A good mouth-filling oath. [ William Shakespeare ]
He that imposes an oath makes it.
Not he that for Convenience takes it. [ Butler ]
It is a great sin to swear unto a sin.
But greater sin to keep a sinful oath. [ William Shakespeare ]
Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath,
Study to break it and not break my troth. [ William Shakespeare ]
An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven:
Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?
No, not for Venice. [ William Shakespeare ]
I'll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath;
Who shuns not to break one, will sure crack both. [ William Shakespeare ]
An oath that is not to be made is not to be kept. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
It is ill to take an unlawful oath, but worse to keep it. [ Proverb ]
It's a hard world, neighbors, if a man's oath must be his master. [ Dryden ]
An oath is a recognizance to heaven, binding us over in the courts above to plead to the indictment of our crimes. [ Southern ]
I take the official oath today with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution by any hypercritical rules. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend
it. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
For it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. [ William Shakespeare ]
The accusing spirit, which flew off to heaven's chancery with the oath blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever. [ Sterne ]
No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath. [ Swift ]
Over Under. These words have various meanings besides the designation of mere locality, and are often misapplied. The terms under oath,
under hand and seal,
under arms,
under his own signature,
etc., are fully established and authorized forms of expression, which do not concern the relative positions of the persons and things indicated, but are idiomatic. Hence, over his own signature,
is an unjustifiable phrase, despite the fact that the signature is really at the bottom of the instrument signed. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]