Top 86 Quotes About Oaths
#1. The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency. Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of his men, and it was evident that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources.
Stephen Crane
#2. Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.
Jeremy Collier
#3. My love for you forged a bond to this land long before I even knew it. You play no part in my oaths to these people...because I made mine to you long ago, in my heart.
Jules Watson
#4. Topher? Dude, how many oaths did this kid plan to break in his first month as a Digger?Who did he think he was?Me?
Diana Peterfreund
#5. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives .
Joseph Brodsky
#6. No one, by swearing, makes themselves an ounce more honest; any more than a man makes himself wealthy by counting his gold. Oaths may make a liar a liar yet again, having lied about the oath as well. But it cannot alter the worth of an honest man's word.
Jake Yaniak
#7. We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny ... The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
E.B. White
#8. Oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.
Herman Melville
#9. Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.
David McCullough
#10. Such words he spoke, but they are not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fell continually from his lips.
Jack London
#11. Do not give dalliance too much rein; the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.
William Shakespeare
#12. I say you must not win an unjust case by oaths.
Aeschylus
#13. A band is not a marriage. There are no oaths of allegiance. If you feel your life will be better served by splitting up the group, you've got to do it - but of course it does cause problems.
Steve Winwood
#14. Every profession will have its rogues, of course, no matter what oaths are sworn, but many health care professionals have a real commitment to serving the best interests of their clients.
Peter Singer
#15. Asgard has fallen. The gods are dead. The old oaths have been broken. And tell all who will hear: the Valkyrie ride to war.
Pierce Brown
#16. When thou dost tell another's jest, therein Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need; Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin.
George Herbert
#17. I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.
Herodotus
#18. Whoever considers the number of absurd and ridiculous oaths necessary to be taken at present in most countries, on being admitted into any society or profession whatever, will be less surprised to find prevarication still prevailing, where perjury has led the way.
Guillaume-Thomas Francois Raynal
#19. ... the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#20. Oaths are the counterfeit money with which we pay the sacrifice of love.
Ninon De L'Enclos
#21. [Deserters], they've given up everything. Oaths. Families. When you desert, it breaks you. It leaves you willing to do anything, because you've already given away everything you could have cared about losing.
Brandon Sanderson
#23. Oaths are not the credit of men but men of oaths.
Aeschylus
#24. Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.
John Quincy Adams
#25. Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths.
William Shakespeare
#26. From now on, there would be no other oaths but this, no other contracts, no other obligations. Never forgive, never forget.
Sarah J. Maas
#27. We swore sacred oaths to be strong and to save the planet and to be friends forever.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#28. If I were to disclose all their rituals, I think that it would be easy to prove that witches are not diabolists; but the oaths are solemn and the witches are my friends. I would not want to hurt their feelings. They have secrets which to them are sacred. They have good reason for their secrecy.
Gerald Gardner
#30. I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
Wilfred Owen
#31. The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
John Adams
#32. Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths
William Shakespeare
#33. She looked up at her father. "I am bound so tight by oaths that I feel like a fly in a spider's web. All I can do is use every resource I have before the spider strikes.
Gwynn White
#34. Married love between man and woman is bigger than oaths guarded by right of nature.
Aeschylus
#35. Son of a whore, God damn you! can you tell
A peerless peer the readiest way to Hell?
I've outswilled Bacchus, sworn of my own make
Oaths would fright Furies, and make Pluto quake;
I've swived more whores more ways than Sodom's
John Wilmot
#36. I launched into a discourse on the gradual contraction of medieval oaths invoking the Virgin Mother Mary's menstrual blood and the seepage of Christ's wounds, astounded to find any use for my college study of medieval literature.
Hope Jahren
#37. Language cannot describe the scene that followed; the shouts, oaths, frantic gestures, taunts, replies, and little fights; and therefore I shall not attempt it.
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet
#38. I [Pigpen] grew up in their clubhouse. I understand you because I am you. I also learned to crawl on the sticky floors of where guys made their oaths. But here's the difference, I grew up watching people make stupid mistakes in the name of revenge.
Katie McGarry
#39. Faith then they vowed
Fast, unyielding,
There each to each
In oaths binding.
Bliss there was born
When Brynhild woke;
Yet fate is strong
To find its end.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#40. For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes,
And hold-fast is the only dog.
William Shakespeare
#41. Promises from Connor Cobalt are like oaths spilled in blood.
Krista Ritchie
#42. Oaths and curses are a proof of a most heroic courage, at least in appearance, which answers the same end.
Mary Collyer
#44. This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths of obedience.
Lauren Oliver
#45. Oh, the others will talk and plan and make oaths and promises, but there are precious few fuckers who will do.
Ian McGuire
#46. When a gentlemen is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.
William Shakespeare
#47. The current situation reminds me too much of the fable of the
farmer whose chickens are dying. The local priest gives one remedy af-
ter another - prayers, potions, oaths - until all of the chickens are dead.
"Too bad," says the priest, "I had so many other good ideas.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
#48. Bardic oaths weren't made to Shkoder, they were just made.
Tanya Huff
#49. A whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if I borrowed mine oaths of him and might not spend them at my pleasure. When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths, ha?
William Shakespeare
#50. I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?
George R R Martin
#52. Tis not the many oaths that make the truth; But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true.
William Shakespeare
#53. I will not hang back here in Alicante while Magnus is in danger. Go without me, and you disrespect our parabatai oaths, you disrespect me as a shadowhunter, and you disrespect the fact that this is my battle too.
Cassandra Clare
#54. Allah does not call you to account for what is vain in your oaths, but He will call you to account for what your hearts have earned, and Allah is Forgiving, Forbearing.
Anonymous
#56. What use of oaths, of promise, or of test, where men regard no God but interest?
Edmund Waller
#57. Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
Samuel Johnson
#59. Gone is the trust to be placed in oaths; I cannot understand if the gods you swore by then no longer rule, or men live by new standards of what is right.
Euripides
#60. A trial relied heavily on oaths, but both sides would bring as many liars as they could muster, and judgment usually went to the better liars or, if both sides were equally convincing, to the side who had the sympathy of the onlookers.
Bernard Cornwell
#62. Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them, - imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.
Laurence Sterne
#63. Love's night and a lamp
Judged our vows:
That she would love me ever
And I should never leave her.
Love's night and you, lamp,
Witnessed the pact.
Today the vow runs:
"Oaths such as these, waterwords."
Tonight, lamp,
Witness her lying
- In other arms.
Meleager
#64. In our laws ... by the oath which they prescribe, we appeal to the Supreme Being so to deal with us hereafter as we observe the obligation of our oaths. The Pagan world ... are without the mighty influence of this principle which is proclaimed in the Christian system.
Rufus King
#65. The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.
Sophocles
#66. Oh, so poignant' said Varys. 'And yet, it is truly said that blood runs truer than oaths
George R R Martin
#68. Oaths were important to word correctly, but Gregory could be forgiven for his lapse. It wasn't every day that his demon lover took a member of his choir hostage, beat the shit out of the guy and kept him a starving captive in her basement.
Debra Dunbar
#69. O, that's a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,
William Shakespeare
#71. oaths to deceive each other lest any foot should
Anonymous
#72. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.
Joseph Heller
#73. What heavenly power lends an ear
To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver?
Euripides
#74. They fix attention, heedless of your pain,
With oaths like rivets forced into the brain;
And e'en when sober truth prevails throughout,
They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.
William Cowper
#75. The senator...was a smart man who had made his way in life with a single-mindedness oblivious to any of those stumbling blocks known as conscience, sworn oaths, justice, duty...
Victor Hugo
#76. Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths ... ?
George Washington
#77. I could imagine Cnut sitting there and thinking that I must join him soon, and we would raise a horn of ale together. There is no pain in Valhalla, no sadness, no tears, no broken oaths.
Bernard Cornwell
#78. Priests, she insisted, could not sin. It was a thing impossible. Everything that they did, and wished, was of course right. She hoped I would see the reasonableness and duty of the oaths I was to take, and be faithful to them.
Maria Monk
#79. The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#80. Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.
John Locke
#81. Oaths be of the heart, and he that breaketh them in open fact is oft, as now, no breaker in truth, for already were they scorned and trampled on by his opposites.
E.R. Eddison
#82. I swore on my knees at the altar where you held me that I would kill you. It was an oath you made me make in my own blood. And now I have returned to give you the promised blade.
T. Mountebank
#83. Never offer an oath lightly. For you pledge not only your life and sacred honor, but your people's honor as well. To break an oath is to be without honor, to be without a spirit, and to be apart from the people.
Raymond E. Feist
#84. When I said I should die in your service with pleasure, I intended to live in it many long years; since, to tell you the truth, from a child I had always a particular dislike to dying, and I think that with every hour the prejudice grows stronger.
Matthew Gregory Lewis
#85. For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#86. Just because your head knows something it does not mean that your heart agrees.
Ale Meza-Santiago
