Quotes & Sayings About Adultery

[In China at that time:] The penalty for adultery is death by strangulation. Mai-da's mother has added the following note to this section; 'Adultery is a feminine vice. Copulation on the man's part is not his wife's concern, unless he sires a child. Then she must accept the child as one of his homestead. — Nora Waln

Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery. — Ambrose Bierce

A dimly lit tavern, a willing young woman, are some of the reasons I cheat. — Randy Travis

I fooled around and fell in love. — Elvin Bishop

The only thing I know about Moses is him coming down from the mountain with the commandments and saying 'The good news is I got him down to 10. The bad news is adultery is still in. — Steve Kluger

Travel is like adultery; one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live ... in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation. — Anatole Broyard

He looks at Norris, exasperated. He seems to think that with eloquence, with sincerity, with frankness, he can change what is happening. The whole court has seen him slobbering over the queen. How could he expect to go shopping with his eyes, and finger the goods no doubt, and not have an account to settle at the end of it? — Hilary Mantel

Being alone and liking it is, for a woman, an act of treachery, an infidelity far more threatening than adultery. — Molly Haskell

They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It's absurd. — Al Sharpton

Then Peter said to Jesus, "Explain to us the parable that says people aren't defiled by what they eat." 16 "Don't you understand yet?" Jesus asked. 17 "Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. 18 But the words you speak come from the heart - that's what defiles you. 19 For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. 20 These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you. — Anonymous

The Bible identifies 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty. ABORTION is treason against the family and deserves the DEATH PENALTY. ADULTERY is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to DEATH. HOMOSEXUALITY is treason to the family, and it too, is worthy of DEATH. — R.J. Rushdoony

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. — Stephen M. Irwin

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived. — Ben Macintyre

Mars, when guilty of homicide, and set free from the charge of murder by the Athenians through favour, lest he should appear to be too fierce and savage, committed adultery with Venus. — Lactantius

Adultery doesn't come until the seventh commandment, and you won't even get to the seventh commandment if you don't violate the first two commandments. Sex is god, and I worship by having sexual sin. — Mark Driscoll

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and "Thou shalt not lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment. — George Carlin

I just made it official. I'm a twenty-eight year old married woman with a twenty-two year old boyfriend who lives twenty minutes from a husband he doesn't know exists. That God I started believing in a few minutes ago is sending me straight to Hell. — Chrissy Anderson

I'm interested in continuing our conversation about the discomfiture I picked up in the mainstream media with one particular element of this debate. It was this discomfort with a law against adultery. — Mike Pence

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus. — Peter De Vries

The custom of saluting [i.e., embracing] ladies by their relatives and friends was introduced, it is said, by the early Romans, not out of respect originally, but to find by their breath whether they had been drinking wine, this being criminal for women to do, as it sometimes led to adultery. — Joseph Haydn

Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. — Peter S. Prescott

Others drink for sterility and commit murder on the human not yet sown. Some when they sense that they have conceived by sin, consider the poisons for abortion, and frequently die themselves along with it, and go to Hell guilty of three crimes: murdering themselves, committing adultery against Christ, and murder against their unborn child. — St. Jerome

Adultery is the injury of nature. — Plato

The Bible is full of thou-shalt-nots. Thou shalt not kill, that's one. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, that's two. Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife - three and four. Notice how none of them have any loopholes. There are no dependent clauses you can hang your sins on, like: Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife, unless thou art wandering in the blackest hell, lost to yourself and to every memory of light and goodness, and uncovering her nakedness is the only way back to yourself. No, the Bible's absolute when it comes to most things. It's why I don't believe in God.
Sometimes it's necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it's the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn't understand that can go fuck Himself.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain - that's five. — Hillary Jordan

God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you
yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery ... Complaints are always being made about men's lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women. — Augustine Of Hippo

The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to "Thou shalt not steal." Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God's name, swiped from the House of the Lord and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. — Stephen King

Perhaps it should be obvious: Adultery is a social threat that arouses raw anger and fear, which the bellicose then need to discharge rather than merely feel, traditionally on the philandering wife or the female home-wrecker. — Mary Gaitskill

In a burst of hideous insight, DeDe realized the depth of her commitment to this marriage. She had just traded adultery for a cheeseburger and an order of french fries. — Armistead Maupin

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. — Sam Harris

Men and women who decide to flirt with adultery just once can become enmeshed in misery and unhappiness for themselves and their precious families. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Married, but not to each other. — Barbara Mandrell

Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself. — Jennifer Egan

Ladies ... any man that lusts after you will answer to God for his mental adultery ... but you will answer to God if you provoked him by the manner in which you are dressed. — Albert Martin

Planned Parenthood is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism - everything that the Bible condemns. — Pat Robertson

As J.R. I could get away with anything - bribery, blackmail and adultery. But I got caught by cancer. I do want everyone to know that it is a very common and treatable form of cancer. I will be receiving treatment while working on the new 'Dallas' series. — Larry Hagman

Murder, arson, adultery, drugging and drinking, cruel politics
reading a book crammed with such activities can make the timid and yearning among us feel like the happiest people in the world. — Edith Pearlman

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one. — Samuel Butler

My lady Silk, remember that a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman - including adultery ... but in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished. — Ama Ata Aidoo

Cuban-heeled stockings; not the sort of thing you could buy for another man's wife. — Ashley Warlick

The reason adultery is immoral is that it might lead to marriage. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date
1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves. — Mark Twain

A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery. — Karl Shapiro

The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust. — Christine O'Donnell

The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with deep contentment, as if this was the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all 'possessed' fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way. If he ever reads these lines, he must believe me. I am writing calmly, lucidly while waiting for him to come home, as one waits for the chosen lover, the eternal one. — Anais Nin

You could have told me yourself that you found someone else, instead I heard it through the grapevine. — Gladys Knight

Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined. — Rose Macaulay

The first breathe of adultery is the freest. — John Updike

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. observed, The Devil did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to lie, to kill, to commit adultery; he tempted them to live independently of God. — Jim Berg

She says that her love for me would never die, but that would change if she found out about you and I. — Bryan Adams

Benchley and I had an office in the old Life magazine that was so tiny, if it were an inch smaller it would have been adultery. — Dorothy Parker

You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends ... But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart. — Umberto Eco

In their quest to be inclusive and tolerant and up-to-date, the accommodationists imitated his scandalously comprehensive love, while ignoring his scandalously comprehensive judgments. They used his friendship with prostitutes as an excuse to ignore his explicit condemnations of fornication and divorce. They turned his disdain for the religious authorities of his day and his fondness for tax collectors and Roman soldiers into a thin excuse for privileging the secular realm over the sacred. While recognizing his willingness to dine with outcasts and converse with nonbelievers, they deemphasized the crucial fact that he had done so in order to heal them and convert them - ridding the leper of his sickness, telling the Samaritans that soon they would worship in spirit and truth, urging the woman taken in adultery to go, and from now on sin no more. — Ross Douthat

To be the other woman
is to be a season
that is always about to end,
when the air is flowered
with jasmine and peach,
and the weather day after day
is flawless,
and the forecast
is hurricane. — Linda Pastan

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution. — Alison Weir

Eleanor would have been indifferent to the immorality of her adultery, but would never have forgiven the stupidity of it. — Sharon Kay Penman

Melancholy, amorous and barbaric, these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites the dishonor it is supposed to avert. Courtly love was a greater tangle of irreconcilables even than usury. It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy (like modern pornography) more for purposes of — Barbara W. Tuchman

Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. — Sam Harris

We can't choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys or griefs we're given. — Paulo Coelho

The curse of marriage
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! — William Shakespeare

Yes, you'd make a great partner for him. What with the embezzling and the adultery and the drinking. That's what every man wants in a wife - a vaguely alcoholic, fornicating thief. — Eleanor Brown

Adultery is an obvious violation of the rights of another. You are stealing what doesn't belong to you. — Sam Storms

I think it's time for the media and our leaders to get real and start telling the truth about the impact of adultery on our national life. — Mike Pence

Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls. — Julian Barnes

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner. — Erica Jong

It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust! ... You're going to be pleasing each other. And if he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture? — Christine O'Donnell

The Devil did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to lie, to kill, to commit adultery; he tempted them to live independent of God. — Bob Jones, Sr.

It doesn't seem to make sense in our eyes. To us, certain sins, like murder and adultery, seem "bigger." While "smaller" sins like anger and lust, many times go unnoticed. But, in Jesus' math, every sin, no matter how little or how big it seems in our eyes, will keep us from him. Or in other words, will "set off the alarm" in heaven one day unless we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. — C.J. Hitz

I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws. — Jerry Falwell

These Bibles included the Unrighteous Bible, so called from a printer's error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?"; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, making it "Thou shalt commit Adultery." There were the Discharge Bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. — Terry Pratchett

One reason for the spiritual sickness of our society is that so many do not know or care about what is morally right and wrong. So many things are justified on the basis of expediency and the acquiring of money and goods. In recent times, those few individuals and institutions that have been courageous enough to stand up and speak out against adultery, dishonesty, violence, and other forms of evil are often held up to ridicule. Many things are just plain and simply wrong, whether they are illegal or not. Those who persist in following after the evil things of the world cannot know 'the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. — James E. Faust

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow. — Lafcadio Hearn

I am not interested in the ephemeral - such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions. — Thornton Wilder

Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. — Walker Percy

We are [God's] by creation, and again by redemption. He has every right to tell me what to do with my mind and body. I have. I right to do whatever I want with my body. — Randy Alcorn

So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes - to treachery, treason, and adultery - by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma. In — Amor Towles

I lay awake long into the night, obsessing over Lucy's failings. Never mind the drugs and adultery; she seemed to lack the most basic parental instincts for keeping the children out of harm's way. The drip, drip, drip of her poor judgment and neglect was pushing me over the edge. — James Whitfield Thomson

You need to identify the values that come out of that kind of belief system, because I don't see them. All the polls I look at say, for example, that adultery is committed as much in the Bible Belt as in any other part of the country. The same goes for abortion, child abuse, spouse abuse or murder. — John Shelby Spong

But, you know, there's still an argument, there's still ten states that outlaw premarital sex, and many more states where adultery is still outlawed and a crime. — Liam Neeson

Take adultery or theft.
Merely sins.
It is evil who dines on the soul,
stretching out its long bone tongue.
It is evil who tweezers my heart,
picking out its atomic worms. — Anne Sexton

I did commit adultery, if adultery is having a relationship in a marriage with another woman. I learned from that. — Steve Garvey

If you say, "Would there were no wine" because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel," because of the murderers, "Would there were no night," because of the thieves, "Would there were no light," because of the informers, and "Would there were no women," because of adultery. — Saint John Chrysostom

I was growing tired of all the fussing and prevaricating, of the stolen hours and the secret rendez-vous; of the small indignities and broad discomfort that are part and parcel of adultery. — Vicki Baum

Is a BJ adultery? What? Did I miss a day of school? Of course it is! Oral sex is adultery like Curling is an Olympic sport. The only thing is, oral sex should be in the Olympics because it's much harder than Curling, and if you're good at it, you DESERVE a medal! — Lewis Black

Then there were the general moral duties: not to commit adultery or fornication, not to stay out late at night after 8 p.m. frequenting inns and brothels, and not to play cards except during the Twelve Days of Christmas. — Jasper Ridley

At the time, the question of woman's emancipation was of great interest to reformers. For the nihilist the issues were regarding work and sexual freedom. Because a woman's passport (which was used for general travel and not just travel abroad) was legally controlled by men - a father, or husband, had ultimate control of a woman's life. The nihilists solved this problem by having 'fictitious' marriages. This allowed for an emancipation of women de jure if not de facto. This resulted in women having the freedom of mobility to pursue some academic pursuits (which were curtailed during the White Terror) and some enterprise. Finally, the nihilists adopted the credo that adultery was a natural, and even desirable trait, in contrast to the spirit of their time, or their own cultural composition (i.e. they were prudes). — Anonymous

I suppose my greatest disappointment has been realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery.
Ann Eliza Young, page 253 — David Ebershoff

Well, I think adultery is a filthy habit,' said Rose, 'like using someone else's toothbrush. — Alice Thomas Ellis

If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed? — Zoe Heller

If certain women walk straight into adultery, there are many others who cling to numerous hopes, and commit sin only after wandering through a maze of sorrows. — Honore De Balzac

... the role of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be ridiculous; but the role of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous ... . — Leo Tolstoy

Leviticus 18 doesn't tell us everything we need to know about sex, but it gives us the basic rules: incest is bad (vv. 6-27); taking a rival wife is bad (v 18) ... adultery is bad (v 20); killing our children is bad (v 21); homosexuality activity is bad (v 22); and bestiality is bad (v 23). — Kevin DeYoung

It takes two to tango but just one dance with the devil to bring the house down. — Jason Versey

Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional. — Vladimir Nabokov

The Devil endeavours by every means to keep men in error, in the enticement of the passions, in darkness of mind and heart; in pride, avarice, covetousness, envy, hatred, wicked impatience and irritation; in evil despondence, in the abominations of fornication, adultery, theft, false-witness, blasphemy, negligence, slothfulness, and sluggishness. — John Of Kronstadt

A woman never wrote, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." God wrote that. You sin first and foremost against God. — Johnny Hunt

One must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Society. Sins such as adultery, bribery, and betrayal are more like treason than like crime; they damage the social order. Social harmony can be rewoven only by slowly recommitting to relationships and rebuilding trust. The sins of arrogance and pride arise from a perverse desire for status and superiority. The only remedy for them is to humble oneself before others. In other words, people in earlier times inherited a vast moral vocabulary and set of moral tools, developed over centuries and handed down from generation to generation. This was a practical inheritance, like learning how to speak a certain language, which people could use to engage their own moral struggles. — David Brooks

As a purely intellectual matter, nothing was suddenly discovered in the 1960s that contradicted the biblical witness on fornication, adultery, and homosexuality, or that established that Jesus hadn't really meant what he said about the indissolubility of marriage ... The difference was that in 1970 many more people wanted to believe these arguments because of the new sexual possibilities associated with the birth control pill. — Ross Douthat

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note. — Georges Bizet

There are those who, while reading a book, recall, compare, conjure up emotions from other, previous readings < ... > This is one of the most delicate forms of adultery. — Alberto Manguel