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More "Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... year, and its rubrics plainly teach us that according to the mind of the Church the principal service of every Lord's Day should be the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Our Lord has also taught us by His example as well as by precept, that works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, are lawful to be done on this day, and are ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... view. As for Giles Jackman, that stalwart "Woods-and-Forester" returned to his adopted land, accompanied by the faithful Quin, and busied himself in the activities of his adventurous career, while he sought to commend the religion of Jesus alike to native and European, both by precept and example, proving the great truth that "godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come." MacRummle, during the same period, spent much time in his study, writing for publication ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their tenets, let us not adopt their errors; errors which would be infinitely more inexcusable in us, who, from the clearer views which revelation has given us, shall not have their ignorance or their doubts to plead. It were well if we availed ourselves of that portion of their precept, which inculcates the improvement of every moment of our time, but not like them to dedicate the moments so redeemed to the pursuit of sensual and perishable pleasures, but to the securing of those which are spiritual in their nature, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or Young Man's Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at church from them to such a man as Harley would have made the parson look back into his sermon for some precept ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... every one of you. But none of you can regret his terrible end so much as I do; for I feel that I am to some extent to blame for it. A certain wise man has said, 'Of the dead speak nothing but good;' and it is well to carry out this precept, so far as is possible. There are occasions, however, when the truth—the whole truth—must be told, even though it reflect discredit upon those who are gone; and this is one of them. I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that what really ailed Mr Purchas was—drunkenness! ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... duty, honor, and gratitude to be faithful to your trust; to support the dignity of your character on every occasion; and to enforce, by precept and example, obedience to the tenets ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... and people sow, such they shall reap at the hand of the just God. And then your many and great privileges, above the children of other people, will add weight in the scale against you, if you choose not the way of the Lord. For you have had line upon line, and precept upon precept, and not only good doctrine but good example; and which is more, you have been turned to, and acquainted with, a principle in yourselves, which others too generally have been ignorant of: and you know you may be as good as you please, without the fear of frowns and blows, ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... one another, in the form of a vote-catching resolution, with "law" to please the man of science, and "creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the orthodox—thereby, no doubt, increasing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... answer, when found, is more prolific in results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, and draws new strength from this avowal. From the moment ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... you think, because I'm a clerk, that I'm not one of the intellectuals. I'm a reading man, a thinking man. I read in a book—a high class six shilling book—this precept: Affirm your manhood. It appealed to me. Ive always remembered it. I believe in it. I feel I must do it to recover your respect after my cowardly behavior. Therefore I affirm it in your presence. ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... whole of his chequered career. "Give me a child of seven years old," had once declared the great Founder of the Society of Jesus, "and I care not who has the after-handling of him"; and in this case the Jesuit professors did not fail to carry out Loyola's precept. But his home life with his mother, whom he loved devotedly, and his course of study at the Jesuit school were suddenly interrupted when he was barely ten years of age, for the elder Tasso was anxious for his little son to join him in Rome, there ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... humoured, and, though whimsical, and often too high in her colouring of characters, and in the trifling business of the idle world,—yet I think she has principles, and a good heart,—[with a glow of conjugal tenderness.] but in a partner for life, Sidney, (you know your own precept, and your own judgment)—affection, capricious in its nature, must have something even in the external manners,—nay in the very mode, not only of beauty, but of virtue itself— which both heart and judgment must approve, or our happiness in that delicate ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... Law's stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... joy. Every one's heart glowed at seeing the son of a monarch whom they were accustomed to regard with veneration and love; and as people who lived in the habitual belief that to "fear God and honour the King" is a "united precept," every mark of respect and attachment was exhibited on both occasions. When his Royal Highness came the second time, as captain of the Pegasus, the homage, which had been paid to him at the first visit, as son of their sovereign, was mingled with respect to himself. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... like this, with its high standard and far-reaching possibilities, can and will be answered. Christianity provides not only an appeal, but a dynamic. He Who bids, enables; He Who calls, provides. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is at once a precept, a promise, a provision, and a power. The religions of the world often tell us to "Be good," but it is left for Christianity to proclaim that "He died to make us good." As a result, the Christian can ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... a supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law found in the precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow or similar means. But we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the civil power or to carry off their property or change their good customs which they have hitherto in that district which they inhabit." Innocent himself and several of his predecessors and successors are known to have had Jewish physicians. Example speaks even louder than precept, and the example of such men must have been a wonderful advertisement for the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, 'to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... 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
... it needs no words of mine to show, that a faithful history of the most Christian country in the most Christian times the world ever witnessed, would contain, fearful evidence of the cruelty of man setting at nought the above blessed precept. Nay, more—I question if, viewed in its entire fulness, there is any one single command in Scripture more habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes "Every one for himself, and God for us all"? or, the more vulgar one, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... civilised government would be its eventual insensibility to the appeal of a "just war." Under any governmental auspices, as the modern world knows governments, the keeping of the peace comes at its best under the precept, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." But the case for peace is more precarious than the wording of the aphorism would indicate, in as much as in practical fact the "big stick" is an obstacle to soft speech. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... I shook with an awful thunder of sound. ... Today I have been happy to tears, and in the blue afternoon on the cliffs with my mother, I shared "Endymion" and "Epipsychidion." ... I do not understand why silence is spoken of as a precept. To me it is the living attribute of God. ... How nobly scornful is Sir Aubrey De ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... in fear and trembling but had no sooner stepped before him than he also accosted me with the question: "So you write poetry?" I did not hesitate to make the admission. He commissioned me to write a poem on some high moral precept which I do not remember. The amount of condescension and affability which such a request coming from him implied can only be appreciated by those who were his pupils. When I finished and handed him the verses next day, he took me to the highest class and made me stand before the boys. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... boasted of his conquests among the women, nor affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering the grand precept of Zoroaster, "When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should they even bite thee." He was as wise as it is possible for man to be, for he sought to live ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... personal satisfaction little understood by the people of Alencon. The world owes a great deal to persons who take such pains to please it. In this there is certainly some accomplishment of that most difficult precept of the Gospel about rendering good for evil. This freshness of ablution and all the other little cares harmonized charmingly with the blue eyes, the ivory teeth, and the blond person of the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... with the world, you will find that Lady Margaret has but expressed what by almost every body is thought: to neglect old friends, and to court new acquaintance, though perhaps not yet avowedly delivered as a precept from parents to children, is nevertheless so universally recommended by example, that those who act differently, incur ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... fig-tree? Why, the Lord will lop its boughs with terror; yea, the thickets of those professors with iron. I have waited, saith God, these three years; I have missed of fruit these three years; it hath been a cumber-ground these three years; cut it down. Precept hath been upon precept, and line upon line, one year after another, for these three years, but no fruit can be seen; I find none, fetch out the axe! I am sure THIS is the fig-tree, I know it from the first year; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the greatest works of fiction by an American. Early in his career he was the victim of that craze that covets the signatures and manuscript sentiments of persons who have achieved distinction, which later he did so much to foster by precept and practice. He was an inveterate autograph-hunter, and toward the close of his life he paid the penalty of harping on the joys of the collector by the receipt of a perfect avalanche of requests for autographs and extracts ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... 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 spirit. To this he attributed the aristocratic disease of gout, the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... solemnly to affirm on the field of battle her adhesion to this precept, though uttered by German lips. In defense of it, Portuguese will fight side by side with Englishmen, as they fought with them at Aljubarrota, side by side with Frenchmen, who fought with them at Montes Claros. Were it necessary to appeal to a motive less disinterested ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... nineteen volumes of this Miscellany, that the most effectual method of conveying instruction, or aiding the progress of knowledge, is by combining it with amusement; or, in other words by at once aiming at the head and heart. The world is already too full of precept upon precept; and a smattering of principles is too often found in the place of practice. How can this order of things be improved but by setting forth duties as innocent pleasures, sweetening utility with entertainment, and garnishing fact with fancy. A man need not study Adam Smith's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... near Moscow in 1862; his two great works are "War and Peace" (1865-68) and "Anna Karenina" (1875-78); has written many works since, all more or less in a religious vein, and in the keenest, deepest sympathy with the soul-oppression of the world, finding the secret of Christianity to lie in the precept of Christ, "Resist not evil," and exemplifying that as the principle of his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... think, a familiar precept to educators, that children should not have their literature too much simplified for them. We are told that they like something beyond them, and that it is good for them to have a sense of mystery and power beyond the sense they ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... a share in the culinary government; but having shown on her first trial, too decided a leaning towards puddings and pancakes, her second essay was put off till she became more thoroughly penetrated with the value of the eternal precept utile dulci, which signifies that, before dessert it is requisite to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not so much facts, dates, and figures, as principles, ideas, and sentiments, which they endeavour to teach. The scholar is made familiar with what he is told by observation and experience whenever it is possible, for that is how Nature teaches. Precept, they say, is good, and example is better; but an ideal of perfection is ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... offices of dignity and emolument were bestowed upon Englishmen; upon men who lived here with reluctance, and but seldom—who had no sympathy with the country or its inhabitants—nay, who looked upon us, in general, with feeling of hostility and contempt; and who, by example or precept, rendered no earthly equivalent for the enormous sums that were drawn from a poor and struggling people. It is idle to say that these prodigious ecclesiastical revenues were not paid by the people, but by the landlord, who, if the people had not paid them, would have added them to ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the genuineness of the sentiment which dictated those words is therefore above suspicion. To work vigorously, to do well whatever he (or she) has to do, is a real pleasure to the Utopian child. Indeed his whole being is a living response to the familiar precept: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... "writhing in agony at the self same hour," and as dying on the same day when he, Mr. Gourlay, crossed over into the United States.—Statistical Account, vol. 2, p. 401. He was astray by exactly a week. By reference to the precept of the court, I find that Mr. Gourlay's trial took place on the day specified in the text—Friday, the 20th of August. He left the Province on the following day—Saturday, the 21st. The Duke's death took place ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... burn the house. These ideas took such hold of his imagination, that he often started up in bed and screamed aloud. But John was too sincerely religious to cherish a revengeful spirit. The wrong done to him was as great as one mortal could inflict upon another; but he had learned the divine precept not to render evil ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... stood so near to death that 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 ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... by no means endure," returned Buddha, "be it the very truth of Heaven. Be comforted; thou shalt proclaim my doctrine to better purpose in other lands. Thou hast this time but a sorry account to render of thy stewardship; yet thou mayest truly declare that thou hast obeyed my precept in the letter, if not in the spirit, since none can assert that thou ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... she. "I do believe that even now my mother watches over her child, and every prayer she once breathed, every precept she once taught, will come more freshly home to my heart, when each place recalls some word or some look there heard and there watched. It is for your sake, Lorenzo, I would be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... a judge, should of all men be most careful to keep his skirts clear from the taint of such corruption. There are ample material rewards for those who serve with fidelity the Mammon of unrighteousness, but they are dearly paid for by that institution of learning whose head, by example and precept, teaches the scholars who sit under him that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The amount of money the representatives of the great moneyed interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent publication broadcast throughout ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it doth indeed appear from reference to the numerous works of the alchymists and magians yet extant, somewhat hastily and unjustly. For those books all unite in dwelling on the necessity of virtue, subdued passions and a clear mind, in order to become a fortunate and accomplished cabalist—a precept, by the way, not without its policy; for, if the disciple failed, the failure might be attributed to his own fleshly imperfections, not to any deficiency in the truth ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and read so as to assure a sharp analysis of character, thereby bringing the real qualities of the subject to the front, and believing, also, that the biographies of the noblest men only should be written for the young, since "example is more powerful than precept," the author sends forth this humble volume, invoking for it the considerate indulgence of critics, and the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Trent, session 13 [in D.—"3"] de reformat, chapter I, whose words, although they are very well worth reading, I omit on account of their length. It is not proper to go up into their houses, except when necessity requires it, keeping therein the evangelical precept (Luke x, 7 [wrongly cited as xx]): Nolite transire de domo in domum. For one will lose much in estimation, while their vices [in D.—"coldness"] do not make this a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Not even if they were "guilty of a skin," or ever so degraded, should we deem ourselves justified in reducing them to a state of servitude. This is NOT "the question before us." We are quite satisfied on all such points. The precept, too, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, was not altogether unknown in the Southern States before his letters were written. A committee of very amiable philanthropists came all the way from England, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... history of the two Apprentices, by representing a series of such scenes as naturally result from a course of Industry or Idleness, and which he has illustrated with such texts of scripture as teach us their analogy with holy writ. Now, as example is far more convincing and persuasive than precept, these prints are, undoubtedly, an excellent lesson to such young men as are brought up to business, by laying before them the inevitable destruction that awaits the slothful, and the reward that generally ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... would not ask an annual appropriation of more than half a million dollars for the purposes of dredging, deepening and diking it. But even as you cross it you learn that it is the Tiber or the Arno, the Elbe or the Po; and, such is the force of precept and example, you immediately get all excited and worked ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... theories of knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they were originally built up has been demolished ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... our love to God is to be unbounded—we are to love him with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole strength. The love which the precept commands us to bear to our neighbour, has affixed to it a direct limit and qualification—we are to love our neighbour as ourself; as it is elsewhere explained by the great commandment, that we must do unto him as we would that he should do unto us. Here there ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... eighteen months ago, however, severe restrictions were in vogue, and the warden declared that it was his belief and policy that men in prison should be taught by precept and illustration to regard themselves as dead to the world; that they should be held practically incommunicado, no visitors, letters at most but once a month, no conversation between prisoners—silence, solitude, suffocation in this terrible ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... tenant shall be bound to bring up and educate his children properly, according to his means and opportunities, by using every endeavour to allow of their attendance at schools where sound religious and secular knowledge may be acquired; and, by precept and example, otherwise training them up to be pious, industrious, and good members ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 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 ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... noble, and aims so lofty, that not his country alone, but the whole of mankind, benefited by his work. It is no exaggeration to say that he has raised the standard of civilization, and the world to-day is undoubtedly better for both the precept and the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... trespassing you are guilty of impertinence. This is obvious. And yet one of the chief activities of home-life consists in prancing about at random on other people's private lawns. What I say applies even to the relation between parents and children. And though my precept is exaggerated, it is purposely exaggerated in order effectively to balance the exaggeration in the ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... oblige all other fortunes to attend on and follow them like satellites; and on that account, therefore, the recent and marvelous successes of his brother Anne reflected on him all the brilliancy of those achievements. Moreover, as he had scrupulously followed the precept of concealing his mode of life, and of dispensing and diffusing his mental wealth, he was only known by the better sides of his character, and in his own family was accounted a very great man, a happiness which many sovereigns, laden with glory and crowned with the acclamations of a whole ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... same time, by a more secure navigation in an open sea. And next, as to the directions I have given for running into the latitude of 61 deg. or 62 deg. S. before any endeavour is made to stand to the westward. The reasons for this precept are, that, in all probability, the violence of the current setting from the westward will be thereby avoided, and the weather will prove less tempestuous and uncertain. This last circumstance we experienced most remarkably; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... that no probability exists of the passage of such an act by a majority of both Houses, either in the present or the next Congress. Surely under these circumstances we ought to be restrained from present action by the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," The day of evil may never come unless we shall ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... still with the silence that intensifies sound tenfold. Eustace thought he could not have had worse luck. His temptation was to hurry; common sense bade him hold himself in check. Panic urged him to risk everything, and make a bolt for it. But Bob's precept was ringing in his mind—there were two sides to the question; he might bolt, but where to in the dark? It was useless to dash headlong into trees and make for nowhere in particular. The plan was to get as far away as possible in the dark, unheard, so that by daylight ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the Landgrave caution Luther's Catholic critics to be very careful in what they say about the heinousness of Luther's offense in granting a dispensation from a moral precept? Have they really no such thing as a "dispensation" at Rome? Has not the married relationship come up for "dispensation" in the chancelleries of the Vatican innumerable times? Has not one of the canonized saints of Rome, St. Augustine, declared that bigamy might be permitted if a wife ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... on a sheet of white paper, any characters may be engraven; these laudable endeavours, by which we may reasonably expect the rising generation will be greatly improved, render particularly due to you, any examples which may teach those virtues that are not easily learnt by precept and shew the facility of what, in mere speculation, might appear surrounded with a discouraging impracticability: you are the best judge, whether, by being made public, they may be conducive to your ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... tolerate the commission of crimes amongst them, which cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance, is more than we can comprehend. Had the priests devoted that time which they spent in exciting the passions and misleading the judgment of their flocks, in the inculcation of the divine precept of brotherly love—had they exercised that influence which they undoubtedly possess in calming the passions and enlightening the minds of their people—the condition of their country would now be widely different from what it is; and surely their bishops might have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... running to its crisis in the minimum of time, and their affections altogether pleasanter than anything of the kind they accuse us of having, as well as less lingering. But with their pills—well, we all know how our ills are nursed by medicine. Is it a relief that their precept is less tedious than their practice? It is good policy for us, perhaps, if our minds are to be under treatment from their books,—and it grows plainer every day that no person of mind can well escape from them,—that our bodies should continue subject to their boluses. Thus we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that a per- fect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers. "Be- ware of philosophy," is a precept not to be received in too large a sense: for, in this mass of nature, there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of divinity; which, to wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... it is not always so. Heavily weights on me at times the burdensome reflection that I cannot honestly say I am confident as to the exact shape of the once-seen, oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the presence of an offended Creator!—it was impossible—it was contrary to his nature and to the religion which he professed. How could he hope for the Divine assistance in his perilous undertaking, when he embarked on it, regardless of the precept to forgive ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was much weaker, having only forty-two thousand, and of these some eight thousand were occupied in the siege of that place. Wurmser was a master of the old school, working like an automaton under the hand of his government, and commanding according to well-worn precept his well-equipped battalions, every soldier of which was a recruit so costly that destructive battles were made as infrequent as possible, because to fight many meant financial ruin. In consequence, like all the best generals of his class, he made war as far as possible a series of manoeuvers. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... week. We ask by what authority, and are very much mistaken if an examination of all the texts of the New Testament, in which the first day of the week or Lord's day is mentioned, does not prove that there is no divine or Apostolic precept enjoining its observance, nor any certain evidence from scripture that it was, in fact, so observed in the times of the Apostles. Accordingly we search the scriptures in vain, either for an Apostolic precept, appointing the first day of the week ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... law are conducted in nearly the same manner in the different states. The following is a sketch of the proceedings in an ordinary civil suit in a justice's court: The justice, at the request of the plaintiff, issues a summons, which is a writ or precept addressed to a constable of the town, in some states to any constable of the county, commanding him to summon the defendant to appear before the justice on a day and at an hour specified, to answer the plaintiff (naming ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... whole conduct before this superior faculty; wait its determination; enforce upon ourselves its authority; and make it the business of our lives, as it is absolutely the whole business of a moral agent, to conform ourselves to it. This is the true meaning of that ancient precept, reverence thyself." ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... never observed the commandment. I ask, however, when has their monastic fanaticism permitted them time and opportunity to perceive for once this law in their hearts, to become sensible of the example set them in their own human instinct, or even to read the precept in books or hear it preached? Poor, miserable people! Do you presume to think that God will make void this, love's commandment, so deeply and clearly impressed upon the heart, so beautifully and unmistakably illustrated in your own natures, and in the many written and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... priuiledged, where the said officer or 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 offender ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 away ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Waste' was his maxim, when I was not disposed to wait the natural development of events. By neglecting this precept, I have nearly sacrificed the lives of my best friends. Lawry, if you are going to be a steamboat man, let me give you this maxim for your government—'Haste ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... add that while there may be an honest difference of opinion regarding the efficacy of legislative enactments in overcoming or restraining the drink habit, there should be little doubt that a whole-hearted, persistent, precept-and-example effort of the medical profession exerted as individuals on their patients and the families of their patients, and as associations on the community at ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... sir, as a father, to consider whether the spirit which you manifested, in bring such unreasonable charges against me, be consistent with the directions given by St. Paul to Timothy, and also with the example and precept of him who loved his enemies and commanded his ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... 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 you are one nation, friends, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... faculty of digesting and arranging, as well as of retaining, has converted his mind into a mighty magazine of knowledge, from which, with the precision and correctness of a kind of intellectual machine, he pours forth stores of learning, information, precept, example, anecdote and illustration with a familiarity and facility not less astonishing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... teaching them to perform what was useful, and to esteem what was excellent. It was a principle with them that all men ought to know how happiness is attained, and in what virtue consists; but they neither trusted to precept nor example. They enforced by habit and practice, and in this the Romans followed the plan the Greeks had laid down, and, by that means, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... they begged her to desist from it, (offering the services of their own blacks,) because the sight of a white person engaged in any labor was extremely injurious to the slaves; they deemed it very important that the negroes should be taught, both by precept and example, that they ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... three years entirely to its farther amendment. Horace has gone so far in recommending careful correction, that he figuratively mentions nine years as an adequate period for that purpose. But whatever may be the time, there is no precept which he urges either oftener or more forcibly, than a due attention to this ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... to name but a few titles typical of the various kinds of instruction offered as amusement. "To present to the young Reader a Little Miscellany of Natural History, Moral Precept, Sentiment, and Narrative," Dr. Kendall wrote "Keeper's Travels in Search of his Master," "The Canary Bird," and "The Sparrow." "The Prize for Youthful Obedience" endeavored to instill a love for animals, and to promote obedient habits. ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... 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 that ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and, conceiving a sort of generous exultation, to be filled with joy and pride, as though we had ourselves originated the ideas which we read." Here speaks his natural disinterested greatness the author himself is here sublime, and teaches by example as well as precept, for few things are purer than a pure and ardent admiration. The critic is even confident enough to expect to find his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime "will always please, and please all readers." And ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... evident from hence, celebrated the feast of harvest, and that by precept; and though no vestiges of any such feast either are or can be produced before these, yet the oblation of the Primitae, of which this feast was a consequence, is met with prior to this, for we find ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small hearers, desiring, like young colts in a field, nothing so little as anything steadying, paid as much attention to this "jaw" as to any precept not supported by cane or imposition. They made of it, indeed, a popular school joke, "Oh, go and write a little every day and boil yourself, you ass!" But it appealed, dimly, to the reflective quality ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the sum of all duty; and in the measure in which we approximate thereto, we come to perfection. So, then, there are here just two points that I would briefly touch upon now—the one is the sublime precept of the text, and the other the all-sufficient motive enforcing it. 'Be ye imitators of God as'—because you are, and know yourselves to be—'beloved children,' and it therefore behoves you to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... here 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, which were laid up there from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... withhold: Be some few errors pardon'd though observ'd: An humble author to implore makes bold. Thy kind indulgence, even undeserv'd, Should melancholy wight or pensive lover, Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim Our blossoms cull, he'll find himself in clover, Gain sense from precept, laughter from our whim. Should learned leech with solemn air unfold Thy leaves, beware, be civil, and be wise: Thy volume many precepts sage may hold, His well fraught head may find no trifling prize. Should ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... it be thought that, because the ultimate methods of work employed by painters vary according to the particular effects produced by each, there would be any difficulty in obtaining their collective assent to a system of elementary precept. The facts of which it is necessary that the student should be assured in his early efforts, are so simple, so few, and so well known to all able draughtsmen that, as I have just said, it would be rather doubt of the need of stating what seemed to them self-evident, than reluctance ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... more pleasing to watch than even grown-up persons. There is no one, therefore, who sees him without falling in love with him. But you'll say: 'why is he then beaten?' You really aren't aware that at home he has no regard either for precept or for heaven; that he comes out with things that never suggest themselves to the imagination of grown-up people, and that he does everything that takes one by surprise. The result is that his father and mother are driven to their wits' ends. But wilfulness is natural to young children. Reckless ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of Emerson's is irradiated by a single precept that is worthy to stand by the side of that which Juvenal says came from heaven. How could the man in whose thought such a meteoric expression suddenly announced itself fail to recognize it as divine? It ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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 ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... myriads of others in the world with whom, under proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as happy—often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm going to find Stephanie. Have you ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of celibacy. The 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 ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and family; it is too manifest to be insisted upon how much the enjoyments of life would be increased. There would be so much happiness introduced into the world, without any deduction or inconvenience from it, in proportion as the precept of rejoicing with those who rejoice was universally obeyed. Our Saviour has owned this good affection as belonging to our nature in the parable of the lost sheep, and does not think it to the disadvantage of a perfect state to represent its happiness as ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... maintain among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes, their powers, and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix in their minds by example, more effectual than precept, a solemn fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:—these were the objects which I proposed to myself, and which the loftiest intellect, or the amplest opulence, might be well employed in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... excellence of true religion, or they may remain in their present darkness. Let me ask you a question: Who will be answerable for the ignorance and crimes of the poor natives— they who have never had the light presented to them, or you who might, by your example and precept, have offered it to them ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... my uncle's precept, 'Be moderate.' Just now you were all confidence that the false guide would shew us a road to avoid Halifax; and now you are, without cause, suspecting that this gentleman will ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... But shall you on your knowledge find this way? Isab. I haue t'ane a due, and wary note vpon't, With whispering, and most guiltie diligence, In action all of precept, he did show me ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was above six years of age before I understood either French or Perigordin ["Perigordin" is Montaigne's name for the dialect of his province, Perigord (Gascony)], any more than Arabic; and, without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing it up ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... even as your Father in heaven is perfect, we are bidden, and this terrible precept—terrible because for us the infinite perfection of the Father is unattainable—must be our supreme rule of conduct. Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he achieves will be scarcely ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... I have seldom or never written to you upon the subject of religion and morality; your own reason, I am persuaded, has given you true notions of both; they speak best for themselves; but if they wanted assistance, you have Mr. Harte at hand, both for precept and example; to your own reason, therefore, and to Mr. Harte, shall I refer you for the reality of both, and confine myself in this letter to the decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the Stra 'Now therefore the enquiry into religious duty' and concludes with the Stra '(From there is) no return on account of scriptural statement'— has, owing to the special character of the contents, a definite order of internal succession. This is as follows. At first the precept 'one is to learn one's own text (svdhyya)' enjoins the apprehension of that aggregate of syllables which is called 'Veda,' and is here referred to as 'svdhyya.' Next there arises the desire to know of what nature the 'Learning' enjoined is to be, and how it is to be done. Here there come ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... imagining the truth, so as to explain the divine jealousy implied in the precept of loving God exclusively and supremely, is, for all its patent limitations, the most generally serviceable. Treated as a strict equation of thought to fact, and pushed accordingly to its utmost logical consequences, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... who attended the schools that he might learn how virtue and honour are to be acquired among virtuous men. But although he was so accomplished that at the age of seventeen or eighteen years he was, as it were, both precept and example to others, Love failed not to add his lesson to the rest; and, that he might be the better hearkened to and received, concealed himself in the face and the eyes of the fairest lady in the whole country round, who had come to the city in order to advance a ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Hence the point of the enumeration of the list of kings and their origin is to serve as a deterring example to the Israelites never to appoint as king of Israel a man who came from another nation, in accordance with the precept in Deuteronomy (17,15), "Thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, which is not ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... exclusive Chinese idea. We have also seen food placed by the side of newly-made Italian graves at Genoa and Pisa, and our Western Indians bury arms, clothing, and dried meats with the bodies of deceased warriors. It is known that reverence for parents is the leading moral precept of Chinese faith, and more than that, it is lived up to upon earth by all classes, and when these parents die they are addressed spiritually and reverentially as guardians. At the entrance of the temples there are always two large, gilded wooden figures or idols, considered ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... wondered, always appear, and triumph over the false; was that precept of morality secure for those who depended on it? And, as Fanny threatened, would he be sorry? But most assuredly he would, for three reasons—Savina, Fanny, and himself; there might, even, be two more, Helena and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... little surprised and fluttered, but did not betray it; she had been taught self-command by example, if not by precept. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 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, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... 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 lower Extraction, attain Qualities ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... thought at conflict with motherhood. Her breasts were the fountain of life; her babies clung to them, and grew large of limb. From her they learnt to speak; from her they learnt the names of trees and flowers and all things beautiful around them; learnt, too, less by precept than from fair example, the sweetness and sincerity wherewith such mothers, and such alone, can endow their offspring. Later she was their instructress in a more formal sense; for this also she held to be her duty, up to the point where other teaching became needful. By method ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... apprehension in life. It was not new to him; indeed it fully answered to the principles he had laid down for the future. He accepted it gratefully: "Life is a function, a ministry, a duty!" the words were a motto, a precept that should aid him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deserted mill rise from a growth of pine-trees. But I knew before I reached her what she would find; knew that her short dream of love was over, and that stretched amongst the weeds which choked the entrance to the old mill lay the dead form of the revered young minister, who, by his precept and example, had won not only the heart of this young maiden, but that of the whole community in which he lived ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... and noble principles, and seeks to 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 needed Divine Wisdom ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... this point, a new author has just given us the following precept and criticism: "Never connect by or, or nor, two or more names or substitutes that have the same asserter [i.e. verb] depending on them for sense, if when taken separately, they require different forms of the asserters. Examples. 'Neither you nor I am concerned. Either ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... not adopt Locke's philosophy he at least paid the greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by following ever more closely his best precept, which is to the effect that to love truth for the sake of truth is an essential part of human perfection in this world, and the fertile soil on which is sown the seed ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are injured only by the precept and example of those whom they love, respect, or admire; and the writer has no fear that his readers will love, respect, or admire Charles Whippleton or Ben Waterford, or that they will fail to condemn their errors and their vices. The author hopes and expects that his young ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... kid. I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good. By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold, With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in hunger and hardship and cold. I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit; In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit. I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I dragged him ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... them acts with creative power upon the young mind, and awakens every germ of goodness within it. This invisible and incalculable influence of parental life acts more upon the child than all the efforts of education, whether by means of instruction, precept, or exhortation. If this be a true picture of the vast influence for good of the institution of marriage, what must be the moral degradation of that people to whom marriage is denied? Not content with depriving them of all the higher and holier enjoyments of this relation, by degrading ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... insignificance, if not of dishonour? For it was dishonour to live with a man she could not love, whether her heart cherished another image or was merely vacant. A dishonour to which innumerable women submitted, a dishonour glorified by social precept, enforced ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... bastard honesty,—by precept out of stupidity. There is no real conviction in it, begotten by thought." This little bit of criticism, harsh as it was, had the effect, and the Prime Minister became less ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... take their part in the new national life of awakened India. This training must be by contact with lives already devoted to Christ, more than by precept, for 'character is caught, ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... noted in this version. The singular refrain "I am God, thy God"—which does not appear at all in the received version—occurs ten times, being, as it were, a solemn ratification of the Divine sanction given at the end of each separate precept. If this be so, the first two commandments, as they are commonly reckoned, are here fused into one, and the tenth place is taken by a commandment which does not appear in the received ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... perhaps forgot, when he employed his always adventurous talents in so ambitious an attempt as a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero: and, possibly, if it were a thing obvious and easy for every man to know himself, the precept had not passed for ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Ghirlandaio were reduced eventually to one, the boy having the good fortune to be chosen as one of enough promise to be worth instruction, both by precept and example, in the famous Medici garden. Here he was more at home than in a painting room, for plastic art was his passion, and not only had Lorenzo the Magnificent gathered together there many of those masterpieces of ancient sculpture which we shall see at the Uffizi, but Bertoldo, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... and strong, and can make my way quite easily," insisted Garfield. "It is always better to right a wrong as soon as you discover it, and I would rather walk the four miles in the mud and rain than disappoint one of my scholars. Sometimes example is more powerful than precept, and if I am not careful to live an honest life before my pupils, they will not give much heed to what I say on such subjects. There is no rule like the golden rule, but he who teaches it must also live it, if he expects others to ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose first precept is ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... forbade the sale of new wine, until the priest had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks. The early prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes; just as, to introduce the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was 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 satisfied short ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of its constituents are the subjects with which the parable deals, it would be childish trifling on the part of a Churchman to quote it as of authority against Nonconformists. In the same Bible stands the precept, "Come out from among them and be ye separate;" and the Nonconformist has as good a right, that is, no right at all, to quote it as of authority by itself against a Churchman. The matter cannot be settled, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... it for yourselves. I will finish this subject by giving you a text from the wise and gracious laws which it pleased the Lord God to lay down for his people Israel, when he was himself their own King. It is a most beautiful precept: it teaches at once to overcome an evil feeling against a fellow-man, and to show mercy to a suffering animal. "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him," Ex. xxiii. 5; and in the 12th verse ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... these two artful women, and they rule him entirely. Nothing, my dear daughter, is more contrary to common sense and to Holy Scripture than this. Are we not told, Wives, be obedient to your husbands? Had Mr. Warrington lived, I should have endeavoured to follow up that sacred precept, holding that nothing so becomes a woman ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... considerable hopes of receiving some dry rice from Cochin-China, the young Prince of that country, lately gone from hence, having undertaken that it shall come to me. But it will be some time first. These are all but experiments; the precept, however, is wise which directs us to try all things, and hold ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... (Economie Politique ii. p. 38) compares the precept of the Roman "Quid est agrum bene colere? bene arare. Quid secundum? arare. Tertio stercorare" with the adage of the French farmer "Fumez bien, labourez mal, vous recueillerez plus qu'en fumant mal ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 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 ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... said, still somewhat beyond his years, a lesson in the skilled cultivation of life, of experience, of opportunity, which seemed to be the aim of the young priest's recommendations. The sum of them, through various forgotten intervals of argument, as might really have happened in a [32] dream, was the precept, repeated many times under slightly varied aspects, of a diligent promotion of the capacity of the eye, inasmuch as in the eye would lie for him the determining influence of life: he was of the number of those who, in the words of a poet who came long after, must be "made perfect ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc Moon Her office they prescribed; ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... a book of life. How many times a day do questions of conduct arise in the family! How often do children ask what is right, and freely discuss the question! Here is a book rich in precept and example on at least many of the questions. There are pictures of actual lives meeting real temptations; there are the epigrammatic precepts of Proverbs and of the teachings of Jesus. Call attention to them, not as ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... their natural endowment and that they may use it in such a manner as will bring the most glory to God. So train them and so live before them in the home that in after-years they will say with pleasure: "This precept was always taught me by my parents. Father and Mother's holy example has been a ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... come—does Athens ask aid—may Sparta befriend? Nowise precipitate judgment—too weighty the issue at stake! 35 Count we no time lost time which lags through respect to the gods! Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take Full circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast: Athens must wait, patient ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... comrades, he was not less secure in the unforced confidence of his enemies, among whom his integrity and mercy were proverbial. By their fruits, indeed, shall we know this community, the history of which furnishes as fine a commentary upon the benefit of good social training for the young—example and precept happily keeping concert with the ordinary necessities and performances of life, the one supported by the manliest courage, the other guided by the noblest ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... apt to degenerate morally, and that, also, was true of the Floralia, as these feasts were called at Rome. It is said that in the early age of the republic there was found in the Sibylline books a precept commanding the institution of a celebration in honor of the goddess Flora, who presided over flowers and spring-time, in order to obtain protection for the blossoms. The last three days of April and the first two of May were set apart ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... told this story, he asked the king: "O King, explain the matter to me. Why did they lose their magic, when everything had been done according to precept?" ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... garland on his head, and with ointment poured upon him, and this because he should not destroy the right notions of God with his fables. Nay, Plato principally imitated our legislator in this point, that he enjoined his citizens to have he main regard to this precept, "That every one of them should learn their laws accurately." He also ordained, that they should not admit of foreigners intermixing with their own people at random; and provided that the commonwealth should keep itself pure, and consist of such only as persevered in ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... wittily remarks that if it were a moral precept that a man should never have intercourse more them once in his life with any particular woman, this would correspond far better with the nature of the normal male and would cost him far less will-power than is needed by him in order to live up to ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... be long of which the purpose is only to strike the fancy, without enlightening the understanding by precept, ratiocination, or narrative. A blaze first pleases, and then ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice, to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so having showed him the way to crook his hough (example is better than precept, as James Batter observes), I taught him the plan of holding the needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing that it was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... his death his son Walter obtained the King's precept to his escheator to hand over the lands of his mother's inheritance to him, and shortly afterwards he secured his father's also. He married Eleanor, daughter of John Hampden of Hampden, in Buckinghamshire, and appears in the register of the Guild of Knowle, 1457, with his "wife ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... presumptuous of me if it did, my dear father," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "and would argue that precept and example had done nothing for me. Come, Wilton," he added, "come in to my help, for here are father and son flinging so hard at each other, that I shall get my teeth dashed down my throat before I've done. Now tell me, did you ever see such a napkin as that in the house of a nobleman, a ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... stead throughout the whole of his chequered career. "Give me a child of seven years old," had once declared the great Founder of the Society of Jesus, "and I care not who has the after-handling of him"; and in this case the Jesuit professors did not fail to carry out Loyola's precept. But his home life with his mother, whom he loved devotedly, and his course of study at the Jesuit school were suddenly interrupted when he was barely ten years of age, for the elder Tasso was anxious for his little son to join him ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... show'r, his words prevail, And aid the moral precept of his tale: His wond'ring hearers learn, and ever keep These first ideas of the restless deep; And, as the opening mind a circuit tries, Present felicities in value rise. Increasing pleasures every hour they find, The warmth more precious, and the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... 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 as ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... "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 and ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... appeared to be irritated by such an obstacle to his will and to transfer his irritation against the law to the one who raised it as an objection. I think that he was especially resentful toward any one who volunteered criticism based on a legal provision, precept, or precedent, apparently assuming that the critic opposed his purpose on the merits and in order to defeat it interposed needless legal objections. It is unnecessary to comment on the prejudice which such an attitude of mind ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the true system; but not before." He guided his finger slowly beneath the following lines: "'Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking be put away from you, with all malice.' There is the precept, you see, and a very good precept, to be found in the secularist creed as well; but now let us look at the practice. See how we secularists are treated! Why, we live as it were in a foreign land, compelled to keep the law yet denied the protection of the law! 'Outlaws ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... failed. Beside a delightful variety of material, the decorations went beyond all my former experience; dates and names were wrought in lines of pastry and frosting on the tops. There was even more elaborate reading matter on an excellent early-apple pie which we began to share and eat, precept upon precept. Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word BOWDEN, and consumed REUNION herself, save an undecipherable fragment; but the most renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old Bowden house made of durable gingerbread, with all the windows ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of duty the German does not accept the principles of the precept, "Do unto others as you would others should do unto you," but has evolved a code of his own construction which is peculiarly Teutonic—"Do unto others as you know others will not dare or deign to do unto you!" The American Ambassador has always responded ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... discord among his brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions.' This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... our own world of which I had knowledge. None are more skilled in the arts, few are better architects or boast purer laws. Moreover, they were brave and had patience. But their faith was the canker at the root of the tree. In precept it was noble and had much in common with our own, such as the rite of baptism, but I have told what it was in practice. And yet, when all is said, is it more cruel to offer up victims to the gods than to torture them in the vaults of the Holy Office or to immure them in the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... only affords, says the same authority, "effectual removal of the patient from temptations and associations which surrounded him in the outer world, but by precept and example it teaches him that he can gain by his reformation, not the ability to drink moderately and with the least safety, but the power to abstain altogether. With the restraint imposed by the institution, and the self-restraint accepted on the part ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and, conceiving a sort of generous exultation, to be filled with joy and pride, as though we had ourselves originated the ideas which we read." Here speaks his natural disinterested greatness the author himself is here sublime, and teaches by example as well as precept, for few things are purer than a pure and ardent admiration. The critic is even confident enough to expect to find his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime "will always please, and please all readers." And ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... whose whole action is healthful, whose restraints are all blessings—this gracious religion, whose chief precepts are the love of God and the love of man—this same Christianity confirms the subordinate position of woman, by allotting to man the headship in plain language and by positive precept. No system of philosophy has ever yet worked out in behalf of woman the practical results for good which Christianity has conferred on her. Christianity has raised woman from slavery and made her the thoughtful companion of ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... we care for him, and in such a manner that he may, if possible, be restored. Simple sequestration of the insane man is an outrage upon him and upon our humanity. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is the divine precept, which, if we follow it as we ought, will lead us to search for our fallen comrades in the alms-houses and penal institutions and reformatories, and sometimes in the outhouses or cellars of private homes, to our shame, where errors of judgment or cruelty have placed them, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... aspirations. Buddhism is often criticized as a gloomy and unpractical creed, suited at best to stoical and scholarly recluses. But these are certainly not its characteristics when it first appears in political history, just as they are not its characteristics in Burma or Japan to-day. Both by precept and example Asoka was an ardent exponent of the strenuous life. In his first edict he lays down the principle "Let small and great exert themselves" and in subsequent inscriptions he continually harps upon the necessity of energy and exertion. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... tells us, frequently acts the very reverse of this precept, of which he produces some instances; and remarks in general, that the first six books of the AEneis, which are the best and most perfect in the original, are the least so in the translation. Dr. Trap's remarks may possibly be true; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Slave-traders employ for this the services of 'runners,' who constitute a caste of pariahs of the most degraded kind. A conscientious scruple would seem never to enter into their calculations. They would hardly recognize a precept of the decalogue except by the circumstance of its violation. Earning their livelihood thus basely, debauchery and crime constitute their every-day history. These persons keep a record of the names of men ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... second place I would recommend to every one that admirable Precept which Pythagoras [3] is said to have given to his Disciples, and which that Philosopher must have drawn from the Observation I have enlarged upon. Optimum vitae genus eligito, nam consuetudo faciet jucundissimum, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... choose an occupation is to ask yourself the question, "What would my government do with me if it were to consider scientifically my qualifications and adaptations, and place me to the best possible advantage for all the people?" The Norwegian precept is a good one: "Give thyself wholly to thy fellow-men; they will give thee back soon enough." We can do the most possible for ourselves when we are in a position where we can do the most possible for others. We are doing the most for ourselves and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... solemn engagement, and bear the cross of the Lord either on his breast or his brow till he set out; and let him who is ready to begin his march place the holy emblem on his shoulders, in memory of that precept of our Saviour, 'He who does not take up his cross and follow me is ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... school gives more than her salary commands and puts heart power into every act. By example and precept the lessons are taught and growth follows in response to cultivation. But the schools are handicapped by lack of time for much personal care, by lack of facilities for the best of instruction and by the multiplicity of things that must be done. Under the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence, responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Nec deus intersit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... has obeyed the precept which you have judiciously delivered. You may be interested, Madam, to know what are the conclusions at which Mr. J.J. Flournoy of Athens, Georgia, has arrived. You shall hear, Madam. He has gone to the Bible, and he has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... home, and the special goodness of Mr Clayhanger and of Maggie, yes, and of her little Clara; and the pride which they all had in Edwin, and the unique opportunities which he had of doing good, by example, and also, soon, by precept, for others younger than himself would begin to look up to him; and again her personal pride in him, and her sure faith in him; and what a solemn ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that nothing must be done too late; and again, that everything must be done at its proper season; while there is a third precept which reminds us that opportunities lost can ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... persons who may so properly challenge a right to this commendable deviation from truth, as young women in the affair of love; for which they may plead precept, education, and above all, the sanction, nay, I may say the necessity of custom, by which they are restrained, not from submitting to the honest impulses of nature (for that would be a foolish prohibition), but ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... "from my Manual of Christian Obligation, which the girls call my catechism." He asked one of the questions: "If you are told to do unto others as you would they should do unto you, and if you find a difficulty in obeying that Divine Precept, what does ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... before God before he can work any good thing. Men judge the worker by the works; God judges the works by the worker. The first precept requires us to acknowledge and worship one God, that is, to trust Him alone, which is the true faith whereby we become the sons of God. Thou canst not be delivered from the evil of unbelief by thine own power, nor by the power of the law; wherefore all thy works which thou doest to satisfy the law ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... The same is true of the emotions—fear, for instance. In many cases, logically planned efforts may be altogether out of relationship to the result. Above all, great weight must be laid upon the consideration that there is a tendency to overrate the effect of education in the form of precept as compared with the effect of example. A child may receive the best of instruction without result, if in its own environment it is continually seeing something precisely the opposite of that which it is being told. This applies with equal force to the sexual life, which ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... his person. After this, he was very careful about his food and drink; he locked himself in at night, and entrusted the key of the apartment to only a few. He ordered one, who was the author of the treason (and he was the one that was suspected), that in virtue of his [the provincial's] holy precept, he should not come into the convent of Manila, but that he should prepare to embark for Nueva Espana where they should take from him the cowl. Thereupon this individual, Fray Juan de Ocadiz—who was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... "Mingere cum bombis res est saluberrima lumbis." A precept to be found in the "Regimen Sanitatis," or "Schola Salernitana," a work in rhyming Latin verse composed at Salerno, the earliest school in Christian Europe where medicine was professed, taught, and practised. The original ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... wait its determination; enforce upon ourselves its authority; and make it the business of our lives, as it is absolutely the whole business of a moral agent, to conform ourselves to it. This is the true meaning of that ancient precept, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... place, and in gratitude to God resolved to give the fullest obedience to the ancient precept: "If any have children . . . let them learn first to show piety at home, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to acquire,—Patience. But it must be acquired,—the power to abide the time calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... so all along the line—the hard and soulless art of technique and rule, of tradition and precept, however accomplished, however perfect it is, is worth nothing; it is only another dreary form of labour, unless through some faculty of the spirit, some vital intensity, or even some inexplicable felicity, not comprehended, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples." Not until the time had come that he should die for the sins of the world did he expose himself to the rage of his enemies; and then he went boldly into Jerusalem at the head of his disciples. His own precept, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves," he perfectly ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... death. There are men who have thought that truest nobility lay in choosing a life in the midst of suffering and woe for the purpose of alleviating it, and who have acted on their opinion. This lesson, however, is not so frequently learnt by us through precept as in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... standard. The second table of the decalogue is adopted throughout as indispensable to the well-being of the state; and a thousand forms of legislation are attempted to secure the ends of the great and comprehensive Christian precept—"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." More especially is it deemed the highest perfection of civilized life and manners, in the code of conventional politeness, to exemplify this latter divine injunction. Otherwise life would be much ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... commonplace phrase, under cover of which the absurdity slips in, is not so readily noticeable. "I don't like working between meals," said a lazy lout. There would be nothing amusing in the saying did there not exist that salutary precept in the realm of hygiene: "One should ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... grandest that can be applied to a human being, was especially applicable to him. He was a hearty man, a large-hearted man that is to say. He was perhaps the largest-hearted man I ever knew. I think he made a nearer approach to obeying the divine precept, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," than one man in a hundred thousand. His benevolence, his active, energising desire for good to all God's creatures, and restless anxiety to be in some way active for the achieving of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... country by which Witherspoon will be longest remembered, was the course he followed at the beginning of the Revolution. From the first, he took the side of the colonies, and by precept and example, held not only the great body of Presbyterians true to that cause, but also the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were naturally Tories by sympathy. He was a member of the Continental Congress, urged ceaselessly the passage of the Declaration of Independence, was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... succumbed, some because their editors were persuaded by threats or rewards on the part of the government to cease publication, and the greater portion because of financial embarrassment. Notwithstanding the constitutional precept guaranteeing free speech, editors of the opposition have generally found it more healthy to withdraw to the neighboring countries and conduct their campaigns at long range. On the other hand, it must be said that several governments have honestly endeavored ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... 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
... obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedure involves, of course, the omission of some important elements in the history of the theory of translation, in that it ignores the discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, the period of the most enthusiastic ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... kind to Victoria in the elements of character, but she must have owed very much of this courage, calmness, modesty, simplicity, candor, and sterling good sense to the peculiar, systematic training, the precept and example of her mother, the much-criticised Duchess of Kent, so unpopular at the Court of the late King, and whom Mr. Greville had by no means delighted to honor. Ah, the good, brave Duchess had her reward for all her years of patient exile, all ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Company are summoned by precept from the Lord Chancellor to form a jury, of which their assay master is always one. This jury are sworn, receive a charge from the Lord Chancellor; then retire into the Court-room of the Duchy of Lancaster, where the pix (a small ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... object of good is proposed and promised to us upon asking, it clearly evinces that there can be no impotence in us, with respect to obtaining it, besides the disapprobation of the will; and that inability which consists in disinclination, never renders any thing improperly the subject of precept or command. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... spiteful story, she reproved them plainly for their mirth as "bad taste." On another she asked some who were thus amusing themselves, "How they would like any one to speak thus of themselves in their absence, and before her?" and her precept, fortified by example (for no unkind comment on any one was ever heard to pass her lips), so effectually extinguished the habit of detraction that in a very short time it was remarked that no courtier ventured on an ill-natured word in her presence, and ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... more than half a million dollars for the purposes of dredging, deepening and diking it. But even as you cross it you learn that it is the Tiber or the Arno, the Elbe or the Po; and, such is the force of precept and example, you immediately get all excited and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... blest and over blest In thy outgoing at the noon of strife When glory clasped thee round; while wayward Death Refused my coaxings for the like-timed call! Yet I did press where thickest missiles fell, And both by precept and example showed Where lay the line of duty, patriotism, And honour, in that ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... world; and I wonder not that when the heroes who captured Troy saw Aeneas carrying his aged father Anchises on his shoulders and leading his son, the puer Ascanius, by the hand, out of the burning city, they cheered him and allowed him to escape with his precious burden. A Chinaman is taught by precept and example to venerate his parents and to give them divine honors after death. Should a Chinese child be disobedient he would be punished severely by the bamboo or other instrument, and he would bring on himself the wrath of all his family. This strong ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... consent to have them imprisoned: and lastly (for the avoiding of future inconvenience) to have their heads severed from their bodies. And having now brought those his chief instruments to exercise that common precept which the Devil hath written on every post, namely, to depress those whom they had grieved, and destroy those whom they had depressed; he urged that argument so far and so forcibly, as nothing but the death of the young ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... danger to the direct interposition of Providence, Vespucci makes no such superstitious claims for himself, though acknowledging his dependence upon God and expressing gratitude for divine support. He believed, evidently, in the precept of the Golden Rule—"Do unto others as you would have them do to you"; and this, alas, cannot be said of Christopher Columbus. Though he married late in life, and had no children of his own, Vespucci "was full of affectionate feeling ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... put 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... was 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 injunctions not ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... morality of today has nothing to add; nor can we conceive a precept that shall be more complete. At most we could widen somewhat the meaning of the word "neighbour," and raise, render somewhat more subtle and more elastic, that of the word "injure." And the book in which these words are found is ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... knob of a stick, trembled slightly. But his northern temperament, sentimental yet cautious and clear-sighted, too, in its idealistic way, checked his impulse to make a clean breast of the whole deadly absurdity. According to the precept of transcendental wisdom, he turned his tongue seven times in his mouth before he spoke. He made then ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... inculcates a salvation that does not save, let us rise superior to its false teachings and, accepting science as the true saviour of mankind, find our whole duty in the code of natural morality, the spirit of which is embodied in that comprehensive precept known as the golden rule, which, being the outgrowth of the discovered necessities of association, without which society could not exist, it necessarily constituted man's sole rule and guide long before priest or temple; ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... do own, Than precept better is; For Creswell she was safe, When she lived a private Miss. And a Tory I ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... to prove the superior force of example over precept, let him try teaching a baby to say "Thank you" or "Please," merely by being scrupulously careful to say these things to the baby on all fit occasions. No one has taken the statistics of the number of times every small child is exhorted to perfect himself in this particular observance; but ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... this the teaching of the holy Council of Trent, session 13 [in D.—"3"] de reformat, chapter I, whose words, although they are very well worth reading, I omit on account of their length. It is not proper to go up into their houses, except when necessity requires it, keeping therein the evangelical precept (Luke x, 7 [wrongly cited as xx]): Nolite transire de domo in domum. For one will lose much in estimation, while their vices [in D.—"coldness"] do not make this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Venerable Sire! the sacred precept is:—'Accompany thy friend as far as the margin of the first stream.' Here, then, we are arrived at the border of a lake. It is time for you to give us ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... hues than Light can give. Thou first, best friend that Heav'n assigns below, To sooth and sweeten all the cares we know; Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm, When nature fades, and life forgets to charm; Thee would the Muse invoke!—to thee belong The sage's precept, and the poet's song. What soften'd views thy magic glass reveals, When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals! As when in ocean sinks the orb of day, Long on the wave reflected lustres play; Thy temper'd gleams ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... much as Nature I respect, I ventur'd once to break, (As you, perhaps, may recollect) Her precept for your sake; ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... had the teaching of example as well as precept, from their father," remarked Violet with a look of loving appreciation up into his face; "so that it would be strange indeed if they had ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... humble way, are addicted to moralising and to speculating on the origin of things. A perusal of the following tales will show that a surprisingly large number of them are attempts to explain some natural phenomenon, or to exemplify some simple precept. In fact they are science,—physical science and moral science,—at a very early stage. The explanations given in these tales completely satisfy the adult Aino mind of the present day. The Aino fairy-tales are not, as ours are, survivals from ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... the Bible,—has next to be encountered. Unmethodical as it seems to be, the Bible arrests a man in his impatient course with many a significant History,—many an unmanageable precept. Much of its contents, it is true, are of such a nature that they may be glossed over,—explained away,—ignored,—set aside. The reading is doubtful: or there are two opinions, (perhaps twenty,) concerning ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... citizens was different; it consisted in teaching them to perform what was useful, and to esteem what was excellent. It was a principle with them that all men ought to know how happiness is attained, and in what virtue consists; but they neither trusted to precept nor example. They enforced by habit and practice, and in this the Romans followed the plan the Greeks had laid down, and, by that means, they surpassed all ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... the action to the word, and in less than ten minutes I had auricular evidence that, as far as the sleep was concerned, he was carrying his precept ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... she had senses. A second was enough to bring about this discovery, to change her soul, to alter her whole life. To have learned to know herself was at first a delight. The {greek here} of the ancient philosophy is not a precept the moral fulfilment of which procures any pleasure, since one enjoys little satisfaction from knowing one's soul. It is not the same with the flesh, for in it sources of pleasure may be revealed to us. Eveline immediately felt an obligation ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... and by half-past ten every respectable inhabitant was sworn. Accompanying the summons was a notice, signed by Messrs. Townsend and Kent, clerics to the magistrates, informing the parties that 'by disobedience to the precept a penalty of L5 would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... false and ignorant prejudice with a true and enlightened pride of race. But the last election showed that appeals to class and nationality had little effect. We were all found loyal to a common citizenship. The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We can not permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... invocation of saints, adoration of the Virgin, relics (of which they might have had a cartload), the observation of Lent, is no part of it, since they neither taught nor practised any of these things. Vows of celibacy are not more contrary to nature, than to the positive precept of St. Paul. He mentions a very common case, in which people are obliged, by conscience, to marry. No mortal can promise that case shall never be theirs, which depends on the disposition of the body as much as a fever; and 'tis as reasonable to engage never ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Father, thy pitiful grace extend To me, careful wretch, which have me sore abused Thy precept breaking, O Lord, I mean to amend, If now thy great goodness would have me excused, Most heavenly Maker, let me not be refused, Nor cast from thy sight for one poor sinful crime; Alas! I am frail, my ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... human character is moulded by a thousand subtle influences; by example and precept; by life and literature; by friends and neighbours; by the world we live in as well as by the spirits of our forefathers, whose legacy of good words and deeds we inherit. But great, unquestionably, though these influences ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... is a precept? It is at best an illustration; it is case law at the best which can be learned by precept. The letter is not only dead, but killing; the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered, alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but familiarity has a cunning disenchantment; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 evident from ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... out a reasonable and right method of comfort, for he, too, in his way, was sorry for the girl, who bravely struggled to be cheerful, in spite of her own private grief, for his mother's sake. He felt as if high principle and noble precept ought to perform an immediate work. But they do not, for there is always the unknown quantity of individual experience and feeling, which offer a tacit resistance, the amount incalculable by another, to all good counsel and high decree. But the bond between the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... never ceased to impress upon him that every public man should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate, as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the Athenaeum. His first published writing ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... urged the necessity of discipline from Matt. xvi. and xviii., 1 Cor. v., etc., and maintained that that could not be deemed a church of Christ, which tolerated vice in its very bosom. They felt themselves bound by the precept, 2 Thess. iii. 6, 14, 15, and 2 John 10, 11, to withdraw from a church in which the gospel was not generally preached; and which cherished in its bosom, so many who crucified Christ afresh, and whom they considered themselves as ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... rabbit fascinated by a snake. Nothing that she had ever learned, either by direct precept from the old starling, or as the result of her own observation of life, had prepared her to cope with this. Outrageous as were his words and tone, she could only show that she resented them by implicitly accusing him of making love to her; and her flurried impulse ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... classical antiquity. For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom of attempting to mould one's style by any other process for that of striving after the clear and forcible expression of definite conceptions; in which process the Glassian precept, "first catch your definite conceptions," is probably the most difficult to obey. But still I mark among distinguished contemporary speakers and writers of English, saturated with antiquity, not a few to whom, it seems ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of others in the world with whom, under proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as happy—often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm going to find Stephanie. Have you ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... phylactery, protasis[obs3]. axiom, theorem, scholium[obs3], truism, postulate. first principles, a priori fact, assumption (supposition) 514. reflection &c (idea) 453; conclusion &c (judgment) 480; golden rule &c. (precept) 697; principle, principia[Lat]; profession of faith &c. (belief) 484; settled principle, accepted principle, formula. accepted fact. received truth, wise maxim, sage maxim, received maxim, admitted maxim, recognized maxim &c; true saying, common saying, hackneyed saying, trite saying, commonplace ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the momentary glimpse, the fragmentary word, the rumors strange and contradictory, yielded only confusion and mental unrest. But this brief biography exhibits to us His entire career, sets each eager listener down beside Christ while He unrolls each glowing parable, each glorious precept, each call to inspiration and the higher life. Thus books acquaint us with the best ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... general) extends to the unconditioned is objectively true, or not; what consequences result therefrom affecting the empirical use of the understanding, or rather whether there exists any such objectively valid proposition of reason, and whether it is not, on the contrary, a merely logical precept which directs us to ascend perpetually to still higher conditions, to approach completeness in the series of them, and thus to introduce into our cognition the highest possible unity of reason. We must ascertain, I say, whether this requirement of reason ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... succeeded one another, in the form of a vote-catching resolution, with "law" to please the man of science, and "creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the orthodox—thereby, no doubt, increasing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... an intelligent people is generally acknowledged. 2. That the moon is made of green cheese is believed by some boys and girls. 3. That Julius Caesar invaded Britain is a historic fact. 4. That children should obey their parents is a divine precept. 5. I know that my Redeemer liveth. 6. Plato taught that the soul is immortal. 7. Peter denied that he knew his Lord. 8. Mahomet found that the mountain would not move. 9. The principle maintained by the colonies ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... William Dugdale, in his chapter concerning the personal attire of judges—"That peculiar and decent vestments have, from great antiquity, been used in religious services, we have the authority of God's sacred precept to Moses, 'Thou shall make holy rayments for Aaron and his sons, that are to minister unto me, that they may be for glory and beauty.'" In this light and flippant age there are men irreverent enough to smile at the habiliments which our judges wear in court, for ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... are conducted in nearly the same manner in the different states. The following is a sketch of the proceedings in an ordinary civil suit in a justice's court: The justice, at the request of the plaintiff, issues a summons, which is a writ or precept addressed to a constable of the town, in some states to any constable of the county, commanding him to summon the defendant to appear before the justice on a day and at an hour specified, to answer ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... 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 ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... or recording such exemplary instances without precept or precedent? Moses, by the Lord's direction, commanded the centers of those who were burnt up when offering strange fire to be made broad plates for a covering to the altar, for a memorial to the children of Israel.—And, passing other ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... people and very young persons," I continued, "marriage is an article of faith, a moral precept, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... another, and so on through the whole array, laying, for their wholesome restriction within due bounds, the same cutting emphasis on such of their propensities as were dearest to his heart and were unquestionably referrable to his own precept and example. Thoroughly persuaded, in the end, that he had made them miserable by his severity, he dismissed them with a small present, and an admonition to walk quietly home, without any leapings, scufflings, or turnings out of the way; which injunction, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... any morality left. Success is the supreme justification of all actions whatsoever. The fact in itself is nothing; the impression that it makes upon others is everything. Hence, please observe a second precept: Present a fair exterior to the world, keep the seamy side of life to yourself, and turn a resplendent countenance upon others. Discretion, the motto of every ambitious man, is the watchword of our Order; take it for your own. Great men are guilty of almost as many base deeds as poor ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... methods which are successful in the case of a normal child; that is, you cannot repeat a simple discipline two or three times and have the child learn the lesson. In the case of the high-strung nervous child it requires "line upon line and precept upon precept;" for, whereas a normal child will respond to a certain discipline after it is repeated a half dozen times, the nervous child will require the persistent repetition of such a discipline ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... enters into Arab poetry because it is essentially a desert bird, and here the comparison is good because it lays its eggs in the waste far from water which it must drink morning and evening. Its cry is interpreted "man sakat, salam" (silent and safe), but it does not practice that precept, for it is usually betrayed by its piping " Kata! Kata!" Hence the proverb, "More veracious than the sand-grouse," and "speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth," is Komayt's saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... born Claude Gellee and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... earth's protector high, Shall, whene'er his form discerning, On it gaze with steadfast eye, And at times shall offer dresses, Offer fitting drink and food. He ten thousand joys possesses, And escapes each trouble rude. Whoso into deed shall carry Of the law each precept, he Through all time alive shall tarry, And from birth and death be free. Foutsa, thou, who best of any Know'st the truth of what I've told, Spread the tale through regions, many As the Ganges' sands ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... thought she had the right to become at once a leader at 'The Moorings.' She was very disgusted not to be in any position of authority, and consoled herself by continual criticism of the monitresses, particularly Merle, with whom she was always sparring. She was a curious character, all precept but not much practice. She loved to give good advice and to lay down the law, and was rather priggish in bringing out moral maxims for the benefit of others. She had a tremendous sense of her own importance and what was due to her, and was very ready ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... heights overlooking the harbor of Mogador, a seaport on the west coast of Morocco, the missionary, in the coolness of the late afternoon, is following the precept of Voltaire by cultivating his garden. He is an elderly Scotchman, spiritually a little weatherbeaten, as having to navigate his creed in strange waters crowded with other craft but still a convinced son of the Free Church and the North African ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... it. No sooner had he gained Waverley's consent to lengthen his visit for a few days, than he laboured to remove the grounds upon which he conceived he had meditated a more early retreat. 'I would not have you opine, Captain Waverley, that I am by practice or precept an advocate of ebriety, though it may be that, in our festivity of last night, some of our friends, if not perchance altogether EBRII, or drunken, were, to say the least, EBRIOLI, by which the ancients designed those who were fuddled, or, as your English vernacular and metaphorical phrase ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... conversation. A strict obedience to the doctrine, and a diligent imitation of the example of our blessed saviour, he often declared to be the foundation of true tranquillity. He recommended to his friends a careful observation of the precept of Moses, concerning the love of God and man. He worshipped God as he is in himself, without attempting to inquire into his nature. He desired only to think of God, what God knows of himself. There he stopped, lest, by indulging his own ideas, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 5 And they deny the power of God, the Holy One of Israel; and they say unto the people: Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... Church.—Many attempts were made, chiefly on the part of individuals, to work a reform of abuses within the church. Many devout men, scholars engaged in theological research and living lives of purity, sought by precept and example to bring about better spiritual and moral conditions. Others sought to bring about changes in ecclesiastical government, not only in the "reforming councils" but through efforts at the papal court and in the strong ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of this Miscellany, that the most effectual method of conveying instruction, or aiding the progress of knowledge, is by combining it with amusement; or, in other words by at once aiming at the head and heart. The world is already too full of precept upon precept; and a smattering of principles is too often found in the place of practice. How can this order of things be improved but by setting forth duties as innocent pleasures, sweetening utility with entertainment, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... extended according to pleasure. In encounters of the few with the many, the array to be formed should be the needle-mouthed one. Our troops compared with the enemy's are few. Keeping in view this precept of the great Rishi, array our troops, O son of Pandu.' Hearing this, that son of Pandu answered king Yudhishthira the just, saying,—'That immovable array known by the name of Vajra, which was designed by the wielder of the thunder-bolt,—that invincible array is the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example—her mother's precept and her father's example—that to let a man count for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make, and Michael's treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the warnings ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... they were thirty-seven years of age. This rule was observed by Aristotle in his own case; but we are unable to say whether the rule was made before or after his marriage, which is a fact of much importance when we consider the wisdom of the precept, and the real principles and philosophy of its famous author. Moreover, regardless of one-half of creation, he has neither stated the age at which females are marriageable, nor given us that of his own wife. This neglect justly detracts from his authority; and it will ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must be acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which Cicero has too often given the sanction, both of his precept and of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should be forgiven unless the man who did the injury repented of his own injustice. As to giving his coat to the thief who had taken his cloak,—he told himself that were he and others to be guided by that precept honest industry would go naked in order that vice and idleness might be comfortably clothed. If any one stole his cloak he would certainly put that man in prison as soon as possible and not commence his lenience till the thief should at any rate affect ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... contrar to the Apostle's rule and practise, who became all things to all Men that by all means he might save some: their not declaring faithfully and freely against the sins of the land former and latter, without respect of persons, contrar to that express precept, "Set the trumpet to thy mouth, and show My people their transgressions, and the house ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love, and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept—If you would have all the world love you, you must first love ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Woods,"—such are the titles he affects. He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be able to meet the requirement of a great educator, who said: "I do not care to be told what a young man knows, but what he can do." I wish here to add my grain to the weight of instruction which you receive, line upon line, precept ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... of the Landgrave caution Luther's Catholic critics to be very careful in what they say about the heinousness of Luther's offense in granting a dispensation from a moral precept? Have they really no such thing as a "dispensation" at Rome? Has not the married relationship come up for "dispensation" in the chancelleries of the Vatican innumerable times? Has not one of the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... known to join in the inhuman sport of hunting wolves for pleasure, because, as he said, although they may not be wolf-children, they do but obey an instinct which was given them; and to be kind-hearted is to obey a precept which was given us. And, owing to the introduction into Portugal of the Book in which this commandment is to be found, wolf-children have become scarcer, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... there were still some who chose the left-hand path because they verily believed that this was the only right way. They, too, justified their course by arguments, line upon line and precept upon precept. And each band tried to make its following as large as it could. Some men stood all day by the side of the rock, urging people to come with them to the right or to the left. For, strangely enough, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... 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 of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... foremost of the great men who have given direction to the fortunes of the nation. No President of the United States, from the beginning of the Republic, ever excelled him in essential preparation for the tasks of the office. By a thorough acquisition of abstract knowledge, by clear and convincing precept and by a firm and diligent practical application of the outstanding principles of statecraft, no occupant of the Executive chair up to his advent was better furnished for a notable administration of public affairs. And Wilson's Administration has been notable. Its achievements, in enumeration ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... 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 decisions there ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Translation of this Text of Aristotle by Gaza: and tho' the parvity or lowness of Stature, be no Impediment, because we have frequently seen such Dwarf-Men, yet we did never see a Nation of them: For then there would be no need of that Talmudical Precept which Job. Ludolphus[E] mentions, Nanus ne ducat Nanam, ne forte oriatur ex iis ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... interest of clearness, it appeared to me inevitable that I should repeat myself frequently, without paying the slightest attention to the elegance of the presentation. I adhered scrupulously to the precept of that brilliant theoretical physicist L. Boltzmann, according to whom matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and to the cobbler. I make no pretence of having withheld from the reader difficulties which are inherent to the subject. On ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... false reasoning of you and some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... to laugh" 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 ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... a terrible dejection. Had the Germans been more enterprising they might have pitched their tents that night in the Place du Carrousel, but with the prudence of their race they had determined that the siege should be conducted according to rule and precept, and had already fixed upon the exact lines of investment, the position of the army of the Meuse being at the north, stretching from Croissy to the Marne, through Epinay, the cordon of the third army at the south, from Chennevieres ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... problem. It was very simple then; nobody was very rich, and nobody was in want; but somehow, as the boy grew older, he began to discover that there were differences, even in the little world about him; some were higher and some were lower. From the first he was taught by precept and example to take the side of the lower. As the children were denied oftener than they were indulged, the margin of their own abundance must have been narrower than they ever knew then; but if ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... more complex, but the answer, when found, is more prolific in results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... activities. Children are not like cattle. 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 mate lightly, ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of their faith. But I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of Barclay's Apology, Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, 'He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism, in the scriptures; that is false.' Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good Quakers had the advantage of him; for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... who have not yet the suggestions of sexual desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may, in individual cases, either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Precept, example, and experience teach these truths at the gymnasia of Athens. Indeed, on days when the Ecclesia is not in session, when no war is raging, and they are not busy with a lawsuit, many Athenians will spend almost the whole day at the Academy. For whatever are your interests, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... as an object of ambition. We have many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle: "Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede. Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he could ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... be at the charge of his Burial? And this sickly Wretch, how comes he to be one of my alloted portion must I take care for his cure? Not I. Hence you may guess what estimate and value the Spaniards put upon Indians, and whether they practise and fulful that Divine and Heavenly precept injoyning mutual ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... NATURE, (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... who have daughters, perhaps, fair enough, and good enough, and sweet enough even for him; the soft-spoken, half-bashful, but tender greetings of the girls, who now, perhaps for the first time, call him by his stern family name, instructed by instinct rather than precept that the time has come when the familiar Charles or familiar John must by them be laid aside; the "lucky dogs," and hints of silver spoons which are poured into his ears as each young compeer slaps his back and bids him live a thousand years and then never die; the shouting of the tenantry, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... "The precept of moral courage which it inculcates, coupled with its excellent tone throughout, stamps it at once as being of the ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... down a ladleful of the pottage, and gasped for another, unmindful of his own precept, while the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... is well-founded the ancestor of the Earls of Ross was chief in Kintail as early as the beginning of the tenth century. We have seen that the first Earl of Ross recorded in history was Malcolm Mac Heth, to whom a precept is found, directed by Malcolm IV., requesting him to protect the monks of Dunfermline and defend them in their lawful privileges and possessions. The document is not dated, but judging from the names of the witnesses attesting it, the precept ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... afterwards places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait to ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... forbidden fruit, and so break the command of God (vv 7-15). This done, they hide themselves, and cover their nakedness with aprons. But God finds out their sin, from the highest branch even to the roots thereof. What followeth? Not one precept by which they should by works obtain the favour of God, but the promise of a Saviour; of which promise this twenty-first verse is a mystical interpretation: 'The Lord God made them coats of skins, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with absolute necessity, then it is clear that no experience could enable us to infer even the possibility of such apodictic laws. For with what right could we bring into unbounded respect as a universal precept for every rational nature that which perhaps holds only under the contingent conditions of humanity? Or how could laws of the determination of OUR will be regarded as laws of the determination of the will of rational beings ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Notwithstanding this precept, M. Pauw (Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 192, edit. Lausanne) represents the Bedoweens as the implacable enemies of the Christian monks. For my own part, I am more inclined to suspect the avarice of the Arabian robbers, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... circumstances can be lawfully disregarded. A man who takes it upon himself to deprive another of life 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 ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... first place, as example is more powerful than precept, we cannot suppose that the Quakers could have shown these noble instances of religious principle, without supposing also that individuals of other religious denominations would be morally instructed by them. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... another. This premature discovery of Cunningham's intrigues totally disconcerted and overwhelmed him; and, in the bitterness of his heart, he cursed the duplicity which he had taught and encouraged, still more by example, than by precept. But Cunningham's duplicity had more and closer folds than his own. Cunningham, conceited of his diplomatic genius, and fearful of the cautious timidity of his father, did not trust that father with the knowledge of all he did, or half of what he intended; ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... As this sapient precept dropped oracularly from his lips, a word at a time, his figure faded and turned pale. With the last word he ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... this old association, Dublin audiences insisted in 1902 in seeing humor in his Peter Gillane in "Cathleen ni Houlihan." For all this past, however, Mr. Fay was intent on serious drama, and, with the precept and example of Mr. Russell and Mr. Yeats always present to him in the early days of the National Theatre Company, and with what he had gathered from the experimental performance of Irish plays by "The Irish Literary Theatre," he advanced ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... assuredly; but biding its time, which the anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians being told not to let the sun go down upon it. Precept which Christians now-a-days are perfectly ready to obey, if it is somebody else who has been injured; and indeed, the difficulty in such cases is usually to get them to think of the injury even while the Sun rises on ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the spiritual life has been expressed in the precept, reiterated in many religions, by many experts in things relating to the life of the soul: "Live as if this hour were thy last." You will recall, as I pronounce these words, the memento mori of the Ancients, their custom of exhibiting a skeleton at the feast, in order to remind ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... said officer or 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 offender ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... to the Sunday school until her mother was taken sick; and though she was only eleven years old, she had a very good idea of her moral and religious duties. "Honor thy father and thy mother," the commandment says; and she could think of no better way to obey the divine precept than to support her mother when there was no one else upon whom she could rely. Little by little their earthly possessions had passed away. Mrs. Redburn had never learned how to save money; and when the day of adversity came, her funds were soon exhausted. She had no friends to whom she ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... 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
... situation; he never could form an idea of it. If I chose to attempt to make him understand it he would listen with the greatest politeness, shrug his shoulders at the end of the story, tell me to keep up my spirits, and order another bottle of Madeira in order that he might illustrate his precept by practice. He is a good-natured selfish man. He likes us to visit him because you are gay and agreeable, and because I never asked a favour of him in the whole course of our acquaintance: he likes Ferdinand to visit him because he is a handsome fine-spirited boy, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving old lessons, and old warnings, upon new subjects, as well as old ones, to the young ladies of her neighbourhood; and so pass on to a good old age, doing a great deal of good both by precept and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Descartes is not the expression of a resigned spirit which renounces the unattainable; it is precept, not doctrine, the starting point of philosophy, not its conclusion, a methodological instrument in the hand of a strong and confident longing for truth, which makes use of doubt to find the indubitable. It is not aimed at the possibility of attaining knowledge, but at ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 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
... productions mentioned she manifested an occasional tendency to revert to the letter of amorous intrigue characteristic of her earlier efforts. In her latest and soberest writings, the conduct books called "The Wife" and "The Husband" (1756), she frequently yielded to the temptation to turn from dry precept to picturing the foibles of either sex. Her long training in the school of romance had made gallantry the natural object of Eliza ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... ... my Lord thus says Ammunira thy servant, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the King my Lord seven and seven times I bow. I hear the message of the letter, and what is thereby commanded to me O King my Lord. And I hear (the precept?) of the message of the scribe of my Lord, and my heart is eager, and my eyes are enlightened exceedingly. Now I have watched much, and have caused the city of Burutu to be fortified for the King my Lord, until the coming of the Egyptian soldiers (bitati) of the King my Lord. As ...
— Egyptian Literature
... neglect of "the powers that be" upon these essential points, it is hoped that, since this is done unwillingly,—more in shame and sorrow than in anger and party-spirit,—it will not be done with a feeling at all contrary to the Divine precept: "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... my own experience I can say that I have found no ill-effects from education in Natives; on the contrary, I have found, as a rule, that the Native who has had an ordinary school education is generally more amenable to precept and admonition than the raw kaffir though less bovinely submissive and therefore more resentful of indignities offered to him. The fact that the educated kaffir comes more often in the way of committing ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... thanks and moral precept] That's all right! Only, Mr Bly, I can't absolutely answer for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... character; for although the proclamation may be considered in the light of a dead letter as regards actual operation, it was enforced, or recommended, by his example; and example hath a louder tongue either than precept, proclamations, or laws. From the beginning to the close of his long reign, George III. manifested a decent, moral, and religious life, which doubtless had very beneficial effects upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... regards fasting. One day in every week is set apart, beside other days and seasons, as a reminder of the fact that fasting is a duty of the Christian life, just as much as almsgiving and prayer—a duty sanctified by the example enjoined by the precept of our ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... observed, it was his spirit that he communicated to the navy rather than a system, admirable as was the strategic system embodied in his methods of blockade. It was by personal influence rather than by formulated precept that Hawke inspired his service, and earned a just claim to be reckoned the greatest force of ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... interpreted in a figurative sense he took literally as rules of action. "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" was one of these. His literal fidelity to this precept afforded him the deep satisfaction of giving aid to honest neighbors in distress; it enabled him to come to the rescue in the emergencies which sometimes face the most industrious and deserving. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... discern the beauties within. Let this, my young readers, be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward ornaments of decency and decorum. And this precept, my worthy disciples, if you read with due attention, you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced by examples in the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... a stream, which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses: It slipped from politics to puns, It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels, or ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... 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 evident from the tone in which Michael inquired ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... clashing kind of music as I had never listened to. If I had been left to myself it would have been long before I knew what it was; but our corporals and sergeants were all old soldiers, and I had one trudging along with his halbert at my elbow, who was full of precept and advice. ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To-day if ye will hear his voice."[172] And explicitly, in the same connection are the various observances included in it presented in precept. "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is."—"For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... murder and the means of murder, and the organized forces of capital and politics making for murder, that must not be mentioned before children, and must be hidden as shameful from the eyes of men; and while a woman may still glory in her hair, according to that spiritual precept of St. Paul: "But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a covering," perhaps she may be permitted even to glory in her motherhood, contemptible as such a notion would doubtless have seemed to the Apostle ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... no passion which steals into the heart more imperceptible and covers itself under more disguises than pride." Still, if in such memoirs there be found landmarks of precept or example that will smooth the ruggedness of Youth's pathway, the success of its mission should disarm invidious criticism. For the great merit of history or biography is not alone the events they chronicle, but the value of the thought they inspire. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... essence of the whole law, which is enshrined here. 'This commandment which I command thee this day' is twice defined in the section (vs. 16, 20), and in both instances 'to love Jehovah thy God' is presented as the all-important precept. Love is recognised as the great commandment. Leviticus may deal with minute regulations for worship, but these are subordinate, and the sovereign commandment is love. Nor is the motive which should sway to love ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... may sit at the Mansionhouse, I think, without knowing much of the law. He may do so without discovery of his ignorance. But the master of hounds who does not know his business is seen through at once. To say what that business is would take a paper longer than this, and the precept writer by no means considers himself equal to such a task. But it is multifarious, and demands a special intellect for itself. The master should have an eye like an eagle's, an ear like a thief's, and a heart like a dog's that can be either soft or ruthless as occasion ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... Roman Ant., p. 332. "That not a soldier which they did not know, should mingle himself among them."— Josephus, Vol. v, p. 170. "The Neuter Gender denotes objects which are neither males nor females."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 37. "And hence it is, that the most important precept, which a rhetorical teacher can inculcate respecting this part of discourse, is negative."—Adams's Rhet., ii, 97. "The meanest and most contemptible person whom we behold, is the offspring of heaven, one of the children of the Most High."— Scougal, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... up with them. But to love such a set of little, trifling, tormenting foibles, all dignified with the name of virtues, required, from her elegant mind, an exertion of its highest principles—a continual remembrance of that difficult Christian precept, "to bear with one another." A person of less sense than Mrs. Douglas would have endeavoured to open the eyes of their understandings on what appeared to be the folly and narrow mindedness of their ways; but ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... unto others as thou wouldst they should do unto thee, is a precept frequently occurring in the old Indian poems. This charity is to embrace not human beings only, but bird and beast as well: "He prayeth best who loveth best all things both ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... went by, he began to conjecture that he who had never had a friend was being hailed and halloed to, was being ordered, if not by precept, at any rate by example, to come out of the shell of his reserve, and let himself feel and let himself express. He could see how utterly different was Falbe's general conception and practice of life from his own; to Michael it had always been a congregation of strangers—Francis ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... and Use of Satire. The Excellency of Epic Satire above others, as adding Example to Precept, and animating by Fable and sensible Images. Epic Satire compar'd with Epic Poem, and wherein they differ: Of their Extent, Action, Unities, Episodes, and the Nature of their Morals. Of Parody: Of the Style, Figures, and Wit proper to this Sort of Poem, and the ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—"Rectitude ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... objects themselves, and certainty as to dates; but the greatest stress has been laid upon the latter. The author of a work which professes to be in any degree didactic, can never impress too strongly upon his mind the value of the Roman precept, "prodesse quam delectare;" and an artist, accustomed by his habits to the contemplation of the beautiful and the picturesque, requires above all men to be warned on this head. Many of the buildings here represented, might easily have been exchanged for others, more ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this great precept often repeated in Plato, "Do thine own work, and know thyself." Of which two parts, both the one and the other generally, comprehend our whole duty, and do each of them in like manner involve the other; for who will do his own work aright will find that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... knowledge he communicates useful, has only to do regularly and by system, that which, under the direction of Nature, every intelligent and enquiring mind in its best moments does for itself. Wherever a useful truth has been communicated in the school or family, or a moral act or precept has been read or announced, the question by the parent or the teacher, "What does that teach you?" will lead the pupil to reflection, not only on its nature, but on its use; and the ability to do so, as we shall afterwards see, may be acquired by almost any individual with ease. Regular training ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... intellect, and sinister to the heart; especially when one generation had bequeathed its 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, ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is always the same. With arrows: Let us use up their arrows. With the club: Let us break their clubs. But how? That is always the question. In matters of war, above all, precept is easy; ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... insufficient for a complete course of instruction in hospital work, so it is best for the leaders to have lectures, lessons, and demonstrations. There is danger in a "little knowledge" of such an important subject. So we shall only say that the one important Scout precept of obeying orders is in a hospital of paramount importance. Disobedience is ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... to be aware that mere division is an unsafe and uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says that we should divide in the middle, for in that way we are more likely to attain species; secondly, in the parallel precept of the Philebus, that we should not pass from the most general notions to infinity, but include all the intervening middle principles, until, as he also says in the Statesman, we arrive at the infima species; thirdly, in the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... obedience to the doctrine, and a diligent imitation of the example of our blessed saviour, he often declared to be the foundation of true tranquillity. He recommended to his friends a careful observation of the precept of Moses, concerning the love of God and man. He worshipped God as he is in himself, without attempting to inquire into his nature. He desired only to think of God, what God knows of himself. There he stopped, lest, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... trial. How awful the responsibility! How dreadful my condition if I violate my charge or deal deceitfully with souls! Oh, God, assist me to declare Thy whole counsel! and help me to instruct by example as well as precept. How swiftly am I gliding down time's rapid stream! I am daily reminded of the uncertainty and shortness of life. I went to-day to visit a friend, and (as usual) smilingly came to the door, when behold! all was mourning and sorrow! An infant son had just taken its everlasting ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... our morality of today has nothing to add; nor can we conceive a precept that shall be more complete. At most we could widen somewhat the meaning of the word "neighbour," and raise, render somewhat more subtle and more elastic, that of the word "injure." And the book in which ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... W. Ralegh, accompanying the first portion of it, he unfolds elaborately the sense of his allegory, as he expounded it to his friends in Dublin. "To some," he says, "I know this method will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly by way of precept, or sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises." He thought that Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had thus written poetry, to teach the world moral virtue and political wisdom. He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, who hated him ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, Know ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... disciples. It was enunciated authoritatively on various occasions. It is incorporated with precepts of perpetual obligation, in such a way, that we cannot without the greatest violence pretend that he did not intend it as a precept[3] to all his disciples. In Luke xii. 22-40, he addresses the disciples collectively against Avarice; and a part of the discourse is: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Whosoe'er the title learning Of the earth's protector high, Shall, whene'er his form discerning, On it gaze with steadfast eye, And at times shall offer dresses, Offer fitting drink and food. He ten thousand joys possesses, And escapes each trouble rude. Whoso into deed shall carry Of the law each precept, he Through all time alive shall tarry, And from birth and death be free. Foutsa, thou, who best of any Know'st the truth of what I've told, Spread the tale through regions, many As the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... to do that," said the old man, "I merely obeyed the Chinese precept, 'Ask no questions of a guest;' it is written on both sides of the teapot out of which you have had ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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 it and to ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... commemorations was, that the Popes in removing the solemn celebrations of certain feasts of Apostles and Martyrs, which were formerly of precept, provided that their cultus should not be forgotten, and that their commemoration in the office should remind priests and the faithful of those servants of God, whom the Church wishes ever to honour. I have said the order given for commemoration in the Ordo ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... perturbed in the course of 1916 at the sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, working men had for some time been convinced, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... always appear, and triumph over the false; was that precept of morality secure for those who depended on it? And, as Fanny threatened, would he be sorry? But most assuredly he would, for three reasons—Savina, Fanny, and himself; there might, even, be two more, Helena and Gregory; yes, and William Loyd Grove. What a stinking ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... foreign people, considers himself first and always a member of his own country, works for its interests to the detriment of all others, and does not scruple to violate moral laws and social traditions in order to betray his new friends, we may well ask in virtue of what precept we should abstain from ostracizing him from the British Empire. His second nationality is so often a mere mask to enable him to perpetrate black treason, and it is so openly thus regarded by his own Government, which upholds and solemnly sanctions the principle, that it would be inexplicable ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... literature, from whence it was taken over into Latin and transmitted, with much mingling of foreign and even contradictory ideas, to the modern world. From Homer to the last runnings of the Hellenic spirit you will find it taught by every kind of precept and enforced by every kind of example; nor was Shakespeare writing at hazard, but under the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his aristocratic creed into the mouth of the hero who to the end ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... to join in the inhuman sport of hunting wolves for pleasure, because, as he said, although they may not be wolf-children, they do but obey an instinct which was given them; and to be kind-hearted is to obey a precept which was given us. And, owing to the introduction into Portugal of the Book in which this commandment is to be found, wolf-children have become scarcer, and ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... expressions,—not even so much as 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, ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... and supernatural from the gospel history, and there is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economy nor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernatural person, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction. Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but from the gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupy three-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give any credit to the remainder? For, as the German ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... 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 the further course of ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... built in a Mexican cotton-field, where a young crop was growing; that Captain Thornton and his men were captured in another cultivated field. He then asks, how under any law, human or divine, this can be considered "no aggression," and closes by asking his clerical correspondent if the precept, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them," is obsolete, of no force, of no application? This is not the anxiety of a politician troubled about his record. He is not a candidate for reelection, and the discussion has passed by; but he must stop and vindicate ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... matter from his mind, for the consideration of the Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which, however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long. Early in his amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind, upon ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a parliament held at Coventry, 6th Henry VI. whereunto by special precept to the sheriffs of the several counties, no lawyer, or person skilled in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... heard a man, who had raised a large fortune by very indirect means, confess his life had been contrary to every precept of the Gospel; but that he hoped the pardon of Heaven for all his sins, as he intended to devote one of his daughters to a conventual life ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... to the ballads we must go for example—precept of this or of any kind there is none—in the bourgeois and respectable virtues; of the sober and chastened behaviour that comes of a prudent fear of consequences, of a cold temperament and a calculating ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... 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 this world ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... all teaching guard duty and all striving hard to establish a satisfactory state of military discipline, Smith varied this irksome work by an occasional review, or by the still more exciting exercise of a reconnaissance in force, thus adding practice to precept, and bringing regiments and brigades to act coherently together. In all this he handled his division skillfully and well, and consequently soon had the satisfaction of showing those in authority over him that it was in admirable ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... his kindness and skill has won the name of the "Good Doctor." But he is more than a successful doctor; he is a true patriot and a good citizen. Honest, just, and discriminating, he endeavors by precept and example to instill into the minds of others sentiments of good citizenship. He is a leader in every reform movement for the benefit of the community; but his patriotism is not confined to race lines. "The world is his country, ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... sincerity of it was 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 get and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... heard even my father, as well as other friends, endeavour in vain to persuade her, that her indiscriminate charity did almost as much harm as good. Her answer always was, having first quoted some amiable Christian precept, "would you leave them to starve, and thus drive them to despair? They are in want of bread; and, after I have relieved them from their present distress, I shall have some claim to their attention; and by setting them a good Christian example, I shall be the better enabled to enforce the mild ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Pure spite and jealousy. Yet that is the way these Christian women of society obey the precept of their religion, and love their ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... narrow was the path in which Ephraim was forced to tread those wintry days, so bound and fettered was he by precept and admonition, that it seemed as if his very soul could do no more than shuffle ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Congress. Jefferson had led his party into power as the special champion of States' Rights and the special opponent of national sovereignty. He and they rendered a very great service to the nation by acquiring Louisiana; but it was at the cost of violating every precept which they had professed to hold dear, and of showing that their warfare on the Federalists had been waged on behalf of principles which they were obliged to confess were shams the moment they were put to the test. But the Federalists of the Northeast, both in the Middle States and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stigmatizing Hale's precept as a mere piece of advice to juries, rather than a maxim of law. He went on ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... among men is of little account. Now, that notion can not be corrected in such a people as that one with which we have to do in the South by an occasional Sunday sermon. In the day-school it must be reiterated morning, noon, and night in various applications, line upon line and precept upon precept. And so, on the other hand, teachers, as well as scholars, must be reminded by pastors, with a little Puritan iron in their blood, of their Christian, as well as educational obligations. One member of your committee who has had practical experience in the Southern work reports that some ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... because the adoption of such a maxim would have had a similar tendency with the subjugation of the passions in producing the same end. For it seems absurd, they conceive, to suppose that wars should cease, and that no precept should have been held out that they were wrong. But the more enlarged interpretation of the words in question furnishes such a precept, and therefore another foundation seems to have been laid in Christianity for ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... good birth, who attended the schools that he might learn how virtue and honour are to be acquired among virtuous men. But although he was so accomplished that at the age of seventeen or eighteen years he was, as it were, both precept and example to others, Love failed not to add his lesson to the rest; and, that he might be the better hearkened to and received, concealed himself in the face and the eyes of the fairest lady in the whole country round, who had come to the city in order to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... said George Herbert, is worth a hundred schoolmasters. In the home she is "loadstone to all hearts, and loadstar to all eyes." Imitation of her is constant—imitation, which Bacon likens to "a globe of precepts." But example is far more than precept. It is instruction in action. It is teaching without words, often exemplifying more than tongue can teach. In the face of bad example, the best of precepts are of but little avail. The example is followed, not the precepts. Indeed, precept at variance with practice is worse than useless, inasmuch ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... great trial for a young creature to realise that a change is inevitable and, at the same time, that one must be cautious about making it. The impulse is always to rush into action, and it is difficult to sit still and agree with the elderly precept in favour of consideration and delay. If matters had been left to Claire she would have started out forthwith to search for a cheap Pension, and would have also despatched a letter to Miss Farnborough by the first post, to inquire if the school post were ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept laissez faire 38, which the eighteenth century derived from Colbert, it has been an important, if not a final step in the making of method. The strongest and most impressive personalities, it is true, like Macaulay, Thiers, and the two greatest ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... was just in its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed. The war has been waged on our part with scrupulous regard to all these obligations, and in a spirit of liberality which was ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestick wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not shewn in the splendor of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Persia come—does Athens ask aid—may Sparta befriend? Nowise precipitate judgment—too weighty the issue at stake! 35 Count we no time lost time which lags through respect to the gods! Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take Full circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast: Athens must wait, patient ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... that he who expects the favor of fortune in return for his observance of precept is mistaken. The "work that is wrought under the sun" makes no special provision for him during his lifetime. Unless the cry of vanity is to be the last word there must be a reinterpretation of the promise of God. This appears in the new ideal of patient submission, and the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... some stranger several times, and had not succeeded. But, oh, here is a weak woman, for years visiting another of her own sex, year after year, remonstrating earnestly and patiently, and lovingly with her, in order to lead her to Christ. Is not this the way that God deals with us? Line upon line, precept upon precept; here ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... England, the Land of liberty and courage and peace; the Land trustworthy and long approved; the home of lofty example and benign precept; the central orb to which, as to a fountain, the nations of the earth 'ought to repair, and in their golden urns draw light;'—O sorrow and shame for our country; for the grass which is upon her fields, and the dust which is in her graves;—for her good men who now look upon the day;—and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the importance of simplifying it to the young, in order to awaken their interest, she bestowed special attention on catechetical instruction. Not satisfied with having Scripture truths committed to memory, she explained and inculcated them, with line upon line and precept upon precept, drawn from her own knowledge and experience. I can not think that this spiritual instruction interfered in the least with the other, but rather was a handmaid to it, furnishing a pleasant as well as profitable variety, awakening and developing heart ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... said Cary scornfully,—"all this for the usual, the familiar, the expected Federalist criticism of Republican precept and practice! What, specifically, is it, Mr. Rand, that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... proper material to be resorted to by one who would be very particular in his correspondence,—"employant pour cela le plus beau papier dore, sechant l'ecriture avec de la poudre d'azur et d'argent"; and Moore repeats the precept in the example of M. le Colonel Calicot, according to the text of Miss Biddy, in the "Fudge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... is no Neutral position for us to assume. If we sustain not this noble enterprise, both by precept and example, then is our influence on the side of Intemperance. If we say we love the Cause, and then sit down at our ease, surely does our action speak the lie. And now permit me once more to beg of you to lend your aid to this great Cause, the Cause of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... precept was, as with Socrates, that the bios anexetastos is not to be lived by man. As we have seen, the freedom of the reason was so dear to him, that he counted it an abuse for a parent to instil his own convictions into the defenceless minds of his young children. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... broken English. This man gave me a hymn-book, and one of the first hymns I read in it afforded me great consolation. It was written by a man who had been a sailor like myself, and one who had been almost as wicked as myself, but who has since done a vast deal of good, by means of precept and example. This hymn-book I now read in common with my bible. But I cannot express the delight I felt at a copy of Pilgrim's Progress which this same Lascar gave me. That book I consider as second only to the bible. It enabled me to understand and to apply a vast ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Duke felt the hopelessness of his cause. Still he battled bravely for it up the High, waylaying, cajoling, commanding, offering vast bribes. He carried his crusade into the Loder, and thence into Vincent's, and out into the street again, eager, untiring, unavailing: everywhere he found his precept checkmated by ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... discipline of this night will, I trust, impress upon them that principle of our revolution which they have hitherto failed to learn, or have been tempted to forget. This night, father, will establish your precept and mine, and that of our Master—no retaliation. If not, may God direct us, by whatever suffering, to some other method of teaching it; for, at whatever cost, it must be ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... who have dared to draw my tiny draft from Aristotle's great well, seem after all to be seeking an excuse, seeking it in example and precept. Precept, at least, I know to be of no avail. My father spent all the many days of his life in the study of Greek; you might suppose it was for Wisdom's sake,—but my father was a modest man. The fact is, he did it for a simpler reason still, a very curious reason, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... that a visit to it could not be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of Asheville. In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us to make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region. We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was with high anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm, foggy morning. We followed a very good road through a broken, pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated. There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills, and occasionally ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... advancing age and mental worry. For 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 than the male; but with them ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... which Carmichael's face had changed, "you are incorrigible. For years we have been trying to make you a really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are distinctly worse than when we began—more lazy, miserly, and uncharitable. It ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... philosopher-Emperor, showed by practice as well as by precept that the tranquil mind is not incompatible with a life of action. Destined from birth to stand at the head of a great empire engaged in distant wars, threatened by barbaric invasion, and not without ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... once of philosophy and of true manhood. They are written with that effusion of sadness and benevolence to which it is difficult to find a parallel. They show how completely Marcus had triumphed over all petty malignity, and how earnestly he strove to fulfil his own precept of always keeping the thoughts so sweet and clear, that "if any one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This or That,'" In short, to give them their highest praise, they would have delighted ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... publicity. The suggestive nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... brethren, what should the love of these younger brothers be for one another! How humbling that there should be so much that is sadly and strangely unlike the spirit which our blessed Master sought to inculcate alike by precept and example! Individual Christians, why these bitter estrangements, these censorious words, these harsh judgments, this want of kind consideration of the feelings and failings of those who may differ from ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... heart the love of Virtue glows, 'T was planted there by an unerring rule; From thy example the pure flame arose, Thy life, my precept,-thy good works, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... it is not the fault of the King of Prussia, since he holds out the right hand of friendship. I think it much more Christian-like to bury feuds than to perpetuate them. Your majesty sees, then, how Frederick has been calumniated, since he follows the Christian precept which commands ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... country and with the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... long as you hold fast and well together. Disagree and separate, and nothing is more easy. If a year goes bad with one, let the others see to make it up. Live united, do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven." So Thompson spake; such was the legacy he left to those who knew from his good precept and example how to profit by it. My friendship with his children has grown and ripened. They are thriving men. Alec has inherited the nature of his father more than any other son. All go smoothly on in life, paying little regard to the broils and contests of external ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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 the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... clear from the taint of such corruption. There are ample material rewards for those who serve with fidelity the Mammon of unrighteousness, but they are dearly paid for by that institution of learning whose head, by example and precept, teaches the scholars who sit under him that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The amount of money the representatives of the great moneyed interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent publication ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Practice followed precept, and in that delightful atmosphere Shelby's confidences flowered like young May. Tuscarora County was put through its paces for a gaping world; Clinton's Ditch—"well-spring of New York's commercial supremacy, gentlemen"—shown ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... it in his thoughts to publish the falsest, as well as the most impudent paper that ever was printed, writ a previous discourse about lying, as a necessary introduction to what was to follow. The first paper was the precept, and the second was the example. By the falsest paper that ever was printed, I mean the 'Examiner' Numb. 17, in which he pretends to give an account of what the Duke of Marlborough has got by his services." The writer in the "Medley," admitting even the correctness ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... yet divine. If our slave holding fellow citizens could be induced to establish schools for the instruction of the rising generation among the blacks, and thus qualify them for self government, which every principle of equity requires they should do, and to teach them by precept and example the importance of moral obligation; one of the greatest obstacles would be removed. If they would introduce among them a sacred regard for the social duties, arising from marriage, and from the relations subsisting ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... It is at best an illustration; it is case law at the best which can be learned by precept. The letter is not only dead, but killing; the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered, alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but familiarity has a cunning disenchantment; in a day or two she can steal all beauty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... endeavour by example and precept to train up their children, servants, and all under their core, in a religions life and conversation, consistent with our Christian profession, in the frequent reading of the holy scriptures, and in plainness of speech, behaviour ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... very presumptuous of me if it did, my dear father," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "and would argue that precept and example had done nothing for me. Come, Wilton," he added, "come in to my help, for here are father and son flinging so hard at each other, that I shall get my teeth dashed down my throat before I've done. Now tell me, did you ever see such a napkin as that in the house of ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... that? I have many answers to his censure. For example, and first, I labour and will continue to labour more and more in this world of things, and less and less in any other world, because here we begin to see things as they are—the deepest things of God and of man, that is. Also, because I have the precept, and the example, and the experience of God's greatest and best saints before me here. Because, also, our full and true salvation begins here, goes on here, and ends here. Because, also, teaching these things and learning these things will infallibly make us the humblest of men, the most contrite, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... be entirely perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by his precept and his example[99]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... thought that truest nobility lay in choosing a life in the midst of suffering and woe for the purpose of alleviating it, and who have acted on their opinion. This lesson, however, is not so frequently learnt by us through precept as in the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy? Sec. 69. The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... very different. Mr. Carter was deeply engrossed in making money, having become suddenly rich through a lucky speculation. Ambitious for his only son, he wished him to have all the advantages of education which he himself had missed. So Jim was sent to a good school, but was taught at home by precept and example that to get money was the ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
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