Oaths Quotes

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“…the trouble with oaths of the form,death before dishonor,is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“I swore on my knees at the altar where you held me that I would kill you. It was an oath you made me make in my own blood. And now I have returned to give you the promised blade.”
― T. Mountebank, Sister Sable

“If you have to go, you know I will go with you." We slept.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.”
― Herman Melville

“No one, by swearing, makes themselves an ounce more honest; any more than a man makes himself wealthy by counting his gold. Oaths may make a liar a liar yet again, having lied about the oath as well. But it cannot alter the worth of an honest man's word.”
― Jake Yaniak, The Punishment of the Gods

“Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this:We(and then we say our own names),Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him.”
― Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist

“When I said I should die in your service with pleasure, I intended to live in it many long years; since, to tell you the truth, from a child I had always a particular dislike to dying, and I think that with every hour the prejudice grows stronger.”
― Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Castle Spectre

“Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,—imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible merely to carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors? Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend people against the evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the service of the evildoers and against the people!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII

“Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled," the fluty voice responded. "Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing. You have learned what you can from the world. You have graduated from that huge portion or Nehwon. It now remains that you take up your postgraduate studies in Lankhmar, the highest university of civilized life here.”
― Fritz Leiber, Swords Against Death

“I have seen what power does to people. And I have seen how those who pledge loyalty come to resent their oaths and wish for the destruction of the one who holds them. I was never less free than when I ruled.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“More solemn oaths are often sworn by a look and a movement of the head than are heard in law-courts.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette

“Self talk and self prayer: When you audible the first and correctly interpret, the white coats correct you in a nuthouse. When you audible the second and misinterpret, the dinner coats swear you to an oath in the White House. Does this make you nuts too? Then outfit your sanity seeking political asylum at my house.”
― Brian Spellman

“He would not let himself be overawed by her consequence! He was also the son of noble parents, if not of a king." Then-then they'll need more Dagons, "he blurted out." Let me go, please. Let me serve the king. "
"It is not my decision to make."
"How can you stop me if I refuse to take vows as a monk when my novitiate is ended?" he demanded.
She raised an eyebrow. "You have already pledged yourself to enter the church, an oath spoken outside these gates."
"I had no choice!"
"You spoke the words. I did not speak them for you."
"Is a vow sworn under compulsion valid?"
"Did I or any other hold a sword to your throat? You swore the vow."
"But-"
"And," she said, lifting a hand for silence-a hand that bore two handsome rings, one plain burnished gold braid, the other a fine opal in a gold setting, "your father has pledged a handsome dowry to accompany you. We do not betroth ourselves lightly, neither to a partner in marriage-" He winced as she paused. Her gaze was keen and unrelenting. "-nor to the church. If a vow can be as easily broken as a feather can be snapped in two-" She lifted a quill made from an owl feather from her table, displaying it to him. "-then how can we any of us trust the other?" She set down her feather. "Our oaths are what makes us honorable people. What man or woman who has forsworn his noble lord or lady can ever be trusted again? You swore your promise to Our Lady and Lord. Do you mean to swear that oath and live outside the church for the rest of your days?"
Said thus, it all sounded so much more serious. No man or woman who made a vow and then broke it was worthy of honor.”
― Kate Elliott, Prince of Dogs

“I accept it, Stormfather! I accept that there will be those I cannot protect!”
The storm rumbled, and he felt warmth surrounding him, Light infusing him. He heard Syl gasp, and a familiar voice, not the Stormfather’s.
THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

“Without a belief in God and the soul, where is the oath? Without the oath, where is the obligation or the pressure to fulfill it? Where is the law that even kings must obey? Where is the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, or The bill of Rights? (All of which arose out of attempts to rule by lawless tyranny.) Where is the lifelong fidelity of husband and wife? Where is the safety of the innocent child growing in the womb? Where, in the end, is the safety for any of us from those currently bigger and stronger than we are? And how striking it is that such oaths we use to make us better, not worse.”
― Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith