"Forswear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he, grasping the bottle by the neck, "and I forswear it! I've given up gambling, and I'll give up this too." He was on the point of deliberately pouring the whole contents of the bottle on to the table, but Hargrave wrested it from him. "On you be the curse, then!" said he. And, backing from the room, he shouted, "Farewell, ye tempters!" ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... tell you I have very often been! And who could keep himself therefrom, seeing men do unseemly things all day long, keeping not the commandments of God neither fearing His judgment? Many times a day I had liefer been dead than alive, seeing young men follow after vanities and hearing them curse and forswear themselves, haunting the taverns, visiting not the churches and ensuing rather the ways of the world than that of God.' 'My son,' said the friar, 'this is a righteous anger, nor for my part might I enjoin thee any penance therefor. But hath anger ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and dishonoured in the presence of thy friend. I will not for my part have any hand in such meanness nor will I taste the olives; furthermore, it standeth not to reason that after seven years' keeping they should be fit to eat. I do implore thee to forswear this ill purpose." On such wise the merchant's wife protested and prayed her husband that he meddle not with Ali Khwajah's olives, and shamed him of his intent so that for the nonce he cast the matter from his mind. However, although the trader refrained ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... actual numerical superiority in fighting strength, an offensive will, however, seldom assume practical form unless founded on an offensive mental attitude, which ever seeks the favorable and suitable opportunity to strike. Completely to abandon the offensive state of mind is to forswear victory. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... year is o'er? You fear to come to want yourself, you say? Come, calculate how small the loss per day, If henceforth to your cabbage you allow And your own head the oil you grudge them now. If anything's sufficient, why forswear, Embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? Can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw Stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine to master the details of the very various business of the estate, Ormiston had revised his position and decided on heroic measures of reform. He would rid himself of debt, forswear expensive London habits, and those many pleasant iniquities which every great city offers liberally to such handsome, fine gentlemen as himself. He actually proposed, just so soon as Katherine could conveniently spare him, to decline ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... actors he was usually out of an engagement, and he was invariably poor. It was always his poorest moment that he would choose for the indulgence of an odd, and surely kindly, eccentricity. He would half starve himself, go without drinks, forswear tobacco, deny himself car fares, till at last he had saved up five dollars. This by no means easy feat accomplished, he would have his five-dollar bill changed into five hundred pennies, filling his pockets with which, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... suffered her own delectable lips to be pressed by the bearded mouth-piece of some tender and persuasive lover, and now sought to make atonement by kissing St. Nicholas! By all the powers of beauty, I'll forswear sack, Dominico, and try—ha! here comes a devotee of another sort. Let us wait a while. For, as I live, it is a great puncheon of a woman, weighing over three hundred pounds—puffing and steaming as she waddles toward the shrine—a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... "There is one condition which not my will, but the jealousy of our people enforces, viz. that the Prince Asander, if he weds my daughter, shall thenceforth forswear his country, nor seek to return to it on pain of death. I pray thee, pardon the rudeness of my countrymen; but they are Greeks, and judge their ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... not be comforted, and cried out that he had done better never to forswear his religion, but to have died at once, as ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... helplessness unless Bootea would now yield to his entreaties and forswear the horrible sacrifice, turned to the girl, his face drawn and haggard, and his voice, when he spoke, vibrating tremulously from the pressure of his despair. He held out his arms, and Bootea threw herself against ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause"—and even "without a cause" seems to have been interpolated in later days—"shall be in danger of the judgment." "Again ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. But I say unto you, Swear not at all, neither by the heavens, for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is His footstool. Let your communication be Yea, yea, nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." "Ye hath ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... Indian that heaven did forswear, Because he heard some Spaniards were there, Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been, He ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... saviour and her sword. In the fierce year of failure and of fame, Art thou not yet the same That wast as lightning swifter than all wings In the blind face of kings? When priests took counsel to devise despair, And princes to forswear, She clasped thee, O her sword and flag-bearer And staff and shield to her, O Garibaldi; need was hers and grief, Of thee and of the chief, And of another girt in arms to stand As good of hope and hand, As high of soul and happy, albeit indeed The ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... friend Nicholas? Hast thou forgot how some years ago he took thee out of the sponging-house?** ['Tis true, my friend Nic. did so, and I thank him; but he made me pay a swinging reckoning.] Thou beginnest now to repent thy bargain that thou wast so fond of; and, if thou durst, would forswear thy own hand and seal. Thou sayest that thou hast purchased me too great an estate already, when, at the same time, thou knowest I have only a mortgage. 'Tis true I have possession, and the tenants own me for master; but has ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... of his tone, Frank gave him a distinct account of the death of Morris. Rob Roy struck the butt of his gun with great vehemence on the ground, and broke out, "I vow to God, such a deed might make one forswear kin, clan, country, wife, and bairns! And yet the villain wrought long for it. He but drees the doom he intended for me. Hanging or drowning—it is just the same. But I wish, for all that, they had put a ball or ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was welcome; she wandered carelessly through the world, but chiefly she loved an island in the north; and in its capital she has her palace, and the inhabitants of the isle have given themselves over, body and soul, to her domination; they pander and lie and cheat, and forswear themselves; to gain her smile they will shrink from no base deed, no meanness; and she, too, makes women widows and children orphans.... But her subjects care not; they are fat and well-content; the goddess smiles on them, and they are the ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... just the same," said Carraway, as he shook his head and went to bed. "I think on the 1st of January, if you have no objections, Mrs. Carraway, I will forswear utilitarianism—and you may remove the golf-balls from the cloisonne vase as soon ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... we're saying; Of to-morrow have no care! Young and old together playing, Boys and girls, be blithe as air! Every sorry thought forswear! Keep perpetual holiday.—- Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; Nought ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Ajib hight that I may take from him my father's and mother's blood-wit." When Jaland had read this letter, he said to Sahim, "Tell thy lord that Ajib hath fled, he and his folk, and I know not whither he is gone; but, as for Jaland, he will not forswear his faith, and to-morrow, there shall be battle between us and the Sun shall give us the victory." So Sahim returned to his brother with this reply, and when the morning morrowed, the Moslems donned their arms and armour and bestrode their stout steeds, calling aloud on the name of the All-conquering ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... first took shape in the imagination, while the struggle between Paganism and Christianity was still going on. As the converted heathen was made to renounce his false gods, none the less real for being false, so the renegade Christian must forswear the true Deity. It is very likely, however, that the whole thing may be more modern than the assumed date of Theophilus would imply, and if so, the idea of feudal allegiance gave the first hint, as it certainly modified the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... no help here unless you forswear your duty. Forswear it! Do not kill my father—the father of the woman who loves you. Worse and more horrible it would be to let my father kill you! It's I who make this situation unnatural, impossible. You must forswear your duty. I can live no longer if you don't. I pray ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... forth fruits meet for repentance." You see what I mean. Now, you are just here, some of you—you know you are. If you are addicted to any evil habit, it is just the same. Jesus Christ wants you to forswear that habit in your will, determination, and purpose. You have not the power to deliver yourself from it. You may struggle, as some of you tell me you are doing, but it overcomes you, and down you ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... were in the Southern army, as in every army, many who went with the multitude in the first enthusiastic rush, or who were brought into the ranks by the needful process of conscription; but it is not a little remarkable that few of the poorest and the most ignorant could be induced to forswear the cause and to purchase release from the sufferings of imprisonment by the simple process of taking the oath. Those who have seen the light of battle on the faces of these humble sons of the South, or witnessed their steadfastness in camp, on the march, in the hospital, have ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... with murder's guilt, how else wert thou The burden of her womb? Dost thou forswear Thy mother's kinship, closest bond ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... wife. We will not give him A Christian burial: yet he was a warrior, And wise, yea truthful, till that blighted vow Which God avenged to-day. Wrap them together in a purple cloak And lay them both upon the waste sea-shore At Hastings, there to guard the land for which He did forswear himself—a warrior—ay, And but that Holy Peter fought for us, And that the false Northumbrian held aloof, And save for that chance arrow which the Saints Sharpen'd and sent against him—who can tell?— Three horses had ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... in a much more lenient shape and style. The truth is, we from the beginning saw marks of feeling and power in Mr. Keats's verses, which made us think it very likely, he might become a real poet of England, provided he could be persuaded to give up all the tricks of Cockneyism, and forswear for ever the thin potations of Mr. Leigh Hunt. We, therefore, rated him as roundly as we decently could do, for the flagrant affectations of those early productions of his. In the last volume he has published, we find more beauties than in the former, both of language and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... money as he had upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York. His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at Newburyport, telegraphed money for the prodigal's return with the stipulation that he should forswear the inky cloak and abase himself in the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... fell straight on his knees before her, and, like a good-hearted cratur as he was, ordered the whiskey punch out of the room, and bid 'em throw open all the windows, and cursed himself: and then my lady came to herself again, and when she saw him kneeling there, bid him get up, and not forswear himself any more, for that she was sure he did not love her, and never had: this we learned from Mrs. Jane, who was the only person left present at all this. "My dear," returns my master, thinking, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... blush to own it?" said Miss Vernon. "Why, we must forswear your alliance. Then, I suppose, you can neither give a ball, nor ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... after Sir W. without some such object as that expressed in the preface. After all, I do not care a damn about the preface. It will get me on four pages somewhere else. Shall I retract my opinion altogether, and forswear my own book? Rayner is right to cry out: I think I have tipped him fair and foul copy, a lean rabbit and a fat one. The remainder of vol. ii will be ready to go on with, but not the beginning of the third. The appendixes had better be at the end of the second ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various |
