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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Vows

Men’s vows are women’s traitors.

Shakespeare.

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows; and to be equally avoided.

William Penn.

Those mouth-made vows, which break themselves in swearing.

Shakespeare.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Johnson.

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows; they are polluted offerings, more abhorred than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

Shakespeare.

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly passing stream.

Catullus.

Make no vows to perform this or that; it shows no great strength, and makes thee ride behind thyself.

Fuller.

  • No man takes or keeps a vow,
  • But just as he sees others do;
  • Nor are they ’blig’d to be so brittle
  • As not to yield and bow a little:
  • For as best temper’d blades are found,
  • Before they break, to bend quite round;
  • So truest oaths are still more tough,
  • And tho’ they bow, are breaking proof.
  • Butler.