"Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 miserable than ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... 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 in the child Sabre's ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... 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
... 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, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 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 |
