promise or oath
Vows are particularly serious promises or oaths, often made within a religious context, such as a wedding vow or a vow of chastity.
- Vow me no vows.
- Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit without Money (c. 1614; publisher 1639), Act IV, scene 4.
- Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
- Ecclesiastes. V. 5.
- Oh, why should vows so fondly made,
Be broken ere the morrow,
To one who loves as never maid
Loved in this world of sorrow?
- James Hogg, The Broken Heart (1829).
- Vows with so much passion, swears with so much grace,
That 'tis a kind of Heaven to be deluded by him.
- Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens (1677), Act I, scene 1.
- Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
- Let us embrace, and from this very moment
Vow an eternal misery together.
- Thomas Otway, The Orphan(1680), Act IV, scene 1.