Nov. 7, 2024, 1:45 p.m.
In today's fast-paced world, the enduring quality of fidelity often gets overshadowed by fleeting trends and passing fancies. Yet, fidelity—whether in relationships, commitments, or principles—remains a beacon of trust and loyalty. It serves as a cornerstone for building meaningful and lasting connections. This carefully curated collection of inspiring fidelity quotes aims to rekindle the appreciation for this timeless virtue. Each quote offers a unique perspective, encouraging reflection and perhaps even a renewed dedication towards the commitments that truly matter. Dive in to explore the wisdom and insights shared by thinkers, writers, and leaders who understand the profound impact of staying true to one's word.
1. “Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.” - Jeffrey McDaniel
2. “Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.” - Marcus Aurelius
3. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.” - Charlotte Brontë
4. “Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.” - Emily Giffin
5. “Snape's patronus was a doe,' said Harry, 'the same as my mother's because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from when they were children.” - J.K. Rowling
6. “We drove to the hotel and said goodbye. How hypocritical to go upstairs with a man you don't want to fuck, leave the one you do sitting there alone, and then, in a state of great excitement, fuck the one you don't want to fuck while pretending he's the one you do. That's called fidelity. That's called monogamy. That's called civilization and its discontents.” - Erica Jong
7. “Across the years I will walk with you -in deep green forests; on shores of sand:and when our time on earth is through,in heaven, too, you will have my hand” - Robert Sexton
8. “I will ask no more of life than this:that I might love you through all my days,and that you may find both peace and joy in the constancy of my heart.” - Robert Sexton
9. “There is no moment of my life when you are not a part of me; you hold my heart; you guard my soul; you guide my dreams so tenderlyAnd if my will might be done, and all I long for could come true, with perfect joy I would choose to share eternity with you.” - Robert Sexton
10. “Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be. It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predicatable of calamities.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
11. “A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. To be good for nothing is just that. If a virtue has been thought a virtue long enough, it must be assumed to have practical justification - though the very longevity that proves its practicality may obscure it. That seems to be what happened with the idea of fidelity...Our age could be characterized as a manifold experiment in faithlessness, and if it has as yet produced no effective understanding of the practicalities of faith, it has certainly produced massive evidence of the damage and disorder of its absence.(pg.115-116, "The Body and the Earth")” - Wendell Berry
12. “I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn’t think so. And then I wondered: Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life?I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn’t quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me. But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.” - Sue Miller
13. “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
14. “every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
15. “I vow I am, and always will be, constant and faithful in my love for you, Anais. Nothing you or anyone else does shall alter these feelings. I am forever loving, forever waiting, forever yearning...forever yours.” - Charlotte Featherstone
16. “Men are as faithful as their options.” - Chris Rock
17. “Do we really mean it when we say ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part or do we add a silent clause, ‘unless you shame me or disappoint me?’ What is the cost of unconditional love and how capable are we of giving that?” - Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker
18. “Thank God (my wife) and I were both born poorso the concept of fidelity was allowed to take root in us.” - Allan Wolf
19. “Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.” - seneca
20. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë
21. “Jag tycker inte om trohet därför att den är vacker, men därför att den är nödvändig. Den som bedrar en människa dödar henne långsamt.” - Stig Dagerman
22. “God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you -- yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery. ... Complaints are always being made about men's lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women.” - Augustine of Hippo
23. “It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I’d been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle.” - Steven L. Peck
24. “There are things we don't do. From this moment forth, let us all ensure our every action reflects well on us and our ancestors. Let us live to the highest standards, lest we win this war only to find ourselves staring in the mirror at the face of our late enemy.” - Jack Campbell
25. “Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices!...” - Carlo Collodi
26. “La música sentimental tiene la especial cualidad de llevarte hacia atrás en el tiempo a la vez que te lleva hacia delante, y por eso te sientes nostálgico y esperanzado a la vez.” - Nick Hornby
27. “The only sheets I'll ever long for are my own.” - A.J. Hartley and David Hewson
28. “It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.” - Émile Zola
29. “It had been years since she question his fidelity, but he'd stepped on to the old fame track again, and that was where the road had taken them before. Infidelity could be forgiven, but forgetting it was impossible. Strangely, that wasn't what bothered her the most. What bothered her was that she didn't really care.” - Kristin Hannah
30. “What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.” - St. Ignatius of Loyola