intemperate husband and father? We can be sober in language, and shun cursing and swearing—the most useless, unmeaning, and brutal of vulgarities. Nothing can be so silly and unmeaning—not to say shocking, repulsive, and sinful—as the oaths so common in the mouths of vulgar swearers. They are profanation without purpose—impiety without provocation—blasphemy without excuse. ”

“ Thy customary swearing is an uncharitable accusation of the hearers, as if they were so incredulous, that they would not believe a man without an oath, and so profane, that they delight in the profanation of the name of God ”

“ Swearing has the same soothing effect upon our angry passions that smashing the furniture or slamming the doors is so well known to exercise; added to which it is much cheaper. Swearing clears a man out like a pen’orth of gunpowder does the wash-house chimney. ”

“ How do we sin by swearing?
We sin by swearing, 1. When we swear falsely or in doubt; 2. When we swear, or induce others to swear, without necessity; 3. When we swear to do what is evil, or to omit what is good. ”

“ This careless, indulgent and pleasure-seeking portion of the world have derived even comfort and convenience from a recognition of the best regulated usages of swearing. Reputations for courage and audacity have thus been hourly established by the careful insinuation of hideous expletives. Friendships have been cemented by the force of this common bond of union; strangers set at their ease; the weak and hesitating have been galvanised into action. ”

“ In the confusion I hear something almost like swearing, but not swearing, for most of those men are "holy men," who do not think of swearing. The confusion continues. Most of this time I am standing, but presently a chair is presented me, and now a new class of comforters gathers around me, speaking smooth, consoling words in my ear while upon the other side are angry disputants, clinching their fists and growing red in the face. ”

“ The common swearer is confined to no rank or age in society. I have heard the youth who was barely in his teens indulge in this sin, as though it had been a part of his parental or day-school education. I have heard the young gentleman, so-called, recently returned from the walks of a University, pollute his lips and character with this shameful vice. I have heard the man who laid claim to wealth, to intelligence, to respectability, and to honour, pour forth his swearing words. ”

“ I desire to be understood right, and that by swearing I mean all those cursory oaths, curses, execrations, imprecations, asseverations, and by whatsoever other names they are distinguished, which are used in vehemence of discourse, in the mouths almost of all men more or less, of what sort soever. ”

“ No language can be stronger than that of Sir John—“I cannot sufficiently lament,” he says “that shameful, inexcusable and almost universal practice of profane swearing in our streets; a crime so easy to be punished, and so seldom done, that mankind almost forget it to be an offence, and to our dishonour be it spoken, it is almost peculiar to the English nation.” ”

“ To begin with, the origin of all swearing was the same—the one intense dread of falsehood against which as yet no laws were sufficient to guard. Fancy the mortal distress of barbarian man when he first wakes to the belief that his enemies can, by smooth speech, wrest from his hands what his prowess or his labour has acquired. No art that he is aware of can pervert the action of tongues set falsely going. Seeing how illimitable is the crop of words, he may even imagine a plague of lies that will fall thick about him like locusts or caterpillars ”

“ It would almost seem, from the evidence of the several passages we have had occasion to refer to, as if the various diversities of character and occupation had engendered a spirit of competition in the assumption of oaths. Whether scholar or soldier, knight or citizen, each man, according to his degree, is burning to distinguish himself by some distinctive and eccentric form of swearing. ”

“ So far as we have mastered the system of Dan Michael we are driven to the conclusion that the practice of swearing, as understood in the Cloister of Saint Austin, was, save for the outward distinction of dress, much the same as prevails in the later world. “For there are some,” says he of the cloister, “so evil taught that they are able to say nothing without swearing. Some swear as if smitten with sudden pain. Others swear by the sun, the moon, by the head, or by their father’s soul.” ”

“ Swearing relieves the feelings—that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings. ”

“ Personally one may hold the art of swearing in perfect indifference, being neither among the number of swearers oneself nor having any very strong feeling of reprobation towards its more active adherents. But despite a certain inclination that we feel to apologise for what we hold to be the silliest of vices, we are forced to recollect that to many the offence will always appear in anything but a trivial light. ”

“ As swearing became a common practice with men upon trivial occasions, and in ordinary conversation, they used to take oaths by any god, person, or thing, as their peculiar habits or predilections, or the fancy of the moment, dictated. ”

“ It is full as true to say now, because of swearing, the land rejoiceth in iniquity, is full of prophaneness, and without any fear or awe of the divine Majesty, daily swallowing down all manner of oaths, with as much serious reflection, as pot-companions swallow down their liquor. ”

“ To curse effectively one must invoke a reality or, at the least, a possibility. Any swearing that fails to wound the susceptibility of the person sworn at or of the witness [13] to the oath, is mere play. Few people enjoy being sworn at, but there are no forms of humour more boring than guaranteed non-alcoholic substitutes for the true wine of swearing. ”

“ The subject of swearing the writer has come to regard as one of the many indices by which the paths of our ancestors may be traced. Holding in fitting estimation the monuments of their industry and their prudence, none the less may we seek to view the departed generations in their hours of carelessness and frolic, and may peer into their casinos and their tiring-rooms, their spital-houses and their bridewells. ”

“ And yet, from the swearing and blasphemy with which our land is cursed, one would think there were some great advantage to be reaped from the practice. There is to-day in all our land no more prevalent custom, and no more God-defying abomination, than profane swearing. You can hardly walk our streets five minutes without having your ears stung and your sensibilities shocked. ”

“ This is a change wrought in men's feelings, which all must hail with great pleasure. Putting out of sight for a moment the sin of such a practice, and the bad influence it must have had upon all emotions of reverence for the name and attributes of the Divine Being, and the natural effect of profane swearing, to "harden a' within," we might marvel at the utter folly and incongruity of making swearing accompany every expression of anger or surprise, or of using oaths as mere expletives in common discourse. ”

“ It was taking the name of swearing itself in vain. It substituted for any closer argument the incisive logic of ridicule.
It occurs to us to notice that Shakespeare, who was certainly alive to the hidden springs of swearing, has conceived the notion of winging much the same folly with a precisely similar shaft. It had been the fashion among the gay Ephesians of Eastcheap, during Elizabeth’s reign, to swear by their honour. “Where learnt you that oath, fool?” ”

“ Austin, ‘We ought to forbear swearing that which is truth; for, by the custom of swearing, men oftentimes fall into perjury, and are always in danger of it.’”
Take a few considerations, with a view to show the evil of swearing, and to deter from the practice of it.
1. Consider that Name by which the Swearer generally commits his sin. “The name of God,” says Jeremy Taylor, “is so sacred, so mighty, that it rends mountains, it opens the bowels of the deepest rocks, it casts out devils, and makes hell to tremble, and fills all the regions of heaven with joy ”

“ An intervening age of irony probably sufficed to undermine the sanctity of the swearing obligation, until at last the oath of more sober times has come to be a common catchword, or the fustian ornament of somewhat spirited talk. In short, we shall always find that the sonorous expletive of recent days is nothing else than the once deliberative oath of Christian piety.
Human ingenuity has seldom been more industriously employed than in attempting to restore successive breaches in the observances of swearing. ”

“ A circumstance like this would seem to suggest some remarkable underlying motive as accounting for the wonderful omnipotence of swearing. It is possible that an occult virus congenial to its development is so insinuated into the composition of the human mind as to defy the power of ethics wholly to eradicate it. Can it be that the habit owes its existence and source of delight to some soothing and pleasureful qualities which, like the solace of the tobacco-leaf or the balm of the nightshade, the world will not willingly forego? ”

“ Swearing has grown milder. The grossness and blasphemy are largely barred, while the expletives that technically may not be swearing at all, being used for raciness, vigor and emphasis, have increased one hundred fold. ”

“ As regards not swearing, in which also you say that Christ completed the law given to these righteous men of antiquity, I cannot be certain that they did not swear, for we find that Paul the apostle swore. With you, swearing is still a common practice, for you swear by the light, which you love as flies do; for the light of the mind which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, as distinct from mere natural light, you know nothing of. ”

“ It continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man. ”

“ Occasionally in low life one hears a picturesque ancestral oath or an imaginative modern one coined by some true blasphemer and carefully stored by an admirer for his own use—“as in wild earth a Grecian vase”. But for the most part the dreary repetition of the two sexual mainstays of barrack-room swearing is the despair of the artist. This is a mechanical age, and even our swearing has been standardized. ”

“ Daisy says we mustn't say 'mercy,' and 'gracious,' and 'heavens,' and maybe we mustn't; but why is that swearing? Swearing is taking God's name in vain, and how do such words take His name in vain if we don't speak it? And she thinks playing with the Bible, or saying its words when we are playing or just talking common talk, is taking God's name in vain, too. ”

“ This practice of the Essens, in refusing to swear, and esteeming swearing in ordinary occasions worse than perjury, is delivered here in general words, as are the parallel injunctions of our Savior, Matthew 6:34 ”

“ Your swearing is not solum vinculum, but novum vinculum, is not the only, but only a new and another bond to tie you to the obedience of the things you swear unto; which are so excellent and so glorious, that if God gave those that take it a heart to keep it, it will make these three kingdoms the glory of the world. ”

“ I ask leave here for a thought or two about that inundation custom has made upon our language and discourse by familiar swearing; and I place it here, because custom has so far prevailed in this foolish vice that a man’s discourse is hardly agreeable without it; and some have taken upon them to say it is pity it should not be lawful, it is such a grace in a man’s speech, and adds so much vigour to his language. ”