"Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc Moon Her office ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... lamentable inconsiderateness to expect fishermen to be able to dodge the weather by such guidance; and it is time to stop this easily concocted nostrum for notoriety; for it is vague and inconclusive in every precept, and has scarcely an assertion which is ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... not think it amiss further to observe on this head, as it will now show that precept and example always went hand and hand with her, that her dairy at her grandfather's was the delight of every one who saw it; and she of all who saw ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... abbot hath ever nourished enmity and discord among his brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions.' This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... voted for a resolution extolling the 'tried and victorious policy based on the class war,' and on their return to England referred to the class war as a 'shibboleth' and as a 'reactionary and Whiggish precept, certain to lead the movement away from the real aims ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by his precept and his example[99]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... expatiating on its beauties. It will not become clear to his comprehension by our pouring upon it all at once a sudden and overpowering blaze of light in the way of explanation. Such a process rather confounds him. Here again let us fall back upon the method of the great Teacher, "Line upon line, precept upon precept." We will first patiently conduct our boy through one of the simplest operations of arithmetic, say, a sum in addition. The next day we will conduct him again through the same process, or through ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... in some of the clumsy fictions of the late Ettrick Shepherd, to say nothing of the edifying legends about the Romish saints which the good people of southern Europe are taught to swallow as gospel. Finally, be it remembered, that Oriental story-tellers have never subscribed to Horace's precept,— ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... all the rest,— The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest," The things named "pants" in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;" One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the manuscripts of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. See doc. no. 87, and notes. The trials had taken place on May 8 and 9, and Kidd was now under sentence. He was hanged at Wapping on the shore of the Thames, May 23, 1701. The precept, or order for his execution, at Wapping "infra fluxum et refluxum maris" (i.e., between high-water and low-water mark, according to admiralty custom), is quoted in Marsden, Law and Custom of the Sea ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... heart glowed at seeing the son of a monarch whom they were accustomed to regard with veneration and love; and as people who lived in the habitual belief that to "fear God and honour the King" is a "united precept," every mark of respect and attachment was exhibited on both occasions. When his Royal Highness came the second time, as captain of the Pegasus, the homage, which had been paid to him at the first visit, as son of their sovereign, was mingled with respect to himself. Some there are ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... said Agrius, "his most important precept: 'If you wish to drink freely and dine well in company, you should eat five leaves of raw cabbage steeped in vinegar, before ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... such an obstacle to his will and to transfer his irritation against the law to the one who raised it as an objection. I think that he was especially resentful toward any one who volunteered criticism based on a legal provision, precept, or precedent, apparently assuming that the critic opposed his purpose on the merits and in order to defeat it interposed needless legal objections. It is unnecessary to comment on the prejudice which such an attitude ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... action to the word, and in less than ten minutes I had auricular evidence that, as far as the sleep was concerned, he was carrying his precept most ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... as having said that "a work-shop is worth a battalion." This precept he managed to put into action even during the first dark days of 1914, and the interior development of Morocco proceeded side by side with the strengthening of its defenses. Germany had long foreseen what an asset northwest Africa would be during ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... are the most eligible paths for man to choose? All such as are an ornament to those who tread therein; and get them honor from man. Be also as careful of the observance of a light precept, as of a weighty one; because thou knowest not the due reward of the precepts, and balance the loss sustained by the omission of a precept against its recompense, and the reward of sin against its loss of happiness. Consider also three things, and thou wilt not transgress. Understand what is ...
— Hebrew Literature
... precept was, as with Socrates, that the bios anexetastos is not to be lived by man. As we have seen, the freedom of the reason was so dear to him, that he counted it an abuse for a parent to instil his own ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... him entirely. Nothing, my dear daughter, is more contrary to common sense and to Holy Scripture than this. Are we not told, Wives, be obedient to your husbands? Had Mr. Warrington lived, I should have endeavoured to follow up that sacred precept, holding that nothing so becomes a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,—this church which ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret hearts and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... American institution of learning. They have believed in democracy because they believed in the nobility of man; they have served society because they have looked upon the possession of learning not as conferring a privilege but as laying on a duty. They have taught and practised the precept that the greater man's power the greater his obligation. The supreme choice is righteousness. It is that "moral power" to which Professor Tyler referred as the great contribution of college men to the cause of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of superiority, greater strength, higher culture, leading to a claim to dominate the minds and the lives, the destinies, of others, and then in its arrogant self-assertion to override all laws and all restraints imposed by justice. It is the exact opposite of the Christian precept: "Let each esteem other better than himself." This, like some other Christian precepts, may never have been meant to express the whole truth, but only that side which men are naturally apt to neglect. It was hardly necessary to insist that men should defend themselves against attack, maintain their ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... characters, and in the trifling business of the idle world,—yet I think she has principles, and a good heart,—[with a glow of conjugal tenderness.] but in a partner for life, Sidney, (you know your own precept, and your own judgment)—affection, capricious in its nature, must have something even in the external manners,—nay in the very mode, not only of beauty, but of virtue itself— which both heart and judgment must approve, or our happiness in that ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his breast or his brow the cross of the Lord, and let him who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his shoulders; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said, 'He that doth not take up his cross and follow me, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the Reason? Would it chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it man the dominions, that might be serene, by the treasures it wastes-by the wars it provokes? Self-knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept, "KNOW THYSELF." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle. But what old heathen oracle has told ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those people who're always harping about the youth of his day and generation being so much better than the present. That's all humbug. But what does get me is, that you youngsters don't profit more by the experience of an old man like me who's been married three times. Line upon line and precept upon precept, I have preached this thing to my boys for the last ten years, and what has it amounted to? Not a single white bride has ever been brought to Las Palomas. They can call me a matchmaker if they want to, but the evidence ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... really part of his passion for collecting antiquities. The theory of Fairyland here (as in many other Scottish legends and witch trials) is borrowed from the Pre-Christian Hades, and the Fairy Queen is a late refraction from Persephone. Not to eat, in the realm of the dead, is a regular precept of savage belief, all the world over. Mr. Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies may be consulted, or the Editor's Perrault, p. xxxv. (Oxford, 1888). Of the later legends about Thomas, Scott gives plenty, in The Border Minstrelsy. The long ancient romantic ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... physic." The very same fault it was, which the prophet reprehends in Asa king of Judah, that he relied more on physic than on God, and by all means would have him to amend it. And 'tis a fit caution to be observed of all other sorts of men. The prophet David was so observant of this precept, that in his greatest misery and vexation of mind, he put this rule first in practice. Psal. lxxvii. 3. "When I am in heaviness, I will think on God." Psal. lxxxvi. 4. "Comfort the soul of thy servant, for unto thee ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Robert Eden deliver a lecture in the school-room—one of a course he is delivering upon anatomy, or rather upon different parts of the human body—and demonstrating the utility of cleanliness, the danger of drunkenness, and mixing precept with information for the benefit of as mixed an audience as ever was assembled, but who seemed much interested and very attentive. There were many of the gentry of Battersea, male and female, the tradespeople, workmen, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... identical with ours, but in order to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept laissez faire 38, which the eighteenth century derived from Colbert, it has been an important, if not a final step in the making of method. The strongest and most impressive personalities, it is true, like ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... inebriate asylum not only affords, says the same authority, "effectual removal of the patient from temptations and associations which surrounded him in the outer world, but by precept and example it teaches him that he can gain by his reformation, not the ability to drink moderately and with the least safety, but the power to abstain altogether. With the restraint imposed by the institution, and the self-restraint accepted on the part of the patient, are remedial ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... civilised government would be its eventual insensibility to the appeal of a "just war." Under any governmental auspices, as the modern world knows governments, the keeping of the peace comes at its best under the precept, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." But the case for peace is more precarious than the wording of the aphorism would indicate, in as much as in practical fact the "big stick" is an obstacle to soft speech. Evidently, in the light of recent history, if the peace is to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... "We have therefore proved satisfactorily, and with more than moral certainty, that an exception occurs to the general law of not speaking untruly, viz. when it is impossible to observe a certain other precept, more important, without telling a lie. Some persons indeed say, that in the cases of impossibility which are above drawn out, what is said is not a lie. But a man who thus speaks confuses ideas and denies the essential ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... there can be no impotence in us, with respect to obtaining it, besides the disapprobation of the will; and that inability which consists in disinclination, never renders any thing improperly the subject of precept or command. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... mount, where He has led; Men count my haltings o'er; I know them; yet, though self I dread, I love His precept more. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the overvaluing of pleasures. Accordingly, temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek philosophers —stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences—was with him, as with them, almost the central point of educational precept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large place in my childish remembrances. He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence, responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Nec deus intersit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... can be applied to a human being, was especially applicable to him. He was a hearty man, a large-hearted man that is to say. He was perhaps the largest-hearted man I ever knew. I think he made a nearer approach to obeying the divine precept, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," than one man in a hundred thousand. His benevolence, his active, energising desire for good to all God's creatures, and restless anxiety to be in some way active for ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth—which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fallacies, there has grown up in them the belief that State education will check ill-doing.... This belief in the moralising effects of intellectual culture, flatly contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori.... This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions of the age.... Not by precept, though heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action, often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And yet this truth, which mental science clearly teaches, and which is in harmony with familiar sayings, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... this book were viewed through a medium which the writings of the Camissard apostle had suggested. His constructions of the text were hasty, and formed on a narrow scale. Every thing was viewed in a disconnected position. One action and one precept were not employed to illustrate and restrict the meaning of another. Hence arose a thousand scruples to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He was alternately agitated by fear and by ecstacy. He imagined himself beset ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... precept of witch-doctors the world over of saying nothing at all in such a way that as many interpretations may be deduced as there are listeners. Each and every doctor and chief accordingly saw in these mystic words, as Marufa had done in the chance ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... and much later, there were many heathens, and vice and immorality were very prevalent among professing Christians. Still among all classes there were notable examples of true piety, and ardent zeal for the propagation of the truth. The excellent queen-mother, Kaahumanu, by her precept and example did much to advance the cause of religion. I must tell you of another native lady, Kapiolani, the wife of Naike, the public orator of the kingdom, by whose courage and faith one of the most terrible of the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... which view was borne out by his after character; for although the proclamation may be considered in the light of a dead letter as regards actual operation, it was enforced, or recommended, by his example; and example hath a louder tongue either than precept, proclamations, or laws. From the beginning to the close of his long reign, George III. manifested a decent, moral, and religious life, which doubtless had very beneficial effects ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sheikh, understand that we Christians desire to follow that precept, not from cowardice or a mean spirit, but from obedience to our Lord and Master; and would you therefore wish to induce me and my companions to abandon a faith inculcating so pure and holy a precept? Understand ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... the taking of usury greatly exercised the minds of men of that day. The church on traditional grounds had forbidden it, and her doctors stood fast by her precept, though an occasional individual, like John Eck, could be found to argue for it. Luther was in principle against allowing a man "to sit behind his stove and let his money work for him," but he weakened enough to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... existence and substance and nature of the soul, asserted that there was no such thing as a soul at all. It is, indeed, the most difficult thing imaginable to discern the soul by the soul. And this, doubtless, is the meaning of the precept of Apollo, which advises every one to know himself. For I do not apprehend the meaning of the God to have been that we should understand our members, our stature, and form; for we are not merely bodies; nor, when I say these things to you, am I addressing ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... believe, to carriages and head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.—By degrees, discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... thousands of hours trying to subjugate impossible muscles. Chopin, who found out most things for himself, saw the waste of time and force. I recommend his advice. He was ever particular about fingering, but his innovations horrified the purists. "Play as you feel," was his motto, a rather dangerous precept for beginners. He gave to his pupils the concertos and sonatas—all carefully graded—of Mozart, Scarlatti, Field, Dussek, Hummel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Hiller and, of Schubert, the four-hand pieces and dances. Liszt he did not favor, which is natural, Liszt having ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... vineam, vel arbustum constituere volet, seminaria prius facere debebit, was the precept of Columella, l. 3. c. 5. speaking of vineyards and fruit-trees: and doubtless, we cannot pursue a better course for the propagation of timber-trees: For though it seem but a trivial design that one should make a nursery of foresters; yet it is not to be imagin'd, without the experience of it, what ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... [Hebrew: hkma yonit] (Greek wisdom). When Ben Zoma desired to study the [Hebrew: sfrim hitsonim], and asked of his teacher at what hour of the day it was lawful to do so, he received the reply that it was permissible at an hour which was neither day nor night; for the precept was to study the Torah by day and night, as it is said, [Hebrew: ] (Josh. i. 8). Bar Kappara, indeed, a rabbi of the third century, explained Genesis ix. 27, "God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem," to mean that the ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... first place observe that Aristotle is not giving a precept here, but only making historical mention of a peculiarity which he observed in the Grecian examples before him. But what if the Greek tragedians had particular reasons for circumscribing themselves within this extent of time, which with the constitution of our theatres no longer exist? ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... many of the great reforms needed, and these she unhesitatingly set down. How much has since been done which she advocated for the education of women, and how much they have already benefited both by her example and precept, is perhaps not yet generally enough known. Her religious tone is always striking; it was one of the moving factors of her life, as with all seriously thinking beings, though its form became much modified with the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... ask you to write others, be sure of that; and you will do well, my dear friend, for your own sake and for ours, to follow the precept of Denis Diderot: "My friends, write stories; while one writes them he amuses himself, and the story of life goes on, and that is less gay than the ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... thoughts to publish the falsest, as well as the most impudent paper that ever was printed, writ a previous discourse about lying, as a necessary introduction to what was to follow. The first paper was the precept, and the second was the example. By the falsest paper that ever was printed, I mean the 'Examiner' Numb. 17, in which he pretends to give an account of what the Duke of Marlborough has got by his services." The writer in the "Medley," ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... never known to join in the inhuman sport of hunting wolves for pleasure, because, as he said, although they may not be wolf-children, they do but obey an instinct which was given them; and to be kind-hearted is to obey a precept which was given us. And, owing to the introduction into Portugal of the Book in which this commandment is to be found, wolf-children have become scarcer, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... only made a considerable progress in sciences universally studied, but in others, revealed but to few, and lying under censure from the blindness of superstition. But while my Guardian laboured to enlarge the sphere of my knowledge, He carefully inculcated every moral precept: He relieved me from the shackles of vulgar prejudice; He pointed out the beauty of Religion; He taught me to look with adoration upon the pure and virtuous, and, woe is me! I have obeyed him but ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... our natural constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote regions of the East: but it was reported that from some ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a stream, which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses: It slipped from politics to puns, It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels, or ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... was an extension of the arms in the shape of a cross; if anyone wants to know how difficult a practice this is let him try it for, say, fifteen minutes. Regarding recitation of the Divine Office it was of counsel, and probably of precept, that is should not be from memory merely, but that the psalms should all be read. For this a good reason was given by Maelruin, i.e. that the recitation might engage the eye as well as the tongue and thought. An ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... looked proud to be wearing the old uniform again. The sadness and trouble was all in the retrospect, not in the outlook. Tommy Atkins, with his great, simple, conspicuous vices and his obscure, surprising, and enduring virtues was unconsciously putting into practice the precept of a certain Old Buccaneer: No regrets; they unman the heart we ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Magazine, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the "strange specimen of oscitancy" which another (it is, in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook. To such trifles as these last the precept of non offendar maculis may safely be applied, although Fielding, wiser than his critics, seems to have foreseen the necessity for still ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... framer of a lay As soft as evening in his favorite May; Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble, And quit his books, for fear of growing double"; Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; Convincing all, by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose insane, And Christmas stories, tortured into rhyme, Contain the essence ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... precept better is; For Creswell she was safe, When she lived a private Miss. And a Tory I will ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... he who expects the favor of fortune in return for his observance of precept is mistaken. The "work that is wrought under the sun" makes no special provision for him during his lifetime. Unless the cry of vanity is to be the last word there must be a reinterpretation of the promise of God. This appears in the new ideal of patient submission, and the chastened faith ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... during which Carmichael's face had changed, "you are incorrigible. For years we have been trying to make you a really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are distinctly worse than when we began—more lazy, miserly, and uncharitable. It ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Maine Woods,"—such are the titles he affects. He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right, provided that love is made subservient to a holier one. But your first duty is, in the words of our Saviour, "to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Obedience to this precept involves a great many other duties, but none of these should interfere ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... but, when once the rhythm of his musical verse had excited his mind to be itself, the force and simplicity of his emotion transfuse and transform these abstractions. Godwin's "universal benevolence" was with him an ardent affectionate love for his kind. Godwin's cold precept that it was the duty of an illuminated understanding to contribute towards the progress of enquiry, by arguing about perfection and the powers of the mind in select circles of friends who meet for debate, but never (virtue forbids) for action, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... exclude form. Manners and morals are not exclusive of each other. If the marriage ceremony included the vow to be polite, it might leave out almost everything else. The home should be the place where tolerance, courtesy, and emotional control are taught both by precept ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... resolved not to move out of his own sphere, not unlike Baldwin, a shoe-maker's son, (and a shoe-maker), in the days of yore, who published a treatise on the shoes of the ancients, having a firm resolution strictly to observe this precept, Ne sutor ultra crepidam. ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... in this assembly about a lady (of the royal household). The prosperity of our kingdom is at an end. Alas, the Kauravas are even now engaged in sinful consultations. Ye Kauravas, take to your heart this high precept that I declare. If virtue is persecuted, the whole assembly becometh polluted. If Yudhishthira had staked her before he was himself won, he would certainly have been regarded as her master. If, however a person staketh anything at a time when he himself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mere experiment on unmeaning forms, or than ringing indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty. To the reverie, rather than the investigation, to the dream, rather than the deliberation, of the architect, we recommend it, as a branch of art in which instinct will do more than precept, and inspiration than technicality. The correspondence of our villa architecture with our natural scenery may be determined with far greater accuracy, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... should observe him; "yes, let her know I'm there." At this time Captain Boodle—or Doodles, as he was familiarly called—had again ascended to the billiard-room, and was hard at work. "Let her know that I'm there," repeated Archie, mentally. Everything was contained in, that precept. And he, with his hands before him on his knees, went through the process of steadying a horse with the snaffle-rein, just touching the curb, as he did so, for security. It was but a motion of his fingers, and no one could see it; but ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... concise elegance of Phaedrus, and the native graces of La Fontaine. Fifteen moral and political sentences are illustrated in a series of apologues: but the composition is intricate, the narrative prolix, and the precept obvious and barren. Yet the Brachman may assume the merit of inventing a pleasing fiction, which adorns the nakedness of truth, and alleviates, perhaps, to a royal ear, the harshness of instruction. With a similar design, to admonish kings that they are strong only in the strength of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... was immediately followed, and that functionary directed that the body should be removed from where it was to the nearest public-house, and immediately issued his precept for an ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Is this any new thing? Was it not said already, that he is "without uniquity, and his ways judgment?" But, alas! how ignorant are we of God, and slow of heart to conceive of him as he is, therefore is there "line upon line, and precept upon precept," and name upon name, if it be possible, that at length we may apprehend God as he is. Alas! our knowledge is but ignorance, our light darkness, while it is shut up in the corner of our mind, and shines not into the heart, and hath no influence on our practice. And the truth ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... most Christian spirit exterminated many,) on the contrary, they are equally free men with the Yankees, and have the same privilege of reducing free men to slavery with their Republican neighbours. The Black Indians, following the precept and example of the White Republicans, have now an immense number of slaves; and in this case, it is not the more civilized who holds his fellow man in bondage, but the less civilized, indeed, savages. So the world is improving and progressing in the Western Hemisphere! ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... justly exposed a precept delivered by some ancient writers, that a man should live with his enemy in such a manner, as might leave him room to become his friend; and with his friend in such a manner, that if he became his enemy, it should ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its heart's content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient, because, as it was always wide of the mark, it often distracted attention very conveniently from operations that would have been defeated or hindered by publicity. A precept which I endeavored vainly to popularize early in the war, "If you have anything to do go and do it: if not, for heaven's sake get out of the way," was only half carried out. Certainly the capable people went and did it; but the incapables would by no means get out of the way: they fussed and bawled ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... consideration of courage. Nothing was more prized and praised in Old Japan. In those days it was the deliberate effort of parents and educators to develop courage in children. Many were their devices for training the young in bravery. Not content with mere precept, they were sent alone on dark stormy nights to cemeteries, to houses reputed to be haunted, to dangerous mountain peaks, and to execution grounds. Many deeds were required of the young whose sole aim was the development of courage and daring. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... graduates and ex-students go, they teach by precept and example the necessary lesson of thrift, economy, and property-getting, and friendship ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... or his superior, to behave himself modestly and with respect. Yet free from flattery or empire. Not with insolence or precept; but as the prince were already furnished with the parts he should have, especially in affairs of state. For in other things they will more easily suffer themselves to be taught or reprehended: ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... of the urban proletariate to hate the very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom the suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried to emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had brought to cities of the past.[480] The appeal to history and to nobler motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the nation. No President of the United States, from the beginning of the Republic, ever excelled him in essential preparation for the tasks of the office. By a thorough acquisition of abstract knowledge, by clear and convincing precept and by a firm and diligent practical application of the outstanding principles of statecraft, no occupant of the Executive chair up to his advent was better furnished for a notable administration of public affairs. And Wilson's Administration has been notable. Its achievements, ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... delicious rarity! I know That all, we always find; but always all, Charms not the palate, critically fine. Archestratus, in culinary lore Deep for his time, in this more learned age Is wanting; and full oft he surely talks Of what he never ate. Suspect his page, Nor load thy genius with a barren precept. Look not in books for what some idle sage So idly raved; for cookery is an art Comporting ill with rhetoric; 'tis an art Still changing, and of momentary triumph! Know on thyself thy genius must depend. All books of cookery, all helps ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the Christian virtues. Jesus was eminently sane. He was no fanatic. He gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. The individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. Nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... Masonry, which is to be faithful to the best interests of mankind. Labor, by precept and example, to elevate the standard of Masonic character, to enlarge its sphere of influence, to popularize its teachings, and to make all men know it for the Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, and Good-will on earth among men; of Liberty, Equality, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... instructing me, that a Load of Riches bring, instead of Felicity, a Load of Troubles; and that the only Source of Happiness is Contentment. Go, therefore, you who have too much, and give it to those who are in want; so shall you be happy yourselves, by making others happy. This is a Precept from the Almighty, a Precept which must be regarded; for The Lord is about your Paths, and about your Bed, and spieth ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... civilisation the gradual triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who preached humanitarian communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to the bourgeois, who were satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe and grew rich, following the precept of Guizot, as well as to the workers who overthrew it. It is significant that the journal of Louis Blanc, in which he published his book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK (1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES. The political question as to the due limits between ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... interest. He still showed none when the speaker said again, that because the pestilence was once more with us—that was in the terrible visitation of 1878—he had devoted his second discourse to the hideous crime of a great city whose voters and tax-payers do not enable and compel it to keep the precept, "Be thou clean." I thought of the clean little home from whose master beside me came no evidence that he thought at all. But the moment the preacher declared his purpose to consider now the application of this great command to the individual life and character ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... to attend to his advice, and set out in the highest glee, wishing for no better sport than to try the firmness of my resolutions on this head, though, it must be confessed, I was fully more inclined to follow the precept enjoined upon me by another friend, who, by way of improving the captain's ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... have thought that truest nobility lay in choosing a life in the midst of suffering and woe for the purpose of alleviating it, and who have acted on their opinion. This lesson, however, is not so frequently learnt by us through precept as in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... number of the "Contemporary Review." Whilst delivering severe lectures upon want of candour and impartiality, and preaching temperance and moderation, the practice of the preacher, as sometimes happens, falls very short of his precept. The example of moderation presented to me by my clerical critic does not seem to me very edifying, his impartiality does not appear to be beyond reproach, and in his tone I fail to recognise any of the [Greek: epieikeia] which Mr. Matthew Arnold so justly admires. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... recourse was had to an accusation of sorcery. The idea of handing him over to the ecclesiastical authorities was briefly discussed, but proofs were necessary, and the judges hesitated. It is a principle of justice, which has become a precept in law, that in cases of uncertainty the accused has the benefit of the doubt; but at the period of which we are writing, these truths were far from being acknowledged; guilt was presumed rather than innocence; and torture, instituted to force confession from those who could not otherwise be convicted, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... appearance of winding among hills, is in fact, on the left side, limited by the sea-coast running northward. It comes into its more proper line at a celebrated sea-marsh called Cameria,[524] concerning which the oracle said "Ne moveas Camarinam," and the transgression of which precept brought on a pestilence. The road here is a wild pass bounded by a rocky precipice; on one hand covered with wild shrubs, flowers, and plants, and on the other by the sea. After this we came to a military position, where Murat used to quarter a body of troops ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Because of this old association, Dublin audiences insisted in 1902 in seeing humor in his Peter Gillane in "Cathleen ni Houlihan." For all this past, however, Mr. Fay was intent on serious drama, and, with the precept and example of Mr. Russell and Mr. Yeats always present to him in the early days of the National Theatre Company, and with what he had gathered from the experimental performance of Irish plays by "The Irish Literary Theatre," he advanced surely in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... being freed, and, if possible, by honest and honourable means; for I always remembered the old adage; and I trust it has ever been my ruling principle, that honesty is the best policy; and likewise that other golden precept—to do unto all men as I would they should do unto me. However, as I was from early years a predestinarian, I thought whatever fate had determined must ever come to pass; and therefore, if ever it were my lot to be freed nothing could prevent me, although ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... precepts which laid down later qualities of English character; for the Oriental reader it would be easier to identify the English traits in Thackeray or Dickens or Meredith if he could first consider them in a dogmatic precept. But the lecture gives us, I think, an extraordinary insight into ourselves, a power of self-criticism almost disconcerting as we realize not only the persistence of ethical ideals in the past, but also the possible career of new ethical systems as they may permeate the books written to-day. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... certainly effect. This does not therefore present itself to him as an object of ambition. We have many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle: "Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede. Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he could ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... one side, there was a manifest principle on the other—a principle so sacred and so clear as imperatively to demand the sacrifice of men's lives, of their families and their fortune. They resolved to give up everything, not to escape from actual oppression, but to honour a precept of unwritten law. That was the transatlantic discovery in the theory of political duty, the light that came over the ocean. It represented liberty not as a comparative release from tyranny, but as a thing so divine that the existence of society must ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Herbert, is worth a hundred schoolmasters. In the home she is "loadstone to all hearts, and loadstar to all eyes." Imitation of her is constant—imitation, which Bacon likens to "a globe of precepts." But example is far more than precept. It is instruction in action. It is teaching without words, often exemplifying more than tongue can teach. In the face of bad example, the best of precepts are of but little avail. The example is followed, not the precepts. Indeed, precept at variance with practice is worse than useless, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... a parliament held at Coventry, 6th Henry VI. whereunto by special precept to the sheriffs of the several counties, no lawyer, or person skilled in the law ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... for cardinal tenet the sacredness of life, the inmates of the great monasteries nevertheless did not hesitate to appeal to arms, at any time, in defence of their temporal privileges or in pursuit of their ambitious designs. Yet the discredit attaching to such a flagrant discrepancy between precept and practice might not have produced very signal result had not the twelfth century brought the Gen-Hei struggle, which plunged the empire into a state of turbulence and reduced the lower orders to a condition ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose first precept is ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... brighter moments. Alas, it is not always so. Heavily weighs on me at times the burdensome reflection that I cannot honestly say I am confident as to the exact shape of the once-seen, oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward", haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... see her and her daughter. She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are blushing for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their unusually munificent mistress. I shall give you "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" of Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his pagan standard. "There is a real greatness," he says, "even in the way that some men will buy a toy to a child. Even ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas; that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... fashions of clothes and furniture have remained the same for ages; suttees are so ancient as to be mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus; justice is still administered at the palace-gates as of old; in short, "every usage is a precept of religion ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... from the repetition of nuptials. The successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... many. Penloe's ideas are so radical that it gives us a shock all over even to think of attempting to bring the people to that mode of living. The thought we have concerning our sex is instilled into us by custom, precept and example, so that from earliest infancy to introduce such an innovation as Penloe proposes would apparently, to our minds, seem like undermining our social structure and its very foundations. While we admit the state of society is morally low, yet ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... bent over them and put food and drink to their lips. Many an office of loving mercy to the sick and dying did he and Roger perform ere daylight faded from the sky; and before night actually fell, the Father had by precept and example got together a band of helpers ready and willing to tend the sick and bury the dead, and the people felt that the terrible panic which had fallen upon them, and caused every one to flee away, had given place to something ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the Pythian of old. "That precept descended from Heaven." Know thyself! Is that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. But never yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what he acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... disease." "At that rate," said the squire, "my bread is like to be rarely buttered o' both sides, i'faith. But, I hope, as by the blessing of God I have run mad, so I shall in good time grow valiant, under your honour's precept and example." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... horror of them. At the same time I have taught him to love, and to do good to his neighbour, whoever that neighbour may be, and whatever may be his failings. Falsehood of every kind I included in this precept as forbidden, for no one can love ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald |
