"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Congress of Vienna represents an important milestone along the road of progress. It is a great precedent. As a disillusioned contemporary admitted, it "prepared the world for a more complete political structure; if ever the powers should meet again to establish a political system by which wars of conquest would ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Bell had been in the habit of making such demands, the housekeeper would have continued to rebel. As it was, she had grave doubts of the wisdom of establishing such a dangerous precedent as compliance with the absurd request. But Raymond Mortimer's distress was so genuine, and the pleasure of the picnic so obviously rested on her surrender, that she made it, albeit slowly and with groans and dismal predictions. The boy's face beamed ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... answered the present emergency, which, by our enormous expenditure, necessarily forced a partial and temporary suspension of specie payments upon our banks and Government. Mr. Chase's system is exclusively his own, and, in many of its aspects, is without a precedent in history. When first proposed by him it had very few friends, and was forced upon a reluctant Congress by the great emergency, presenting the alternative of its adoption or financial ruin. Indeed, upon a test vote in Congress in February ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... under a portrait of your great-grandfather, in a dim parlor full of mahogany and rose jars, with her black silk skirts spreading about her, and an Old Blue cup in her hand, and talk family,—how cousin this married a man whose people aren't anybody, and cousin that is outraging precedent by naming her child for her husband's side of the house. She's a funny, dear old lady! You know, Miss Paget," the professor went on, with his eager, impersonal air, "when I met you, I thought you didn't quite seem ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... to have a snap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which three middle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. The roar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us that they had only followed precedent—we'd had to do the same thing the year before to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and it laughed at us. Unfortunately, we didn't stand any too well there anyway, while most of the Blanks were the pride and joy of the professors. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... forthcoming, a great cheer shook the building, while Virginia and the young ladies with her bowed and blushed and smiled. Colonel Carvel, who was a Director, laid his hand paternally on the blue coat of the young Prince. Reversing all precedent, he presented his Royal Highness to his daughter and to the other young ladies. It was done with the easy grace of a Southern gentleman. Whereupon Lord Renfrew bowed and smiled too, and stroked his mustache, which was a habit he had, and so fell naturally ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... your wisdom and piety, well contemplated the bad precedent," said the other, with much consternation in his countenance at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means bearing any resemblance to a stag's.... "I have, I have," replied the other, interrupting ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... with the strictness that some parents do the studies of their children. He was very particular that we should play the old English games according to their original form; and consulted old books for precedent and authority for every 'merrie disport;' yet I assure you there never was pedantry so delightful. It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... installed as a public organ of government, (and first owned a distinct political responsibility,) did it become the duty of a religion which assumed, as it were, the official tutelage of poverty, to proclaim and consecrate that function by some great memorial precedent. And, accordingly, in testimony of that obligation, the first Christian Caesar, on behalf of Christianity, founded the first system of relief for pauperism. It is true, that largesses from the public treasury, gratuitous coin, or corn sold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... tells me you have been uniformly successful with the cases he's put you on. I hope," the young father entreated, "that you'll follow your usual precedent." ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... feature of this meeting will be the unusual number of missionaries and workers from the field, who will give living pictures of things as they are. Following the happy precedent of other years, each of the co-operative Congregational societies will be represented by a speaker chosen by itself. These addresses will be brief, and will manifest the feelings of harmony and comity existing ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... these contractions: for, instead of prob DEUM atque hominum fidem, they say Deorum. They are not aware, I suppose, that custom has sanctified the licence. The same Poet, therefore, who, almost without a precedent, has said patris mei MEUM FACTUM pudet, instead of meorum factorum,—and textitur exitium examen rapit for exitiorum, does not choose to say liberum, as we generally do in the expressions cupidos liberum, and in liberum loco, but, as the literary virtuosos above-mentioned ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... composite structure suggests the Star and Crescent of Mohammed. The architecture shows a free interpretation of early Roman forms. It is, in fact, a purely romantic conception by Architect Maybeck, entirely free from traditional worship or obedience to scholastic precedent. Its greatest charm has been established through successful composition; the architectural elements have been arranged into a colossal theme of exceptional harmony, into which the interwoven planting and the mirror lake have been incorporated in a masterly way. The entire composition bespeaks ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... was deeply moved. The perils of such a precedent were evident enough to any thinking man. Although the unwearied exertions of Bright, Roebuck, and other leading Radicals, could not arouse the people to that state of unreasoning excitement in which these demagogues delight, yet the tone of the press and the spirit of the public meetings gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... led to their taking to the sea; but as Lesbos had long been famous for its buccaneers, whether indigenous or importations from Catalonia and Aragon, there was nothing unusual in the brothers adopting a profession which was alike congenial to bold hearts and sanctioned by time-honoured precedent.[5] Ur[u]j, the elder, soon became the reis, or captain, of a galleot, and finding his operations hampered in the Archipelago by the predominance of the Sultan's fleet, he determined to seek a wider and less interrupted field for his depredations. Rumours had reached the Levant ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... me know?" Mr. Longdon reflected. "I'm sure I can't say—it's a sort of thing for which I haven't a measure or a precedent. In my time women didn't declare their passion. I'm thinking of what the meaning is of Mrs. Brookenham's wanting ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... have survived, for the hill people had "the habit of standing." They had set a precedent of fertility and hardihood and the will to live for a matter of centuries.... But there had come influences over which not even the carefully nurtured stubbornness of 300 years could prevail.... The railroad and the concrete highway and the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... thus created is without precedent in American history. When Scott captured the City of Mexico it was acknowledged on both sides that his occupation was only to be temporary, and there were no insurgents to deal with. When the Americans entered California they found only a scanty population, who were ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... modern locomotive, after all these years of labor. In the same year of 1829, on the morning of the 6th of October, a great crowd had assembled to see an extraordinary race—a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three: The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and Manchester ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... of his disposition, and of the employment of his time till he was Master of Arts, which was anno 1615, and in the year 1619 he was chosen Orator for the University. His two precedent Orators were Sir Robert Naunton,[7] and Sir Francis Nethersole.[8] The first was not long after made Secretary of State, and Sir Francis, not very long after his being Orator, was made Secretary to the Lady Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. In this place of Orator our George Herbert continued eight ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Sometimes, though rarely, black men had come here, and from them they had heard of the existence of men much whiter than themselves, who sailed on the sea in ships, but for the arrival of such there was no precedent. We had, however, been seen dragging the boat up the canal, and he told us frankly that he had at once given orders for our destruction, seeing that it was unlawful for any stranger to enter here, when a message had come from "She-who-must-be-obeyed," ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... uniform habit of caution robbed his acts of the fine flavor of spontaneity; he was painstaking, and as laborious as Philip, which is the last effort of comparison, seeing Philip's industry was all but without precedent. If he flooded coasts and inlands by the seas he emptied on them as if the seas were his, he also inundated courts of kings and assemblies of nobles with appeals, remonstrances, or letters of instruction or information. He lacked ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... nevertheless very great when she told me that you had offered her your hand, and that she, young and inexperienced as she is, had, without consulting me, ventured to accept you. Such a thing, my dear sir, is against all precedent. The whole of society would be subverted, and all parental authority destroyed, were I as a father to allow what you do me the honour of proposing to take place. I am, I repeat, deeply grateful to you for the inestimable ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... to those who see in the task only an assignment. Such men know the actual working of the financial mechanism, not as economists see it, but as Bagehot knew it. They understand the actual working of municipal machinery besides having a minute knowledge of character, decision, practice, and precedent in administration. In our real politics, big and little, they and the Washington and Albany correspondents are the only men who know both sides, are trusted with the secrets of both parties, and read closed pages of the book of the chronicles of the Republic. As for the Police Headquarters ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... windows of our hotel commanded a most astonishing extent of mountain scenery diversified by the windings of the Arve through a well cultivated valley. The hotel was sufficiently comfortable, but the bill was extravagant beyond any precedent in the annals of extortion. We had occasion to remonstrate with our host on the subject, and our French companion exerted himself so much on the occasion, that at last we succeeded in persuading the landlord to make a considerable reduction ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... as influential a Whig as any in the city. If Hawthorne was removed through his instrumentality, he performed our author a service, which neither of them could have realized at the time. Hawthorne, however, had a strong precedent in his favor in this instance; namely, Shakespeare's caricature of Sir Thomas Luce, as Justice Shallow in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; but there is no reason why we should think better or worse of Mr. Upham on ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... set myself to work, and within a few months produced a piece of five acts, which was accepted of at the theatre. I remembered to have formerly taken tickets of other poets for their benefits, long before the appearance of their performances; and, resolving to follow a precedent which was so well suited to my present circumstances, I immediately provided myself with a large number of little papers. Happy indeed would be the state of poetry, would these tickets pass current at the bakehouse, the ale-house, and the chandler's ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... so. Judge Starkins has decided that your manumission is unlawful; your marriage a bad precedent, and inimical to the welfare of society; and that you and your children are remanded ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... convict station was at that time a hard one. He was often stinted in rations, and of necessity deprived of all rational recreation, while punishment for offences was prompt and severe. The companies drafted to the penal settlements were not composed of the best material, and the pair had good precedent for the course they ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... animates House just now. BONNER LAW leads off with demand for judicial inquiry into "the Plot." Fact that its appointment would establish novel precedent in constitutional procedure adds interest to situation. PREMIER, with emphatic thump of the table that reminds it of GLADSTONE in his prime, stands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... appearance of it, as much as possible, was by them considered as a providential escape. They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they had then settled forever. Accordingly, that they might not relax the nerves of their monarchy, and that they might preserve a close conformity to the practice of their ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory statutes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... days' wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and would be as soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master Betty's acting was so far wonderful, and drew crowds to see it as a mere singularity, because he was a boy. Mr. Kean was a grown man, and there was no rule or precedent established in the ordinary course of nature why some other man should not appear in tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther, Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as beautiful as it was ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... rebuilding of his system on a healthy plan by new material. During most of the time he has suffered from a profuse and weakening diarrhea, but this we have not checked nor retarded, because it was Nature's indispensable condition precedent to the new man. His perspiration has been profuse, and that we have assisted for the same reason by every means in our power—all our baths and rubbings, our galvanism and medicine so far as used, have favored to the utmost ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Government were said to have only "conquered by giving way," for they agreed to put the number of men into the Estimate, and thus avoid making a precedent, according to our contention, absolutely unconstitutional. On the other hand, Lord Beaconsfield's speech in the House of Lords was defiant in the extreme, and Holker's [Footnote: The Attorney-General.] in the Lower House ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... if those deeds of the previous night, that long fight against fate, those dismal forebodings, the tragedy of the Prince, were all separated from us by a gulf of years. It was almost impossible to conceive of them as belonging to our immediate precedent past and as colouring our present and our future. And as my gaze swept the horizon for the orient towards the west it landed upon nothing less ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... observation of the modern commonwealths, is of opinion that an agrarian is not necessary: it must be confessed that at the first sight of them there is some appearance favoring his assertion, but upon accidents of no precedent to us. For the commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland, I mean of those leagues, being situated in countries not alluring the inhabitants to wantonness, but obliging them to universal industry, have an implicit agrarian in ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... oftentimes had said— Write what thou seest in letters large of gold, That livid are my votaries to behold, And in a moment made alive and dead. Once in thy heart my sovran influence spread A public precedent to lovers told; Though other duties drew thee from my fold, I soon reclaim'd thee as thy footsteps fled. And if the bright eyes which I show'd thee first, If the fair face where most I loved to stay, Thy young heart's icy hardness when I burst, Restore to me the bow which all obey, Then may thy ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania had married in 1880 a young niece of Senator John Sherman of Ohio, thus making an alliance of dynastic importance in politics, and in society a reign of sixteen years, during which Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Lodge led a career, without precedent and without succession, as the dispensers of sunshine over Washington. Both of them had been kind to Adams, and a dozen years of this intimacy had made him one of their habitual household, as he was of Hay's. In a small society, such ties between ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Sir John, "that we shall be ten in number, and I would therefore propose that, after an illustrious precedent, we limit our operations to ten days. Then if we each produce one culinary poem a day we shall, at the end of our time, have provided the world with a hundred new reasons for enjoying life, supposing, of course, that we have no failures. I propose, therefore, that our ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... of the Supreme Court in constitutional interpretation has, for all but special students, fallen into something like obscurity owing to the luster of Marshall's achievements and to his habit of deciding cases without much reference to precedent. But these early labors are by no means insignificant, especially since they pointed the way to some of Marshall's most striking decisions. In Chisholm vs. Georgia, * which was decided in 1793, the Court ruled, in the face of an assurance in the "Federalist" to ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... celebration of the last marriage. The canopy and all the paraphernalia of royalty will be assigned to the new Empress, and the Emperor will furthermore make a concession on this occasion which is without precedent in the annals of the realm: at table he will resign the first place to his daughter, and take the second place himself. Nothing will be left undone to give these ceremonies their full splendor and to show the interest with which these new ties are regarded here. The Emperor ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... course. Mr. Blake walked on to wait for me in the garden, while I accompanied Betteredge into his room. I fully anticipated a demand for certain new concessions, following the precedent already established in the cases of the stuffed buzzard, and the Cupid's wing. To my great surprise, Betteredge laid his hand confidentially on my arm, and put this ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... fair means or foul—and I am afraid the means were not always fair means, as we should consider them—the exemption of their house from episcopal visitation or control. I believe that the earliest instance of such an exemption being granted in England was that of the Conqueror's Abbey of Battle. The precedent was a bad one, and led to all sorts of attempts by other houses to procure for themselves the like privilege. Such attempts were stoutly resisted by the bishops, who foresaw the evils that would inevitably follow, and which in fact did follow; and, of course, bishop and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... honour, all respect. It is only when they preach or teach these preliminaries, these accessories, to be more important than Literature itself—it is only when they, owing all their excuse in life to the established daylight, din upon us that the precedent darkness claims precedence in honour, that one is driven to utter upon them this dialogue, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the description she gives of her visit to the Empress of Germany shows very clearly. When this meeting was first proposed, the Margravine declined positively to entertain the idea. 'There was no precedent,' she writes, 'of a King's daughter and the Empress having met, and I did not know to what rights I ought to lay claim.' Finally, however, she is induced to consent, but she lays down three ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... An upright judge, with his own passions and prejudices subdued, attentive to the principles of justice by which alone the happiness of the world can be promoted, and by the rectitude of his decisions affording precedent and example to future generations, he considered as a character that must command the reverence and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... says that the world has produced only about half a dozen men who deserve to be placed in the first class. The elements that make up this super-superior man are high intellect, which abandons itself to the purpose in hand, careless of form and precedent; indifference to obstacles and opposition; and a joyous, sympathetic, loving spirit that runs over and inundates everything it touches, all with no special thought of personal pleasure, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." There can be little doubt that, in this case, Jeroboam was not so much recalling the transgression in the wilderness—it was not an encouraging precedent—as he was adopting the well-known cognizance of the tribe of Joseph, that is to say, of the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which together made up the more important part of his kingdom, as the symbol of the presence ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Bees always erected domes on every planet they colonized, Arthur, but precedent is a fallible tool. And it's even more firmly established that there's no possibility of our rationalizing the motivations of a culture as alien as the Hymenops'—we've been over that argument a hundred times on ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless and wearisome discussions of the matter: Mrs. Prettyman had no legal claim upon Stoke Revel. To give her compensation for the plum tree would be to allow that she had; to create a precedent highly dangerous under the circumstances. How could one refuse to other old women or old men leaving their cottages what one had weakly granted to her? The demands would be unceasing, the trouble endless. So arguing, Mrs. de Tracy soon brought herself ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Judeans were all Jews and this was under the law before Christian baptism had superceded water baptism at Pentecost. Of course they baptized with water, circumcised the flesh and kept the law of Moses; but this is no precedent for us whether Jews or Gentiles in these gospel days; since the Holy Spirit is poured out upon all flesh in all the fulness we ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... life Mr. Foote could find a family precedent. This matter had been handled thus, and that other matter had been handled so. But this thin—it had never been handled because it had never happened. He was left standing squarely on his own ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... schools which the God of Western theology is supposed to have opened for the education of Man. And it is in that special development of the Legal School which is known as Pharisaism that we shall look for a precedent for the conventional teaching of arithmetic in our elementary schools. The ultra-legalism of the Pharisee in the days of Christ finds its exact counterpart in the ultra-legalism of the child who has been taught ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... In accordance with classic precedent, this anthology ought to have consisted of "1,001 Gems of German Thought," I have been content with half that number, not—heaven knows!—for any lack of material, but simply for lack of time and energy to make the ingathering. After all, enough is as good as a feast, and I think that the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... time endures, nature's laws work out natural ends. Generations may pass away, perhaps perish from violence, and others succeed with equally unnatural institutions, making miserable the race, until it, like the precedent, passes from the earth. Yet these great laws work on, and in the end triumph ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... merciless and logical veracity with which he discriminates between the solemn judgment of a tribunal and a stump speech from the bench,—the startling narration of decisions and statutes, practice and precedent, condensed into a few of the closing pages of the Oration, with which the discussion read by Chief Justice Taney in the famous case of Dred Scott is confronted and exposed,—are among the greater merits of this elaborate and able ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... nobility, with no clear line of division between them. They are in fact the very rich, whose families have some prominence, and the moderately well off. For it may be noticed that among nobles of all times and countries, although wealth unaided may not give titles and place, it is pretty much a condition precedent for acquiring them. A man may be of excellent family, and poor; but to be a great noble, a man must be rich. In old France the road to preferment was through the court; but to shine at court a considerable income was required; and so the noblesse de cour was more or less ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... that faced the Atlantic—when the new-found continent first felt the abiding foot of the stranger—from Oglethorpe to Acadia, reveals, alas! no Utopia. It remained for a later time,—the earlier half of the present century, amid some severity of climate, and under conditions without precedent, and incapable of repetition,—to evolve a community in the heart of the continent, shut away from intercourse with civilized mankind—that slowly crystalized into a form beyond the ideal of the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... of that, on my father's part," said Morton; "and if," he continued, laughing, "if the grave old ladies of my acquaintance find fault, I can quiet them in a moment, by quoting the conduct of the tribe of Benjamin, in a similar situation, by way of precedent." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... realize that you are—your mother's daughter," said he, in a queer, hard tone. "No, I won't refuse the first thing you ask me. But perhaps you'd better not consider that a precedent." ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... development, which has been called by Professor Owen metagenesis. In this case "the new parts are not moulded upon the inner surface of the old ones. The plastic force has changed its course of operation. The outer case, and all that gave form and character to the precedent individual, perish and are cast off; they are not changed into the corresponding parts of the new individual. These are due to a new and distinct developmental process," &c.[887] Metamorphosis, however, graduates so insensibly into metagenesis, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... (Centre) re-opened the debate: I think that the preliminary question, whether our present endeavours after economic justice really are without any historical precedent, was exhaustively discussed yesterday and was answered in the negative. At least, I am authorised by yesterday's speakers of the opposite party to declare that they are fully convinced that the teaching ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... precedent if Austria should justify those who lay sacrilegious hands upon the crown of their lawful sovereign; and, for my part, my principles forbid me to uphold a band of rebels, who are engaged in an insolent conspiracy to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of the application of the principles of right and wrong, as at present understood, to the investigation of the continued soundness of an accepted precept of law. In the judgments of Lord Stowell there are many such examples; and guided as he was by precedent and authority, he could not be said to have been led by anything but the principles of universal justice. At no time does he appear for a moment to have hesitated in putting aside precedent, when the true doctrine was unsatisfied. Mr. Justice Story acted ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... and attempted to hold it as the viceroy of France? When, in June, 1775, Governor Dunmore and his Council took refuge on board a British man-of-war, the Virginians of that day proceeded to meet in convention, and provide new officers to manage the affairs of their State. Let this historical precedent be followed now. Wherever, in either of the States which the rebels have sought to appropriate, the loyal citizens can find a spot in which they can meet in safety, let them meet by their delegates in convention, and adopt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... no means improbable, however, that these hydrocarbons are, at least in part, products of the action of the sulphuric acid. Cahours and Kraemer's and Godzki's observations on the higher fractions of crude wood spirit, in fact, furnish a precedent for this view. Referring to the results obtained by Anderson, Tilden, and Renard, the author suggests that rosin spirit perhaps contains hydrides intermediate in composition between those of the CnH{2n-6} and CnH{2n} series, also derived like the latter from hydrocarbons ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... having contributed to their injury was brought very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were so, she had got to a common plane of understanding with him on some difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of with any justice or generosity; for, according to precedent, Gwendolen's view of her position might easily have been no other than that her husband's marriage with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs. Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some resentment ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... copyright remaining with me. You remember you wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate: there is hardly any occasion on which I should be otherwise, if the printing any poem of mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: so, any liberality you exercise will not be drawn into a precedent against you. I fancy this is a case in which one may handsomely puff one's own ware, and I venture to call my verses good for once. I send them to you directly, because expedition will render whatever ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... wounds undeniably were; but they were not the less severe on that account, nor was the contagion of spontaneous martyrdom on that account the less likely to spread. In reality, the late astonishing schism in the Scottish church (astonishing because abrupt) is, in one respect, without precedent. Every body has heard of persecutions that were courted; but in such a case, at least, the spirit of persecution must have had a local existence, and to some extent must have uttered menaces—or how should those menaces have been defied? Now, the "persecutions," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... that Brother Simmons and his whole following pointed out unitedly and successively the utter impossibility and absurdity of the proposal which was unconstitutional and without precedent. The hockey team had the company with them and with the bit in their teeth ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... tugs and other vessels. The fact that the water in that vicinity was crested with currency had not escaped the notice of these navigators and they had gone to it as one man. First in the race came the tug Reuben S. Watson, the skipper of which, following a famous precedent, had taken his little daughter to bear him company. It was to this fact that Marlowe really owed his rescue. Women have often a vein of sentiment in them where men can only see the hard business side of a situation; and it was ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the discontented nobles, won from his brother the affections of the young king, and believing every thing ripe for an attack on his usurped authority, he designed to bring forward in the ensuing parliament a proposal for separating, according to ancient precedent, the office of guardian of the king's person from that of protector of the realm, and for conferring upon himself the former. But he discovered too late that he had greatly miscalculated his forces; his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... find that Paris is still everywhere talking of Mr. Roosevelt. It was a thing almost without precedent that this blase city kept up its interest in him without abatement for eight days; but that a week after his departure should still find him the main topic of conversation is a fact which has undoubtedly entered into Paris history. The Temps ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... however, did not sit with the knights of shires, but apart by themselves, and, through loyalty or obsequiousness, assessed themselves in a contribution nearly one third greater than that granted by the barons and knights. The convenient precedent was not overlooked, and it became henceforth customary to expect the like liberality from subsequent parliaments. At this period, also, the principal divisions of the city were first denominated wards; these wards were presided over ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... knows that henceforth he must live by it or else begin life over again in another sphere. At all events, for a term of years, his personal prosperity depends upon the use he can make of his hold upon the public goods. He is not individually to be blamed, perhaps, for he follows a precedent as widely recognized as it is universally pernicious. It is the system that is to be blamed, the general belief that a man can, and justly may, support himself by clinging to a set of principles of which he ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... he found that they had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts instead of following the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for working them in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could make the Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this new process, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation rather than offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had to be dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... instruments for carrying out the popular will. The real tyrants now, those whose irresponsible authority is dangerous to the masses, are the kings of industry; if the cry of "liberty" is to be raised again, it should be raised, according to all historical precedent, in behalf of the slaves of modern industry rather than in behalf of the fortunate few who give up so grudgingly the practical powers they have usurped. There were those, indeed, who fought passionately for ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of which we are mercifully protected by a painted vapour, by an illusion that unspeakable darkness which we all of us know to exist, but which we hypocritically deny, and determine never to confess to one another? Here again, however, Zachariah had his advantage over others. He had his precedent. He remembered that quagmire in the immortal Progress into which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom; he remembered that gloom so profound "that ofttimes, when he lifted up his foot to set forward, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... were stern-faced and intense. They had made laws of their own, they had established a code. The violation of either was not to be countenanced. It was of no consequence to them that Judge Malone's methods were without precedent, that they were not even a travesty in the true ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this "gently broadening down from precedent to precedent," which makes the British constitution of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar series of national adjustments in which the power of the Monarchs has been modified from time to time ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... with him a peace to the advantage of all the princes of France. They who gave this advice thought that in case it was adopted, the king should be restrained of his liberty. Further, it was against all precedent to free so great a seigneur when he had committed so grave ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... history is singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous and austere renown—that he wrote a great number of verses, as little durable as his laws [98]. As for the latter—when we learn that they were stern and bloody beyond precedent—we have little difficulty in believing that they ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... principle, no precedent, no reason why, if the majority desire anything, a Legislative sanction should not be given ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... days ago he sent me his correspondence with Senor Posada, who observes that the vice-queens alone had the privilege of the entree, and seems to hesitate a good deal as to the advisableness of granting a permission which might be considered a precedent for others. However, I think he is too amiable to resist our united entreaties. I hold out as an argument, that C—-n, being the duplicado of the queen herself, my visit is equal to that of the vice-queen, which argument has at least amused ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... is true, and now you have put your finger on the danger spot. Why has the Election been delayed beyond all precedent?" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... Bobby is quite the most complete and remarkable ever recorded in dog annals. His lifetime of devotion has been witnessed by thousands, and honored publicly, by your own Lord Provost, with the freedom of the city, a thing that, I believe, has no precedent. All the endearing qualities of the dog reach their height in this loyal and lovable Highland terrier; and he seems to have brought out the best qualities of the people who have known him. Indeed, for fourteen years hundreds of disinherited children have been made kinder and happier by knowing Bobby's ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... indeed, is the practice of kings. Then why dost thou reprove me? Formerly, the Rishi Agastya, while engaged in the performance of a grand sacrifice, chased the deer, and devoted every deer in the forest unto the gods in general. Thou hast been slain, pursuant to the usage sanctioned by such precedent. Wherefore reprovest us then? For his especial sacrifices Agastya performed the homa with fat ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... and people will take them up.—In spite of the merits of the work, it seems to you to be a dangerous, nay, a fatal precedent. It throws open the gates of the temple of Fame to the crowd; and in the distance you descry a legion of petty authors hastening to imitate this novel and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials open before him, looks through the various entries for the year just completed. As name after name recalls interesting particulars of character and incident in their history, he relates them as if to an imaginary friend at his side. The precedent of The Deserted Village is still obviously near to the writer's mind, and he is alternately attracted and repelled by Goldsmith's ideals. For instance, the poem opens with an introduction of some length in ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Aurelius to decide justly with his people that he found himself swamped with cases of every sort and description. He tried to pass upon each case by its merits, regardless of law and precedent. Then other judges construed his decisions as law, and the lesser courts cited the upper ones, until Gibbon says, "There grew up such a mass of judge-made laws that a skilful lawyer could prove anything, and legal practise swung on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... composed of honest gentlemen—that felt the shame which she dissembled. There were the eyes that fell away before the spurious effrontery of her own glance. They were disconcerted one and all by this turn of events, without precedent in the experience of any, and none more disconcerted—though not in the same sense—than Sir Terence. To him this was checkmate—fool's mate indeed. An unexpected yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset of the deadly game that he was playing. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... with which eventually to break the peace, as well as to ensure a diligent prosecution of such enterprise when once it has been undertaken. Such a spirit of militant patriotism as may serviceably be mobilised in support of warlike enterprise has accordingly been a condition precedent to any people's entry into the modern Concert of Nations. This Concert of Nations is a Concert of Powers, and it is only as a Power that any nation plays its part in the concert, all the while that "power" here means ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... subject to his hearers, inflamed them with the expressions and metaphors used on such occasions. He recalled the offence, the injury which had been done to Quiquendone, and which a nation "jealous of its rights" could not admit as a precedent; he showed the insult to be still existing, the wound still bleeding: he spoke of certain special head-shakings on the part of the people of Virgamen, which indicated in what degree of contempt they regarded the people of Quiquendone; he appealed to his fellow-citizens, who, unconsciously ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... no Salic law amongst Moslems; but the Rasm or custom of AlIslam, established by the succession of the four first Caliphs, to the prejudice of Ayishah and other masterful women would be a strong precedent against queenly rule. It is the reverse with the Hindus who accept a Rani as willingly as a Rajah and who believe with Europeans that when kings reign women rule, and vice versa. To the vulgar Moslem feminine government ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... municipality from the proceeds of taxation. Above and beyond all these considerations, the personal equation comes in, sometimes very powerfully. It often seems as if some library authorities regard popular favor as an actual mark of discredit, while others look upon it almost as a condition precedent to purchase. Take, as an example, the so-called "fiction question," over which most libraries, and some of their patrons, are at present more or less exercised. There can be no doubt of the popular regard for this form of literature, especially for the current novel or ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... propriety in the mutual affection of these two young people; it was, to say the least of it, quite patriarchal that Abraham should love Sarah; but whether Abe ever thought of Scripture precedent for indulging such sentiment or not, one thing is certain, he followed the example set by one of old, and took Sarah to ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... rector and honorary treasurer of the Plutoria University) and stated that he proposed to give his lectures for nothing. The trustees of the college protested; they urged that the case might set a dangerous precedent which other professors might follow. While fully admitting that Dr. McTeague's lectures were well worth giving for nothing, they begged him to reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from that day on, in spite of all offers that he should retire ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... back to say that the Bishop has no objection to a special confirmation's being held by the Bishop of Matabeleland when he comes to stay here next week. At the same time, he says the Bishop doesn't want it to become a precedent." ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant, and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... course will naturally be adopted as in the case of Hsi Jen. This is no question for any large quarrels or small disputes, and no mention should be made about face or no face. She's our Madame Wang's servant-girl, and I've dealt with her according to a long-standing precedent. Those who say that I've taken suitable action will come in for our ancestors' bounty and our lady's bounty as well. But should any one uphold that I've adopted an unfair course, that person is devoid of all common sense and totally ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... poetry (Spectators 70, 74, 85) was not a sheer novelty. He had a ringing English precedent in Sidney, whom he quotes. And he may have had one in Jonson; at least he thought he had. He cited Dryden and Dorset as collectors and readers of ballads; and he might have cited others. He found comfort in the fact that Moliere's ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... I overlook this affair, it's not to be a precedent, you understand. I intend to live at home now and look after the estate. My father ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a sudden apprehension in his throat, "yesterday our labours dissolved in air through the very doubtful precedent of allowing one to testify what he had had the intention to relate. Now we are asked to allow a tomb-haunter to call a parricide to disclose that which he himself is ignorant of. Press down your ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... war, sowing and reaping. There is no dogma except belief in this extrahuman influence—no conception of moral effort as based on and sanctioned by a definite moral ideal, no struggle of the sort that we call spiritual. Religion consists of a body of practices whose authority rests on precedent; as it is supposed they have existed from time immemorial, they are held to be necessary to secure the well-being of the tribe (a sufficient supply of food, or victory over enemies); to the question why such and such things are done, the common reply of the savage is that without them the thing ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... ces grands feuillets ont leurs bases dans l'Allee-Blanche, et forment ensemble tout l'avant corps de la base de la pyramide. Chacun de ces feuillets, vu de l'Allee-Blanche, paroit une grande montagne, je les ai decrits dans le chapitre precedent sous le noms de Mont-Peteret, Mont-Rouge, et Mont-Broglia, Sec. 830, 831, 834. Mais du haut du Cramont, on voit plus nettement leur forme, et leur ensemble, on distingue, par exemple, qu'ils sont eux-memes composes de grandes feuilles ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... the monstrous pretence that they had no interest in their captures when made within the distance of two leagues from the shore? Will your excellency contend that this was a good and sufficient reason? Was it founded in common sense, or on any rational precedent, or indeed any precedent whatever? Was it either honest to the squadron or faithful to the country? Was it not calculated to prevent the squadron from ever again assailing an invading enemy, or again expelling him from the shores of ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... river that the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... (General Hovey) had issued an order permitting the departure south of all persons subject to the conscript law of the Southern Confederacy. Many applications have been made to me to modify this order, but I regarded it as a condition precedent by which I was bound in honor, and therefore I have made no changes or modifications; nor shall I determine what action I shall adopt in relation to persons unfriendly to our cause who remain after the time limited by General Hovey's order had expired. It is now sunset, and all who ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... went on to explain to me how the theatrical newspapers, which contain the lists of performers and of pieces in all the theatres of Paris, (play-bills being unknown,) enter into a contract, which is the condition precedent of their sale in the theatres, stipulating that they will never speak otherwise than in praise of the pieces brought out. The report of the new piece is often written and set up before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this is due from us as a guaranty to the whole of Christendom, that, in the States of the Church reorganized in this new form, nothing shall be derogated from the liberties and rights of the Church herself, and of the Holy See, nor any precedent be established for violating the sacredness of the religion which it is our duty and mission to preach to the whole world, as the only scheme of covenant between God and man, the only pledge of that heavenly benediction by which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... "Johnny Appleseed" I believe that she found precedent for her nut tree nursery initiative in the work of inestimable value to posterity done by that same worthy. If the legend be true, he worked with much happiness of heart, but not more so than that of Mrs. Ellwanger, I am sure you will agree, when I tell you that many ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... a husband and also a lover is not entirely without precedent," said Disraeli in mock apology, and took snuff solemnly. Meantime manuscripts were traveling back and forth between the East ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... ease, health, applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of my country." He referred to the "kind of power, the exercise of which cost one king of England his head and another his throne." Such language, publicly spoken, was new. His argument was, to Englishmen, irrefutable. No precedent, no English statute, could stand against the Constitution. "This writ, if declared legal, totally annihilates" the privacy of the home. "Custom-house officers might enter our houses when they please, and we could not resist them. Upon bare suspicion they could exercise ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... said Madeline, "have you heard that this year's junior ushers are going to keep up the precedent, out ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... that the princes of D'Hartia had always married the queens. This Senestro had had a brother, but he died. And in such an event it was the iron custom that the surviving brother marry both queens. It had happened only once before in all history; but the precedent was unbreakable. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... descending from the skies, like an undulating garland of pearls." The Aunnays are supposed to be a sort of birds of paradise. They are represented as milk white; remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk; and endowed with considerable gifts. Mr. Wilson, in his Meghaduta, has given me a precedent for the change of geese into swans; see p. 27, v. 71, with the note. And Mr. Ellis, Asiatic Researches, vol. xiv. p. 29, has the following note on the subject: "There are three distinctions of Hamsa; the Raja-hamsa, with ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... a king All places are contained. His words and looks Are like the flashes and the bolts of Jove; His deeds inimitable, like the sea That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracks, Nor prints of precedent for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... executive power and the person of the king, should he be a minor at the death of the preceding sovereign, in the hands of the next male heir, and the appointment of James's widow to the regency and the guardianship of his son was made in distinct disregard of all recognised precedent. The consent of the Scottish lords to the innovation had been given entirely from a sense of loyalty to their beloved and unfortunate monarch James IV. But a proviso had been made in his will, that in the event of the queen's remarriage, the regency, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a German king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas- time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You must not call a voter a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... a great cause, and much depending upon its issue—and many causes of great property likely to be decided in times to come, by the precedent to be then made—the most learned, as well in the laws of this realm, as in the civil law, were consulted together, whether the mother was of kin to her son, or no.—Whereunto not only the temporal lawyers—but the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to swallow the information suavely by the help of a classical precedent, and said, with a gracious smile, "Then I perceive we must have played the part of AEneas and Anchises—" But before he had got so far, the idea had been quite too much for Dermot, who cried out, "Pick-a-back! With his boots sticking out on both sides! Thank you, Dora. Oh! my uncle, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Cheyt Sing, in support of the principles of natural equity, and of the Law of Nations, which is the birthright of us all,—we contend, I say, that Cheyt Sing would have established, in the opinions of the best writers on the Law of Nations, a precedent against himself for any future violation of the engagement, if he submitted to any new demand, without what our laws call a continual claim or perpetual remonstrance against the imposition. Instead, therefore, of doing that which was criminal, he did that which his safety and his duty bound ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... unknown to the Nazarenes. His opening sentence broke the silence and greatly startled and disturbed the congregation. "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," were his opening words. And then He began a statement of His conception of His ministry and His Message. Thrusting aside all precedent and musty authority, He boldly proclaimed that He had come to establish a new conception of the Truth—a conception that would overturn the priestly policy of formalism and lack of spirituality—a conception that would ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... art cannot be catalogued under any known division of portrait, landscape, marine, or genre, but it is simply—the art of Vedder. It stands alone and absolutely unrivalled. The pictorial creations of Vedder are as wholly without precedent or comparison as if they were the sole pictorial treasures of the world. The visitor may care for them, or not care, according to his own ability to comprehend and to recognize the inscrutable genius there manifested; ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... prerogative of God and the law alone. The peculiar circumstances of Cavendish's crime plead eloquently, almost irresistibly, for his pardon. He has saved the state—yes! But the case is one in a million, and it is not an individual case alone which hangs upon my decision,—it is the establishment of a precedent, the maintenance ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... it, I'm almighty afraid you'd run up against exactly the same thing," Bob concluded, "and they'd certainly use the Brown case as a precedent." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... no one else in the same business departed from the business rule of making all they could. In fact, men in the same business, I have since learned, were the first to sharpen their knives for him. He was establishing a bad precedent. I don't know but their attitude is sound, after all. In sheer self-defense a man must make all he can when he has a chance. You cannot indulge in philanthropy in a business undertaking these days, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... under consideration &c (plan) 626; brewing, batching, forthcoming, brooding; in store for, in reserve. precautionary, provident; preparative, preparatory; provisional, inchoate, under revision; preliminary &c (precedent) 62. prepared &c v.; in readiness; ready, ready to one's band, ready made, ready cut and dried: made to one's hand, handy, on the table; in gear; in working order, in working gear; snug; in practice. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ever so little pride is greatly ashamed to go back from its word, and often struggles gallantly against its own inclinations; it becomes stubborn for honour's sake, and sacrifices everything to the noble pride of keeping its word. Though I have pardoned him now, do not consider this a precedent for the future. Whatever fortune has in store for me, I cannot think of giving my hand to the Prince of Navarre, until he has shown that he is completely cured of those gloomy fits which unsettle his ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... letter of this morning, that Art. 7 of the Spanish Decree of April 24 has any bearing upon the legitimacy of privateering generally. The article in question (following, by the by, the very questionable precedent of a notification issued by Admiral Baudin, during the war between France and Mexico in 1889) merely threatens with punishment neutrals who may accept letters of marque from a ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... fitness of things that the Governor-General should promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this composition it is unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's observation that in it 'the words "justice and necessity" were applied in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English language,' and Sir Henry Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the views and conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood which a ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and, as we have abundant proof, other forms suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form. Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very much swayed by general opinion—by precedent, by the feeling of his nobles, his priesthood, his army—are in part immediate results of the national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national character, they are soon practically abrogated. The failure of Cromwell permanently to establish a new social condition, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a Riot Controller for Cork and District is said to be under consideration. Following the Indian Government's precedent as exposed in the Mesopotamia Report, he will conduct his official business from the Isle ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... considered in all cases as a protection. The chiefs agreed to confiscate the land of the aggressor to the King of England. The whole proceeding, however, in thus trying and punishing a chief was entirely without precedent. The aggressor, moreover, lost caste in the estimation of his equals; and this was considered by the British as of more consequence than the confiscation ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Parliament included only his own supporters, and hence was not a truly national body. But it made a precedent for the future. Thirty years later Edward I called together at Westminster, now a part of London, a Parliament which included all classes of the people. Here were present archbishops, bishops, and abbots, earls and barons, two knights from every county, and two townsmen to represent each ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... a wiser Man than I, and he lent his Wife to a young Fellow they call'd Hortensius, as Story says; and can a wise Man have a better Precedent ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... it was obvious to any man who knows these savages, that Abdie could not have been ignorant of one single feature in the whole of these transactions. Though the loss was small, I did not think it of little importance, as it remained a precedent, if overlooked, for the committal of greater deeds; and the place, being a port, was open to the exaction by blockade of any fines—which, without doubt, is the true way ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... my windows is the barn where my Catholic men are having High Mass, and where in half an hour, if alive, we shall have our service too. There was a good precedent for stables, I believe, 1915 years ago, so we do not view it as incongruous, but I understand that High Mass is unusual, and no doubt a great honour to the Regiment. I hear that our leave does not come ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... these alcaldes. Mason, who once made the experiment of appointing a special court at Sutter's Fort to try a man known as Growling Smith for the murder of Indians, afterwards declared that he would not do it again except in the most extraordinary emergency, as the precedent was bad. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... with great dignity. "Contrary to all precedent. I could not have permitted such a thing. Should not have listened to it for a moment. Quite inadmissible. Would have placed every one in a false position. His lordship has lost no time in selecting an experienced friend. May I hope Mr. Stanmore will be equally prompt? ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Do-funny, was unique as an individual, perhaps in the very fact of an individuality unembarrassed by the limitations of convention, of education and of precedent, he becomes in a sense typical of his people and ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... new system. The old social order must grow disjointed and chaotic before the new social order can begin to evolve from it. The establishment of a plastic consistency in the mass is the condition precedent of the higher development. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... spectator became so interested in observing his manner of striving for an effect, that he forgave him for falling short of what he strove for. But this is a very exceptional and a very dangerous kind of precedent. Art ever is more honored in the observance than in the breach. Yet its breach often is honored by modern audiences, and especially operatic audiences, because they tend to rate temperament too high and art too low, and to tolerate singers ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... curious fact, in itself adding to their interest, that these chansons, though a very important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection, save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed. Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances owed their origin ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... this point, because it is believed to be unique: but many precedents for plunging the reader in medias res, as does the surviving text, might be found in the modern short story of the artist in style. As M. Boissier points out Varro might have cited the beginning of the Odyssey as a precedent for this.] ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... you remember that under the Empire Fouche was telling an anecdote about the Convention, in which he had to quote Robespierre, and he said, 'Robespierre called out to me, "Duc d'Otrante, go to the Hotel de Ville."' There's a precedent for you!" ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their common order; but when the high-roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office can ever give. Mr. Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of human legislation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tight place we are apt to try to slip out of it under some plea of a European precedent. But it used to be supposed that it was precisely European precedents that we came over here to avoid. I am not profoundly versed in political economy, nor is this the time or place to discuss its principles; but, as regards protection, for example, I can conceive that there may be ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... house of an old friend at Yverdun,[99] where native air, the beauty of the spot, and the charms of the season, immediately repaired all weariness and fatigue.[100] Friends at Geneva wrote letters of sincere feeling, joyful that he had not followed the precedent of Socrates too closely by remaining in the power of a government eager to destroy him.[101] A post or two later brought worse news. The Council at Geneva ordered not only Emilius, but the Social Contract ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... later days which are adjusted to the needs of the family and suited to its surroundings, because built honestly with due regard to the necessities, and even if, as Ruskin says, their detail is abominable and there is no precedent, no right nor reason in the square drip moulding over the windows, yet we love them as a whole, and cannot help feeling that they expressed truly the story they were intended to tell. But we do not feel the same instinctive attraction in the Palladian ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... second hypothesis is, that the present state of things has had only a limited duration; and that, at some period in the past, a condition of the world, essentially similar to that which we now know, came into existence, without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally proceeded. The assumption that successive states of Nature have arisen, each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is a mere modification of this ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... not yet found in freedom, our fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from American soil. But the freedman remains. With him, a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil—with equal political and civil rights—almost equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility—each pledged against fusion—one for a century ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... advice too, within the law-precedent and code and every legal fact behind." The Seigneur was a man of laconic speech. "Tut, tut, Dauphin; precedent and code and legal fact are only good when there's brain behind 'em. The tailor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "There's been one precedent, hasn't there?" said the missionary, pretending to be at ease with a cigarette. "The ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance |
