"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a higher understanding of Nature's method and accomplishment as a precedent to study and observation of our national parks, I seek enormously to enrich the enjoyment not only of these supreme examples but of all examples of world making. The same readings which will prepare you to enjoy to the full the message of our ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... before the people of the United States by written and spoken word, this is self-evident in a country which recognizes the principles of freedom of the Press and free speech. Apart from this, however, the American Government have themselves provided a precedent in this connection during the civil war, when President Lincoln in 1863 sent to England the famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, whose sympathies were strongly on the side of the Federals. Through his speeches, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... taking penalties, enforcing the most rigid etiquette. For he was one of those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... this. You see, it won't ever do for me, a brigadier in the regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial—there isn't any precedent for it, don't you see. Very well. I will go on examining authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out of this scrape by presiding herself. Do ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... the superficialness and mock-mystery of the medical science of those days, like a miner sinking his shaft and running a hideous peril of the earth caving in above him. Especially did he devote himself to these plants; and under his care they had thriven beyond all former precedent, bursting into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three instances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in its beauty, compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder of an unrevealed danger. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Love oftentimes had said— Write what thou seest in letters large of gold, That livid are my votaries to behold, And in a moment made alive and dead. Once in thy heart my sovran influence spread A public precedent to lovers told; Though other duties drew thee from my fold, I soon reclaim'd thee as thy footsteps fled. And if the bright eyes which I show'd thee first, If the fair face where most I loved to stay, Thy young heart's icy hardness when I burst, Restore to me the bow which all obey, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... wishes. He then reflected upon the fact of her maid having accompanied her, and concluded, very naturally, that if she had resolved to elope with this hateful stranger, she would have done so in pursuance of the precedent set by most young ladies who take such steps—that is, unaccompanied by any one but her lover. From this view of the case he gathered comfort, and was beginning to feel his mind somewhat more at ease, when ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Shelley's, a defiance of them. All through his life he had a scholar's respect for learning, and for the great tradition of literature which it is the true business of scholarship to maintain. Radical and rebel as he was in politics and theology, contemptuous of law, custom and precedent, he was always the exact opposite in his art. There he never attempted the method of the tabula rasa, or clean slate, which made his political pamphlets so barren. The greatest of all proofs of the strength of his individuality is ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the law which we live under—and the law in those States which have adopted either the English, or the Roman law—descends from the past. It has been evolved precedent, by precedent, by the decisions of generation upon generation of judges, and it has for centuries been purged by amending statutes. Moreover we, the present male electors—the electors who are savagely attacked by the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... which ever and anon excited the wrath of the leaders of the opposite party, who induced some of their followers at last to throw the press and type of the obnoxious journal into the Bay, while they themselves, following the famous Wilkes' precedent, expelled Mackenzie from the legislature, and in defiance of constitutional law, declared him time and again ineligible to sit in the Assembly. The despotic acts of the reigning party, however, ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... of a Riot Controller for Cork and District is said to be under consideration. Following the Indian Government's precedent as exposed in the Mesopotamia Report, he will conduct his official business from the ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... a small portion turned to vexation at the thought of the poor chance that presented itself of finding the large part that, so it seemed to me, was missing of such an interesting tale. It appeared to me to be a thing impossible and contrary to all precedent that so good a knight should have been without some sage to undertake the task of writing his marvellous achievements; a thing that was never wanting to any of those knights-errant who, they say, went after adventures; for every one of them had one or two sages as if made on ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... instituted by the Admiralty. The Naval Chronicle, a service journal which since 1798 had been recording the successes and supremacy of the British Navy, confessed now that "the depredations committed on our commerce by American ships of war and privateers have attained an extent beyond all former precedent.... We refer our readers to the letters in our correspondence. The insurance between Bristol and Waterford or Cork is now three times higher than it was when we were at war with all Europe. The Admiralty have been overwhelmed with letters of complaint or remonstrance."[253] ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... agreed, then, that the Columbiad must be cast on the soil of either Texas or Florida. The result, however, of this decision was to create a rivalry entirely without precedent between the different towns of these ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... against those who despised workmen as "mudsills," had had a powerful reaction upon the people of Great Britain. These now clamored for the rights of man, as against privileged men. British liberty was once more "to broaden down from precedent to precedent." In France, the World's Exposition was being held. Prussia and Austria had rushed ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... quickly found its way, crowding to applaud Coquelin cadet, Fragson, and other budding celebrities. It was here that the poets first had the idea of producing a piece in which rival cabarets were reviewed and laughingly criticised. The success was beyond all precedent, in spite of the difficulty of giving a play without a stage, without scenery or accessories of any kind, the interest centring in the talent with which the lines were declaimed by their authors, who next had the pleasant thought of passing in review the different ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... I decided that I, as a British subject, should steer clear of them, more especially as one could not tell to what lengths they would go. I had been on the brink of the plot for the destruction of Alexander Obrenovitch, a sufficiently alarming precedent, so I declined to become a member of the Slovenski Jug, preferring a front seat at the drama to being possibly ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... discarded methods,—Heredity, Caste, Autocracy, Plutocracy? I respectfully submit this is a question no one has a right to put, and one I am not called upon to answer. Again, let me take a concrete case. Once more I appeal to the yellow fever precedent. The first step towards a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the yellow fever, a score of years only ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... sometimes requires that portions of it be appropriated to local objects in the States wherein it may happen to lie, as would be done by any prudent proprietor to enhance the sale value of his private domain. All such grants of land are in fact a disposal of it for value received, but they afford no precedent or constitutional reason for giving away the public lands. Still less do they give sanction to appropriations for objects which have not been intrusted to the Federal Government, and therefore ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... serve, unconsciously to Dick, as the means of his deliverance? Hitherto she had assumed that her son's worst danger lay in the chance of his confiding his difficulty to Clemence Verney; and she had, in her own past, a precedent which made her think such a confidence not unlikely. If he did carry his scruples to the girl, she argued, the latter's imperviousness, her frank inability to understand them, would have the effect of dispelling them like ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... master of the Opelousas Queen the following morning, as he sat in the cabin; "I'm a lawyer myself, and I want to tell you, the law is a strange thing. It will, and it won't. It can, and it can't. It does, and it doesn't. It's blind, crosseyed and clear-sighted all at the same time. It offers a precedent for everything, right or wrong. Now, as you say, it is unlawful for us to stop the delivery of these mails. I know it—big penalty for non-delivery. But let's talk it ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... a clear understanding. It will be better in every way. I have felt that Americans have been altogether too willing to subscribe to European customs in marrying off their daughters. I am going to establish a new precedent, if I can. Am ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... hot weather, were yet quite willing to join him in doing that moral service to Politian. It was finally agreed that Tito should be supported in a Greek chair, as Demetrio Calcondila had been by Lorenzo himself, who, being at the same time the affectionate patron of Politian, had shown by precedent that there was nothing invidious in such a measure, but only a zeal for true learning and for the instruction of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in existence in England and made use of there on the authority of English statutes. The pleas against them advanced by Otis took cognizance of the fact that the Writs were irreconcilable with the charter of the Massachusetts Colony, that English precedent for their enforcement had no application in America, and that taxation by the Motherland and compulsory acts of the nature of the Writs did open violence to the rights and liberties of the people and were inherently arbitrary and despotic, being imposed without the consent of the Colonies and to ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Head Mastership has been regarded as a stepping-stone to a Bishopric—with disastrous results to the Church—and in Butler's case it seemed only too likely that the precedent would be followed. Gladstone, when Prime Minister, once said to a Harrovian colleague, "What sort of Bishop would your old master, Dr. Butler, make?" "The very worst," was the reply. "He is quite ignorant of the Church, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of danger was not so near as that of loneliness—of a pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its master's soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken something out of the house with it. 'Lizabeth had known this kitchen for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night it was unfamiliar, with emptier corners and wider intervals of bare floor. She ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... some earnestly pressing, that he should be immediately seized as a spy, and kept in custody; while others insisted, that there were not sufficient grounds for such violent measures; that "putting strangers into confinement, without reason, was a step that afforded a bad precedent; for that the same would happen to the Carthaginians at Tyre, and other marts, where they frequently traded." The question was adjourned on that day. Aristo practised on the Carthaginians a Carthaginian ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... whose edicts were received into the civil and criminal jurisprudence, had publicly declared their intentions concerning the new sect; and that whatever proceedings had been carried on against the Christians, there were none of sufficient weight and authority to establish a precedent for the conduct of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was impossible. He realized that the multitude of honors tendered him was in a sense a vast compliment which he could not entirely refuse. Howells writes that Mark Twain's countrymen "kept it up past all precedent," and in return Mark Twain tried to do his part. "His friends saw that he was wearing himself out," adds Howells, and certain it is that he grew thin and pale and had a hacking cough. Once to Richard ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Convocation, for which Napoleon claimed a precedent in the history of the ancient Franks, was to have two objects: first, to make such alterations and reforms in the Constitution of the Empire as circumstances should render advisable; secondly, to assist at the coronation of the Empress Maria Louisa. Her presence, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... other towards dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilized have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilized to blame as having in ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... with obvious reluctance, but he made a condition precedent to his acceptance. "Le' 's see Hull first, just you 'n' me. I ain't strong for the police. We'll go to them when we've got an ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... sea-proof, to wish wearily that the first half of it were over. Rosalie was not weary, but she began to be bewildered. As she had never been a clever girl or quick to perceive, and had spent her life among women-indulging American men, she was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation clear. The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to her she simply stared at him, her eyes looking like those of a puzzled, questioning child. Then she broke into her nervous little laugh, because she did not know what else ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there was intellect behind what he did, and the spectator became so interested in observing his manner of striving for an effect, that he forgave him for falling short of what he strove for. But this is a very exceptional and a very dangerous kind of precedent. Art ever is more honored in the observance than in the breach. Yet its breach often is honored by modern audiences, and especially operatic audiences, because they tend to rate temperament too high and art too low, and to tolerate ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... has come from the porphyry in the condition of carbonate of lead, chloride of silver, etc., then the nature of the deposition was quite different from that of the similar ones of Tybo, Eureka, Bingham, etc., which are plainly gossans, and indeed is without precedent. But if the process was similar to that in the Galena lead region, and the ores were originally sulphides, their formation should have continued and been detected in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... precedent for it, in the case of a particularly powerful Double, such as was given in this romance to Queen Neter-Tua by her spiritual father, Amen, the greatest of the Egyptian gods, it seems, therefore, legitimate to suppose that, in order to save her from the abomination ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... were convened by certain of the members, and the obnoxious despatch was laid before them. An animated and indignant debate terminated in the removal of Wilmot from his place as their patron. No prudent colonist would desire to see this precedent often followed. The distinction between a governor as the head of the social circle and as the chief of a political body will be more readily apprehended when his power shall be less absolute, and his secret advice no ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... sacred calls of my country." He referred to the "kind of power, the exercise of which cost one king of England his head and another his throne." Such language, publicly spoken, was new. His argument was, to Englishmen, irrefutable. No precedent, no English statute, could stand against the Constitution. "This writ, if declared legal, totally annihilates" the privacy of the home. "Custom-house officers might enter our houses when they please, and we could not resist them. Upon bare suspicion they could exercise this ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... at least a precedent, which is of importance in a country like this, so truly conservative in the sense of adhering to anything that is fixed law or matter of traditional business routine. Now, in these concerns, where there is often so much wild speculation and mismanagement, no one is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... relations with some of his old friends and colleagues. He at once arrayed himself fiercely against the Revolution, and broke finally with what might be called the Liberty of all parties and creeds, and stood forth to the world as the foremost champion of authority, prescription, and precedent. Probably none of his writings are so familiar to the general public as those which this crisis produced, such as the 'Thoughts on the French Revolution' and the 'Letters on a Regicide Peace.' They are and will always remain, apart from ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... hypothesis is, that the present state of things has had only a limited duration; and that, at some period in the past, a condition of the world, essentially similar to that which we now know, came into existence, without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally proceeded. The assumption that successive states of Nature have arisen, each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is a mere modification ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... referred to are an invention of Admiral Fiske's which, in accordance with what seems to be a fixed and fatal precedent in the United States, has been ignored by our own authorities but eagerly adopted by the naval services of practically all the belligerents. One weakness of the aerial attack upon ships of war is that ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... conversation. As soon as dinner was over we scattered in all directions, like a flock of sheep. Chrysophrasia retired to her room. John Carvel went to the library, whither his wife followed him in a few minutes. Macaulay, Patoff, and I went to the smoking-room, contrary to all precedent; but as Macaulay led the way, we followed with delight. The result of this general separation was that Hermione and Professor Cutter were left alone ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Most High God,"—not of the local gods of the separate tribes, but of the highest God, above all the rest. That he was the acknowledged arbiter of surrounding tribes appears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes out of the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there were no precedent for it; for he regarded the spoils as belonging, not to himself, but to the confederates in whose cause he fought. No doubt it was the custom, as in the case of Delphi, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter; and in doing so Abraham ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... occupied Bristol, I fell back to Abingdon. At Bristol a large amount of valuable stores were captured by the enemy, and more clerks and attaches of supply departments caught or scared into premature evacuation of "bummers'" berths than at any precedent period of the departmental history. They scudded from town with an expedition that was truly astonishing to those who had ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... decorative epithets, according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore, after a moment of irresolution, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... distressed, and it was not difficult to foresee a time of famine. Not far from Le Palais stood a huge building which went by the name of the King's Storehouse, and the Intendant resolved to fill this with wheat. He had an ancient precedent in Egyptian history, but his motive was not that of provident Joseph. Fixing the price of grain by an edict, and imposing penalties on those who refused to sell, his agents went through the country gathering up maize and wheat; and when ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... a science of controlling things, forces, without the use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a printed diagram of such wirings on a card to ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... had vanished; an event had happened almost without precedent in the history of the world, unless we instance the burying of the army of Cambyses in the African desert. When Dr. Brydon was sufficiently rested and refreshed he told his story. It is the story we have ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... very different from his opponent's. His swing was short and often stopped too soon. His stance was rather awkward, after West's, and even his hold on the club was not according to established precedent. Yet, notwithstanding all this, it must be acknowledged that Whipple's drives had a way of carrying straight ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a well-known daily paper, "the hedges and trees are now budding forth into green leaves." This, we understand, is according to precedent. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... imitate the admirable precedent? Were I a young man, and an owner of land, assuredly I would do so. Choose some goodly tree, straight-soaring; cut away head and branches; leave just the clean trunk and build your house about it in such manner that the top of the rooted ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... unhappy times before he ascended the throne. His father was evidently a difficult person to live with; not only his extravagance and erratic habits, but also a thoroughly unjustified suspicion of his elder son, must have caused the latter a great deal of misery. Instead of following the precedent of the P[vr]emysls in dynastic disputes, Charles wisely abstained from open opposition to John, although the people's affection had been transferred from father to son. Added to this there were the usual troubles caused by ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... he could not interfere with the discretion of the prosecution, nor vary the ordinary procedure. Justice and fair play on the one side and precedent on the other: justice was waved out of court with serene indifference. Thereupon Sir Edward Clarke pressed that the trial of Mr. Oscar Wilde should stand over till the next sessions. But again Mr. Justice Wills refused. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... herself with the veil and deputed one of the witnesses to execute the contract on her behalf. So they drew up the marriage contract and she acknowledged to have received the whole of her dowry, both precedent and contingent, and to be indebted to me in the sum of ten thousand dirhems. Then he gave the witnesses their fee and they withdrew whence they came; whereupon she put off her clothes and abode in a shift of fine silk, laced with ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... your view in all respects. Really the more we consider this abominable man's conduct (and his accomplice Cavour is quite as bad, though not so foolish), the greater indignation we feel at the unprovoked breach of the peace. The audacity of the pretence from a despot and usurper exceeds precedent. What can be said too of Russia, which keeps her hold of Poland only ten years longer than the settlement of 1815! It really would be important, now that the attempt has been made to represent [the first] Napoleon as the friend ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... there was as yet no precedent in Church history for a bastard's donning the scarlet, the pope hunted up four false witnesses who declared that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand of Castile; who was, as we know, that valuable person Don Manuel Melchior, and who played the father's ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... games. On their return, the Fellahheen were rapacious in demands for remuneration of their services, but were at length contented. This was the signal for the others to take their advantage. They wanted toll to be paid for crossing part of the desert on which they thought the Jehaleen had no right or precedent for bringing strangers. So, on our preparing to leave the ground, they rushed up the bank, secured commanding points for their guns, and thus exacted their fee. The screams and hubbub were at length ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the Rishi Agastya, while engaged in the performance of a grand sacrifice, chased the deer, and devoted every deer in the forest unto the gods in general. Thou hast been slain, pursuant to the usage sanctioned by such precedent. Wherefore reprovest us then? For his especial sacrifices Agastya performed the homa ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the classical foundations of English literature and English culture, all that great erudition which, once accepted, frees the mind from restlessness, I should have had to give up my Irish subject matter, or attempt to found a new tradition. Lacking sufficient recognised precedent I must needs find out some reason for all I did. I knew almost from the start that to overflow with reasons was to be not quite well-born, and when I could I hid them, as men hide a disagreeable ancestry; and that there was no help for it, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... of Syracuse. It would have been the undying glory of Marcellus if, on obtaining possession, he had shielded the unhappy city from further miseries. The art-treasures of Syracuse were sent to Rome, aprecedent afterwards followed. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... justice. I find them, on further experience, to be mere measures of the degree of panic in the Consuls, varying directly as the distance of the nearest war-ship. The judgments under which they fell have now no sanctity; they form no longer a precedent; they may perfectly well be followed by a pardon, or a partial pardon, as the authorities shall please. The crime of Mataafa is to have read strictly the first article of the Berlin Act, and not to have read at all (as how should he when it has never been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and secured the sole right to operate steamboats on the waterways of New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. How different would have been the story of the steamboat if Congress had accepted Fitch at his word and created a precedent against ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... accidentally discovered by Dick and Jacker one day during a hunt for a wounded rabbit. Investigation proved the mine to be of no great depth, and, thanks to the pumps of the Silver Stream, as dry as a bone. A company of reliable small boys was formed with exceeding caution and a fine observance of rule and precedent; for Dick Haddon did nothing by halves, and forgot nothing that might give an air of reality to the creations of his ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... quarter were abed. He set forth in haste, accompanied by two squires riding on one horse, a page and a few varlets running with torches. As he rode, he hummed to himself and trifled with his glove. And so riding, he was beset by the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of Burgundy set an ill precedent in this deed, as he found some years after on the bridge of Montereau; and even in the meantime he did not profit quietly by his rival's death. The horror of the other princes seems to have perturbed himself; he avowed his guilt in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unless they contained a peculiar mark of authenticity." And he was induced to believe him right, by noticing the fact that, since the establishment of peace, no one had obeyed the royal letters. Finally, in decided but respectful language, he remonstrated against the pernicious precedent which the court was allowing to become established, when the express commands of the monarch were set ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... in the same manner, he will, inevitably, be disgraced. Pain and shame, impress precepts upon the mind: the child, therefore, is intent upon remembering the new sound of u in bun; but when he comes to busy, and burial, and prudence, his last precedent will lead him fatally astray, and he will again be called a dunce. O, in the exclamation Oh! is happily called by its alphabetical name; but in to, we can hardly know it again, and in morning and wonder, it has a third and a fourth additional sound. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... closely. Why should persons—even if ignorant—have the bias which some obviously present against the idea of a God? Why should they wish to think that there is no such Being, no future existence, nothing higher than Nature? Some persons maintain that precedent to a denial of God there must be a moral failure. That I am sure is quite wrong. I should be far from saying that in some materialists there is not a considerable weakening of moral fibre, or perhaps ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... emigrant nobles of Lombardy from the democratic republicans that follow Mazzini. In truth, the Government of Vienna needs their estates; and, imitating the example of the French Convention, and furnishing another precedent for Socialism when it shall come into power, it seized them without any colour of right or form of law. Another branch of the scourging tyranny of Austria is the system of forced loans. Some of the wealthiest families of Lombardy have been ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... morning when Paw died. This was an unexpected and unsettling contingency. One doesn't look for a "chronic's" doing anything so unscheduled and foreign to routine; but Paw spoiled all precedent. They found him that morning with his heart quite still, and Luke knew they stood in the presence of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... punishment. He hoped no Texan feared a bullet. A clean, honorable death like that was for a man who had never wronged his manhood. Every rascally horse thief or Mexican assassin would demand a shot if they were given a precedent. And arguments that would have been essentially false in some localities had a compelling weight in that one. The men gravely nodded their heads in assent, and Lorimer knew that any further pleading was in vain. Yet when he returned to his son, he clasped ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... livres. The windows of our hotel commanded a most astonishing extent of mountain scenery diversified by the windings of the Arve through a well cultivated valley. The hotel was sufficiently comfortable, but the bill was extravagant beyond any precedent in the annals of extortion. We had occasion to remonstrate with our host on the subject, and our French companion exerted himself so much on the occasion, that at last we succeeded in persuading the landlord to make a considerable reduction in his charges, which were out of all reason, making ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... A little before his death, the chief priest of Eleusis, following the Socratic precedent, entered an indictment against him for impiety. This indictment was supported by citations of certain heretical doctrines from his published writings; on which Grote makes the significant remark, that his paean in honour of his friend Hermeias would be more offensive ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... I will continue to do, Mrs. Potiphar; only I thought that, perhaps, you would like to know the fact, because it might make you more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our old house here. It has an aristocratic precedent." ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... delay at Kurayat was caused by want of carriage. He justly remarks that "every one in this country appeals to precedent"; the traveller, therefore, should carefully ascertain the price of everything, and adhere to it, as those who follow him twenty years afterwards will be charged the same. One of the principal obstacles to Lieutenant Speke's progress was the large sum given to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... A fact without precedent has just happened at the Sorbonne. A young deaf mute, M. Dusuzeau, underwent recently with success the examinations for the degree of "Bachelor of Science." This distinguished pupil has answered by writing all the questions ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... lawyer-man Took breath, and then again began: "Your Honor, if you did attend To what I've urged (my learned friend Nodded concurrence) to support The motion I have made, this court May soon adjourn. With your assent I've shown abundant precedent For introducing now, though late, New evidence to exculpate My client. So, if you'll allow, I'll prove an alibi!" "What?—how?" Stammered the judge. "Well, yes, I can't Deny your showing, and I grant The motion. Do I understand You undertake to prove—good land!— That when the crime—you mean ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... life: for though I had a minute theoretical knowledge of all British workings, I was, in my practical relation to them, like a man who has learnt seamanship on shore. At this place the dead were accumulated, I think beyond precedent, the dark plain around for at least three miles being as strewn as a reaped field with stacks, and, near the bank, much more strewn than stack-fields, filling the only house within sight of the pit-mouth—the small place provided for the company's officials—and even lying over the great ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... supreme power. There was a certain likeness in the exigencies, to be sure, but a broad difference between the problems confronting the two rulers. Lincoln was a constitutional President with strictly limited powers, bound by usage and precedent. For him to have kept his seat by military force, in defiance of a Democratic majority, would have been an act of treason. But the Lord Protector held a new office, unknown to the old constitution ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... any one, especially one whom I have taught to see through me. Let the two talks we have had be as though they had not been. Let us bow to each other, as last year, but let that be all. Let us follow in all things the precedent ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... system under which he is brought up, rendered cruel, merciless, and deceitful. There may be, and probably are, hardships inflicted by some of the landlords; but they are produced in most instances by criminal and precedent acts on the part of the people. In no country in the world are the rights of property so ill understood or so recklessly violated: the industrious man fears to surround his cottage with a garden, because his fruit and vegetables would be carried off by his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... would make in the Moniteur next day! I would cheerfully give him my watch and purse if they would content him. I might call out and rouse the house, but most likely Brunhilda in my situation would have held a parley. A good precedent. I sat up to show that I was awake, and in doing so recognized my old man. Though nothing could look more threatening as he stealthily advanced, shading his light, taking pains to make no noise, I could not entirely mistrust ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... religious to the moral aspect of the Aeneid, we find a gentleness beaming through it, strangely contradicted by some of the bloody episodes, which out of deference to Homeric precedent Virgil interweaves. Such are the human sacrifices, the ferocious taunts at fallen enemies, and other instances of boasting or cruelty which will occur to every reader, greatly marring the artistic ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... very vigorous action of a repressing, even of a punitive, description. It was not, in itself, a complicated situation, and no Governor, who was soldier too, need have hesitated for an instant. The various Stations, indeed, anticipating the usual course of action indicated by precedent, had automatically gone to their posts, prepared for the "official instructions" it was known that I should send, wondering impatiently (as I learned afterwards) at the slight delay. For delay there was, though of ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... perceive that it does so in myself; I will to do something and I do it; I will to move my body and it moves, but if an inanimate body, when at rest, should begin to move itself, the thing is incomprehensible and without precedent. The will is known to me in its action, not in its nature. I know this will as a cause of motion, but to conceive of matter as producing motion is clearly to conceive of an effect without a cause, which is not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... in our happy land, How with this woman will you make account, How answer her shrill question in that hour When whirlwinds of such women shake the polls, Heedless of every precedent and creed, Straight in hysteric haste to right all wrongs? How will it be with cant of politics, With king of trade and legislative boss, With cobwebs of hypocrisy and greed, When she shall take the ballot for her broom And sweep away the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... composite structure suggests the Star and Crescent of Mohammed. The architecture shows a free interpretation of early Roman forms. It is, in fact, a purely romantic conception by Architect Maybeck, entirely free from traditional worship or obedience to scholastic precedent. Its greatest charm has been established through successful composition; the architectural elements have been arranged into a colossal theme of exceptional harmony, into which the interwoven planting and the mirror lake ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... the whole of Lord Cardigan's proceedings has been lest a precedent of this nature should arise out of them. The question is whether it is not more prudent to prevent a question being brought forward in the House of Commons, than to wait for it with the certainty of being obliged to yield to it or of being overpowered by ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of the Portuguese were later utilized by the Spaniards in their American colonies. The slave-trade was a sombre precedent, followed only too readily; the system of grants of newly discovered territory to captains or contractors who would continue its discovery or conquest, exploit its resources, and pay to the crown a large share of its products was followed, somewhat ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... of their tender ones, Who hath not seen them, even with those wings Which sometime they have us'd with fearful flight, Make war with him that climb'd unto their nest, Offering their own lives in their young's defence? For shame, my liege! make them your precedent. Were it not pity that this goodly boy Should lose his birthright by his father's fault, And long hereafter say unto his child, 'What my great-grandfather and grandsire got, My careless father fondly gave away?' Ah, what a shame were this! Look on the ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... hope not, Edward; but are the qualifications we require in companions for our daughters, always such as are most reconcileable with our good sense or our consciences; a single communication with an objectionable character is a precedent, if known and unobserved, which will be offered to excuse acquaintances with worse persons: with the other sex, especially, their acquaintance should be very ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... personal, and not to be followed as precedents, since this is not the Emperor's will; for a favour bestowed on individual merit, or a penalty inflicted for individual wrongdoing, or relief given without a precedent, do not go beyond the particular person: though others are general, and bind all ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... use of the flag of a neutral or an enemy under the stress of immediate pursuit and to deceive an approaching enemy, which appears by the press reports to be represented as the precedent and justification used to support this action, seems to this Government a very different thing from an explicit sanction by a belligerent Government for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag of a neutral ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... soon as I have it all before me—with references to the documents cited, if you please, otherwise it is difficult to follow—I will see whether it calls for a detailed reply on my part, in which case I might, according to American precedent, republish my article, inserting, with your permission, your reply. This was done by the New York Outlook, when it published in the same number, "the Case of the Boers," and "the Case of ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... a whispered consultation with an aide) Well, sir, there is a precedent. May I recall to your attention an incident recorded in Navy history about eighty years ago. An officer of flag rank, if my memory holds, in defiance of instructions and in a damaged ship, at great danger to himself and his crew, acting on an operational plan ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We make precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... III. Sec. 15) that, to consider the matter a priori, anything may produce anything, and that we shall never discover a reason why any object may or may not be the cause of any other, however great, or however little, the resemblance may be betwixt them. This evidently destroys the precedent reasoning, concerning the cause of thought or perception. For though there appear no manner of connection betwixt motion and thought, the case is the same with all other causes and effects. Place one body of a pound weight on one end of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... is not rapid transit. So the people of Holland have plenty of precedent for moving at a moderate speed. There are no mountains in Holland, so water never runs; it may move, but the law of gravitation there only acts to keep things quiet. The Dutch never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... preceding letter was—that the Court of Admiralty requested my consent to give up certain prize property, the object being to construe my acquiescence as regarded a small portion—into a precedent for giving up the remainder. This was firmly refused on the ground of its being a ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... terms were finally agreed upon, and the date for this great meeting was fixed. He declined to negotiate with any, other than the absolute heads of the respective Governments, and after much discussion all precedent was set aside, and it was agreed that the conference should be held on board of the Little Peace Maker. Franz Josef I., Emperor of Austria; Wilhelm II., Emperor of Germany; George V., King of England; Nicholas II., Czar of Russia; the President of the French Republic; Mr. Cockadoo ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... him. He found his patient cured by the draught! It was contrary to all rule and precedent; it savored of quackery—the red lavender had no business to do what the red lavender had done—but there she was, nevertheless, up and dressed, and contemplating a journey to London on the next day but one. "An act of duty, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the Privy Council had summarily forbidden the use of Blackfriars as a "public" playhouse. Its proprietor, however, Richard Burbage, might take advantage of the precedent established in the days of Farrant, and let the building for use as a "private" theatre.[310] Exactly when he was first able to lease the building as a "private" house we do not know, for the history of the building between 1597 (when it was completed) and 1600 (when it ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... The treaty stipulated that Francois should give up the duchy of Burgundy to Charles, and marry Eleanor of Portugal, Charles's sister; that Francois should also abandon his claims on Flanders, Milan, and Naples, and should place two sons in the Emperor's hands as hostages. Following the precedent of Louis XI. in the case of Normandy, he summoned an assembly of nobles and the Parliament of Paris to Cognac, where they declared the cession of Burgundy to be impossible. He refused to return to Spain, and made alliances wherever he could, with the Pope, with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... taken seriously, another explanation of them is possible, namely, that he relied on the example set by Alexander the Great, who with a small but highly-trained army had shattered the stately dominions of the East. If Bonaparte trusted to this precedent, he erred. True, Alexander began his enterprise with a comparatively small force: but at least he had a sure base of operations, and his army in Thessaly was strong enough to prevent Athens from exchanging her sullen but passive hostility ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... broke the rule or precedent in Mr. Hayne's case would he not practically be saying that he endorsed the views of the court-martial as opposed to those of the department commander, General Sherman, the Secretary of War, the President of ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... moves on Miss Lillie's checker-board of life were skilfully made. The house was to be refitted, and the Newport precedent established. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
