"Prescriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adequate answer in less than four words: feeling, imagination, faith, and reflection. The doctrine of a future life for man has been created by the combined force of instinctive desire, analogical observation, prescriptive authority, and philosophical speculation. These are the four pillars on which the soul builds the temple of its hopes; or the four glasses through which it looks to see its ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... care a pin if I had told them it was in the south-west horn of the new moon; but all authors, when they put pen to paper, seem actuated by the kind and neighborly spirit of the sagacious Dogberry—namely, to "bestow all their tediousness" upon their readers; and I do not know that I have any prescriptive right—I am sure I have no intention—to depart from so well-worn a track, or to fly in the face of so many ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... The right honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerable patriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has recourse to recrimination, the last resource of guilt. He says that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox's India bill; and judging of others by his own nature and principles, he more than insinuates that this provision was made, not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the contract. Yet there has grown up in merchant vessels a series of customs, which have become a well understood system, and have almost the force of prescriptive law. To be sure, all power is in the captain, and the officers hold their authority only during his will; and the men are liable to be called upon for any service; yet, by breaking in upon these usages, many difficulties ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... all this, long habit has secured to these pernicious customs a sort of prescriptive right. The distress consequent upon them, increases in proportion as the reactive powers of the organism decrease, which is more particularly the case in the present generation. The suppression of ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... execrating the author of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that the land belonged to the Convent of St. Bernard, and that this outrage had been committed by their orders. I knew before that if avarice could harden the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence far more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated man is sometimes restrained by shame from outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius, which once made nature even lovelier than itself; but associated man holds ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... little—only to the extent of placing some little pleasantry at its service, and now and then suggesting a subject for illustration. A set of rhymes by Mr. H. D. Traill, reprinted in his volume entitled "Number Twenty," was his sole contribution, the "Saturday Review" having had a sort of prescriptive right to all his work of this description. It is the greater pity, for even the lightest of his verses have the true ring and, according to some, much of the vigour characteristic of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's work. Mr. Arthur Armitage, too, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Eternity in the Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Soldier of that Right. If his country should be robbed of her liberties, he should still not despair. The protest of the Right against the Fact persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is barred by no length of time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated States kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the stress of necessity; but ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... quiet, though still continuing to give concerts. At this period and for some time previous many music-sellers had striven to buy the copyright of his works. But Paganini put a price on it which was prescriptive, the probability being that he did not wish his compositions to pass out of his hands till he had given up his career on the concert stage. He was willing that they should be arranged for the piano, but ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... essential features with those which a few model boroughs already possessed. The governing body was to consist of a mayor, aldermen, and councillors, together forming a town council. The councillors were to be elected directly by ratepaying occupiers, with a saving for the prescriptive rights of existing freemen. They were to hold office for three years; the aldermen were to be elected by the councillors for six years, with a provision for retirement by rotation. The mayor was to be elected annually by the town council. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a literature comparable to that of Greece or Rome. Thus literary criticism was prescriptive, and the typical treatises were text-books. Rhetoric, which had long been taught, very naturally furnished the methods, the teachers, and in many cases the subject matter for this instruction in poetry. As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the renaissance ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark |
