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Faithlessness

noun
1.
Unfaithfulness by virtue of being unreliable or treacherous.  Synonyms: falseness, fickleness, inconstancy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Faithlessness" Quotes from Famous Books



... break off their engagements is not generally very publicly known, but the duke came out from this interview in a fit of great vexation and anger. He pulled off the queen's ring and threw it from him, muttering curses upon the fickleness and faithlessness ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... person coming from an interview with him might construe as a promise the kindly remarks with which the President wished to soften a refusal. The promise, which was no promise, not being kept, the suppliant accused the President of faithlessness or falsehood. McKinley, it was said, could say no to three different seekers for the same office so balmily that each of them went away convinced that he was the successful applicant. Yet McKinley escaped the charge of mendacity and Roosevelt, who deserved ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... said the lady, looking up from the enamoured and conquering eyes of the king, "art thou not ashamed, my lord?—the grim earl comes to chide thee for thy faithlessness to thy queen, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Teuton, haply the Roman Empire might still be standing. As it was, the statesmen of the day, men of temporary shifts and expedients, living only as we say "from hand to mouth", saw, in the changing moods of the Germans, only the faithlessness of barbarism, which they met with the faithlessness of civilisation, and between the two the Empire—which no one really wished to ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... in accents of the liveliest surprise, dismay, and horror. "Oh, woman! Woman! The faithlessness! The treachery!" ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... chiefs spread a snare for the Envoy is plain, and that they regarded his acceptance of their deceitful proposals as a proof of his faithlessness to the treaty obligations to which he had bound himself. It was no element in their reasoning that since they had not regarded the treaty the British functionary might without breach of faith hold that it did not bind him. But it is ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... in her society, together with the absence of temptation in the shape of his mistress. Constancy to the marriage vow was scarcely to be expected from a man whose morals had never been shackled by restraint; yet faithlessness to a bride was scarcely to be anticipated ere the honeymoon had waned. This was, however, the unhappy fate which awaited ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... Charles X. invading a dependence of his ally, the Sultan, and confiscating a province to revenge a tap on the face given by the Bey of Algiers to a French consul. We find Louis Philippe breaking the most solemn engagements with almost wanton faithlessness; renouncing all extension of territory in Africa and then conquering a country larger than France—a country occupied by tribes who never were the subjects of the Sultan or of the Bey, and who could be robbed of their independence only by wholesale and systematic ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... friendship. They advanced in the confiding way usual among Indians when they bear the pipe of peace, and consider themselves sacred from attack. If we violate the sanctity of this ceremonial, by any hostile movement on our part, it is we who incur the charge of faithlessness; and we doubt not that in both these instances the white men have been considered by the Blackfeet as the aggressors, and have, in consequence, been held up as ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... Alice, that I do not attempt to defend my faithlessness, hardly to extenuate it; and I do not at all wonder at your altered temper towards me. It was a cruel blow I gave you. But my life shall show you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... the cause that builds its strength upon a woman's faith; for women are faithful only where they love, and when they love their faithlessness becomes their faith. They are not fixed as men are fixed: they rise more high and sink more low—they are strong and changeful as the sea. Harmachis, beware of this Charmion: for, like the ocean, she may float thee home; or, like the ocean, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we spoke in our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose together, and walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand clung to my wife as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of the prison of my faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was glorious again. It had faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma, uninteresting as "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" the moon had been but a round ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... my child," I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched creature, Laertes, in Hamlet, who reads his sister such a lesson on her maidenly duties, but declines almost ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... no connection with political agitation, and did not require any measure like this to put it down; and that the true cause of these disturbances was the refusal of ministers to abolish tithes, and the true object of it to prevent all expression of public sentiment in Ireland against their faithlessness and misgovernment. Those who supported the bill contended, on the other hand, that not only were the existing outrages such as to require extraordinary measures contrary to the constitution, and that when this necessity for overstepping the constitution once existed, it was safer to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... needn't think so ill of yourself because it was you who punished my faithlessness and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... 9: The singer one evening overhears a young man lamenting the faithlessness of his sweetheart, who scorns him ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin

... affection in it,—some vestige at least of the intelligence of affection,—else what gain is there for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?" ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... offered them what they said they would lose; to this they agreed, and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in prayer; when he had ended, he looked up, and his congregation had vanished! His shrewd brother Thomas, to whom he complained of this faithlessness, said, "Eben, the next time ye pay folk to hear you preach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you are done." I remember, on another occasion, in Bristo Church, with an immense audience, he had been going over the Scripture accounts of great sinners repenting and turning to God, repeating ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... change seemed a positive sin. She shuddered to think of Sara's wicked faithlessness; she wept with pity, remembering poor Charles. The sense of wrong, as well as of misery, had entered her world at once; her idols were crumbling into dust. Life grew painful, and a morbid bitterness ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... on. Yet all desire not to be charged with wrong-doing; they would not they should be called unchristian on account of their conduct. Indeed, such excess of covetousness obtains that the public robbing and stealing, and the faithlessness and fraud, of the meanest hirelings, servants and maids everywhere can no longer ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... such a compact, and that the compact should still have remained in existence without his knowledge. Although there were hours during which he was most anxious to return to her,—in which he told himself that it was more difficult to stay away from her than even to endure her faithlessness; though from day to day he became convinced that he could never return to the haunts of men or even to the easy endurance of life without her, yet his pride would ever come back to him and assure him that ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... then followed me dumbly. I was so filled with sorrow for him that I did not, except in one place, think much of the fearful cliffs along which we made our way. At the Devil's Seat, indeed, my nerves for a moment seemed shaken and almost gave way as I thought of the false young lord whose faithlessness had caused all the misery to these simple, kindly folk, and of the fierce young Norseman who had there found so sweet a revenge. But we came on and passed the ledge, and descending struck the broader path just after the day broke, where it was ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... Simon's words: "Though all should leave me, yet with my four sons I will stand true to the just cause, which I have sworn to uphold for the honour of the Church and the good of the kingdom; I have been in many lands, pagan and Christian, but in none have I found such faithlessness ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... possibly come from an old man sixty-eight years of age, he was taken to Kallendborg Castle, where he was permitted to entertain himself by hunting or in any other manner he pleased. He lived ten years later, ending in 1559 a life whose misfortunes were a just reward for his faithlessness and cruelty in his day ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... burned and steamed and pounded and starved, till he is finally disgusted enough to want something that will not harm if it will not cure, so he drags himself before us with possibly a gleam of hope, possibly the faithlessness of despair, and asks for ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... fact more unanswerably demonstrated than in the missionary field. Faithlessness in this respect and fearfulness of expenditure, both of men and money in missionary work, have always stood in any church for choked channels of spiritual power, and subsequently spelled anaemia, atrophy, and death. Constant metabolism is as essential for spiritual ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... disloyalty to friendship ever known is to be sought in that age, it will be found in the conduct of Essex to Bacon's royal mistress. Yet writers of eloquence have exhausted their rhetorical powers in denouncing Bacon's faithlessness to his friend. But no impartial reader of the full story in the documents of the time can doubt that throughout these events Bacon did his duty and no more, and that in doing it he not merely made a voluntary sacrifice of his popularity, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... disclose to any one the cause of his failure to present himself on the wharf in time. Whether she loved Lacy, or some one in the Union fleet, made no difference to his love. He would love her till he died. Ay, he would love her even in the face of her treachery, her faithlessness—everything! He hated himself for this, but it was true, he could not ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the vessel towards the harbour of Arbroath, into which he resolved to run at all hazards, trusting to the harbour-lights to guide him when he should draw near. He knew that he ran the strongest possible risk of getting himself shot when the Frenchmen should find out his faithlessness, but he hoped to prevail on them to believe the harbour-lights were only another lighthouse, which they should have to pass on their way out to sea, and then it would be too late to put the vessel ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... of finding another place. Whenever it becomes as easy for clerks, draughtsmen, mechanics, and the like to "suit themselves" as it is for cooks or housemaids, we find them as faithless. Native mechanics and seamstresses are just as perfidious as Bridget, but incur less obloquy, because their faithlessness causes less annoyance; but they have no more regard in making their plans for the interest or wishes of their employer than she has, and they all take the "modern view" of the matter. What makes her so fond of change is that she lives in a singularly restless society, in which ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... Geographer, not long after Polo's time, gives an account of Tabriz, quoted in Barbier de Meynard's Dict. de la Perse, p. 132. This also notices the extensive gardens round the city, the great abundance and cheapness of fruits, the vanity, insolence, and faithlessness of the Tabrizis, etc. (p. 132 seqq.) Our cut shows a relic of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... him having changed as completely as did those of certain earlier democrats in regard to Mr. O'Connell, when the great Irishman denounced slavery in America. It is a sore subject with our pro-slavery people, this faithlessness of Russia to the cause of human oppression. How they sympathized with her in the war with the Western powers, and prophesied the defeat of the Allies in the Crimea, is well remembered; but when the new Czar announced his purpose to abolish serfdom, they, as Lord Castlereagh would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... implication in his portent of fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her situation? What was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate and faithlessness fostered by this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant's notice to break out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragical nature of Kell's great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold, of riotous gambling, but ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... Siegfried swears that there had been no deception. Brunhild appeals to us much less in the "Nibelungenlied" than in the Norse version. In the latter she feels herself deeply wronged by Siegfried's faithlessness, and resolves on his death because she will not be the wife of two men. In our poem she has no reason for wishing his death except her wounded pride. In the "Nibelungenlied", too, she disappears from view after Siegfried's death, whereas in the Norse ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... enormous sums of money, arms, clothing, and materials of war upon the Spaniards, who wasted or pocketed them, they kept their own army unsupplied with money, transport, or clothes. Unsupported by the home authorities, the British commanders had yet to struggle with the faithlessness, mendacity, and inertness of the Portuguese and Spanish authorities, and were hampered with obstacles such as never beset a British commander before. Still, in spite of this, British genius and valour triumphed over all difficulties, and Wellesley delivered Lisbon and compelled ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... he loved Marie. I need not tell you that I suffered from his inconstancy. I was inexpressibly grieved; but pride upheld me, and Louis never received a word or look of reproach for his faithlessness. Meanwhile your father offered his hand, and before I accepted it he was made acquainted with the history of my heart. I concealed nothing from him, so that he was at once the confidant of my past ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... something almost worse: she left Miss Nightingale. She was growing old, and she felt that she had closer and more imperative duties with her own family. Her niece could hardly forgive her. She poured out, in one of her enormous letters, a passionate diatribe upon the faithlessness, the lack of sympathy, the stupidity, the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had taken no hold among them; she had never known one who had appris a apprendre; she could not even get a woman secretary; 'they don't know the names of the Cabinet Ministers—they don't know which of the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... seen Abigail yet, but of course she knew that I was married. A vague faithlessness accused me. And yet I had never spoken a word of love to her. It was my admiration for her and hers for me, rising up to ask me why I had married Dorothy. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... On this occasion Fabius seems to have acted unworthily of his reputation, for he ordered the chief Bruttian officers to be put to the sword, that it might not be said that he gained the place by treachery. However, he did not obtain this glory, and gained a reputation for faithlessness and cruelty. Many of the Tarentines were put to death, thirty thousand were sold for slaves, and the city was sacked by the soldiers. Three thousand talents were brought into the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... she had left for him; for his image had grown dim in the flight of time and among the distractions of gayer stations than Rohar. Certainly she had flirted herself, flirted recklessly; but that was a different matter to his faithlessness. She might do it; but he must not. Did she want him? She hardly knew. But she was not going to be put aside for this tiger-killing young person, this jungle girl, who must be taught not ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... down the Magdalena unchallenged. Now listen, my masters all! We have won, by God's good grace, gold enough to serve us the rest of our lives, and that without losing a single man; and may yet win more, if we be wise, and He thinks good. But oh, my friends, do not make God's gift our ruin, by faithlessness, or greediness, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... be very miserable, and ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole soul burn within him with an almost implacable moral indignation at the sight of cruelty and injustice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and social crimes. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... father disposed of his daughter's hand in marriage with absolute authority; and although we meet with many models of conjugal affection, as in the noble characters of Andromache and Penelope, yet the story of Helen, and other similar ones, suggest too plainly that the faithlessness of the wife was not regarded as a very great offence. The wife, however, occupied a station of as much, if not more influence in the family than was the case in the historical period; but she was not the equal of her husband, and even Homer portrays none of those ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... division of soul which narrows all newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... hour Katuti was still pacing her bedroom, thinking of Paaker's insane devotion, of Mena's faithlessness, and of Nefert's altered demeanor; and when she went to bed, a thousand conjectures, fears, and anxieties tormented her, while she was distressed at the change which had come over Nefert's love to her mother, a sentiment which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... one hand is Philosophy, bidding me stand firm; on the other, my sweetheart reproaching me with coldness and faithlessness. But should Erasmus Montanus for any reason renounce his conviction, hitherto his one virtue? No, indeed, by no means. Yet here is necessity, which knows no law. If I do not submit in this, I shall make both myself and my sweetheart miserable. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... what pressure will Colonel Armytage bring to bear to compel Edda to break her promises to me, and to unite herself to him. It was of that the Spaniard was thinking. But no; I have heard and read of the falsehood and faithlessness of women, but I will not believe that Edda Armytage could by any possibility be guilty of such treachery: the very thought is dishonouring to her. Did I think that such a union would tend to her happiness, I would release her from her promise; ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... sustained my soul and lightened my toils, the written engagement given me by Marco Antonio. I had intended to carry it with me to Italy, find Marco Antonio there, and present it to him as an evidence of his faithlessness and my constancy, and constrain him to fulfil his promise. At the same time I am conscious that he may readily deny the words written on this paper, since he has made nought of the obligations that should have been engraved on his soul; besides, it is plain that if he ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer, or if you do not, ask your smooth-tongued saint, your companion in the New Haven train; he will enlighten you; he will not wonder at my going, and perhaps he will offer ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... had become his professional occupation,—the wheel which it was his business to roll. He was above jealousy; he was above vanity. No one outstripping him cast a bad colour on him; nor did he object to bow to another as his superior. But he was prepared to suspect every one of insincerity and of faithlessness; and, being the master of the machinery of the plots, he was ready, upon a whispered justification, to despise the orders of his leader, and act by his own light in blunt disobedience. For it was his belief that while others speculated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... an idea of faithlessness in it, nevertheless," said Maria Consuelo, thoughtfully. "Or if it is not faithless, it is fickle. It is not the same to oneself to love twice. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... to look beyond the limits of the time recorded by the stratified rocks. I said: "This attempt to limit, at a particular point, the progress of inductive and deductive reasoning from the things which are to the things which were—this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to me to have cost uniformitarianism the place as the permanent form of geological speculation which it might otherwise have held" (Lay Sermons, p. 260). The context shows that "uniformitarianism" here means that doctrine, as limited in application by Hutton and Lyell, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... King's accession to the sovereignty he had arranged a truce of five years, which had been broken through by the faithlessness of France. He had, therefore, been obliged, notwithstanding his anxiety to return to a country where his presence was so much needed, to remain in the provinces till he had conducted the new war to a triumphant close. In doing this he had been solely governed by his intense love for the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... minor characters, although most of his time was spent in painting scenery. He had married a woman who was on the stage, and she had deserted him for one of the actors, and left her child behind. Her faithlessness nearly broke his heart. Through one of our own people in London he found us and sent the child to the convent where we have a school for just such cases. When the girl got to be seventeen years old he sent for her and she went to London to see him. He remembered her mother's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... notorious that there is "honour among thieves." They would watch over one another. Among them "nimak-harami" or "faithlessness to their salt" would soon come to be regarded as a crime of ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... satisfied with such a libretto. Schneider and Devrient therefore altered it and in their version the two female lovers are put to the test, but midway in the plot it is revealed to them that they are being tried—, with the result that they feign faithlessness, play the part out and at the close declare their knowledge, turning the sting against the authors of the unworthy comedy. The contents ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... fellow's really trying to do what he ought, his best friends'll do nothing but chaff him and try to put him down." And he stuck his books under his arm and his hat on his head, preparatory to rushing out into the quadrangle, to testify with his own soul of the faithlessness of friendships. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... accounted for by Ephraim Darke having on the previous day paid a visit to his son in the cell, and left with him a key that ere now has opened many a prison door. Joe Harkness, a weak-witted fellow, long suspected of faithlessness, was not the man to resist the temptation with which his palm ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... mule-wrangler returned as bride and groom and set up housekeeping on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past the honeymoon cottage every time he completed the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County. Chugg never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink. His bitterness found vent in tipping over the stage when his passengers were confined to members of the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said, "the flask in his innerds ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh had suffered at the hands of His people. Israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: "The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... house of my God, 'tis the dwelling of prayer, The temple all hallowed by blessing and praise; If sorrow and faithlessness conquer me, there My heart to the throne of his grace I ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... he cried. "Haven't I remembered you all these years? They talk of man's faithlessness and woman's faithfulness. It seems to me, it's all the other way. Women ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... new spiritual content. Hamlet's revenge gained a new significance. It is no longer a fight against the murderer of his father, but a battle against "a world out of joint." No wonder that a simple duty of blood revenge becomes a task beyond his powers. He sees the world as a mass of faithlessness, and the weight of it crushes him and makes him sick at heart. This is the tragedy of Hamlet—his will is paralyzed and, with it, his passion for revenge. He fights a double battle, against his uncle and against himself. The conviction that Shakespeare, and not his predecessor, ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... absence. If I could see that she hearkened to his words with the ears of one who deferred even to devotedness, and found that pleasure in his accents which should only have been accorded to mine. It is the low nature, alone, which seeks for developments beyond these, to constitute the sin of faithlessness. Of looks, words, consideration, habitual deference, and eager attention, I was quite as uxorious as I should have been of the warm kiss, or the yielding, fond embrace. They were the same in my eyes. It was for the momentary glance, the passing word, the forgetful sigh, that I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... arms to me, making me promise not to despise her, and what would one not promise! The modesty inherent in the sex, the fear of results, perhaps a kind of instinct which reveals to them the natural faithlessness of men make women ask for such promises, but what mistress, if really amorous, would even think of asking her lover to respect her in the moment of delirious ecstacy, when all one's being is centred on the fulfilment ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... moment, I may fall, I know not where; and eyeing with doubt and dismay even the most composed and settled of all the circumstances of life. He is a happy man who is doomed to pass from the cradle to the grave, without having cause to experience the faithlessness of experience, who has only read of those dreadful disruptions of the mind and feelings, that scatter the old elements, in order that some new consolidating power may throw them into forms and combinations a thousand times more horrible ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... nervous affectation, indicative of the peasant. But there was nothing to suggest that Chris had disturbed them in their privacy and confidences. Yet he had evidently seen enough to satisfy himself of her faithlessness. Had he ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... against wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not make him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to do his work rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren, those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness, an even temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among our fellow-men with true dignity ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... the complainant be a homely girl the jury feels that he must have intended to swindle her anyway, as he could never have honestly intended to marry her. Thus in any case the Lothario is apt to pay a severe penalty for his faithlessness. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... looking for establishment or match-making, and therefore her disinterestedness charms all the lords and gentlemen who have been used to match-making mothers and young-lady-hunters for titles, and under favour of this disinterestedness her insolence and faithlessness is passed over, while all the time she is in love with a captain with "soft Venetian eyes," as Mrs. Thrale used to ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... you to say whether he is the real knight or not? There are so many deceivers in this world," added the Princess, in tears, "that one can't be too cautious now." The fact is, that she was thinking of the desertion of Otto in the morning; by which instance of faithlessness her heart was ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... for me,' he said. 'It was her way of signifying that we had better be strangers for the future. I taxed her with her faithlessness; she denied it, of course—every mare does; we had an explanation, and everything is at ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... love and anxiety. How Siegfried forges the sword, kills the dragon, secures the ring, escapes the most crafty intrigues, and awakens Brunhilde; how the curse that rests upon the ring does not spare even him, the innocent one, but comes nearer and nearer; how he, faithful in faithlessness, wounds out of love the most beloved, and is surrounded by the shadows and mists of guilt, but at last emerges as clear as the sun and sinks, illuminating the heavens with his fiery splendor and purifying the world from the curse—all this the god, whose governing spear has been broken in the struggle ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... here, with Father Lasse wandering among strangers, and perhaps unable to find shelter? There was nothing with which he could console himself, no evasion or excuse was possible; Pelle howled at the thought of his faithlessness. And as he lay there despairing, worrying over the whole business and crying himself into a state of exhaustion, quite a manful resolve began to form within him; he must give up everything of his own—the future, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... faithlessness of fear, And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain Wash out the altar's bloody stain; The law of Hatred disappear, The law of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... dallied with her conscience and been loath to part with him; how at length she had as good as revealed to him that she loved him in return; and how she was now overwhelmed and crushed beneath a sense of her own faithlessness and the impossibility of making reparation to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... desire of sending you a word of comfort and sympathy. I thought that you were in need of such. For I had heard, to my horror, how great your annoyance must be, and B.'s account confirmed my impression that you were deeply annoyed and grieved by ingratitude, faithlessness, and even treachery. Suddenly, however, I felt quite stupid, and all I intended to say to you appeared to me trivial and superfluous. I could think of nothing better than to copy out for you a few fragments of my last work. They are not the really important things, for those can be understood ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... on which Mr. Pickwick and his two disciples were engaged was, it will be remembered, to convert Mr. Tupman from his resolution to forsake the world in a fit of misanthropy, induced by the faithlessness of ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... make the engagement public at once; if he shrank from admitting it for the present, it was because of Elspeth's plight. "Grizel, you might have given her a little time to recover from this man's faithlessness," was what his heart cried. He believed that Grizel had told David, and for the last time in his life he was angry with her. He strode down the hill savagely towards Caddam Wood, where he knew he ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... touch of the small, lifeless form, the resentment which had smoldered in Houston's heart for months seemed to disappear. Instinctively he knew what a baby means to a mother,—and she must be its mother. He understood that the agony of loss which was hers was far greater even than the agony which her faithlessness had meant for him. Gently, almost tenderly, he went again to the bed, to chafe the cold, thin wrists, to watch anxiously the eyes, then at last to bend forward. The woman was looking at him, staring with fright in ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... shalt thou pay the penalty of the wrong thou hast done me; these hands shall tear out that heart of thine, abode and dwelling of all iniquity, but of deceit and fraud above all; and to these he added other words all in effect upbraiding this Fernando and charging him with treachery and faithlessness. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Master," he cried, "how deeply have I fallen! Oh, woe unto me, weak and wretched man! I have three times denied my dearest friend and teacher. I cannot understand how I could so forget myself. A curse upon my shameful faithlessness! How my heart will repent of it—this contemptible cowardice. My dearest Lord, hast thou still grace for me—grace for a faithless, one—oh! send it me! This once more hear the voice of my repentant heart. Alas! the sin is committed. I cannot undo it, but ever, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... "I know not if there be any meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what you deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure you, by your father's noble name; by your mother's honor, show me the worst; but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and now hears my words, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... return, and the consul was surprised to see that, while Karl's attitude towards her had not changed, the girl exhibited less effusiveness than before. Believing it to be partly the effect of the return of the corporal, the consul taxed her with faithlessness. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... thousandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has come that they may have life, sees how they will not come to her and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness. "If thou hadst known," she cries in the heart-broken words of Jesus Himself over Jerusalem, "if thou hadst but known the things that belong to thy peace! Behold and see, then, if there be any sorrow like to mine, if there be any grief ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... very essence and vital center of all Browning's work—that ultimate success is attained through partial failures. From first to last Browning regards life as an adventure of the soul, which sinks, falls, rises, recovers itself, relapses into faithlessness to its higher powers, yet sees the wrong and aims to retrieve it; gropes through darkness to light; and though "tried, troubled, tempted," never yields to alien forces and ignominious failure. The soul, being divine, must ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... masked in the garb of religion. Monasticism, by its constant insistence upon poverty and obedience, fostered a spirit of loyalty to Christ and the cross, which served as a protest, not only against the general laxity of morals, but also against the faithlessness of corrupt monks. Harnack says: "It was always monasticism that rescued the church when sinking, freed her when secularized, defended her when attacked. It warmed hearts that were growing cold, restrained unruly spirits, won back the people when alienated from the church." It may have been ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... knowledge of the enemy's doings. There was only one inference to be drawn, namely, that Victor Durnovo had abandoned his people at Msala with the same deliberation which had characterised his cowardly faithlessness to Jack Meredith. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... God," for he commits his crime in the dark and thinks that none sees him, not even the Lord, whose eyes float over all the world, and see good as well as evil. He oversteps the second commandment: "Thou shalt not have strange gods besides Me..., I am a jealous God," who is wroth against faithlessness, whether toward Me, or toward men. He breaks the third commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain," for he swears he has not committed adultery, but he did so. He is the cause of profanation of the Sabbath, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... years of my life in perfect happiness with you. I expected to enjoy such blissful days for a much longer period. But now everything is hopeless. My life shall be ended by violence, because of your faithlessness. We shall see each other no more. Receive the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... road to the mountains. In the many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself, search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. He realized it now—he realized his life in looking back upon this completed episode, as he might have done in the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... wedding, so Braden found himself without an ally. He went to London early in the fall, with Anne's promises safely stowed away in his heart, and he came back in the middle of his year with Sir George, dazed and bewildered by her faithlessness and ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... Susanna's boarders, which are only four besides myself, had something to say in general about the faithlessness of men and the flirtatiousness of girls, and how times had changed, and how you couldn't put your hand on any human being and feel you could trust him in these days, and how men were gobbled up before they had got their breath good after painful experiences, and dozens of other things on that order. ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... daughter, and a mouth worthy of the Lowther Arcade in its days of glory. Add to this the quick grace of a kitten, with the appealing helplessness of a baby in its first short frock, and you will be able to forgive Mr. Reginald Peters his faithlessness. Bohemia looked from one to the other—from the fairy to the woman—and ceased to blame. That the fairy was as stupid as a camel, as selfish as a pig, and as lazy as a nigger Bohemia did not know; nor—so long as her figure and complexion ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... not admit that it was faithlessness. She said it was mere honesty. She could see nothing inherently wrong in falling in love genuinely after one arrived at years of discretion. She thought it inherently idiotic, and worse, to make a choice ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... repulsive cloven-footed trio, falsehood, fraud, and faithlessness, and she whom he had chosen for his help-mate was the woman—it shamed him to his inmost soul-for whom he had been in the act of sacrificing all that was honorable, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Stafford. Some things make us suspect that a large district on this side of England was treated as northern Yorkshire had been, and homeless fugitives in crowds driven forth to die of hunger. The patience which pardoned the faithlessness of Edwin and Waltheof was not called for in ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... party and their principles and become members of the government. The Liberals of St. John, who had elected these gentlemen by a substantial majority, were naturally chagrined at such a proof of their faithlessness, and their colleagues were likewise greatly annoyed. Messrs. Gray and Wilmot made the usual excuses of all deserters for their conduct, the principal one being that they thought they could serve the interests of the constituency and of the province better by being in the government ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... unarmed, Vitelli mounted on a mule, wearing a cloak with a green lining. In that group he is the only man deserving of any respect or pity—a victim of his sense of duty to his family, driven to his rebellion and faithlessness to Valentinois by his consuming desire to avenge his brother's death upon the Florentines. The others were poor creatures, incapable even of keeping faith with one another. Paolo Orsini was actually said to be in secret concert ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... away in anger and never forgive her, but she deserved it. As she went downstairs, the only thing that really worried her was the thought of the pain Gilbert would suffer when she told him of Anna's faithlessness. She had seen his face as he passed under her window, and it was the face of a blithe man who had not heard any evil tidings. It was left to her to tell him; surely, she thought apathetically, that was punishment enough ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... be impossible. Day after day, week after week, and no tidings from him came; conscience too acutely accounting to her for his faithlessness. Then the horrible truth forced itself upon her, that its consequences would soon too plainly declare her sin before the world; that upon her innocent offspring would fall a ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... Israel's rejection. The two points on which he seizes are noteworthy. 'Ye delivered Him up'; that is, to the Roman power. That was the deepest depth of Israel's degradation. To hand over their Messiah to the heathen,—what could be completer faithlessness to all Israel's calling and dignity? But that was not all: 'ye denied Him.' Did Peter remember some one else than the Jews who had done the same, and did a sudden throb of conscious fellowship even in that sin make his voice tremble for a moment? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... great nation. Its encroachments are becoming so enormous, and its progress so rapid, that it is now a conflict for the freedom of the citizens rather than for the emancipation of the slaves. The reckless faithlessness and impudent falsehood of our national proslavery legislation, the present season, has scarcely a parallel in history, black as history is with all kinds of perfidy. If the men who mean to be free do not now ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... exactly what she had done, nothing but rage remained to her—rage and its offspring, vindictiveness. The Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis escape punishment for his faithlessness. La Voisin should afford her the means to accomplish this. And so she goes once more to the Rue de ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... treaties with the Flemings confirmed the hasty negotiations of Ghent. Benedict XII, still pursued Edward with remonstrances. He warned the English king to have no trust in allies like the Flemings, who had shamefully driven away their natural lords and whose faithlessness and inconstancy were by-words. He told him that his strength was not enough to conquer France, and reproached him with calling himself king of a land of which he possessed nothing. Somewhat inconsistently, he offered his mediation between Edward ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... herself up by a table. She then stood awhile, without saying a word or regarding my sorrow. At last she smiled sadly, and spake thus: That she clearly saw how true was that spoken by the Holy Ghost, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man;" [Footnote: Jer. xvii. 5.] and that the faithlessness of the young lord had surely broken her poor heart if the all-merciful God had not graciously prevented him, and sent her a dream that night, which she would tell, not hoping to persuade the judges, but to raise up the white head of her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... characteristics which, from contiguity to White men, have deteriorated in the south, but which have been retained in the north—high courage, determination, and great ingenuity, but joined to cruelty and faithlessness; and as in the south Destruction Island obtained its name from their savage cruelty, so does the coast throughout its length afford the same testimony. Cook, who first discovered them, says, "They were thieves in the strictest sense of the word, for they pilfered nothing from us but ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... and he reproached himself bitterly for the involuntary faithlessness that could allow her image to grow dim. He was almost without hope of seeing her again. And then, with the inconsequence of dreams and sprites, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... closely followed by the faithful Bertram, and a female in a riding-hood, whose face, though carefully concealed, was no other than that of the unfortunate Margaret de Hautlieu, whose worst fears had been realized as to the faithlessness ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... negotiation in France. But already his breach with Gloucester and the bulk of his fellow councillors was marked. In the Lent Parliament of 1259 he had reproached them, and Gloucester above all, with faithlessness to their trust. "The things we are treating of," he cried, "we have sworn to carry out. With such feeble and faithless men I care not to have ought to do!" The peace with France was hardly signed when his distrust of his colleagues was verified. Henry's withdrawal ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... Melmotte. But she had been very rigorous in declining the attentions of other suitors. She had made up her mind that she was in love with Felix Carbury, and she had resolved on constancy. But she had begun to tremble, fearing his faithlessness. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... his breeches pocket, and a desire to emulate English statesmen and English institutions in his heart! Look, also, at the able and larned Irishman who stands at the head of the University of that same methropolis of the West, and whose eloquence so mystifies his faithlessness to Ireland as to confuse you, and almost lade you captive, until, on cooler deliberation, you find that his response to 'the toast of the evenin,' is naither more nor less than a superb burst of oratory, robed in green and goold, but with a heart ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... whiter and thinner each day, she felt her heart swell with indignation toward one who had wrought this fearful change. "Surely," thought she, "if Dr. Lacey could know the almost fatal consequence of his faithlessness he would relent; and he must, he shall know it. I will tell Mr. Miller and he I know will write immediately." Then came the thought that she had promised not to betray Fanny's confidence; but she did not despair of gaining her consent, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... his feverish service—musicians, artists, soldiers, antiquarians, aristocrats. Would not Wagner induce the King of Bavaria to speak to von Doenniges? Would not the Catholic Bishop Ketteler help him?—he would become a Catholic. And ever present an insane belief in the reality of her faithlessness, mockingly accompanied by a terribly lucid recognition of the instability of character that made it certain. The "No"—her first word to him at their first meeting—resounded in his ears, prophetically ominous. The sunrise, hidden ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... mallet, and chisel. They are by the hatchway, which they have opened, intending descent into the hold. With the lantern concealed under the skirt of his ample dreadnought, Harry Blew stands within the shadow of the mast, as if reflecting on his faithlessness—ashamed to let his face be seen. He even appears reluctant to proceed in the black business, while affecting ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... one moment occurred to her that she should accuse Drake of his faithlessness, much less that she should upbraid him. Indeed, what would be the use? Could she—she, an ignorant, half-taught girl, just Nell of Shorne Mills—contend against such a ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... probably, rough copies. I did not, at the time, suffer my fancy to linger over the tessellated document. I set to elucidating the reference to the fete-champetre. As I retraced my footsteps to the little bookshop, I wondered if I should find any excuse for the cruel faithlessness of Emma Tylney Long. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... off the offender's nose—an admirable practice, which is not only a severe penalty to the culprit, but also a standing warning to others, and an efficient preventative to any recurrence of the fault. Faithlessness combined with bad example or brazen-facedness was further treated by being led in solemn procession through the bazar mounted on a diminutive and crop-eared donkey, with the face turned towards the crupper. After a few such examples the women of Ujjayani ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... took one slim white hand in her large kind ones, and gently held it. The fat was indeed in the fire. Poor old Hilary! How he would feel it! Peggy divined that what stung Hilary most deeply at the moment was Peter's discovery of his faithlessness. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... and disease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love—all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is not impossible that the infernal interruption of this fall downstairs may throw a colour of evil on the whole of ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock



Words linked to "Faithlessness" :   infidelity, unfaithfulness, faithless



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