#adultery

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

#humour #change

It is said that passion may die and faithfulness endure, to which I reply: yes, and faithfulness may be accompanied by boredom and resentment, which may lead to deceit and infidelity, which may lead to vengeance. Passion’s sweep is predictable. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#faithfulness #love #passion #faith

My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#food #wickedness #food

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was 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. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#fiction #god #life #literature #love

You once told me, when you visited my house, how Anne conducts herself with men: she says, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, no.”’ Wyatt nods; he recognises those words; he looks sorry he spoke them. ‘Now you may have to transpose one word of that testimony. Yes, yes, yes, no, yes. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#trial #men

If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught? ↗

— Robert J. Sawyer

#darwinism #evolution #infidelity #macro-evolution #macroevolution

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

#cheating #fidelity #cheating

Laine slowly rolled out of bed. The queen size was one of the few new things in the house. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-spring monument to lies, a petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from the light but left harsh scratches and diseased black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as, she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewelry - everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again. ↗

— Stephen M. Irwin

#betrayal #emotions #escaping #longing #loss

...oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy. ↗

— Herman Melville

#liars #oaths #equality

Husband: a man with hopes of being a lover who settles for being a provider, causing his wife to grow suspicious of her depleting jewelry box. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #husband #providing #funny