Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Wedlock   /wˈɛdlˌɑk/   Listen
Wedlock

noun
1.
The state of being a married couple voluntarily joined for life (or until divorce).  Synonyms: marriage, matrimony, spousal relationship, union.  "God bless this union"



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Wedlock" Quotes from Famous Books



... that the Turrald barony was a barony by writ—whatever that may be. The point is that if my brother had lived to restore it, the title, on his death, would have descended to his only daughter, if she had been born in wedlock. As she is illegitimate, the title would have descended to me, and after me ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... presence of certain witnesses, who were named. Further, he produced his own baptismal certificate (he had been baptized in Geneva as the son of the merchant Born and his wife Julia, nee De St. Val, begotten in lawful wedlock), and various letters from his father to his mother, who was long since dead, but they none of them had ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... Plato and Aristotle.[317] Aristotle wanted it small enough, "to be comprehended at one glance of the statesman's eye." Plato's ideal democracy, by rigid laws limiting the procreative period of women and men and providing for the death of children born out of this period or out of wedlock, restricted its free citizens to 5,040 heads of families,[318] all living within reach of the agora, and all able to judge from personal knowledge of a candidate's fitness for office. This condition was possible only in dwarf commonwealths ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... sixth year of wedlock, is still very fond of his Sophie Dorothee,— "Fiechen" (Feekin diminutive of Sophie ), as he calls her; she also having, and continuing to have, the due wife's regard for her solid, honest, if somewhat explosive bear. He troubles her a little now and then, it is said, with whiffs ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... ransack to the very last The dregs of pleasure for their vanished joys; Or buy in selfish marriage some young victim, Too helpless to refuse a state that's honest, 320 Too feeling not to know herself a wretch. Our wedlock was not of this sort; you had Freedom from me to choose, and urged in answer Your ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... blue smoke curreled up between The lofty trees o' feaeden green: A zight that's touchen when do show A busy wife is down below, A-worken hard to cheer woone's tweil Wi' her best feaere, an' better smile. Mid women still in wedlock's yoke Zend up, wi' love, their own blue smoke, An' husbands vind their bwoards a-spread By faithvul hands when I be dead, An' noo good men in ouer land Think lightly o' the wedden band. True happiness do bide alwone Wi' them that ha' their own he'th-stwone To gather wi' their childern ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... horse swerved from the fierce fire; then, by Grimhildr's magic arts, Sigurd and Gunnar changed shapes and arms, and Sigurd mounted Gran, and the noble steed carried him through the flame. Thus Brynhildr was wooed and compelled to yield. That evening they were united in wedlock; but when they retired to rest Sigurd unsheathed Gram, and laid it between them. Next morning, when he arose, he took the ring which Andvari had laid under a curse, and which was among Fafnir's treasures, and gave it to Brynhildr as a gift, and she gave him another ring in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... for a year," she replied hurriedly;—and he knew at once by her voice that she already dreaded this new wedlock. Whatever of anger he might before have felt for her was banished. She had brought herself by her ill-judgement,—by her ignorance, as she had confessed,—to a sad pass; but he believed that she was still worthy of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... only through a double crime! The most revolting part of it all is that these children of crime, who are of course perfectly innocent themselves, are called natural children, as if children born in wedlock came into the world in an unnatural manner! In one word, my dear son, the vow of chastity is so much opposed to Divine precepts and to human nature that it can be agreeable neither to God nor to society, nor to those who pledge themselves to keep it, and being in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the only thing left to her. She was frightened of her love for Peter. Marriage, she argued, would be—must be—a shield and buckler against the cry of her heart. If she were married she would be able to stifle her love, crush it out, behind those solid, unyielding bars of conventional wedlock. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... tied we were so intimately, that We straight were sweetly lost in one another. Thus when two notes in music's wedlock knit, They in one concord blended are together: For nothing now our life but music was; Her soul the treble ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... in 1878 the quartette disbanded as we were unable to fill his place. While singing at the First Unitarian Church the choir was composed of Mrs. Marriner, soprano; Miss Sallie Rightmire, alto; Joseph Maguire, tenor; W.C. Campbell, basso. The soprano and bass were united in the holy bonds of wedlock and are still living happily together. Having given up concert singing for several years past, Mr. Campbell still retains his magnificent voice which gives great pleasure to those who hear him. His voice has a range of two and one-half octaves from high F to low B flat, a remarkable ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... married woman, who had enjoyed thirty-three years of wedlock, and who was the grandmother of four beautiful little children, had an amusing old ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... of Aragon, presumably by the help of his son. The mother was a Fleming, said by Calderon to have been a lady by birth and called by him Maria Sandelin. She is said by others to have been first the mistress and then the wife of Francisco Calderon. Rodrigo is said to have been born out of wedlock. In 1598 he entered the service of the duke of Lerma as secretary. The accession of Philip III. in that year made Lerma, who had unbounded influence over the king, master of Spain. Calderon, who was active ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... kind? Speak to her I say: is this not she of whom, When first she came, all flushed you said to me Now had you got a friend of your own age, Now could you share your thought; now should men see Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock; she you walked with, she You talked with, whole nights long, up in the tower, Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth, And right ascension, Heaven knows what; and now A word, but one, one little kindly word, Not one to ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Am I not imprisoned, fettered? Have I not a wife? Nay, a wife that was a widow, a young widow, a handsome widow, and would be again a widow, but that I have a heart of proof, and something of a constitution to bustle through the ways of wedlock and this world. Will you yet be reconciled to truth ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... tradesman, whom he astonishes with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends and much painfulness may prefer him to thirty pounds a year, and this means to a chambermaid; with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock:—next Sunday you ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... of cabbage. Disorders may run riot in all forms. To dream of seeing cabbage green, means unfaithfulness in love and infidelity in wedlock. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... "You force this poor creature to bend to your will, humiliate her, strip her clothes from her and gaze upon her though you are not united in lawful wedlock." He shielded his eyes from sight with a raised arm. "You are evil, Jason, a demon of evil and must be brought ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... few, to work and move, Will exclude the force of love. Blooming maids that would be married, Must in virtue be unwearied; Modesty a dower will raise, And be a trumpet of their praise. A cavalier will sport and play With a damsel frank and gay; But, when wedlock is his aim, Choose a maid of sober fame. Passion kindled in the breast, By a stranger or a guest, Enters with the rising sun, And fleets before his race be run: Love that comes so suddenly, Ever on the wing to fly, Neither can nor will impart Strong impressions to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake; Or, whom he wishes most, shall seldom gain Through her perverseness; but shall see her gain'd By a far worse; or if she love, withheld By parents; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet already link'd, and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... estrangement and love-longing. As they were thus engaged, behold, there arose in the distance a dust-cloud which spread till it walled the world, and they heard the neighing of horses and clank of arms and armour. Now the reason of this was, that after the Princess had been bestowed in wedlock upon the Wazir who had gone in to her that night, the King went forth at daybreak, to give the couple good morrow, taking with him, after the custom of Kings with their daughters, a gift of silken stuffs and scattering gold and silver among ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... cannot afford to be lenient with illegitimacy is that there is no proper provision for rearing children born out of wedlock. The woman and the child usually need the financial support of the man; they always need his love and care. If the man marries the girl he has wronged, there is not only the disgrace still attaching to her (and rightly to him, still more), but the fact of a hasty and unintended ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... meridian. Whence rebuffed, The perjured Scythian she lacked At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower, She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower; Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon She woke, A nuptial-knotted derelict; Pensioned with Rescripts other aid ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of Arcos, had no children born in wedlock, but a numerous progeny by his concubines. Among these latter, was Dona Leonora Nunez de Prado, the mother of Don Rodrigo. The brilliant and attractive qualities of this youth so far won the affections of his father, that the latter obtained the royal sanction ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... comment:—"Oft have I heard that no accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be the last of thy ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... "Expose her not to those fascinations which I know no heart can resist. Let her not associate with him—with my husband; he is not free to love—I am his lawful wife; and the child you saved is his—his own—the offspring of lawfully-hallowed wedlock; though he has cast me off, though his eyes have never gazed upon my child, yet, yet we are his. No cruel words of separation has the law of England spoken. But do not, oh! if you have any regard for me," she continued, wildly seizing both Percy's ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... joyful events await them in the future, in wedlock and the arrival of children, that those events seem to constitute life itself. But this is indeed a ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... both been accustomed to look upon Edith as consecrated to a vestal life; and as she had hitherto turned coldly and decidedly from the addresses of men, they believed her inaccessible to the vows of love and the bonds of wedlock. The young Julian was a poet as well as an artist; his pictures were considered masterpieces of genius in the painting galleries of the cities; he was, as report said, and as he himself modestly but decidedly affirmed, by birth and education a gentleman; ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... and Chinese is not uncommon, and children born of such relationship have just as good a standing as those born in wedlock. The Indian sees no sense in punishing an innocent child for what it is in no way responsible for. He frankly argues that only a silly fool of a white man or woman would do so cruel and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... Union for her own sake, and for England's sake, because England could not afford independence established so close against her own ribs,—it was at any rate necessary to England's character that the bride thus bound in a compulsory wedlock should be endowed with all the best privileges that a wife can enjoy. Let her at least not be a kept mistress. Let it be bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, if we are to live together in the married state. Between husband and wife a warm word ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... escape; he sold the woman for a slave after getting her with child himself to enhance her value. The other was the eloquent defence of a young woman brought before the authorities for bearing a child out of wedlock. Franklin owned to the fraud in Necker's house when he came to Paris, much to the confusion of French philosophism. Behold how the New World twice set a bad ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... of lucid order and arrangement. In the small town where he resided, he continued to pick up a decent sustenance; for he had no competitor, and was looked upon as a man of considerable ability. He was the only one of three brothers who had ventured upon wedlock. But of this part of our history we shall at present say no more than that he had an only child, and had married his wife, to use his own expression, because ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... honestly anxious for the rights of the man. Of the doctrine that divorce is only permitted for the help of wives, he exclaims, "Palpably uxorious! who can be ignorant that woman was created for man, and not man for woman? . . . What an injury is it after wedlock not to be beloved! what to be slighted! what to be contended with in point of house-rule who shall be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, for that were something reasonable, but out of female pride! 'I suffer not,' saith St. Paul, 'the woman to usurp authority ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... where they find Fillamour and Galliard. Mutual explanations follow. Octavio nobly renounces Marcella in favour of Fillamour who claims her hand, whilst Cornelia gives herself to Galliard in sober wedlock. Tickletext and Sir Signal are then discovered to be concealed in the room, and their mutual frailties exposed. It is promised that the money of which Petro has choused them shall be restored, and everything is forgiven, since "'twas but one night's intrigue, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... richer, who accepts the office, and becomes a godfather. There are also societies formed amongst them for the purpose of defraying the expenses, and every Jew receives the benefit if his child is born in wedlock. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... "the unfitness and effectiveness of an unconjugal mind"; "a worse condition than the loneliest single life"; "unconversing inability of mind"; "a mute and spiritless mate"; "that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded persons"; "a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper"; "ill-twisted wedlock"; "the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit society"; "one that must be hated with a most operative hatred"; "forsaken and yet continually dwelt with and accompanied"; "a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either side, blasting all the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... quoth Juan, turning round; 'You scarcely can be thirty: have you three?' 'No—only two at present above ground: Surely 't is nothing wonderful to see One person thrice in holy wedlock bound!' 'Well, then, your third,' said Juan; 'what did she? She did not run away, too,—did she, sir?' 'No, faith.'—'What then?'—'I ran ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... pastimes of old, the cause of morality was not overlooked:—there was in them a happy union of utility, pleasure, and virtue. A spotless life and unblameable manners, a purity of descent by being born in wedlock through several generations, and a series of creditable relations, were indispensable qualifications of a candidate on the Olympic turf. It is true, there is at least as much attention paid to purity and faultlessness on the plains of Newmarket; but the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... two to four feet. There the frequent clouds introduce their fertilizing contents at a modest distance from the fat valley, and send their humid influences from the mountain tops. There the saline atmosphere of Salt Lake mingles in wedlock with the fresh humidity of the same vegetable element which comes over the mountain top, as if the nuptial bonds of rare elements were introduced to exhibit a novel specimen of a perfect vegetable progeny in the shortest ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... how to smoke. There is nothing that will more surely and quickly bring a stranger into the fellowship and good graces of the ladies than to join them in their pet habit of snuff-rubbing. It seems to form a bond of friendship which they regard as sacred as the vows of wedlock. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Why should she fear you! Why should she fear you! What do you mean? Why, you must be crazy! If she doesn't fear you, she's not likely to fear me. A pretty state of confusion there would be in the house! Why, you're living with her in lawful wedlock, aren't you? Or does the law count for nothing to your thinking? If you do harbour such fools' notions in your brain, you shouldn't talk so before her anyway, nor before your sister, that's a girl still. She'll have to be married too; and if she catches up your ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky

... an' stay four or five days. Early in March he paid a visit to his own ranch to ready things up for spring, an' the day after he was gone Jabez sez to Barbie at dinner, "Now, Mr Hawthorn is a gentle man. He asked me for the honor of winnin' your hand in holy wedlock; an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... said, "and he's perfectly honest. He'd sooner put you off than on, any day. That's very sound in a lawyer. But if he carries it into wedlock he's a damned fool, in ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... She was old {p.xi} enough to feel all the bitterness of her mother's tragedy. She remembered to her dying day the humiliation of the Boleyn marriage. She never ceased to resent the birth of her sister Elizabeth. Her brother Edward was born in lawful wedlock after Queen Catherine's death, and Mary was always perfectly loyal and obedient to him as she was to her father. But she looked with cold disfavour, mingled with morbid jealousy, on the budding promise of Elizabeth. Her very existence was an insult to Mary's mother and a menace to Mary's ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... ECONOMISE," rejoined the brave wife; "I will never have it said that Ann Denman ruined John Flaxman for an artist." And so it was determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made when their means would admit. "I will go to Rome," said Flaxman, "and show the President that wedlock is for a man's good rather than his harm; and you, Ann, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... Braun, said, "If it were naturally so arranged that in every wedlock man must bear the second child, there would be no more than three children in any family.'' His intention is, that even if the woman agrees to have the third child, the man would be so frightened at the pains of the first child-birth that he never again would permit ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... he detested; and what's rather odd, If caught with a wench you in wedlock were tacked,— I could stand it no ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... no shrinking at your cruelty, shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die in its sickening vaults; and I will not consent to enter it. Here, of my own free will, I take my stand for the right, and refuse your sanctions! No woman ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... Ronald kiss'd fair Ellenore, And press'd her lily hand; Sic a comely knight and comely dame Ne'er met in wedlock's band: But the baron watch'd, as he raised the latch, And kiss'd again his bride; And with his spear, in deadly ire, He pierced Lord ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... result of a sober ceremony, whereby two douce and decent people, Mansie Wauch, my honoured father, and Marion Laverock, my respected mother, were linked thegither, for better for worse, in the lawful bonds of honest wedlock. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... was returning, and was revolving the sayings of the Goddess within myself, there began to be apprehensions that my wife had not duly observed the laws of wedlock. Both her beauty and her age bade me be apprehensive of her infidelity; {yet} her virtue forbade me to believe it. But yet, I had been absent; and besides, she, from whom I was {just} returning, was an example ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Papiria, the daughter of Maso, who had formerly been consul. With her he lived a considerable time in wedlock, and then divorced her, though she had made him the father of noble children; being mother of the renowned Scipio, and Fabius Maximus. The reason of this separation has not come to our knowledge; but there seems to be a truth conveyed in the account of another Roman's being ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Yossel was leaving the village bound for the Holy Land, produced a sensation which quite obscured his former notoriety as an aspirant to wedlock. Indeed, those who discussed the new situation most avidly forgot how convinced they had been that marriage and not death was the hunchback's goal. How Yossel had found money for the great adventure was not the least interesting ingredient in the cup ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... should be too many for me. He first hinted that marriage was decreed by Heaven; that it was the fixed state of life, which God had appointed for man's felicity, and for establishing a legal posterity; that there could be no legal claim of estates by inheritance but by children born in wedlock; that all the rest was sunk under scandal and illegitimacy; and very well he talked ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... you joy of her. But it is part of a mariner's creed—and you will grow to be a mariner here—that wedlock does not hold across the seas. However, that matter may rest. But, coming to my Tin Islands again: they'll delight you. And I tell you, a kingdom will not be so hard to carve out as it was in Egypt, or as you found in Yucatan. There are beasts ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... their condition, or less indignation. But Romulus in person went about and declared, "That what was done was owing to the pride of their fathers, who had refused to grant the privilege of marriage to their neighbours; but notwithstanding, they should be joined in lawful wedlock, participate in all their possessions and civil privileges, and, than which nothing can be dearer to the human heart, in their common children. He begged them only to assuage the fierceness of their anger, and cheerfully surrender ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... been assassinated in 1407 by order of Jean-Sans-Peur, and whose death had armed the Armagnacs against the Burgundians. Dame de Cany was his mother, but he ought to have been the son of the Duchess of Orleans since the Duke was his father. Not only was it no drawback to children to be born outside wedlock and of an adulterous union, but it was a great honor to be called the bastard of a prince. There have never been so many bastards as during these wars, and the saying ran: "Children are like corn: sow stolen wheat and it will sprout as well as any other."[522] The Bastard of Orleans ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... woman-worship of chivalry. Woman- worship, 'the honour due to the weaker vessel,' is indeed of God, and woe to the nation and to the man in whom it dies. But in the Middle Age, this feeling had no religious root, by which it could connect itself rationally, either with actual wedlock or with the noble yearnings of men's spirits, and it therefore could not but die down into a semi-sensual dream of female-saint-worship, or fantastic idolatry of mere physical beauty, leaving the women themselves an easy prey to the intellectual allurements of the more ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... his body 'like Niobe, all tears.' And then within a month—'O God! a beast would have mourned longer'—she married again, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible and loathsome in his eyes; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuous wedlock;[43] married him not for any reason of state, nor even out of old family affection, but in such a way that her son was forced to see in her action not only an astounding shallowness of feeling but an eruption of coarse sensuality, 'rank ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... she exclaimed, with startling vehemence. "A lie,—A LIE! You are my lawful son, born in wedlock! There is no stain upon your name, of my giving, and I know there will ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... of young love, attracted by the wealth, the family, or the manners of her suitor, she allows the indissoluble tie to bind her in unholy wedlock. Soon the faith she has trifled with assumes its mastery in her repentant heart, but liberty is gone; for the dream of conjugal bliss which dazzled when making her choice, she finds herself plunged for life into the most galling and irremediable of human ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock, a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth, but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she ever known, but the instinct of generous ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... In wedlock a species of lottery lies, Where in blanks and in prizes we deal; But how comes it that you, such a capital prize, Should so long have remained in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... the guardian whom he had appointed by will. These three ancient forms of marriage fell, however, gradually into disuse, so that, at the most splendid period of Roman greatness, they had almost entirely given place to a fashion of wedlock—old apparently, but not hitherto considered reputable—which was founded on a modification of the lower form of civil marriage. Without explaining the technical mechanism of the institution now generally popular, I may ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... conviction that he lov'd To many: others thought, her dower, The loss of lordships, wealth, and power, Full cause for sorrow; and the king Hop'd he might consolation bring, And bind a wavering servant o'er, (Not found too loyal heretofore,) By linking his sole daughter's fate In wedlock with an English mate— His favourite too! whose own domain Spread over valley, hill, and plain; Whose far-trac'd lineage did evince A birth-right worthy of a prince; Whose feats of arms, whose honour, worth, Were even nobler than his birth; Who, in his ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... attaining his Thirtieth Year! His intentions towards me were of the most Bounteous Description; and he even, being pleased to say that I was a good-looking Fellow enough, and come to an Age when it behoved me to be settled in Life, proposed that I should enter in the bonds of Wedlock with one Miss Jenny Lightfoot, that had formerly been a Milliner in Liquorpond Street, but who, when his Lordship introduced me to her, lived in most splendid Lodgings under the Piazza, Covent Garden, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... what is thy request?" said he. But she, setting her whole self, figure, look and voice in a fashion to charm him, answered, "Be thou joined with me in the bonds of wedlock, and I will ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... aunt's hand with ardour. "I feel that it must be so. Where this confidence is absent, the married, even after wedlock, are two strangers who do not know each other. It should be so; without this, there can be no happiness. And now, aunt, the best ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... Well, so I am; and my father loves me the more, I think, that he never loved any other being save my mother, and she died in this very cave when I was born. He has always loved me and given me my own way; but these last weeks a change seems to have come over him, and he talks of giving me in wedlock to that terrible man T hate worse than them all—the one they call Devil's Own. He has never spoken a soft word to me all these years; but the past three weeks he has tried to woo me in a fashion that curdles the very blood in my veins. I would not ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... one summer's day, "Tho' wedlock's a word that revolts, Whatever our folks in Westphalia may say, I've a great mind to marry miss Quoltz. For of all the dear angels that live near the Weser, Miss Quoltz is the stoutest and tallest; Tho' of all German ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason; but, finding him still dumb with emotion, he said, "I do not know whether you are overpowered by admiration of what is painted in this chamber. You must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock. I believe I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name; my own, out in the world, was Chiaramonte; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... ideal wedlock,' replied Miss Barfoot. 'But so much in life is compromise. After all, she may regard him more affectionally ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... of all sober and thinking men. I had not now held conference with you in this intimate fashion, were I not aware that you, Master Julian, were free from such stain of the times. Heaven, that rendered the King's course of license fruitful, had denied issue to his bed of wedlock; and in the gloomy and stern character of his bigoted successor, we already see what sort of monarch shall succeed to the crown of England. This is a critical period, at which it necessarily becomes the duty of all men to step forward, each in his degree, and aid in rescuing the country which gave ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... of customers' bottles, finished in the company of the waiters, gradually filters into her complexion—no beauty is full blown so soon as the beauty of an oyster-opener. Luckily for Mme. Cibot, lawful wedlock and a portress' life were offered to her just in time; while she still preserved a comeliness of a masculine order slandered by rivals of the Rue de Normandie, who called her "a great blowsy thing," Mme. Cibot might have sat as a model to Rubens. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity with regard to the claims of wedlock. In short, ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... hunted up obscure relatives, and procured for a song sung by themselves, their signatures to a deed of property of which they had never heard; he had proven that John Williams, Junior, son of John Williams, Senior, was born out of wedlock, had gone grubbing back into forgotten burying-places, and disinterred the dead, searched out the weakness of their lives; had raked out a forgotten scandal, carefully gathered it up in its rottenness, and had poured it out, before the jury; and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... well-beaten ways. There is no doubt that, unless some such event as he has narrated, or some influence equivalent to it in effect, had supernaturally drawn him away, he would of his own volition have sought what he was repeatedly advised to seek by his most attached friends, a congenial union in wedlock. He was naturally susceptible, and his attachments were not only firm, but often seemed obstinate. Of celibacy he had, up to this time, no other idea than such as the common run of non-Catholics possess. At home, indeed, when afterwards pressed to seek a wife, he had answered, truly enough, though ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... or a Big Buffalo, and after wedlock to devote yourself to the tender task of digging your lord's maize-field while he smokes ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Gonfalonier of Holy Church (who had seen his works in Rome), to the end that there might be made with his design, as it afterwards was, the Albergo de' poveri di Dio,[1] which is a hospital that serves for sick men and women, and for the innocent children born out of wedlock. The division for the men in this place is in the form of a cross, and extends 160 braccia in all directions; and that of the women is the same. The width is 16 braccia, and within the four square sides that enclose the crosses of each of these two divisions there are four ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... know. She has been fashionable these two winters; her husband has commenced a suit in Doctors' Commons against her cat, and will, they say, recover considerable damages: but the lawyers are of opinion, that the kittens must inherit Mr. French's estate, as they were born in lawful wedlock. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... now rose to view again in my mind as a telling stroke in the full-length portrait that all his acts had been painting of the boy during the last twenty-four hours. Notwithstanding a meddlesome aunt, and an arriving sweetheart, and imminent wedlock, he hadn't forgotten to stop "taking orders from a negro" at the very first opportunity which came to him; his phosphates had done this for him, at least, and I should have the pleasure of correcting ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... me thereto, I will slay myself." Now Prince Ardashir heard of her fame and fell in love with her and told his father who, seeing his case, took pity on him and promised him day by day that he should marry her. So he despatched his Wazir to demand her in wedlock, but King Abd al-Kadir refused, and when the Minister returned to King Sayf al-A'azam and acquainted him with what had befallen his mission and the failure thereof, he was wroth with exceeding wrath ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... and it would be a great gain to recognize and appreciate the element of status which historically underlies the positive institutions and which is still subject to the action of the mores. Marriage (matrimony or wedlock) is a status. It is really controlled by the mores. The law defines it and gives sanctions to it, but the law always expresses the mores. A man and a woman make a contract to enter into it. The mode of entering into it (wedding) is fixed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... any marriage, especially when that marriage puts the savings of their life at the mercy of the husband—and they see but too many miserable instances of what that implies. The very refinement which they have acquired in domestic service often keeps them from wedlock. 'I shall never marry,' said an admirable nurse, the daughter of a common agricultural labourer. 'After being so many years among gentlefolk, I could not live with a man who was not a scholar, and did not ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley

... he certainly did now in her imagination. He had never spoken to her or looked at her. He was a boy of fourteen and she a girl of eight. Now she was twenty-five. Also she was tame and domesticated, with a white husband who was not bad to her, and children for each year of wedlock, who would grow up to speak English better than she could, and her own tongue not at all. And E-egante was not tame, and still lived in a tent. Sarah regarded white people as her friends, but she was proud of being an Indian, and she liked to think that her race ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... at his collar. 'Master Printer John Badge the Younger,' he flickered, 'if you break my crown I will break your chapel. You shall never have license to print another libel. Give me your niece in wedlock?' ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly persuaded that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered, Grushenka lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old voluptuary hoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya had reached this conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. That was how it was that he could believe at times that all Grushenka's uneasiness rose from ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... do in choosing for herself a husband, she is bound in infancy, through holy wedlock, to a child like herself. Her child husband may die before he attains manhood, when she becomes a widow. And, because her stars are supposed to have had influence in his death, she is treated with cruelty and is regarded as the evil star of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... as the lawful daughter of you two. All these documents are from Monte Carlo. You will understand why I am in Nice. Yes—they are all genuine, every one of them, as I have had no difficulty in ascertaining. So I am the daughter of Lucrezia Ferris, born out of wedlock and subsequently whitewashed into a sort of legitimacy. And Lucrezia Ferris is lawfully the Countess Spicca. Lucrezia Ferris, the cowardly spy-woman who more than half controls my life, the lying, thieving servant—she robs me at every turn—the common, half ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... corslet, and then added, "And yet, my dame and I would but quarrel which of the knaves we should like best; for I should wish for the black-eyed rogue—and she, I warrant me, for that blue-eyed, fair-haired darling. Natheless, we must brook our solitary wedlock, and wish joy to those that are more fortunate. Sergeant Brittson, do thou remain here till recalled—protect this family, as under assurance—do them no wrong, and suffer no wrong to be done to them, as thou wilt answer it.—Dame, Brittson is a married ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... 1777.... This day, dearest of friends, completes thirteen years since we were solemnly united in wedlock. Three years of this time we have been cruelly separated. I have patiently as I could, endured it, with the belief that you ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... Harrison,[**] 'was the bull-headed Minotaur. Behind the legend of Pasiphae, made monstrous by the misunderstanding of immigrant conquerors, it can scarcely be doubted that there lurks some sacred mystical ceremony of ritual wedlock ([Greek: ieros gamos]) with a primitive bull-headed divinity.... The bull-Dionysos of Thrace, when he came to Crete, found a monstrous god, own cousin to himself.... Of the ritual of the bull-god in Crete, we know that it consisted in part ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... is of stone, painted and gilt. On the east wall of the north aisle are three monuments which attract attention. That of "Payne of Pallenswick Esqre," who "hath placed this monument to the memory of himself and Jane his wife who hath lived with him in wedlock XLIIII years and died the first day of May in Anno Dmi 1610, and the said William Payne the day of Anno Dmi . The sayd William Payne hath given forever after his decease an Ilande in the Ryver of Thames caled Makenshawe ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... respectable fashion. Of course I can't say that the Glittering Lady is as yet absolutely converted to our faith, but I am certain that she has absorbed enough of its principles to justify me in uniting her in Christian wedlock." ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... propensity to lure man to his undoing. Thus the old belief in the uncleanness of woman was renewed in the minds of men with even greater intensity than ever before, and in addition to a dangerous adventure, even within the sanction of wedlock the sex act became a deed of shame. The following quotations from the church fathers ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... proned into us that you wants this party. Which if we makes a mistake, by way of repa'rin' that error, let me say that if thar's any one else in sight whom you preefers, an' who's s'fficiently single an' yoothful to render him el'gible for wedlock,'—yere Enright takes in Boggs an' Texas with his gaze, wharat Texas grows as green-eyed as a cornered bobcat—'he's yours, Ma'am, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... certainly some awkward circumstances in respect of this illegitimacy question. Sir Clarence had known that he had had a brother born out of wedlock; and it is possible he also knew that the documents relating to his own birth were not where he could put his hands upon them. He may even have been aware that, were his title to be challenged, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... he, frowning a little, nevertheless. 'I should not like to take to wife an over-forward maiden, ready to jump at wedlock. Besides, the congregation might talk, if we were to be married too soon after my father's death. We have, perchance, said enough, even now. But I wished thee to have thy mind set at ease as to thy future well-doing. Thou wilt have leisure to think ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Marry, I must deny myself, and follow Christ. What is that? I must not follow my own desire, but the will and pleasure of Christ. Now what saith he? Non fornicaberis, non adulteraberis; "Thou shalt not be a whoremonger, thou shalt not be a wedlock-breaker." Here I must deny myself, and my will, and give place unto his will; abhor and hate my own will. Yea, and furthermore I must earnestly call upon him, that he will give me grace to withstand my own lust and appetite, in all manner of things which may be against ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... at the departure of the King for Spain, was in his twenty-seventh year. He was a widower; his first wife, Anne of Egmont, having died in 1558, after seven years of wedlock. This lady, to whom he had been united when they were both eighteen years of age, was the daughter of the celebrated general, Count de Buren, and the greatest heiress in the Netherlands. William had thus been faithful to the family traditions, and had increased his possessions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... But Macdonald—for such was the name of the warm-hearted clansman—was not destined to see his dearest wishes realized in the union of the two. A sudden sickness laid low his hardy frame, and, dying, he called the pair to his bedside, and joined their hands in anticipation of the rite of wedlock. The father dead, the lover betook himself to the study of the law, and with an extraordinary aptitude and diligence, not only mastered the details of legal practice, but comprehended, beyond others, the great principles both of English ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... researches, and who only grope in the shade respecting these marriages, may see some light, I have conceived it would be worth while to present for their consideration the following articles on the subject: I. After the death of a married partner, again to contract wedlock, depends on the preceding conjugial love. II. It depends also on the state of marriage, in which the parties had lived. III. With those who have not been in love truly conjugial there is no obstacle or hindrance to their again contracting wedlock. IV. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... ideas, the grandest is that which lay at the root of the monastic system,—that religion is the wedlock of the soul to God; although the method in which this idea was exemplified was a faulty one, or, at any rate, one which rapidly became corrupt, even if it was not so at first. The wonderful worship of the middle ages at least taught men to serve God in ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... 933), through whom Norway had been made a united kingdom. He made a voyage to Jerusalem through the Mediterranean, and was a renowned crusader. After his death (1130), there were fierce contests for the throne, the more fierce as illegitimate sons had the same right in law as those born in wedlock. In 1152 a papal legate established a hierarchy in Norway, which interfered in the struggle. Conflicts arose between the clerical party and the national party, in which the latter at length gained the day. Under Hakon VI., Iceland was conquered (1260). Magnus VI. (1263-1280) ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... to search and probe me. But I came too well prepared. Instead of shrinking from the encounter, my brow contracted increasing indignation; and my voice grew louder, as I stood forth the champion of chaste virginity and sanctimonious wedlock!—The scene, in the very critical sense of the phrase, was ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... addition to that argument. And then, as the fiend is ever ower busy wi' brains like mine, that are subtle beyond their use and station, I was unhappily permitted to addBut they might be brought to think themselves sae sibb as no Christian law will permit their wedlock.'" ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... do not marry before they are from seventy-five to one hundred years old, and that the age at which women enter wedlock is only a little less, and that both men and women frequently live to be from six to eight hundred years old, and in some ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson

... against celibacy that it violates the Divine precept to "increase and multiply;" for this command surely cannot require all marriageable persons to be united in wedlock. Otherwise, bachelors and spinsters would also be guilty of violating the law. The number of men and women consecrated to God by vows of chastity forms but an imperceptible fraction of the human family, their proportion ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... strength of their love and faith, dared the doom to win the promise, for here in the living flesh stands that Vilcaroya, son of the great Huayna-Capac, and there beside him is Golden Star, that virgin of the Royal Race who of her own will joined hands with him in the wedlock of death, and whose pure soul has dwelt with his in the Mansions of the Sun while ten generations of men have lived and died awaiting their return to ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... heyday of her time. And though I was happy, the sobs rose in my throat. There stood Polly Ann, as white now as the bleached linen she wore, and Tom McChesney, tall and spare and broad, as strong a figure of a man as ever I laid eyes on. God had truly made that couple for wedlock ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... when able-bodied people receive government assistance they have responsibilities to the taxpayer. A responsibility to seek work, education, or job training. A responsibility to get their lives in order. A responsibility to hold their families together and refrain from having children out of wedlock. And a responsibility to obey the law. We are going to help this movement. Often, state reform requires waiving certain federal regulations. I will act to make that process easier and quicker for every state that asks our help. And ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... by such peculiarities that they constitute a species by themselves. It consists of the friendships which grow up between husbands and wives, within the shielded enclosure of matrimony. The community of interests between those united in wedlock if they are married in truth as well as in form is the most intimate and entire that ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... God hath joined together, let no pathogenic organism put asunder. (To the assembled company.) Forasmuch as John and Mary have consented together in aseptic wedlock, and have witnessed the same by the exchange of certificates, and have given and pledged their troth, and have declared the same by giving and receiving an aseptic ring, I pronounce that they are man and wife. In the name of Mendel, of Galton, of ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... has placed her little hand With noble faith in mine, And vowed that wedlock's sacred band Our nature ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... wedlock were sacred in the traditions of the Habsburg house, but still the intervention was nominally made. As early as August, 1568, the Emperor's minister at Madrid had addressed a memorial to the King. He had spoken in warm and strong language of the fate of Egmont ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... warm, considering that Haydn was still in the bonds of wedlock. We cannot tell how far he reciprocated the feeling, his letters, if he wrote any, not having been preserved; but it may be safely inferred that a lady who was to be "happy to see you both in the morning and the evening" did not do ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... of a man. And anon, the name giving, he prophesied, saying: Because she is taken of the side of a man, therefore a man shall forsake and leave father and mother and abide and be adherent unto his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh; and though they be two persons, yet in matrimony and wedlock they be but one flesh, and in other things twain. For why, neither of them had power of his own flesh. They were both naked and were not ashamed, for they stood both in the state of innocence. Then the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... everlasting period of twelve years of wrangling. During this time, scarcely an hour, certainly not a day, passed in which they did not, directly or indirectly, reproach one another; and tacitly form, or explicitly express, the wish that they had never been joined in holy wedlock. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... dimpling the comers over thoughts of his grounds for fury. He had them, though none for the incriminating charge. The Sphinx mouth of the married woman at war and at bay must be left unriddled. She and the law differed in their interpretation of the dues of wedlock. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Olga unconsciously drew near to each other. They stood in front of the high pulpit back of the arm-chair, each one resting a hand on the chair back. Although they were quite unaware of it, their position suggested that of a young couple, before the altar, about to be joined in wedlock. The cynical humor of the situation struck Millar, who walked around them, stood in the chair and leaned over the back, like a ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... was the father of Mrs. Devenant's deceased husband, as you will no doubt long since have supposed. A fortnight from the day on which they met in the grave-yard, Mr. Green and Mrs. Devenant were joined in holy wedlock; so that George and Mary, who had loved each other so ardently in their younger days, were now husband and wife. Without becoming responsible for the truthfulness of the above narrative, I give it to ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... carry towards me a love like that which is said to be in a conjugal affection. And if by some mishap I should fall sick, I would be looked to very waywardly. The wise man saith, Where there is no woman—I mean the mother of a family and wife in the union of a lawful wedlock—the crazy and diseased are in danger of being ill used and of having much brabbling and strife about them; as by clear experience hath been made apparent in the persons of popes, legates, cardinals, bishops, abbots, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... slighted, without taking offence at it. For shame, Leander; arise from your humiliation; consider well your infatuation; if none of us are wise at all times, yet the shortest errors are always the best. When a man receives no dowry with his wife, but beauty only, repentance follows soon after wedlock; and the handsomest woman in the world can hardly defend herself against a lukewarmness caused by possession. I repeat it, those fervent raptures, those youthful ardours and ecstacies, may make us pass a few agreeable nights, but this bliss is not at all lasting, and as our passions grow ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... On our happy marriage morn, too, was it not in God's house, before Christ's minister, in Christ's name, that we were married? Surely the kingdom of God is come to us, when our wedlock, as well as our souls and bodies, is holy to the Lord. Is that nothing? How few think of their marriage-joys as holy things— an ordinance of Christ's kingdom, which He delights in and blesses with His presence and His special smile, seeing that it is the noblest and the purest of ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... and distress at this time weighed upon Roger. Osborne, heir to the estate, was going to have a child. The Hamley property was entailed on 'heirs male born in lawful wedlock.' Was the 'wedlock' lawful? Osborne never seemed to doubt that it was—never seemed, in fact, to think twice about it. And if he, the husband, did not, how much less did Aimee, the trustful wife? Yet who could tell how much misery any shadows of illegality might cast into the future? One evening ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... his daughter to wife and he was willing to do so, but when she heard of it she consented not to marry him. Accordingly, the King said to him, "O traitor, thou desirest no good for me, because in past time thou soughtest my daughter in wedlock, but she would none of thee; so now thou wouldst cut off the way of her marriage and wouldst have the Princess lie fallow, that thou mayst take her; but hear from me one word. Thou hast no concern in this matter. How can he be an ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... Wife is the Ocean, He always in danger, she always in motion; And he that in Wedlock twice hazards his Carcase Twice ventures the Drowning, and, Faith, that's a hard case. Even at our Weapons the Females defeat us, And Death, only Death, can sign our Quietus. Not to tell you sad stories ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... the new young Earl of Douglas, a boy of eighteen, tacitly assented. He was the most powerful and wealthiest subject in Scotland; in France he was Duc de Touraine; he was descended in lawful wedlock from Robert II.; "he micht ha'e been the king," as the ballad says of the bonny Earl of Moray. But he held proudly aloof from both Livingstone and Crichton, who were stealing the king alternately: they then combined, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... contrary to the broad round hats, and depending queues, of the women inhabiting the neighbourhood of Saverne. But you should know that the farmers about Strasbourg are generally rich in pocket, and choice and dainty in the disposition of their daughters—with respect to wedlock. They will not deign to marry them to bourgeois of the ordinary class. They consider the blood running in their families' veins to be polluted by such an intermixture; and accordingly they are oftentimes saucy, and hold their heads high. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... daughter was talked about in Paris on account of her great beauty, and renowned above all things for her exceeding gracefulness. There were those who sought her favours by the usual tricks of love and, but others offered large sums of money to the father to give them his daughter in lawful wedlock, the which pleased ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... months of wedlock, Henrietta of England had become so beautiful that the King drew every one's attention to this change, as if he were not unmindful of the fact that he had given this charming person to his brother instead of reserving her for himself ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... united were the ladies of Brookfield, and so bent on their grand hazy object, that they looked upon married life unfavourably: and they had besides an idea that Wedlock, until 'late in life' (the age of thirty, say), was the burial alive of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... my heart's dictates. ROB. Of course—no doubt. It's quite right—I don't mind—that is, not particularly—only it's—it is disappointing, you know. ROSE (to Robin). Oh, but, sir, I knew not that thou didst seek me in wedlock, or in very truth I should not have hearkened unto this man, for behold, he is but a lowly mariner, and very poor withal, whereas thou art a tiller of the land, and thou hast fat oxen, and many sheep and swine, a considerable dairy farm and much ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... Law! what law can search into the remote abyss of nature? what evidence can prove the unaccountable disaffections of wedlock? Can a jury sum up the endless aversions that are rooted in our souls, or can a bench give judgment upon ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar



Words linked to "Wedlock" :   matrimony, marital status, marriage of convenience, monandry, open marriage, polygamy, inmarriage, law, intermarriage, monogamy, common-law marriage, spousal relationship, endogamy, jurisprudence, cuckoldom, misalliance, exogamy, monogamousness, bigamy, sigeh



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com