Was it a strength or a weakness to be unable to break one's word?

It is quite possible, besides, to break one's word to the ear and yet keep it to the sense."

It's like breaking one's word to a child."

WHY does the Press describe breaking one's word as a U-turn?

"There is a great difference between breaking one's word - which I have not done - and waiting around to be incinerated by someone who doesn't understand the difference.

He thought of Benedetta talking in paradoxes about honour and faith, of how honour might sometimes depend on abasing oneself and faith on breaking one's word.

It seems to me, Harry, that sometimes honour may depend on abasing oneself rather than on guarding one's self-esteem, and faith on breaking one's word rather than on keeping it."

I would rather endure the winds and the tempests all my life: And if it were not a mean and ugly thing to break one's word, he would never make his peace or be reconciled with me.

He added that, regrettable as it might be to have to break one's word, it was far better to do so than to condemn oneself to years of bickering that ended in the squalor of the divorce court.

But to break one's word /is/ a crime, and because of the temptation of this stuff, which, I confess, for me has more allurement than anything else on earth, at any rate, in these latter days, I have broken my word.