"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as Frenchmen, and that they were ill-treated, Germany would interfere quickly enough and continue to do so until some fair modus vivendi was established. The fact is that the case of the Transvaal stands alone, that such a condition of things has never been known, and that no previous precedent can apply to it, save the general rule that a minority of white men cannot continue indefinitely to tax and govern a majority. Sentiment inclines to the smaller nation, but reason and justice are all on the side ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... port regulations were severe, but he was accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there was no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to the Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... can walk, with God's acceptance before him. He blessed him with grace suitable to the work he was now to begin; to wit, for the replenishing and governing the new world God had brought him to: so that Noah did not without precedent qualifications take this work upon him. God also gave Caleb and Joshua another spirit, and then they followed him fully. That of David is for this remarkable, "Who am I, [said he] and what is my people, that we should be able ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... all humanity, and of the cause of peace itself, to follow his advice in national and party politics whenever practicable. To bind oneself to follow the political dictation of Leo the Thirteenth, and to consider such obedience to the Pope as indispensable to salvation, would be to create a precedent. Pius the Ninth was no statesman at all, and there are plenty of instances in history of Popes whose political advice would have been ruinous, if followed, though it was often formulated more authoritatively and more dictatorially than the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... her funeral expenses; and one cannot help surmising that she must have been distantly related to the late Old Bullion BENTON. "No National Bank nonsense at my tomb!" said she; "no grimed and greasy currency for my undertaker! I will have a specie-paying funeral or none at all." As we have the precedent of a great many Old Ladies in the Cabinet, we are rather sorry that it is too late to invite this clear-headed dame to take ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... sailing-ships as well as in that of galleys. Both have their points of resemblance to the modern ship; both have also points of essential difference, which make it impossible to cite their experiences or modes of action as tactical precedents to be followed. But a precedent is different from and less valuable than a principle. The former may be originally faulty, or may cease to apply through change of circumstances; the latter has its root in the essential nature of things, and, however various its ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... conservatism, Mrs. Garnett was duplicating the uneventful placidity of her parents' early years, content to rule her household wisely, to love and minister to her husband, and to devote her energies to the rearing of her children according to time-honored precedent. Pocahontas, the youngest of the family, was still unmarried, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... of the whole nation, and charged with the duty of ascertaining the actual state of things in Ireland and the wisest line of economic development. Such an undertaking will amount to a unification of Irish life altogether without precedent. It will draw the great personalities of industry for the first time into the central current of public affairs. It will furnish them with a platform upon which they will have to talk in terms of the plough, the loom, and the ledger, and not in terms of the wolf-dog and the orange-lily, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... had heard from my wife only two days before this. At that time she was quite sick, but was thought to be improving. With a heart filled with sadness I now prepared for my journey home. The warden was absent, and the deputy warden said, "There was no precedent for permitting a prisoner to go home on a visit, as such a thing had never occurred before in the history of the State, but," continued he, "if you will give me your word that you will return to the prison I will let you go." I told him to set the time for my return and I would be back. ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... no time for discussion on questions of precedent, so we began to climb together, reaching a great branch about twenty feet from the ground, no easy task for me, encumbered as I was ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... von Nurnberg." Wagner's mind dwelt much on Greek things, and as he followed a classical principle in choosing mythological and legendary subjects for his tragedies, so also he followed classical precedent in drawing the line between tragedy and comedy. "Tannhauser," "Tristan und Isolde," "Der Ring des Nibelungen," "Parsifal," and, in a lesser degree, "Lohengrin," are examples of the old tragedy type. To them the restrictions ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in vain that Brother Simmons and his whole following pointed out unitedly and successively the utter impossibility and absurdity of the proposal which was unconstitutional and without precedent. The hockey team had the company with them and with the bit in their teeth ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... too promiscuous "clearing the ground" by syncope and suicide. Another is the juvenility of Mildred:—a serious infraction of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, as in the circumstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, is at least excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother reveals himself as her lover's murderer, she, like the typical young Miss Anglaise of certain French novelists, betrays her incapacity for true passion by ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... men of sense and standing will pass resolutions approving in so many words of things done contrary to law, as one of the resolutions of this meeting did. It quoted the demolition of the tea in Boston harbor as being authority and precedent. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Sandeau then went on to explain to me how the theatrical newspapers, which contain the lists of performers and of pieces in all the theatres of Paris, (play-bills being unknown,) enter into a contract, which is the condition precedent of their sale in the theatres, stipulating that they will never speak otherwise than in praise of the pieces brought out. The report of the new piece is often written and set up before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of liberty proved the futility ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... by all laws, divine and human, in laying under contribution every one of his subjects, of whatever rank or condition.[277] But, as the same ends might be attained by methods more agreeable to law and precedent, Francis preferred to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... within the suburbs of the city of Manila, to which you promise to retire your troops, and name as conditions precedent: First, protection to your shipping by the United States Navy, and the free navigation of your vessels within the waters in United States occupation; second, restitution to your forces of all positions which are now occupied ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... thing: a kind of professional sentiment which the sternest scientist need not be ashamed to acknowledge. And then, beyond that, his many talks with Klinker had invested the campaign for the reformatory with a warmth of meaning which was without precedent in his experience. This was, in fact, his first personal contact with the suffering and sin of the world, his first grapple with a social problem in the raw. Two years before, when he had offered to write an article on this topic for the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from American soil. But the freedman remains. With him, a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil—with equal political and civil rights—almost equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility—each ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and with a solid array of discontents behind him. The two former comrades of the firing line, as the heads of their respective groups, were locked in a momentous political life-and-death struggle the outcome of which may prove to be the precedent for ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... THE PLAN SUCCEEDED WHERE IT HAS BEEN TRIED? This question frequently occurs as an issue in connection with all sorts of propositions. Its importance and significance are so evident that no explanation is needed. The value of precedent is ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... suggestion of the marquis, Madame de Saint-Dizier resumed: "Though the doctor seems to me to be far too indulgent to mademoiselle, I might not see any great objection to trusting her with him; but that I do not wish to establish such a precedent, for hence forward she must have no ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... many ways an exceptional person even before the occasion of her bereavement, and in this, contrary to all precedent, she had rashly cast her every garment into the dye-pot, sparing not even so much ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... these hydrocarbons are, at least in part, products of the action of the sulphuric acid. Cahours and Kraemer's and Godzki's observations on the higher fractions of crude wood spirit, in fact, furnish a precedent for this view. Referring to the results obtained by Anderson, Tilden, and Renard, the author suggests that rosin spirit perhaps contains hydrides intermediate in composition between those of the CnH{2n-6} and CnH{2n} series, also derived like the latter from hydrocarbons ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... obliged to resign. By this, the country was undoubtedly robbed of the services of a man capable of making one of the best officers for that position our country has ever known. However, it was right that it should be so; it would have been very unwise to have established such a precedent. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... incomplete, and sometimes, by a sudden interference transcending the usual forms, he rather confused than advanced the public business. If he ever failed in the scrupulous regard due to the relative rights of Congress, it was so evidently without design that no conflict could ensue, or evil precedent be established. Truth he would receive from any one, but when impressed by others, he did not use their opinions till, by reflection, he had made ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... am bidden to tell you that the Royal Archivist, whom you bade to search through the histories of your royal ancestors for some precedent to guide you in this matter, has locked himself with his forty assistants in the royal library, and ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... essential, the very day which was first appointed? How dare we change a day which God himself ordained from the beginning, until he makes the change as peremptory as the institution itself? Have we any right to infer, in such an important matter? Where is the express, divine command,—not precedent, example, usage, but where is the enactment,—making the first day of ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... more free than our own, and then she had been accustomed to think every thing English of the purest water. A little reflection reconciled her to the innovation; and the next day, at a dinner party, she was heard defending the usage as a practice that had a precedent in the ancient incense of the altar. At the moment, however, she was dying to impart her discoveries to others; and she kindly proposed to the captain and Aristabulus to introduce them to some of her acquaintances, as they must find it dull, being ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... to volunteer and offered himself in large numbers at every recruiting station, without avail. True, he was accepted in numerous instances, but the condition precedent, that of filling up and rounding out the few Negro Regular and National Guard organizations below war strength, was chafing and humiliating. Had the response to the call for volunteers been as ardent among all classes of our people; especially the foreign ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Lentulus brought on a debate as to what should be done with the prisoners. Caesar, from whatever motive, spoke forcibly against any unconstitutional action which, however justified by the enormity of the prisoners' guilt, might become a dangerous precedent. In his opinion, the wise course would be to confiscate the property of the prisoners, and to place their persons in custody not in Rome, but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... he could tell me only, that in some cases, more frequently on the continent and in America than in England, Jews have married Christian women, and the wives have continued undisturbed in their faith; whether such marriages were regularly permitted or not, Jacob could not say—no precedent that he could recollect was exactly a case in point. This difficulty concerning religion increased, instead of diminishing, in magnitude and importance, the more my imagination dwelt upon it—the longer it was considered by ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the sense of danger was not so near as that of loneliness—of a pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its master's soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken something out of the house with it. 'Lizabeth had known this kitchen for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this he resembled his father, who, on leaving Scotland after the failure of 1715, sent money to Argyll to compensate the country folk whose cottages had been burned in the war; an act without precedent or imitation. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the Author has here endeavoured to execute has not, so far as he knows, the advantage of any near precedent in any literature, he hopes that a few explanatory words may be offered without ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Council of Ministers elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 14 April 2002 (next to be held in April 2007); after the first legislative elections, the leader of the majority party was appointed prime minister by the president, suggesting a precedent for the future election results: Kay Rala Xanana GUSMAO elected president; percent of vote - Kay Rala Xanana GUSMAO 82.7%, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and similitudes between the French Revolution, or any part or phase of it, and our affairs in Ireland are moonshine. For the practical politician his problem is always individual. For his purposes history never repeats itself. Human nature, doubtless, has a weakness for a precedent; it is a weakness to be respected. But there is no such thing as an essential reproduction of social and political combinations of circumstance. To talk about Robespierre in connection with Ireland is just as idle ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... 165) imposed a fine of L10 on any one employing a schoolmaster of unsound faith, with disability and imprisonment for the schoolmaster so offending; in 1603 another law required a license from the bishop on the part of all schoolmasters as a condition precedent to teaching; in 1662 the obnoxious Act of Uniformity (R. 166) required every schoolmaster in any type of school, and all private tutors, to subscribe to a declaration that they would conform to the liturgy of the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... is named—Sandro Botticelli.... The Pagan and Christian world mingle in the work of Botticelli; but the man himself belonged to an age that is past and gone—an age that flourished long before men recorded history. His best efforts seem to spring out of a heart that forgot all precedent, and arose, Venus-like, perfect and complete, from the unfathomable Sea of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... with obvious reluctance, but he made a condition precedent to his acceptance. "Le' 's see Hull first, just you 'n' me. I ain't strong for the police. We'll go to them when we've got ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... Nyleptha and Sorais, having been an exceptionally able and vigorous ruler, and, as a consequence, he kept down the power of the priests and nobles. On his death, two years before we reached Zu-Vendis, the twin sisters, his children, were, following an ancient precedent, called to the throne, since an attempt to exclude either would instantly have provoked a sanguinary civil war; but it was generally felt in the country that this measure was a most unsatisfactory one, and could hardly ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... trifle alarmed. One partner of Hamilton and Company was there in the buggy with her. By all the rules of precedent and South Harniss business the other should have been at the store. She knew that her uncles had employed no clerk or assistant since ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Labor party, the unofficial chief of the secret Soviet forces in the United States, was alive and again in the field against law and order was enough to set in motion every force that he controlled. Waving aside precedent and crashing his way past secretaries, he set in motion not only the agents of the Department of Justice but also the post-office forces and the specialized but highly efficient Military and Naval Intelligence ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... misty abstraction, and its claim of absolute sovereignty a doctrine almost as fantastic as that of the divine right of kings. The Netherlanders were, on the whole, a law-abiding people, preferring to conduct even a revolution according to precedent, very much attached to ancient usages and traditions, valuing the liberties, as they called them, which they had wrested from what had been superior force, with their own right hands, preferring facts to theories, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Majesty to look at these; we have been still worse treated than the Arnolds!' And indeed, I have understood the Law-Courts, for some time after, found great difficulty to assert their authority: the parties against whom judgment went, taking refuge in the Arnold precedent, and appealing direct ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... expects every man to do his duty! Are your films ready to record a scene without precedent in the scientific annals ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... comments, in some cases attacking the received doctrines of the Church. A Hebrew Old Testament, in 1546, was followed in 1550 by the Greek New Testament. The next year he published a new edition of the Testament in which for the first time it was divided into verses, a precedent followed in Bible printing ever since. It was not merely the fact of his printing the scriptures at all that angered the heresy-hunters, but much more Estienne's notes and comments, in which, like Luther in Germany and Tyndale in England, ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... tells me you have been uniformly successful with the cases he's put you on. I hope," the young father entreated, "that you'll follow your usual precedent." ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... signal entailed, as a matter of course, a number of those rewards and titles with which Great Britain judiciously fostered the spirit of emulation in her Navy. These were to a considerable extent affairs of routine and precedent, and Nelson, knowing that junior flag-officers had on several previous occasions been made baronets, wished to avoid this hereditary dignity because inconsistent with his means. His love of distinction also prompted him to desire one of those Orders which carry with them ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... largely their own fault. Such was the position of those in immediate contact with the working wheels of the Sho[u]gun's Government. The great bugyo[u] (magistrates) were continually shifting. Their court staff was the solid foundation of unyielding precedent in form. The one was a court officer; ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Rev. George Plaxton, then chaplain to Lord Gower:—"Johnson, the Lichfield librarian, is now here. He propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height. All the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they have from him; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance sine directione Michaelis."—Gent. Mag. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... thing is without precedent, sir! These mitigating circumstances may be brought to bear on the Commander-in-Chief, and may be embodied in a recommendation to mercy! They should have no weight in the finding of the verdict," said the President, "which should be in accordance with the fact ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... wallowed blindly in a mire of offensive epithet, his fellow-citizens came to dark conclusions. He had an old score to pay off against Maudie, they all knew that. Had he chosen this way? What other so effectual? He might even say most of that dust was his, anyway. But it was an alarming precedent. The fire of Maudie's excitement had caught and spread. Eve the less inflammable muttered darkly that it was all up with Minook, if a person couldn't go on a stampede without havin' his dust took out of his cabin. The crowd was pressing Charlie, and twenty cross-questions were ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of the rules of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. To which poetry would be made subsequent, or, indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate. I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... if he wrote rapidly, he "held up" what he did write long, and pretty certainly rewrote a good deal. Now the previous Book had appeared only a short time before what must have been the date of his death; and this could not, according to analogy and precedent, have been ready, or anything like ready, when he died. On the other hand, time enough passed between his death and the publication (even of the Ile Sonnante fragment) for the MS. to have passed through other hands and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... ascendancy was, however, sufficient to prevent the storm from breaking while he was President. It was reserved for his successor. In 1797 his second term expired. He had refused a third, thereby setting an important precedent which every subsequent President has followed, and bade farewell to politics in an address which is among the great historical documents of the Republic. The two points especially emphasized were long the acknowledged keynotes of American policy: the avoidance at home of "sectional" ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... difficult to take the very slightest interest. Fabrice del Dongo himself,[131] with whom every woman falls in love, and who candidly confesses that he does not know whether he has ever been really in love with any woman—though there is one possible exception precedent, his aunt, the Duchess of Sanseverina, and one subsequent, Clelia Conti, who saves him from prison, as above—is depicted with extraordinary science of human nature. But it is a science which, once more, excludes passion, humour, gusto—all the fluids of real or fictitious life. Fabrice ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... parallels are notoriously risky, particularly where the conditions have no precedent. They ought, however, to be made, provided that we keep our generalisations from them under careful control. Now, after the Napoleonic wars we had a national debt somewhat comparable in magnitude in its relation to the national wealth and income with the present ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... 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
... the world calls 'educated,' but the world, the world of men, knows better. It laughs at me. It has cheated me because I am a woman. The world of men has fenced me in and hobbled me with convention, with precedent, with fictitious sentiment. If I pursue the business of men as they themselves would pursue it I am called an ungrateful daughter. If I should adopt the morals of men I would be called a fallen woman. If I adopted the religion of men I would have no religion ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... such a thing? It never had been done, of course, in all the world; but the essence and the object of the whole day's run were that it should defy all precedent. There were few people, however, of those on board who in their hearts dared harbor any hope; especially as the engine which was to be tried at this crucial moment ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... occasion, precedent, agent, causation, former, origin, reason, antecedent, condition, fountain, originator, source, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in the navy, consequent upon the seizure of the Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of the population ambitious of Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to defend our Island from foreign invasion. But I tell those jackanapeses, sir, that while I admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of kidnapping such youths after the expiration of their several terms of imprisonment as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship; and packing them off to sea again whenever they venture to take the air on shore; I deny the justice of the inference; inasmuch as ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... grace before meat is read by the Senior Scholar. The Judas grace (composed, they say, by Christopher Whitrid himself) is noted for its length and for the excellence of its Latinity. Who was to read it to-night? The Warden, having searched his mind vainly for a precedent, was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... as he explains elsewhere]. This is the method of defining everything and proving everything. . . A fine method, but impossible; since it is evident that the first terms that we wish to define, suppose precedent terms necessary for their explanation—and that the first propositions that we wish to prove, suppose others which precede them; and so it is clear we can never arrive at absolutely first principles. ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... editorship it is doubtful if any review published in English exercised so great an influence, and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From almost nothing the Forum, in two or three years, attracted 30,000 subscribers—something without precedent for a publication of this character. It had accomplished this great result simply because of the vitality and interest of its contents. The period covered was an important one, in the United States and Europe; it was the time of Cleveland's ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... such phrases, and people will take them up.—In spite of the merits of the work, it seems to you to be a dangerous, nay, a fatal precedent. It throws open the gates of the temple of Fame to the crowd; and in the distance you descry a legion of petty authors hastening to imitate this novel and easy style ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... fundamental claims of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... world; when Roman senators and generals had more power than kings; when Grecian arts and literature were copied by the imperial Romans; when the rich and fortunate were luxurious and ostentatious beyond all precedent; when life had reached the highest point of material splendor, and yet when luxury had not destroyed military virtues or undermined the strength of the empire. The "eternal city" then numbered millions of people, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Peril were it not for his present management. This management, his government, is set, crystallized. It is what binds him down to building as his fathers built. The governing class, entrenched by the precedent and power of centuries and by the stamp it has put upon his mind, will never free him. It would be the suicide of the governing class, and the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... dangerous and man is fallible; that a man so good as Washington dies tomorrow and another man steps in, and that those who have the government in their present keeping should curb ambitions, limit their own power, and thus fix a precedent for those who are ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... setting a dangerous precedent, I'd tell Sarah how glad we all are that she defied the authorities and did some smuggling," remarked Kitty. She and Debby had gone to the creek to bring up the milk for supper, and now made a pretty picture as they came up the willow-grown ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... council [the entire court], sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; but found none; yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false witnesses." (Matthew 26:59,60) This exalted tribunal, in violation of every law and every precedent known to Jewish jurisprudence, demanded of Jesus that he testify against himself. "The high priest arose and said unto him, ... I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God." ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... boat in case of fire. It's an inheritance from steamboats—pure precedent—and useless, for a submarine cannot catch fire. Why, a few turns of that wheel when in the awash trim would admit enough water in two minutes to sink the boat. I've applied for ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the lords the address was moved by the Duke of Somerset, and seconded by Lord Seaford. The Duke of Wellington fully concurred in the expression of congratulation to her majesty upon the alliance which had been announced to the country. But, his grace continued, every precedent of the reign of George III. had been followed in this matter except one, and that was the declaration that this prince was a Protestant. He knew the prince was a Protestant; but as this was a Protestant state, the fact that the prince was a Protestant should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the head of the Department, and after consultation with you, I wrote unofficial letters to General Samuel Milroy and to Allen Hamilton, esq., on the 18th September, setting forth the views of the Department as hereinbefore expressed in regard of precedent legislative sanction and the importance to Indiana of treating with the Miamies, whose disposition to cede their remaining lands on just and equitable terms might not continue. It was thought, however, to be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... murder does not deprive a member of his privileges, complaints of this nature are only cognizable by the Assembly, which, being yet in its first days of regeneration, is rather scrupulous of defending such amusements overtly. Alarmed, however, at the number, and averse from the precedent of these denunciations, it has now passed a variety of decrees, which are termed a guarantee of the national representation, and which in fact guarantee it so effectually, that a Deputy may do any thing in future with impunity, provided it does not ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland—e.g. the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... who know the difference in feeling and views which separate the royalist emigrant nobles of Lombardy from the democratic republicans that follow Mazzini. In truth, the Government of Vienna needs their estates; and, imitating the example of the French Convention, and furnishing another precedent for Socialism when it shall come into power, it seized them without any colour of right or form of law. Another branch of the scourging tyranny of Austria is the system of forced loans. Some of the wealthiest families of Lombardy have been ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... days' wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and would be as soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master Betty's acting was so far wonderful, and drew crowds to see it as a mere singularity, because he was a boy. Mr. Kean was a grown man, and there was no rule or precedent established in the ordinary course of nature why some other man should not appear in tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther, Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and he seemed almost like ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... is a precedent to teach wicked men; That when they leave religion, and turn atheists, Their own abilities leave them. Pray you take comfort, I will endeavour you shall be his guardians In his distraction: and for your land, Mr. Wellborn, Be it good or ill in law, I'll be an umpire Between you, and this ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... effect of the adoption of the indeterminate sentence for felonies is that every State prison and penitentiary must be a reformatory. The convict goes into it for the term of a year at least (since the criminal law, according to ancient precedent, might require that, and because the discipline of the reformatory would require it as a practical rule), and he stays there until, in the judgment of competent authority, he is fit to be trusted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... safety exasperated Betty beyond measure. She scolded him vigorously. Charley accepted the scolding with humility, but his resolution was unshaken; he did not propose to vacate the public roads at any man's behest; that would be an unwise precedent to establish. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... women and children by French raiders there was no precedent or just provocation. Here Frontenac must be deemed more culpable than the Puritans. The only extenuating circumstance is that those who survived the first moments of attack were in almost all cases spared, taken to Canada, and there ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... John, "that we shall be ten in number, and I would therefore propose that, after an illustrious precedent, we limit our operations to ten days. Then if we each produce one culinary poem a day we shall, at the end of our time, have provided the world with a hundred new reasons for enjoying life, supposing, of course, that we have no failures. I propose, therefore, that our ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... up to it. Popular rumour likened him to the man with the whole pound of tobacco, who had sworn against borrowing or lending. Mr. Ffrench could afford to be independent of such men as Alf, but couldn't afford to establish a precedent for invalided carriers loafing on the run. Of course, you would n't look at the thing in that light; but then, your name is not Wentworth St. John Ffrench, and you would n't do for a manager of Avondale. You would have the run swarming with a most tenacious type of trespassers ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... them of bribery, larceny or any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York. No barriers whatever stand today between women and the exercise of their right to vote save those of precedent and prejudice, which refuse to expunge the word ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... but I perceive that it does so in myself; I will to do something and I do it; I will to move my body and it moves, but if an inanimate body, when at rest, should begin to move itself, the thing is incomprehensible and without precedent. The will is known to me in its action, not in its nature. I know this will as a cause of motion, but to conceive of matter as producing motion is clearly to conceive of an effect without a cause, which is ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... which affected Charleston, S.C., in 1886 had no corresponding precedent in that section, nor has it been followed by a similar disturbance. Regardless of the terrible experience of 1886, the government has now in course of construction at Charleston a navy-yard, and a great dry-dock, costing many millions of dollars, which will be operated ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... all! Assassination has always been deified; and before it is objected to, the world must change its creeds, its celebrities, and its chronicles. 'Monsieur, you are an assassin,' says an impolite world. 'Messieurs,' says the polite logician, 'I found my warrant in your Bible, and my precedent in your Brutus. What you deify in Aristogiton and Jael you mustn't damn in Ankarstroem and me.' Voila! What could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... securities were not sufficient for the anxious attention of the Supreme Council to Mr. Sulivan's welfare: Mr. Hastings had before given him the contract without any proposal on his part; and to make their gift perfect, in a second instance they proceed a step beyond their former ill precedent, and they contract with Mr. Sulivan for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... enraged, and affirmed he had strongly protested against the illegality of this proceeding to the magistracy, as I was actually in the Austrian service; but that they had answered him the court of Vienna had afforded them a precedent, for that, in 1742, they had done the same by the two sons of the burgomaster Rutenberg, of Dantzic, and that, therefore, they were justified in making reprisal; and likewise, they durst not refuse the most ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... unique that I doubt if there is any legal precedent for it. Ordinarily when the husband fails to put in appearance and the presumption is he is no longer living, the woman is considered free in the eyes of the law, after a certain number of years, varying I believe, in different states. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the conduct of one or other of the two 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 ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... entre Macaire et le chien eut lieu a Paris, dans l'ile Louviers. On place ce fait merveilleux en 1371, mais ... il est bien anterieur, car il est mentionne des le siecle precedent par Alberic des ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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 such evidence we may infer that in ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... of one of our early sovereigns seems to afford a precedent for the mode in which divers gentlemen and persons of quality voluntarily showed civility towards Richard Evelyn, and for that in which several gentlemen of birth and estate testified their respect and affection for Humphrey Chetham. Nicholas ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as they fall ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... condition of carbonate of lead, chloride of silver, etc., then the nature of the deposition was quite different from that of the similar ones of Tybo, Eureka, Bingham, etc., which are plainly gossans, and indeed is without precedent. But if the process was similar to that in the Galena lead region, and the ores were originally sulphides, their formation should have continued and been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... Assyria? There are sand, and failing rivers, and in Assyria's writings an utter nothing. The aged caves of India, who shall tell when they were sculptured? Far back when the sun was burning, burning in the sky as now in untold precedent time. Is there any meaning in those ancient caves? The indistinguish-able noise not to be resolved, born of the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... from bluff to bluff, lying snake-like in the grass. Some of the bolder might creep in to drag away the bodies of dead warriors, risking a chance shot, but there would be no open attack in the dark. That would be averse to all Indian strategy, all precedent. Even now the mournful wailing had ceased; Roman Nose had rallied his warriors, instilled into them his own unconquerable savagery, and set them on watch. With the first gray dawn they would come again, leaping to the coach's wheels, yelling, triumphant, mad with new ferocity—and he ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the sake of precedent," said Law, "let me see. Well, then, I will take one gem, only one. Here, Henri, is the diamond which I brought with me when I came to Paris years ago. It was the sole jewel owned then by my brother and myself, though we had somewhat of gold between ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... from time unnumbered, the African peoples have known only fear as the governing power, and, from long acclimatization, the Portuguese might almost count as African. This man of a superior race came and set himself up in authority over them, in defiance of all precedent, law, everything; and they submitted with dull indifference. The sweets of freedom are not always appreciated by those who have known the easy ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... would be impossible in a country with higher standards. "Our theater can, however, venture undisturbed to combine these two comprehensive series of scenes into one which shall not require more time than each one of them singly—a venture, to be sure, which is not wholly without precedent in foreign countries. It is clear that the result cannot give an adequate notion of Shakespeare's 'histories' in all their richness of content, but it does, perhaps, give to the theater a series of ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Shakespeare's time, and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms, might not visit ale-houses, and might ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... 5: None of the forms of column sketched here have any existence in reality. They are purposely kept apart from imitation of accepted forms to get rid of the idea that architecture consists in the acceptance of any particular form sanctioned by precedent.] ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... in this state, but this suffices for a general description. But in the Carolinas and the island of Jamaica, the cruelties that have been wantonly exercised on those miserable creatures, are without a precedent in any other part of the world. If those who have written on the subject, may be believed, it is not uncommon there, to tie a slave up and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... original as well as from actual sin? What is the meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art full of grace," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such donum supernaturale as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... folkways and mores, the traditions and conventions, of the group. So potentially fitted for social life is the natural man, however, so manifold are the expressions that the plastic original tendencies may take, that instinct is replaced by habit, precedent, personal taboo, and good form. This remade structure of human nature, this objective mind, as Hegel called it, is fixed and transmitted in the folkways and mores, social ritual, i.e., Sittlichkeit, to use the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 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 ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... such a thing occurred." The Brahman addressed the king thus, "Say not so; for it is not right; for with regard to renown and wisdom, personal celebrity, and worldly substance, these four things indeed are not to be considered according to precedent or subsequence; but whatever is produced according to nature, such things are liable to the law of cause and effect: but now whilst I recount some parallels let the king attentively listen:—Bhrigu, Angira, these two of Rishi family, having passed many years apart from ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... for a higher understanding of Nature's method and accomplishment as a precedent to study and observation of our national parks, I seek enormously to enrich the enjoyment not only of these supreme examples but of all examples of world making. The same readings which will prepare you to enjoy to the full the message of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Fennimore entered, displeased at the English sounds, and at finding them all, as she thought, loitering. Phoebe explained Maria's omission, and Miss Fennimore allowed her five minutes in her own room, saying that this must not become a precedent, though she did not ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... language; but his polite formulae could not conceal the fact that he had no very high opinion of those in whose hands his fate lay. Nor did the well-meant observance of established forms on the part of the Court do anything to modify his sentiments. It was in strict conformity with precedent that he should be adjured to make a clean breast of it and should be informed that, while truthfulness would meet with clemency, lying would be severely dealt with.[154] It is strange that it should have been thought necessary to ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... The pleas were closed, and the case concluded against the introduction of new evidence; and that, too, by the express notice and agreement of the counsel for the prosecution. And now to open it would be in glaring violation of all rule, all law, and all precedent. In short, it would be an outrage too gross to be tolerated anywhere but in a land of despotism. And, if the court would not at once decide to exclude the threatened testimony, he must be heard ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... having a husband and also a lover is not entirely without precedent," said Disraeli in mock apology, and took snuff solemnly. Meantime manuscripts were traveling back and forth between the East ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... census in 1885 was a breach of the Constitution for which no previous decade affords a precedent, and the absence of a school census becomes, year by year, a graver sin of omission as the pressure of economic conditions makes child labor more widespread ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... had happened. Yancoo's reputation had been grimly asserted. Every one now dreaded him anew. Again he was king. Though it was contrary to all precedent to point the death-bone at a member of the tribe, yet had Yan-coo made a law unto himself and his own justification, and the proudest testimonial to his skill was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... other. At the same time the bugbear of Miss Ingram and of Mr. Rochester's engagement with her is kept up, though it is easy to see that this and all concerning that lady is only a stratagem to try Jane's character and affection upon the most approved Griselda precedent. Accordingly an opportunity for explanation ere long offers itself, where Mr. Rochester has only to take it. Miss Eyre is desired to walk with him in shady alleys, and to sit with him on the roots of an old chestnut-tree towards the close ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... painfully hideous. Why it should have been allowed to appear is a mystery, as Mr. PIGOTT is a man that either is, or should be, without an enemy. There is only one thing to be done—our contemporary (following a recent precedent preserved in its own columns) should publish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... to persecution. It certainly has succeeded in producing a whole nation possessed of exquisite manners and perfect courtesy. Nor is Chinese courtesy merely conventional; it is quite as reliable in situations for which no precedent has been provided. And it is not confined to one class; it exists even in the humblest coolie. It is humiliating to watch the brutal insolence of white men received by the Chinese with a quiet dignity which cannot demean itself to answer rudeness ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... event? What heart but spurns at precedent And warnings of the wise, Contemned foreclosures of surprise? The banners play, the bugles call, The air is blue and prodigal. No berrying party, pleasure-wooed, No picnic party in the May, Ever went less loth than they Into that leafy neighborhood. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... imagined I had brought upon myself by marrying her.—I think it necessary, that as well those persons who are afraid the example should be taken, as those who are inclined to follow it, should consider all the material parts of it; otherwise, I think the precedent may be justly cleared; and the fears of the one be judged groundless, and the plea of the other but a pretence, in order to cover a folly into which they would have fallen, whether they had this example or not. For instance, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... write in English! I had pardoned him my terror. I had pardoned him the heads of the good men he hath struck off. For that princes should inspire terror is just, and that the great ones of the earth should prey one upon the other is a thing all history giveth precedent for since the days when Sylla hunted to death Marius that sat amidst the ruins of Carthage. But that the learned should be put to shame! that good letters should be cast into the mire! History showeth no ensample of ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... in any obvious way superior to Gilbert Fenton. It was only that he was just the one man able to win her heart. That mysterious attraction which reason can never reduce to rule, which knows no law of precedent or experience, reigned here in full force. It is just possible that the desperate circumstances of the attachment, the passionate pursuit of the lover, not to be checked by any obstacle, may have had an influence upon ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... accuse of seeking to abolish religion; nor ever in political affairs did any party proclaim a juster, larger, wiser ideal of government without being accused of seeking to abolish government. So it was quite according to precedent that those who taught the right of all to property should be accused of attacking the right of property. But who, think you, were the true friends and champions of private property? those who advocated ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... deep sigh. "Sire," she said, softly, "you yourself are binding tighter and tighter the chains of our imprisonment. To-day you limit our freedom to two poor hours, and that will be a precedent for others to continue what you have begun. We shall after this walk for two hours daily under the protection of M. de Lafayette, but there will come a time when this protection will not suffice, and no security ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the well-being, honor, prosperity, and augmentation of the lord king and of his kingdom, and in order to obey him and please him in all ways possible, do grant him the sum of three hundred thousand livres of Tours, for this once only, and without being a precedent, on account of his late joyful accession to the throne of France, and for to aid and support the outlay which it is suitable to make for his holy consecration, coronation, and entry ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in her eyes, and he smiled. "Your Royal Highness, my lords, ladies and gentlemen," said he, while all the company were racking their brains to recall a precedent for such proceedings at a more than formal London dinner party; "the Princess and myself thank you from our hearts. For me this might almost seem the end of the fairy-tale of my life, in which—when I was eleven years old—her ladyship the Countess of Danesborough" ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... resumed the young man, 'my governor, who's the head of the firm, is all for doing things according to precedent. He loves red tape—wears it wrapped round him in winter instead of flannel. He's all for doing things in the proper legal way, which, as I dare say you know, takes months. And, meanwhile, everybody's wondering what's happening and ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... impossible to him; no General knows what he can do till he tries. Therefore, he, the British General, must always try! must never listen to the rule-of-thumb advisers who seek to chain down adventure to precedent. But our wounds make us weaker and weaker. Oh that we could fill up the gaps in the thinned ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... (I Sam. xxx. 24). From this unhistorical, but highly instructive chapter, we learn the tendency to refer all Israel's legislation, whatever its origin, to Moses, and the further tendency to find a historical precedent, which no doubt once existed, for the details of the legislation. It is from this point of view that the narratives of P have to be considered. The story of the fate of the Sabbath-breaker is simply told to emphasize the stringency of the Sabbath ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... novel, who discards her lover upon such a discovery as was made by you last night. It is a common novel incident, and, of course, from novels every young lady, even, who might not have felt without a precedent, knows how she ought to express herself in such circumstances. But you will observe, my dear, that both in novels and in real life, young ladies generally like and encourage men of feeling in contradistinction to men of principle, and too often men ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... with a sudden apprehension in his throat, "yesterday our labours dissolved in air through the very doubtful precedent of allowing one to testify what he had had the intention to relate. Now we are asked to allow a tomb-haunter to call a parricide to disclose that which he himself is ignorant of. Press down ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... host of relatives; and precedent loomed large to tell him what to do with them: the precedent of the dynasty-founders of old. Nor were they themselves likely to have been backward in reminding him. Wu Wang had come into possession of many feudal dominions, and had made of the members of his family dukes and marquises to rule them. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... not without precedent in archaeology. "Antiquarian lore," as Dr. Munro remarks by implication, can "distinguish between true and false antiquities." {5a} But time is needed for the verdict, as we see when Dr. Munro describes "the Breonio Controversy" about disputed stone objects, a controversy which began in 1885, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... 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 top of the rooted timber rises a couple of feet above your bedroom ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... it not be contested that the firmly rooted monarchist tendencies in Berlin and Vienna exclude the possibility of such an event. This war has opened a new era in the history of the world; it is without example and without precedent. The world is no longer what it was three years ago, and it will be vain to seek in the history of the world a parallel to the happenings that have ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... this singular outbreak are withheld from us; only by wary hints and guarded allusions do the Spanish chroniclers apprise us of its existence and its perils. It is clear that all narrative of an event that might afford the most dangerous precedent, and was alarming to the pride and avarice of the Spanish king, as well as the pious zeal of the Church, was strictly forbidden; and the conspiracy was hushed in the dread silence of the Inquisition, into whose hands the principal conspirators ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... routineers is larger than the conservatives. The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... present, I was thrown upon my own resources. 'I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow. 'Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is not a convenient precedent at all. Far from ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... that as the crime was committed in New York City in broad daylight, in a public place and under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth available was let loose upon the case, the perpetrator would never be discovered. Do you not think my postulation justified by precedent?" ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... great cities men are all more or less alike. It is only in solitary abodes that strong natures grow up in their own way. Catrina had grown to womanhood in one of the solitary places of the earth. She had no facile axiom, no powerful precedent, to guide her every step through life. The woman who was in daily contact with her was immeasurably beneath her in mental power, in force of character, in those possibilities of love or hatred which go to make a strong ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... came for their tickets and Archie took advantage of the interruption to ponder the ethics and the etiquette of his predicament; but there was no precedent in all history for such a synchronization of two gentlemen who had recently engaged in a midnight duel. Archie was appalled by the consciousness that he and Congdon were really hitting ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... comes into our hands the history, and especially the history of predisposing causes, needs the most careful examination. It is well established that syphilis is a common precedent of ataxia, occurring in at least two-thirds of the cases; it is even more firmly settled that iodide and mercury in large doses do no good in advanced ataxia. I say in advanced ataxia, because a few cases are seen in which the syphilis has been of recent ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... to be established in the Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction. Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The claim was not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... could not be executed, and that similar writs were in existence in England and made use of there on the authority of English statutes. The pleas against them advanced by Otis took cognizance of the fact that the Writs were irreconcilable with the charter of the Massachusetts Colony, that English precedent for their enforcement had no application in America, and that taxation by the Motherland and compulsory acts of the nature of the Writs did open violence to the rights and liberties of the people and were inherently arbitrary and ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... yet no precedent in Church history for a bastard's donning the scarlet, the pope hunted up four false witnesses who declared that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand of Castile; who was, as we know, that valuable person Don Manuel Melchior, and who played the father's ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wine into new bottles, which betrays a want of confidence in the expansive power of God. I hate with a deep-seated hatred all such attempts to bind and confine the rising tide of thought. I want to see religion vital and not formal, elastic and not cramped by precedent and tradition. And thus I love to see worship enshrined in noble classical buildings, which seem to me to speak of a desire to infuse the intellectual spirit of Greece, the dignified imperialism of Rome into the more timid and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called it a Distinction without a Difference, and absolutely insisted, that when once all Pretensions of Honour and Virtue were given up in any one Instance, that there was no Precedent for resorting to them upon a second Occasion. In short, poor Conscience had certainly been defeated in the Argument, had not Fear stept in to her Assistance, and very strenuously urged, that the real Distinction between the two Actions, did not lie in the different ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... genius of Paganism. The true gospels were taught by sensible images, and many of the ceremonies employed in celebrating the heathen mysteries were observed in the institutions of Christ, which soon in their turn obtained the name of mysteries, and served as a melancholy precedent for future innovations, and as a foundation for that structure of absurdity and superstition which deformed and disgraced the church." Rutter's History ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... if I may use the expression, I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely an action the motive of which may not be subject to a double interpretation. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent. If, after all my humble but faithful endeavors to advance the felicity of my country and mankind, I may indulge a hope that my labors have not been altogether without success, it will be the only real compensation I can receive in the closing ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the southern section, and all the substantial favorites of our Northern and Western States thrive luxuriantly in her middle and northern divisions. Some of the cultivated berries are remarkably developed; the strawberry, for instance, thrives beyond all precedent in central Mexico, and while larger, it is no less delicately flavored than our own choice varieties. The flora throughout Mexico is exceedingly rich and varied, botanists having recognized over ten thousand ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as ...
— The Federalist Papers
... should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, that in proportion to the strength of character required for the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, whether respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and their ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sometimes said that Gordon used to "toss up" when he was in any doubt, and that such a step indicates want of faith in prayer. As a matter of fact, he did appeal two or three times to lot in this way, and he used to quote Acts i. 26 as a precedent; but it is not true that he often decided questions thus, nor is it true that he resorted to an appeal to lot instead of seeking guidance in prayer. He would pray first, and ask God to indicate His mind in this modern form ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the aged Jackson the fine which had been imposed upon him for contempt of court during the defense of New Orleans. An experienced opponent found him ready with a taking retort to every interruption. It being objected that there was absolutely no precedent for refunding the fine, "I presume," he replied, "that no case can be found on record, or traced by tradition, where a fine, imposed upon a general for saving his country, at the peril of his life and reputation, has ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown |
