"Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... common consent, the first duty of the educator is that of doing no harm: first do no harm, a precept also accepted in the practise of medicine. To obey it to the letter is, indeed, impossible, because every method of scholastic education is in some way prejudicial to the normal development of the child. But the educator will seek to alleviate ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... definition of divine faith must be drawn from the Apostolic deposit of doctrine, in order that it may be considered an exercise of infallibility, whether in Pope or Council. Similarly, a precept of morals, if it is to be accepted as from an infallible voice, must be drawn from the moral law, that primary revelation to us from God. The Pope has no power over the Moral Law, except to assert it, to interpret ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... commits two grievous wrongs: one towards his victim, whose most important right he violates, and one towards God, who has a right to the life and service of His creatures. "Thou shalt not kill" is a precept as deeply engraven on the human heart by reason itself as it was on the stone tables of the Ten Commandments ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... there must be a plain conflict of commands, and we must take care lest we substitute whims and fancies of our own for the injunctions of God. Peter was not guided by his own conceptions of duty, but by the distinct precept of his Master, which had bid him speak. It is not true that it is the cause which makes the martyr, but it is true that many good men have made themselves martyrs needlessly. This principle is too sharp a weapon to be causelessly drawn and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... arise from education, and were, at first, invented, and afterwards encouraged, by the art of politicians, in order to render men tractable, and subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness, which incapacitated them for society. This principle, indeed, of precept and education, must so far be owned to have a powerful influence, that it may frequently increase or diminish, beyond their natural standard, the sentiments of approbation or dislike; and may even, in particular instances, create, without any natural principle, a new sentiment of this kind; ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... in the use of" tobacco. The sixth is "that you drink not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie Tobacconists are wont"—there must be no alliance, in short, between the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The suggestion ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... she was already a child of Him who had asked this, and she might look for none but good gifts from Him. And what was commanded immediately after seemed to her so simple, so easy to obey, and yet so wise. She thought it over a little, and saw that in this precept—of which it was said that it was all the law and the prophets—there was in fact a rule which, if it were obeyed, must keep all mankind guiltless, and make every one happy. These words, she thought, should be written over every door and on every heart, as the winged sun was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... world but for a season; the Lord—as correctives to honor and riches—the Lord has placed sufferings, sickness, and death; and no one," added she, with a melancholy smile, which proved she made the application of the funeral precept to herself, "no man can take his wealth or greatness with him to the grave. It results, therefore, that the young gather the abundant harvest prepared for them ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.[278] So nearly, indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than ordinary audacity had assumed for the motto on his standard the blasphemous device: "'Double 's death' has conquered 'Verily.'"[279] But the strictness ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... officers may not lawfully intromit or intermeddle, that then the Maior, shirifes, baylifes, and other head officers, or ministers, within euery such citie, borough, towne incorparate or place or places franchised, vpon a precept to them, or any of them, to be directed from the gouernour or gouernours, Consuls and assistants of the said fellowship, in number and forme aforesaid, vnder the common seale of the sayd fellowship and communaltie for the time being, shall and may attach and arrest the body or bodies of such ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... the world and its allurements, it behooves us to be ever watching, if we are never to stumble and to fall. Had our nature never been corrupted by original unfaithfulness, had our first parents never turned away from God and transgressed His sacred precept, all our present ills would never have existed. But now it is different. We are born into the world a weakened people; each one of us has had an implicit part in the first transgression; we all, like erring sheep, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... the sacred awfulness of his responsibility, and of the fulness of his resources. So the appeal now is not merely to be like-minded, and to be watchful for unity. He asks them now to use fully for a life of holiness the mighty fact of their possession of an Indwelling God in Christ. The details of precept are as it were absorbed for the time into the glorious power and principle—only to reappear the more largely and lastingly in ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... chronicle, and trace the remaining career of El Zagal. His short and turbulent reign and disastrous end would afford a wholesome lesson to unprincipled ambition, were not all ambition of the kind fated to be blind to precept and example. When he arrived in Africa, instead of meeting with kindness and sympathy, he was seized and thrown into prison by the caliph of Fez, Benimerin, as though he had been his vassal. He was accused of being the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... demand of yours would readily be granted, and the most obstinate even would be obliged to give way. Therefore, mighty lords, we have consented, for the honor of God, for the sake of the King, and in obedience to that precept of the Gospel, which you profess: 'Love not your friends only, but your enemies also', urgently to beseech you: Do away with this misery! Remember, that they are your Christian brethren, your neighbors; that they speak your own language; that ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... admiration, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:—"Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto." There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cheek more than once. Don Quixote saw a certain amount of reason in this; still, he asked his squire to do his utmost to restrain himself against any such rash impulse in the case of members of the knighthood. And Sancho Panza swore that he would keep this precept as religiously as Sunday. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the rascal has consoled himself already, and found a new mate. Let us, too, follow the precept of Horace, so far as we may, and enjoy the present day. The poet may let the future go as it will, but I cannot, for, unfortunately, I am ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... position was not an enviable one to flesh and blood; but to one who had renounced all worldly ties, and who only desired to suffer like his Lord, it was full of promise. His mission was soon discovered; and though he complied with the apostolic precept of flying, when he was persecuted, from one city to another, he was at last captured, and then the long-desired moment had arrived when he could openly announce his ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... his great learning and judgement, hath very well observed in his Comment upon this Aphorisme; Hippocrates speaketh here onely of those purging medicines, which are strong, and vehement, or hot and fiery; and that this precept is to take place in most hot Regions, but not in these cold Countries, as France, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... animal, vegetable, nor mineral, neither male nor female, yet often produced between both; it exists from two to six feet high, is often spoken of in romances, and strongly recommended by precept, example, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... of agriculture is simplicity itself, sir. It is all founded on one beautiful commercial precept. Our friends round about here [with a wave of the hand, indicating the country side]—our old folks—whenever they got a guinea put it out of sight, made a hoard, hid it in a stocking, or behind a brick in the chimney. Ha! ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Jesus should perish, if the high and fine moral precepts of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and all the great teachers of the pagan world should cease to exist, if there were not a printed moral precept on earth, morality would not be touched. It is not these that have created morality. It is the natural moral nature of man that has written all the commandments, whether they have come to us by the hand of Moses or of Gautama or Mohammed ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... 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 Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... mutual intercourse of civilized nations and confirming the principles of equality, equity and comity which underlie their relations to one another. This right is not created by treaties; it is recognized by them as a necessity of national existence, and we apply the precept to other countries, whether it be conventionally declared or not, as fully as we expect its ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... which nothing was to be learned which he might not learn at Athens among his countrymen, for whose reformation, besides, he thought his labors ought to be devoted, rather than to that of strangers. And as moral philosophy is a science which is taught better by example than by precept, he laid it down as a rule to himself, to follow and practise all that right reason and the most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Marston had bestowed much care upon Lorenzo and Franconia; he had indulged and idolised the latter, and given the former some good advice. But advice without example seldom produces lasting good; in truth, precept had the very worst effect upon Lorenzo,—it had proved his ruin! His singular and mysterious departure might for a time be excused,—even accounted for in some plausible manner, but suspicion was a stealing monster that would play upon the deeply tinctured ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... as well as on land, he knows how to provide for the liberty as well as for the wants of his guests. He understands also the fine art of conversation, which consists of silence as well as speech. And when it comes to angling, Izaak Walton himself could not have been a more profitable teacher by precept or example. Indeed, it is a curious thought, and one full of sadness to a well-constituted mind, that on the Ristigouche "I. W." would have been at sea, for the beloved father of all fishermen passed through ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... been, Doctor, to some extent." At hearing this the Doctor made very evident signs of discontent. "You cannot alter the ways of the world suddenly, though by example and precept you may help to improve them slowly. In our present imperfect condition of moral culture, it is perhaps well that the company of the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Lessing: "The schoolmaster holds the future in his hands." The religious law is a system of instruction, the synagogue is a school. It will redound to the eternal honor of Judaism that it raised the dissemination of knowledge to the height of a religious precept. At a time when among the Christians knowledge was the special privilege of the clergy, learning was open to every Jew, and, what is still finer, the pursuit of it was imposed upon him as a strict obligation. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... by the observance of a magical ceremony, so the dreaded consequence does not really result from the violation of a taboo. If the supposed evil necessarily followed a breach of taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common sense. It is not a taboo to say, "Do not put your hand in the fire"; it is a rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... I have heard that he was impatient of inquiries which related to diet; thinking, I suppose, that after the age of childhood, in ordinary cases, each person might regulate it best for himself. But from an almost entire abstinence from fermented liquors, he was, both by precept and example, a strenuous adviser. "He believed," says Miss Edgeworth, in her Memoirs of her Father, "that almost all the distempers of the higher classes of people arise from drinking, in some form or other, too much vinous ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Church. Since union through the truth is the only method authorised by Holy Scripture, we must teach and teach and teach. That is the task of our divinity schools and of the clergy in preparing their candidates for confirmation: line upon line and precept upon precept, definite and clear instruction should be given so that the future heads of families may know and value their privileges, and the whole population will be impressed by the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... instances, one time when at his lodgings, he interpreted those words of Christ personally, "Sell all that thou hast and distribute to the poor," when, without the formality of selling, he thought the precept might be more summarily fulfilled, and therefore, one morning he tumbled every thing he had in his room, through the window, into the street, that the poor might help themselves; bed, bolsters, blankets, sheets, chairs! ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... little in my way to be thoroughly read, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a book up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example as, to my heart's core, I was convinced could ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... when Tom Wydeawake, ten years agone, Toil'd to arouse dull old Britain betimes, By example—he shouldered his rifle alone, By precept—he showered his letters and rhymes,— With bullets he peppered old Sherborne's hillside, With ballads and articles worried the Press,— The more he was sneer'd at, the stronger he tried, And would not be ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a lawyer, and as such you will permit the smile at your mention of the equity court. You would not be allowed to enter its doors. For its first precept is: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. Are your hands clean? I think not—neither your hands nor Orcutt's. But, the matter will never reach the courts. There is no question of a technical error ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... this reason nearly invariably after a general financial collapse we witness a religious "revival." Age, full of care and fear, is thus prompted to piety, willing, as La Rochefoucauld remarks, to do good by precept when it can no longer do evil by example. The inhabitants of swampy, fever-ridden districts are usually devout. The female sex, always the weaker and often the worsted one in the struggle for existence, is when free more religious ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... do not use dispensations, nor receive the sacraments; they pay no respect to images, rosaries, bulls, neither do they hear mass, nor divine services; they never enter the churches, nor observe fasts, Lent, nor any ecclesiastical precept; which enormities have been attested by long ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lips in a stern silence, and had no word of pity for her daughter. It shocked her proud heart that one of her girls should have behaved in a manner so unworthy the precept which she had endeavoured to teach, for she knew well that Lilias would have felt no qualms in preparing for her marriage, if Ned's story had been one of success ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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
... apostate had succeeded in exalting himself "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped."(78) He had dared to change the only precept of the divine law that unmistakably points all mankind to the true and living God. In the fourth commandment, God is revealed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and is thereby distinguished ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... she seemed to have looked upon earth in the light of eternity. In that light, rank and title, with all their lofty associations and splendid accompaniments, faded away, while true nobleness, the nobleness which dwells in the Christian precept "Love your enemies—do good to those that despitefully use you," stood out in all its beauty ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... anecdotes and general fund of bright reading matter is such as excites the vivid imagination of the young, without leaving a trace of wild and unbridled adventure to torture their minds to a longing for border acts of cowboy heroism. There is a moral precept in every page, and an abundance of thrilling adventure to awaken the lethargy of any boy or girl. We cheerfully commend it to parents as a valuable adjunct to the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... moral precept, solidarity, as interpreted by Bakounine, is a very excellent thing. But to set up this a morality, which by the way is not at all "absolute," as principle "inherent" in humanity and determining human nature, is playing with ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... note with Reland, that the precept given to the priests of not drinking wine while they wore the sacred garments, is equivalent; to their abstinence from it all the while they ministered in the temple; because they then always, and then only, wore those sacred garments, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the temple at Mecca, over which is a lofty building, from which the name is by some said to be derived—Caaba, high. Mr. Ferguson, in his account of "The Holy Sepulcher," thus describes it: "The precept of the Koran is, that all men, when they pray, shall turn toward the kaaba, or holy house, at Mecca; and consequently throughout the Moslem world, indicators have been put up to enable the Faithful to fulfill this condition. In India ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... wives and wives their husbands? We have already seen that in the text-book for Japanese women, the "Onna Daigaku," not one word is said about love. It may be stated at once that love between husband and wife is almost as conspicuously lacking in practice as in precept. In no regard, perhaps, is the contrast between the East and the West more striking than the respective ideas concerning woman and marriage. The one counts woman the equal, if not the superior of man; the other looks down upon her as man's inferior ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... It is not simply a question of their being brought into the world sound and strong. Their long infancy which in the biological as well as in the legal sense, lasts until they are grown up, should be spent in surroundings which can minister, by example and precept, to moral and intellectual development. Surely no such end can possibly be attained when man and woman ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... intelligence,—men of skill, men of light and leading, college-bred men, black captains of industry, and missionaries of culture; men who thoroughly comprehend and know modern civilization, and can take hold of Negro communities and raise and train them by force of precept and example, deep sympathy, and the inspiration of common blood and ideals. But if such men are to be effective they must have some power,—they must be backed by the best public opinion of these communities, and able to wield for their objects and aims such weapons as ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... religious gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next; for these characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by being inherited from the example and precept of other human beings, and not from an original and spiritual source. The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a race of lower and narrower souls than their progenitors had been. The latter were stern, severe, intolerant, but not superstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She did not refuse, and there was a whispering between her and those next her in debate of the question. But it was closed by the loud, austere voice of one of the believing matrons in the apostolic mandate, "Let your women keep silence in the churches." The text was not closely apt; it was not a precept obeyed in the revivals of any of the sects in Leatherwood; it was especially ignored in the meetings of the Dylks believers; but its proclamation now satisfied the yearning always rife in them to affiliate their dispensation with ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... indication that the Virginians had any great love for intellectual exertion. When the amiable attorney-general of Charles II. said to the Virginian commissioners, pleading the cause of learning and religion, "Damn your souls! grow tobacco!" he uttered a precept which the mass of the planters seem to have laid to heart. For fifty years there were no schools, and down to the Revolution even the apologies bearing that honored name were few, and the college was small and struggling. In some of the great families, the eldest sons would be sent to England and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... legislator! In war contending, by the wager of battle, for the independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race; ever manifesting amidst its horrors, by precept and example, his reverence for the laws of peace and the tenderest sympathies of humanity: in peace soothing the ferocious spirit of discord among his countrymen into harmony and union; and giving to that very sword, now ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... contributed to the amusement and instruction of a numerous class of his fellow creatures. The present volume consists of no dry didactic dissertations on an art unteachable by written rules, and in which, without long and often dear-bought experience, neither precept nor example will avail; but it contains a sufficiency of sagacious practical advice, and is enlivened by the narration of numerous angling adventures, which bring out, with force and spirit, the essential character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... wood and forest folk of Germany, spirits inhabiting the forests, who stood in friendly relation to man, but are now so disgusted with the faithless world, that they have retired from it. Hence their precept— ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... consists of the Judge Advocate and two inhabitants of the colony, appointed by precept from the governor, and takes cognizance of all pleas where the amount sued for does not exceed L50 sterling, (except such pleas as may arise between party and party at Van Dieman's Land) and from its ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... sentence of the apostle pronounces that "the forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils." WESLEY, who published "Thoughts on a Single Life," advised some "to remain single for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but the precept," he adds, "is not for the many." So indecisive have been the opinions of the most curious inquirers concerning the matrimonial state, whenever a great destination has ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the faselus must be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and moral precept] That's all right! Only, Mr Bly, I can't absolutely answer for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... language of the home uniform throughout our world-wide community. Purely intellectual development beyond the matter of language we may leave for a space. There remains the distinctive mental and moral function of the home, the determination by precept, example, and implication of the cardinal habits of the developing citizen, his general demeanour, his fundamental beliefs about all the common and essential things ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... "The precept for life in general and for every one is: Exhibit only thy spiritual, thy life, in the external, and by means of the external in thy actions, and observe the requirements of thy inner being ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... been a doubt of the truth of the proverb that example is better than precept, the behaviour of the young men and maidens of Pitcairn, after the wedding just described, would have cleared that doubt ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... comports with the domestic persecutions authorized by the same monarch during his profligate reign. It is still more lamentable to reflect how little a similar spirit of toleration was encouraged, either by precept or example, in other of the New England Colonies." (Commentaries, etc., Vol. I., ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the importance of Christianity ought we to be filled by such descriptions as these? Yet, in vain have we "line upon line and precept upon precept."—Thus predicted, thus prayed and longed for, thus announced and characterized and rejoiced in, this heavenly treasure poured into our lap in rich abundance we scarce accept. We turn from it coldly, or at best possess it negligently, as a thing ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... arose and joined the company, who, encouraged by the precept and example of Michael Lambourne, and consisting chiefly of persons much disposed to profit by the opportunity of a merry meal at the expense of their landlord, had already made some inroads upon the limits of temperance, as was ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... lord King,' said Milo at large; 'but I draw this distinction. You are not so guilty as you suppose; for in this world the father maketh the son, both in the way of nature and of precept. In heaven it is otherwise. There the Son was from the beginning, co-eternal with the Father, begotten but not made. In the divine case there was pure sacrifice, and no guilt at all. In the earthly case there was much guilt, but ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of a boys' camp depends upon leadership rather than upon equipment. Boys are influenced by example rather than by precept. A boys' camp is largely built around a strong personality. Solve the problem of leadership, and you solve the greatest problem ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... had added the colossal fortune of a beautiful heiress, whose extravagances aggregated less than his own solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her lord ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... influence for righteousness, moulding his people in that simplicity of life and independence of spirit, which in all times have been preeminent as features in the Dutch character. Into the homespun of common life, he wove the threads of gold, revealing by life and precept that type of religion which is not "too bright and good for ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to the precept of Horace that I have begun by plunging in media res. Now that every one is asleep—the beautiful Colomba, the colonel, and his daughter—I will seize the opportunity to acquaint my reader with certain details of which he must not be ignorant, if he desires to follow ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... human nature in general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by precept, what we are eagerly to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... ye so late with Dominie Grier? To tell you the tale of my going on foot to the town of Edinburgh that I might preserve pure the doctrine and precept of the parish of Rowantree? Ay, to tell of it I am ready, and with right goodwill. Never a day do I sit under godly Mr. Campbell but I think on my errand, and the sore stroke that the deil and Bauldy Todd gat that day when I first won speech with ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... 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, and will require ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... wholesome respect for their ancestors, and familiarity with the Jewish law were instilled into the minds of all children. Music and dancing were taught in every household, not for pleasure, but as a means of religious expression. By prayer and holy living, by precept and example, by word and deed, the father discharged the duty committed to him by God, leading his children by careful watchfulness toward the ideal manhood which was revealed to him by the teachings ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... felt in the lives of the people. I don't want a religion that I put away with my Sunday clothes, and don't take out till the day comes round again; I want something to see and feel and live by day-by-day, and I hope you 'll be one of the true ministers, who can teach by precept and example, how to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Book, and ours was a mingling of history, poetry, and prophecy, of precept and folk-lore, even such as the modern reader finds within the covers of his Bible. This Bible of ours was our whole literature, a living Book, sowed as precious seed by our wisest sages, and springing anew in the wondering eyes and upon the innocent lips of little children. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... skilled labor. He has the means to carry his ideas into practice, and actively engages in the work of instructing and building up the boys in a knowledge of the useful arts. He believes in religion, morality, and social and political virtue. He insists upon practice in addition to precept and theory, as well in the inculcation of the duties of social life as ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... we dare not attack him; and if he be weary of the world, or of his own villainies, he has nothing to do but die, and then his reputation is safe. For these excellent casuists know just Latin enough to have heard a most foolish precept, that de mortuis nil nisi bonum; so that if Socrates, and Anytus his accuser, had happened to die together, the charity of survivors must either have obliged them to hold their peace, or to fix the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... mine Thy course direct.' And many a precept more He gave, and careful as he bound the wings Upon the shoulders of the boy, his cheeks Were wet with tears, and in the task his hands ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... is enough. Confiding in your sound heart and strong honor, I turn you thus betimes on the world. Have I done wrong? Prove that I have not, my child. Do you know what a very good man has said? Listen and follow my precept, not example. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is to be obtained by faith, and from these premises the further conclusion is logically deducible, that we cannot make ourselves any better in order to receive it, but that we must take it as we are. And so we arrive at and adopt the pithy precept of John Wesley, "Expect it by faith—expect it as you are—expect ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... manner of life up to admiration, what is all that compared to the Gospel message? The claim may be well made: a fine sermon, a splendid exposition; but, after all, nothing more comes of it than precepts, expositions, written comments. The precept, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," remains a mere array of words. When much time and effort have been spent in conforming one's life to it, nothing has been accomplished. You have pods without ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... This 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 Irish homily refers to the mortification ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... that work given to the poor should be work that cost something to the giver. This principle, regarded by her as an illustration of the text, "Shall I give unto the Lord my God that which has cost me nothing?" ran through all her precept and her practice. When in some public distress we children went to her crying, and asking whether we could not help the little children who were starving, her prompt reply was: "What will you give up for them?" And then she ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... in this world that is of any practical good whose vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath, the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or habits that offend and disable, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Reason to suspect us of Flattery in the Relation given of them, the Motive of their Publication being only to encourage Virtue in both Sexes, by showing the Amiableness of it in real Characters. And if it be true (as certainly it is) that Example has more Efficacy than Precept, we may be bold to say there are few fairer, or more worthy Imitation.—The Sons and Daughters of the greatest Families may give additional Lustre to their Nobility, by forming themselves by the Model here presented to them; and those of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... mathematician to determine the amount of that probability. The case, then, is as follows:—Among all the various systems one must be true. We cannot lay our finger for certain on the true one, but we can take that which has the highest degree of probability in its favour, and thus follow the precept of Butler to which we have already referred. A mathematician would describe his process by calling it the method of least squares. Since Herschel's discovery, one hundred years ago, many an astronomer using observations ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... falling, told her, without looking at her very particularly, that there was nothing the matter, only to keep yourself "quite quiet and still;" and the ship rolling at the same moment, he pitched head-foremost out of the cabin, showing practically how much easier precept is than example. As we shall no doubt have a norther after this, which may last three days, our promised land is still ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... it was now too late; the savages had passed on to some distance. I, however, explained to Matilda the beauty of the divine precept, 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you,' asking her how she would have liked to be detained by the savages, and what, then, would be the suffering of her own mamma? She was thoughtful for a moment, and then, embracing Minou and me, 'You ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... else has the poet shown equal virtuosity in the handling of unusual meters. Nowhere among his works is there greater variety or harmony of verse. Though not the most serious, this is the most pleasing of his poems. Espronceda follows the Horatian precept of starting his story "in the middle of things." In the first part he creates the atmosphere of the uncanny, introduces the more important characters, and presents a striking situation. Part Second, the most admired, is elegiac in nature. It pleases by its ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the benefactors ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... practised, and concerned only the rich widows, who refused to be burned; but now, since the Brahmans have been caught in the false interpretation of the Vedas, with the criminal intention of appropriating the widows' wealth, they insist on the fulfilment of this cruel precept, and make what once was the exception the rule. They are powerless against British law, and so they revenge themselves on the innocent and helpless women, whom fate has deprived of their natural protectors. Professor Wilson's demonstration of the means by which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and intimacy need not 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 and example. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... up the interest of the meeting to some who would hardly have cared to listen to a sermon out of the kirk, or on a week night. A few who were only occasional hearers on the Sabbath liked these informal discussions of precept and doctrine, as they would have liked the discussion of any other matter, for the mere intellectual pleasure to be enjoyed, and, as may be supposed, opportunities for this kind of enjoyment did not often ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but His own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to allow you a seventh day for rest; or, if you thought that hard upon you, we would not refuse you half your time: if you came out, like some great monarch, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... master. Here, on the spot, I am told the nephew received from a certain Professor Federau instruction in art, and I have before me a drawing, the earliest that has come to my knowledge, which proves that the pupil was at least painstaking. The subject, in accordance with the father's precept, is Homeric, the well-known meeting of Ulysses and Telemachus.[6] After the prevailing manner of the period, the style is classic, according to the French school of David, and a Greek portico appropriately finds a place in the background. Young Overbeck discovered in ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... infancy, childhood, and boyhood passed as the father could have wished. A young Nazarene could not have been bred up with more rigour. All that was evil was withheld from his observation: he only heard what was pure in precept, he only witnessed ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... elevate man to the highest perfection of which he could conceive. "And no greater praise can be given to a work of heathen morality than to say, as may be said of the ethical writings of Aristotle, that they contain nothing which a Christian may dispense with, no precept of life which is not an element of Christian character; and that they only fail in elevating the heart and the mind to objects which it ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... every play of this period, it is the unveiling of a lie. See yourselves as you are, the man of science seems to be saying to us. Here are your 'pillars of society'; they are the tools of society. Here is your happy marriage, and it is a doll's house. Here is your respected family, here is the precept of 'honour your father and your mother' in practice; and here is the little voice of heredity whispering 'ghosts!' There is the lie of respectability, the lie hidden behind marriage, the lie which saps the very roots of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and direction can be given is it becoming to stamp it as official? it is 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 not contradicted by ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... wherefore he should prepare himself to resume his journey with the pilgrims on the following day. To this Ignatius answered that his resolution was very fixed, and he did not think that anything would keep him from executing it. If the precept did not bind him under pain of sin, he would not allow any fear to keep him from carrying out his desire. The Provincial said he had authority from the Holy See to detain those he thought fit, and to even excommunicate those who would not obey when stopped by him, and he thought in this case it ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... his heart to school, Nor dares to move unpropp'd upon the staff Which Art hath lodg'd within his hand,—must laugh By precept only, and shed tears by rule. Thy Art be Nature! the live current quaff, And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool Have kill'd him, Scorn should write his epitaph. How doth the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... 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, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... pasty, and topping up with a two-pound perch, washed down by a great jug of ale, he smiled upon us all and told us that his fleshly necessities were satisfied for the nonce. 'It is my rule,' he remarked, 'to obey the wise precept which advises a man to rise from table feeling that he could yet eat as much as he has ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that, though there be ill company, you will partake of good fare. If I say it myself, there's no better master of the flesh pots outside of Paris than at this hostelry. The rogues eat as well as the king's gentlemen. Feasting, then fasting, is their precept." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... beginning,—only a sympathy broad enough to take our little planet and all her human tribes in its arms, deep enough to go beneath the skin in which men differ, to the heart's blood in which they agree,—only pains and patience, faith and forbearance,—only a national obedience to that profound precept of Christianity which prescribes service to him that would be greatest, making the knowledge of the wise due to the ignorant, and the strength of the strong due to the weak. The costs of freedom would have been paid in the patient lifting up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... one precept, in addition to those which, as originally laid upon him, he has discharged, shall receive favor from above, and is equal to him who has ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... streets; they had diverted themselves at weddings or the husking-bee, or by walking in the woods, or by drinking in a tavern. But no frivolous and superstitious world of Anti-Christ compassed them about to point the moral of the harsh Puritan tale. Their Puritanism was induced by precept and example rather than by the compelling impact of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution, by unnecessarily informing them what he is going to sing, or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing; but, according to the precept of Horace:— ...
— English Satires • Various
... as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy [34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course, eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their guilt." Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a sort of grim conscientiousness colouring ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... that it may be always ready to our hand. For instance, we have laid down among the rules of life (IV:xlvi., & Note), that hatred should be overcome with love or high- mindedness, and not required with hatred in return. Now, that this precept of reason may be always ready to our hand in time of need, we should often think over and reflect upon the wrongs generally committed by men, and in what manner and way they may be best warded off by high-mindedness: we shall thus associate the idea ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the brave that were. In civil courage, moral courage, or courage shown in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same law is true. Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and is good to be taught to men, women, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... the Amsterdam International Congress they 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 ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... 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
... observer in private, and by stealth imbibed, from parental precept or example, the sentiment of a national religion, suppressed, not extinguished, or in the gloomy absence of all indications of it, remained unsolicited by any rival mode of worship to bestow his apostacy upon an alien creed. Thus the minds ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... or make a fuss, as you call it (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed—that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, 'Let your yea be yea, and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the question ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... wardmote are held by the aldermen of each ward, for choosing ward-officers, and settling the affairs of the ward, the Lord Mayor annually issuing his precept to the aldermen to hold his wardmote on St. Thomas's Day for the election of common councilmen and other officers; they also present such offences and nuisances at certain times to the Lord Mayor and common ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... A throne compassyd of his riall se; Aboughte whiche shortly to conclude, Of hevenly angelles was[225] a gret multitude, To whom was gevyn a precept in scripture, Wreten in the front of the highe stage, That thei shuld do there ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... sent for, in conformity with a precept of the countess, who preferred a bone-setter at hand to the first surgeon in the world three hundred miles off. A horribly-complicated dressing, bristling with splints and bandages, was applied to the leg, with very respectful but formal ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... throwing myself out of bed, "the nearest expression to Mrs Russell's that I know of is, 'Take care of Number One.' It is an older precept, and most likely a wiser one; and henceforward I will be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... desires would ultimately be absorbed into the godhead. It does not seem that Kabir made any exact pronouncement on the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and re-birth, but as he laid great stress on avoiding the destruction of any animal life, a precept which is to some extent the outcome of the belief in transmigration, he may have concurred in this tenet. Some Kabirpanthis, however, have discarded transmigration. Bishop Westcott states that they do ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... (1) said, "which is the right course that a man should choose for himself? (2) That which is a pride to him who pursues it and which also brings him honor from mankind. Be as scrupulous about a light precept as about a grave one, for thou knowest not the grant of reward for each precept. Reckon the loss incurred by the fulfilment of a precept against the reward secured by its observance (3), and the gain gotten by a transgression against the loss it involves. Consider three things, ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text |
