"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... all who compared the magnitude of the design with his capacities and resources, warned him of the danger into which he was about to rush. Even King James of England preferred to see his son-in-law deprived of this crown, than that the sacred majesty of kings should be outraged by so dangerous a precedent. But of what avail was the voice of prudence against the seductive glitter of a crown? In the moment of boldest determination, when they are indignantly rejecting the consecrated branch of a race which had governed them for two centuries, a free people throws itself ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was taking an ordinary risk, and it turned out to be an extraordinary one. To read some criticisms it would seem as if he deliberately ran his ship in defiance of all custom through a region infested with icebergs, and did a thing which no one has ever done before; that he outraged all precedent by not slowing down. But it is plain that he did not. Every captain who has run full speed through fog and iceberg regions is to blame for the disaster as much as he is: they got through and he did not. Other liners can go faster than the Titanic could possibly do; had they struck ice ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... the eve of election by a Swiss press against Governor Seward's late speech at Rochester as revolutionary and disunionist. Our loss from this source is considerable." The returns, however, showed plainly that one-half of the Americans, following the precedent set in 1857, had voted for Parker, while the other half, irritated by the failure of the union movement at Syracuse, had supported Burrows. Had the coalition succeeded, Morgan's majority must have ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Commons, as soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles the Second had ordered it to be cancelled in his presence, and had, both by his own mouth and by a written message, assured the Houses that the step which had caused so much complaint should never be drawn into precedent. It would have been difficult to find in all the Inns of Court a barrister of reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative which the Sovereign, seated on his throne in full Parliament, had solemnly renounced a few years before. But it was not quite so clear that the King might not, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... federal, republican country of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." He had been and still was favoring delay and conciliation, in the visionary hope that the seceders would follow the scriptural precedent of the prodigal son. On April 9 the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Mr. Phillips said:[132] "Here are a series of States, girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... "According to all precedent," said the judge, glumly, "such a man ought to be hanging round Lottie. Everybody was that amounted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a Head Mastership has been regarded as a stepping-stone to a Bishopric—with disastrous results to the Church—and in Butler's case it seemed only too likely that the precedent would be followed. Gladstone, when Prime Minister, once said to a Harrovian colleague, "What sort of Bishop would your old master, Dr. Butler, make?" "The very worst," was the reply. "He is quite ignorant of the Church, and ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... twenty-six should entertain a design so broad and bold implies singular intellectual intrepidity. He had neither model nor precedent. The vastness and novelty of the undertaking increase admiration for the remarkable ability with which the task ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... [17] This precedent from Germany is good authority, because the trial by jury was in use, in the northern nations of Europe generally, long before Magna Carta, and probably from time immemorial; and the Saxons and Normans were familiar with it before ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... brooding, mystical wisdom of the Canyon in the starlight. You have intimated to me several times that law was not my end. You are right, as usual. Law has its face forever turned backward. It is searching always for precedent rather than justice. A man who is going into politics should be ever facing the future. He should use the past only in helping him to avoid mistakes in going forward. And, perhaps I am wrong. I am willing to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to overlook the crime of insulting their released prisoner by the full repentance of this woman. But "the Law" had heard her too, and it laid its hand promptly on the two accomplices. The canons instantly objected, and a valuable precedent was created by the decision of the King, before whom the final appeal of the case was laid. By the royal charter, signed in February 1395, the full privileges of the canons were upheld. The proces-verbal still exists upon a roll of parchment fairly written, nine feet in length, with the evidence ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the Queen's resignation they had no precedent; for the solemnity of the King's coronation they had many; and the same is at large, with all the circumstances and ceremonies thereof, set down by one of their authors, Wexionius (Epit. Descriptionis Sueciae, lib. v. c. 6), from which the ceremonies of this Coronation were not much different, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... the scene, and, as it was understood that the service was to be choral, great expectations of ecclesiastical splendor and effect were much anticipated by the fair sex. They were, however, doomed to disappointment, for, although the day was fine, the attendance numerous and brilliant beyond precedent, Lord Culloden would have "no popery." Lord Carisbrooke, who was a ritualist, murmured, and was encouraged in his resistance by Lady Clanmorne and a party, but, as the Duke of Brecon was high and dry, there was a want of united action, and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... next is the interplay of individualities; to speak teleologically, the world exists for the sake of and through initiative, and individuality is the method of initiative. Each man and woman, to the extent that his or her individuality is marked, breaks the law of precedent, transgresses the general formula, and makes a new experiment for the direction of the life force. It is impossible, therefore, for the State, which represents all and is preoccupied by the average, to make effectual experiments and intelligent innovations, and so supply the essential ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... formality of written declarations, rejoinders, and replications. It is, in fact, the custom of the Turks that all causes, except those which relate to marriage, shall be immediately and summarily decided, rather by the rules of common sense than of legal precedent; and among these barbarians (if such they are in this respect) the cadi is the sole judge in all cases, cuts short the pleadings, gives sentence in a breath, and there is no appeal from his decision. Presently a khawass ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... (my Lady) Polixenes for Leontes: O thou Thing, (Which Ile not call a Creature of thy place, Least Barbarisme (making me the precedent) Should a like Language vse to all degrees, And mannerly distinguishment leaue out, Betwixt the Prince and Begger:) I haue said Shee's an Adultresse, I haue said with whom: More; shee's a Traytor, and Camillo is A Federarie with her, and one that knowes What she should ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is confined to no one class, rich or poor. The equitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity that have developed beyond all precedent during the last half century, requires time. Justice and equity are not dead, but everywhere in evidence, dominating mankind at large. Public sentiment was never more keen and never nearer right than to-day. There is general confusion, however, as to methods and ways and means. The ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... of the prosecutor Grinnell, and his aides, are equalled only by the speeches of the prosecution in the Mooney case, the Herndon case, the Scottsboro case. In other words, they established a fine precedent for all ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... pointed to very vigorous action of a repressing, even of a punitive, description. It was not, in itself, a complicated situation, and no Governor, who was soldier too, need have hesitated for an instant. The various Stations, indeed, anticipating the usual course of action indicated by precedent, had automatically gone to their posts, prepared for the "official instructions" it was known that I should send, wondering impatiently (as I learned afterwards) at the slight delay. For delay there was, though of ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... all other rights, by virtue of which, in cases determined by himself, he provided in a discretionary way for all Catholic interests, of which he thus becomes the supreme judge, the sole interpreter and the court of last appeal. An indestructible precedent was set up; it was the great corner-stone in the support of the modern Church edifice; on this definitive foundation all other stones were to be superposed, one by one. In 1801, Pius VII., under the pressure of the reigning Napoleon, had obliged the prelates of the old regime, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... doing had run abroad. I had no lack of friends, whom I instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had seen to it that the knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner. Saragossa began to stir at once. Here was a thinly masked violation of their ancient privileges. If they suffered this precedent of circumventing their rights, what was to become of their liberties in future, who would be secure against an unjust persecution? For their sympathies were all ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... no such precedent inaccessibility of common ground concerns Zola's grasp of character. It seems to me to have been, if not exactly weak, curiously limited. I do not know that his people are ever unhuman; in fact, by his time the merely wooden character had ceased to be "stocked" (as an unpleasant modern ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... architecture that was already highly colored. Furthermore, no two of the canvases would meet exactly the same conditions and, as a result of the changes in light and atmospheric effects, the conditions would be subject to continual change. Finally, they were obliged to work without precedent. It was true that the early Italians had done murals for the open air, but no ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... imitate the admirable precedent? Were I a young man, and an owner of land, assuredly I would do so. Choose some goodly tree, straight-soaring; cut away head and branches; leave just the clean trunk and build your house about it in such manner that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... family feud between the Ripleys and the Millikens; and when the young people took it into their heads to fall in love with each other in spite of precedent or prejudice, they found that the course of true love ran in anything but a smooth channel. It was, in fact, a sort of village Montague and Capulet affair; but David and Samantha were no Romeo and Juliet. The climate and general conditions of life at Pleasant River were not favorable to the ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... concept but had to yield to it and allow himself to be worshipped directly as a god in the Orient itself and in certain coast towns of Italy which were under strong Oriental influence, but he forbade it in Rome, and thus established a precedent which was followed by all the better ones among the emperors ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... away her heart long before, and quite contrary to all precedent, to a man whose very name she was ignorant of, and who sent her no diamonds, and not even any flowers. But he was young and good-looking, and stood so retiringly, and so evidently in love, at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 1820, during a visit to Borne, merely entered upon a transient agreement, by which Rome was bound to no concessions. The war openly declared by Rome was now attempted to be turned aside by means of petty and secret artifices. Several bishops, in imitation of the precedent given by Count von Spiegel, the peace-loving archbishop of Cologne, secretly bound themselves to interpret the brief in the sense of the government and to adhere to the ordinance of 1803. On Spiegel's decease in 1835, his successor, the Baron Clement Augustus ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... mentioned morning and evening and noon as fitting hours of prayer, and one psalmist, in his enthusiasm, had even gone so far as to declare seven times a day to be not too often for giving God thanks. There was also the precedent of Daniel opening his windows toward Jerusalem three times a day. As the love for order and system grew year by year stronger in the Christian Church, the laws that govern ritual would be likely to become more stringent, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... editor and ambassador. At the great dedication of the new building, in April, 1907, the celebration of Founder's Day surpassed all previous efforts, being marked by the assembling of an illustrious group of men, and the delivery of a series of addresses, which made the festival altogether beyond precedent. On that occasion there came to Pittsburgh, as the guests of the Institute, from France, Dr. Leonce Benedite, Director Musee du Luxembourg; Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Member of the French Senate and of the ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... consciousness that she ought not to be mixed up in such a business; but, after all, the girls often scrambled up and peeped into one another's cubicles for a joke, so her action would not be without precedent. She was a very human person, and liked fun as well as anybody. With extreme caution she and Rona mounted the chest of drawers, trying not to make the slightest noise. Their eyes were just on a level with the top of the partition, and ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... such gods and materials are mentioned as would have been required for the building and adornment of the temple and for the provision of its offerings and cult. But even so its mythological background is instructive. For while Anu's creation of heaven is postulated as the necessary precedent of Enki's activities, the latter creates the Deep, vegetation, mountains, seas, and mankind. Moreover, in his character as God of Wisdom, he is not only the teacher but the creator of those deities who were patrons of man's own constructive work. From ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... being introduced by way of New Orleans, by persons who are not citizens of the United States." It was moved to strike out the excepting clause; but the motion received only twelve votes,—an apparent indication that Congress either did not appreciate the great precedent it was establishing, or was reprehensibly careless. Harper of South Carolina then succeeded in building up the Charleston slave-trade interest by a section forbidding the slave traffic from "without the limits of the United States." Thatcher moved ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... be; there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established: 'Twill be recorded for a precedent; And many an error, by the same example, Will rush into the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... on the sea and who had already subjugated one great Asiatic empire. But it may at least be said that he did nothing to make the ultimate solution of the question more difficult, and his flattering reception of Lord Macartney's embassy was an important and encouraging a precedent for ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the other, but observing that juste milieu which good sense dictated, and the spirit of our republican institutions demanded, succeeded in overcoming all prejudice against the new form of municipal government, and in establishing a precedent, which, followed by succeeding mayors, has saved the city millions of dollars of needless expense, and has served as a worthy example to many other ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... established. But the time came that they have forsook it themselves. For a while after the Iroquoits came there, the number of seaven hundred, on the snow in the beginning of Spring, where they make a cruell slaughter as the precedent years, where some ghostly fathers or brothers or their servants weare consumed, taken or burnt, as their relation ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... growth of the city of London was entitled "Another Essay," intimating that some other essay had preceded it, which was not to be found. I having been much importuned for that precedent essay, have found that the same was about the growth, increase, and multiplication of mankind, which subject should in order of nature precede that of the growth of the city of London, but am not able to procure the essay itself, only ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... that saying, That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so pleased; it has often occasioned contest, and sometimes public ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... and you will find no precedent for such a profligate act of tyranny, exercised by a majority over their fellow legislators, nor for such an impudent contempt of the rights ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... once visited by the Mambari, and a distinct recollection of that visit is retained. They came to purchase slaves, and both Santuru and his head men refused them permission to buy any of the people. The Makololo quoted this precedent when speaking of the Mambari, and said that they, as the present masters of the country, had as good a right to expel them as Santuru. The Mambari reside near Bihe, under an Ambonda chief named Kangombe. They profess to use the slaves for ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... retained in the interest of wrong, of home-traitors, of misrule, has already impliedly put in the plea of insanity for the assassin. The same journal runs a parallel between him and John Brown. Well, Virginia executed John Brown—its own precedent is ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... we want to go. That's where we have come three thousand miles to go." And they did go, into the very teeth of the deadly machine guns. In defiance of all precedent they stormed, with rifle and bayonet in frontal attack, against ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... person from whom he had nothing to fear. Nor is that all. He must admonish him, tell him he has been naughty long enough, and wind up by giving him some good advice, counselling him to mend his ways. This was certainly without theological precedent. It was, however, a simple idea which would have arranged matters splendidly.... Even to-day to speak well of the devil is an abomination almost as serious as to speak evil of the Deity. There was assuredly a great fortitude of mind as well as daring of conduct to ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... upon the foibles and virtues of her countrymen in stories whose form is very like that employed by Miss Barlow in her "Irish Idylls" (1892) as in these so original little plays that she has wrought out without precedent, under ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... photoplay terminology is, even yet, only in process of formation. The terms given and defined in Chapter III are the terms in common daily use in the majority of studios, but there is no ancient precedent to compel any writer to adhere to any of these terms if he is in the habit of using others. There is too great a disposition on the part of amateur writers to split hairs over the correct technical term. A matter of far more importance is to turn ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... her sedentary habits such abrupt decisions were not without precedent in Zeena's history. Twice or thrice before she had suddenly packed Ethan's valise and started off to Bettsbridge, or even Springfield, to seek the advice of some new doctor, and her husband had grown to dread these expeditions because of their cost. Zeena ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... bitter enemy of the Senecas, and that they will not rest until they wipe out this defeat, do you suppose he would believe it? You have given a pledge to the Iroquois that is entirely outside of the Governor's view of military precedent. To tell the truth, Menard, I don't believe he will ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... and he has acted consistently on the theory. It is highly significant that his very first public act, almost never mentioned by his biographers, was his spoliation of the Prince-Bishop of Liege (an historical precedent tragically suggestive at the present day). The Prince-Bishop of Liege had committed the heinous crime of resisting the impressment of his subjects kidnapped by the recruiting sergeants of the Prussian King. On the strength of that theory, Frederick attacked the defenceless daughter of the Austrian ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... sea-proof, to wish wearily that the first half of it were over. Rosalie was not weary, but she began to be bewildered. As she had never been a clever girl or quick to perceive, and had spent her life among women-indulging American men, she was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation clear. The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to her she simply stared at him, her eyes looking like those of a puzzled, questioning child. Then she broke into her nervous little laugh, because she did not know what else to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... then as it may be in this civil war. But the chief clerk adviser of the Department found out that President Polk's administration during the Mexican war granted a similar permission, and, glad to have a precedent, his powerful brains could not find out the difference between then ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... National Library can ever be too large. In order that the completeness of the collection shall not fail, and to preserve the whole of our literature, it is put into the Statute of Copyright, as a condition precedent of the exclusive right to multiply copies of any book, that it shall be deposited in the Library of Congress. Apprehension is sometimes expressed that our National Library will become overloaded with trash, and so fail of its usefulness. 'Tis a lost fear. There is no act of Congress ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... storm on Wednesday and Thursday night was terrific. The damage to shipping has been fearful. On sea the tremendous gale proved disastrous beyond precedent. Falmouth Harbour was the scene of several collisions, and one barque and a tug steamer sank at their anchors. A wreck is reported at Lelant, to which the Penzance lifeboat with a stout-hearted crew had ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Magagnati was invited to appear before the Senate and receive the acknowledgment of the Serenissimo, who had already been informed by the Councillors that while the spontaneous offer of a galley so maintained had no precedent in the annals of Venice, the reward which the Senate proposed to bestow had, in fact, in early historic days been offered by the Republic as a ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... through the enslaving and exploitation of the material forces of nature. This wealth is not well distributed, but large numbers of families have received enough so that the women do not have to work constantly with their hands. At this point all historic precedent would have turned these women into luxury-loving parasites and playthings. A good many of them have taken this easiest way and entered the peripatetic harems of the rich. But several million women refused to repeat the old cycle of ruin; they knew too much.[27] What then should they do? Faith ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... the opposing counsel, David J. Baker, then recently from New England, had quoted from Johnson's New York reports a case strongly against Hubbard's side. Reading reports of the decisions of courts before juries was a new thing in those days; and Hubbard, to evade the force of the authority as a precedent, coolly informed the jury that Johnson was a Yankee clock-peddler, who had been perambulating up and down the country gathering up rumors and floating stories against the people of the West, and had them published in a book under the name ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... years ago by voices now forever still; finding things to say that an assailed boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of his impulses to himself. I understood no more than the people who called upon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of his racial surroundings and associations. For you must understand that there was no ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... made no answer. Here was a problem for the solution of which he found no precedent in all ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... had had a taste of war with the Maroons and the slaves, and they were well inclined to let the hounds have their chance. Resolutions were then passed to approach your honour and ask that full powers be given to Calhoun to pursue the war without thought of military precedent or of Calhoun's position. He has no official place in the public life here, but he is powerful with the masses. It is rumoured you have an order to confine him to his plantation; but to apply it would bring revolution in Jamaica. There are ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... simple people who had never been at a university in their lives, they did not know that Form and Precedent are the two pillars of Strength and Beauty, the Jachin and Boaz at the entrance of the temple of the law. Or that the proper genuflections before them are of more importance than the mere bringing out of a bit of truth which might save ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... this respect, that whichever could first free itself of fear should be independent, and make use of its independence after its own mind; and, besides, no one makes a contract respecting the future, but on the hypothesis of certain precedent circumstances. But when these circumstances change, the reason of policy applicable to the whole position changes with them; and therefore every one of the contracting commonwealths retains the right of consulting its own interest, and consequently ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the clerks and clerkly paraphernalia of a divisional Headquarters. That may have been the routine rightly followed in many cases at Cape Town, but the true application of the lessons of history does not consist in blind imitation of precedent from the past in those respects in which the conditions have changed. Joint action in manoeuvre will be valueless unless it is used to familiarise each service with the work of the other as it will be in the actual fighting of the time. During the great war at the end of the eighteenth ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... their visit. The fleet then proceeded to China, through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar, and at the end of one year and sixty-eight days, after covering 45,000 miles, dropped anchor in Hampton Roads. The accomplishment of this feat, without precedent in naval annals, still farther contributed to the establishment of the prestige of the United States as a ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... were at stake; for old parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests and passions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was at its crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and safe ripening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxiety as to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strong and heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals were at odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... called attention to the very remarkable feature of modern American liberality in the lavish gifts and endowments going on all over the States to colleges and places of learning. He said that it was unprecedented in history. With submissions to the learned president, not quite without precedent. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a similar spirit in the foundation and endowment of colleges and schools in England and Scotland. About half the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... great 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 arithmetic by ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... BUT NOT A PRECEDENT.—It is a gracious act on the part of a Cabman, when, at a dinner-party, he gives the pas to an Omnibus-driver, at the same time courteously explaining this waiver of rights by saying that "at the present moment he is not standing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... times before he ascended the throne. His father was evidently a difficult person to live with; not only his extravagance and erratic habits, but also a thoroughly unjustified suspicion of his elder son, must have caused the latter a great deal of misery. Instead of following the precedent of the P[vr]emysls in dynastic disputes, Charles wisely abstained from open opposition to John, although the people's affection had been transferred from father to son. Added to this there were the usual troubles caused by ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... bearing banners and followed by vast multitudes of the Swedish populace, marched through the streets of Sweden's capital, and gathered about the mausoleum on the Island of Knights, where lies the mighty dead, sang paeans in his praise, then it happened, somehow, that, regardless of precedent or custom, the flag of the free republic—aye! flag, flagstaff, golden eagle, and all—was run out from the American Legation; and the starry banner of America waved in unison with the yellow cross of Sweden, in honor of the mightiest warrior for the freedom ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... ghost," my companion replied, "and yet I have no right to be. And this is what makes me so uneasy, and so much afraid of him. It is a strange story, and, I truly believe, without precedent. Two years and a half ago, John Hinckman was dangerously ill in this very room. At one time he was so far gone that he was really believed to be dead. It was in consequence of too precipitate a report ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... hope, you know, Mr. Kazallon; out of a hundred chances, ninety-nine may be against us, but perhaps the odd one may be in our favor. Besides, I believe that our case is not without precedent. In the year 1795, a three-master, the Juno, was precisely in the same half-sunk, water-logged condition as ourselves; and yet, with her passengers and crew clinging to her top-masts, she drifted for twenty days, until she ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... 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 feet, without ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... it might 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 ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... were therefore able to establish the "ruling rates." They continued at a real a load, until H., with reckless generosity, one day paid our improvised oyster-man two reals for his cargo, who thereupon, appealing to this bad precedent, refused to go out, unless previously assured of receiving the advanced rate. This led to the immediate arrest of H., on an indictment charging him with "wilfully and maliciously combining and conniving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... realise how much more than any one preceding him in graphic satire du Maurier was able to dispense with exaggeration. Nevertheless, the studied avoidance of exaggeration has not had the happiest effect as a precedent in the art of Punch. Without du Maurier's sensitive response to the whole comedy of drawing-room life the tendency has been to lapse into ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... perusing the latest popular romance, while, forsooth, in yonder hammock his dignified spouse swings slowly to and fro, conning the pages and the colored plates of the current fashion journal. Surely in the telltale word "rusticantur" you and I and the rest of human nature find a worthy precedent and much encouragement for our practice of loading up with plenty of good reading before we start for the scene ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... special pleasure any happy grafting of a new usage on to that old stock of memories. Speaking in his constituency after the lying in state of King Edward, which he had attended (standing next to the Prime Minister as the senior Privy Councillor present), he welcomed the precedent which gave a new association to Westminster Hall—that 'epitome of English history.' He recalled to his hearers the outstanding incidents and persons whose record had then come into his mind. His habit of tracing out links with the past made him at Westminster ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... precedent which Lawrence thus established, injurious to the service and destined to act fatally against himself in the end, when from the challenger he became ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... pitch in her when Barry swung into the saddle and that was a thing without precedent in Molly's history. She tried none of her usual catlike side-steps and throwing of the head. Altogether, Vic was troubled even as he would have been at the sight of Betty Neal in the arms of another man. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... establishing a bad precedent, Mr. Spencer?" inquired Miller. He had met the lawyer on his arrival before dinner. "Suppose other officers follow his example, what will the army do in case of ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Infirmary, and the doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract of belladonna. Mark what I tell you! I have happened to become intimately acquainted with circumstances of a very extraordinary nature,—not, perhaps, without precedent, but such as very few have been called upon to witness. Suppose that I should see fit to tell these in connection with the story of which they form a part? I may render myself obnoxious to persons whom it is not safe to offend,—persons that won't come out in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... held in demesne. The burgesses, 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 by an alderman, assisted by a ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... accommodate yourself to our manners," said Jones, when Murdoch had left the room. "They may seem unnecessary, or even absurd, but they are sanctioned by custom, and, you know, civilization is built on custom. The poet speaks of a freedom which 'slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent.' Precedent is custom. Never defy custom, or you will find her your master. Humor her, and she will be your slave. Now I think I shall leave, while you try and tune yourself to the atmosphere of these ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent, this 'satiable Elephant's Child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind), and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, 'Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green, ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... therefore not easily adaptable to varying needs. Private charities can undertake a large expenditure for one family, when a large expenditure will put the family beyond the need of charity; but official relief must always be hampered by the fear of establishing a precedent, and inadequate relief is often the result of this fear. Moreover, public relief comes from what is regarded as a practically inexhaustible source, and people who once receive it are likely to regard it as a right, as a permanent pension, implying no obligation on their part. Even where it is well ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... as you wish me to—on account of my position; none to give away foolishly as you expect me to—on account of precedent and example. I am a soulless machine taking care of capital intrusted to me and my brains, but decidedly NOT to my heart nor my sentiment. So my answer is, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the proposals now under consideration. In Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland bills have been introduced dividing the States into single-membered electorates, and some of the smaller States are inclined to use the Block Vote. In Victoria a bad precedent has been established by giving the party in power the duty of determining boundaries. From time to time it will be necessary to rearrange the boundaries, not only on account of movements of population within the State, ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... if not acted upon, terminates with the session. There seems to be no reason or good precedent for permitting merely two persons, by moving a reconsideration, to suspend for any length of time all action under resolutions adopted by the assembly, and yet where the delay is very short the advantages of reconsideration overbalance ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... custom and your agreement to start anew. The law defines your allowance of food, but not your duties or your working- and sleeping-time. That is left to the discretion of your captain and officers. Precedent—the decision of the courts—has decided the privilege of a captain or officer to punish insolence or lack of respect from a sailor with a blow—of a fist or missile; but, understand me now, a return of the blow makes that man a mutineer, and his prompt killing is justified by the law of the land. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Bethel, and said unto his people, "It is too much for you to go up to 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 ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... dirty East End hop pickers infected with typhoid seemed too radical. Surely he could have done something less extraordinary. Would everybody be expected to turn their houses into hospitals in case of village epidemics, now that he had established a precedent? But there were people who approved, and were warm in their sympathy with him. At the first dinner party where the matter was made the subject of argument, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel, who was present, listened ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... feller," objected Pap, as Shade turned away. It was against all reasonable mountain precedent to trade so quickly; but indeed Shade had merely done so with a view to forcing through what he well knew to be a ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... great horrour; but Fryar Bacon comforted the gentleman, and sent him home with a quiet conscience, bidding him never to pay the devil's money back, as he tendred his own safety, which he promised for to observe." From these instances, Melanax might have quoted precedent for insisting on the literal execution of his stipulation with Malicorn, since, to give the devil his due, the strict legal interpretation appears always to have been applied to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... 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 him; "say no more; ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... squadron in admitting the Pompee and Hannibal to partake of their prize-money is an honourable and beautiful contrast to the bickerings which have arisen lately respecting joint captures, and must ensure success to every claim that can be made out; but I am afraid we shall not be able to find a precedent for anything beyond head-money being given for ships which have been blown up ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... defence. These people here, if not wise as serpents, are at least harmless as doves; but, in case of the bicycle frightening a team and causing a runaway with the unpleasant sequel of broken limbs, or injured horse, they would scarce know what to do in the premises, since they would have no precedent to govern them, and, in the absence of any intelligent guidance, might conclude to wreak summary vengeance on the bicycle. In such a case, would a wheelman be justified in using his revolver to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... their price was so low that it was almost impossible to lose by the purchase. The supply of U.E. Loyalists' lands, or claims for land, for a long time seemed to be almost inexhaustible; for the loyal refugees appear to have been prolific beyond all precedent, and most of those who held office at the capital of the province, or who could command a small capital, became speculators and throve prodigiously. Many persons, during the early days of the colony, were thus enriched, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... a dangerous 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 ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
