"Prescriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who for many years had filled all the public offices in Hungary, were compelled either to learn the Hungarian language or surrender their places to natives. In most cases the latter was unavoidable, and these aliens, furious at being driven from their prescriptive sinecures, went up to Vienna and did their best to make it hot for the Hungarians. As every war has its origin in an inkstand, students are, naturally, the greatest Chauvinists, and I was to find that out with a vengeance. All my friends and colleagues became more and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... two they hesitated. Lisle had, straining his new authority to the utmost, asked them a very hard thing, for in their regard some degree of luxury was less an accidental favor than a prescriptive right. Then Bella took up a long garment and with a little resolute ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... I had told them it was in the south-west horn of the new moon; but all authors, when they put pen to paper, seem actuated by the kind and neighborly spirit of the sagacious Dogberry—namely, to "bestow all their tediousness" upon their readers; and I do not know that I have any prescriptive right—I am sure I have no intention—to depart from so well-worn a track, or to fly in the face of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... between three and four miles when that prescriptive comfort and relief to wanderers in woods—a distant light—broke at last upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost sinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward, and the dim outline of a dwelling ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... should give in their names, and enlist as soldiers: and if any of them was apprehended by his master, he was rescued by a crowd of his fellow soldiers, who being involved in the same guilt, repelled, at the hazard of their lives, every violence offered to any of their body. These by a prescriptive privilege of the Alexandrian army, used to demand the king's favourites to be put to death, pillage the properties of the rich to increase their pay, invest the king's palace, banish some from the kingdom, and recall others from exile. Besides these, there were two thousand ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... from Elizabeth down to Victoria, acted the tyrant over the Catholics; and in Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and the Protestant Swiss cantons, persecution is now a part of the laws of these several states. Persecution is not sanctioned by the laws of the United States, if we except the prescriptive code of New Hampshire, which comes under that genus; but if it be not legalized, we are not to thank Protestantism for that. Wherever it has sway in the family, in the town council, or the assembly, there the cloven ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... often enough as but rehearsing the traditional conflict between Crown and Parliament. Like their prototypes they identified the rights of property with natural right, and translated political liberty in terms of prescriptive privilege. The rights of man and the rights of Englishmen were thus thought to be synonymous terms: a happy confusion by which it was possible for them to defend liberty against the encroachments of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the battle-field. Those bold imaginations in due time Had vanished, leaving others in their stead: And now I looked upon the living scene; Familiarly perused it; oftentimes, 145 In spite of strongest disappointment, pleased Through courteous self-submission, as a tax Paid to the object by prescriptive right. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... flower of his manhood, the illustrious chief who introduced the Mughal dynasty into India; who, conquering the provinces of the North-west and some districts in the centre of the peninsula, acquired for that dynasty the prescriptive right to claim them as its own. He had many great qualities. But, in Hindustan, he had had neither the time nor the opportunity to introduce into the provinces he had conquered such a system of administration as would weld ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... the subject the Course of Study must be more or less elastic, and the topics detailed in the programme are intended to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. It may be that, owing to local conditions, topics not named are among the best that can be used, but all substitutions and changes should be made a subject of consultation with the Inspector. The treatment of the subject must always be suited to the age and experience of the pupils, to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... exasperation of overstrained pressure, in a land so peculiarly circumstanced as Ireland is, be altogether withheld, and thus its whole foundations shaken or overturned, and the justice of individual claims and prescriptive ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... steady eyes had lost none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... where the protestant members seem to be such sticklers for the established church; but their zeal never makes them lose sight of the spoil of ignorance, which rapacious priests of superstitious memory have scraped together. No, wise in their generation, they venerate the prescriptive right of possession, as a strong hold, and still let the sluggish bell tingle to prayers, as during the days, when the elevation of the host was supposed to atone for the sins of the people, lest one reformation should lead to another, and the spirit kill the letter. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Underwood, Felix will really enjoy helping us to this extent more than any private expenditure. Is it not so, my boy? Well then, I propose that the sovereign of old prescriptive right should go to his menus plaisirs, and the rest to something needful; but he shall say to what. Said I well, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out to the youngsters at a farthing the puff. Albert when under age had instituted the puff, and when over it had organized the tariff. By the puff-a-farthing method the cigarettes could not be confiscated, for they belonged only to those who had a prescriptive right to them, while the puffers, with a little cunning, were able ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... gratuitous direction of the American conscience. Our ambition to "do the thinking" of our Yankee cousins is materially damped by the unpleasant necessity which it involves, of being "done" ourselves. They seem, however, to claim a prescriptive right to the works of the British press, as well as to the funds of the British public. They read our books, on the same principle as they borrow our money, and abuse their benefactors into the bargain with more than Hibernian asperity. After all, however, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... walked off on leaving Wildfire—saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating a return home to the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts together, I doubt whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive respectability of a family with a mural monument and venerable tankards, would not have been suppressed as of unsound tendency. But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... government rarely interfered with the prescriptive rights of the masters, nor did it often object to the transfer of servants when the value of an estate depended on the possession of bond labor. The most remarkable deviation from this policy was in the instance of Mr. William Bryan, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Aliverdy Khan, a cruel and ferocious tyrant, the manner of whose acquisition of power I have already stated. He came too young and unexperienced to that throne of usurpation. It was a usurpation yet green in the country, and the country felt uneasy under it. It had not the advantage of that prescriptive usage, that inveterate habit, that traditionary opinion, which a long continuance of any system of government secures to it. The only real security which Surajah Dowlah's government could possess was the security of an army. But the great aim of this prince and his predecessor ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... continent. It has, for example, the exclusive right to prescribe the universal mode of dress and living; and no style of dress, however inconvenient or ridiculous, may be controverted after the Parisians have once established it. How or when they obtained this prescriptive right is unknown to me. I observed, however, that this dominion did not extend to other things; for the other nations often make war with the French, and not seldom force them to sue for peace on very hard terms; but ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... destroyed or will destroy Europe." Here again Burke was wrong; if France was a revolutionary crater, the safest way was to let it burn out in itself, while the insane aggression of continental powers only confirmed the reign of terror. Burke would go to war for the idea of prescriptive right; Pitt declined to fight for the French monarchy, and would make war only for the defence of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... now generally acknowledged to be the most cosmopolitan of modern times; and a native of this country, all things being equal, is likely to form a less prescriptive idea of other nations than the inhabitants of countries whose neighborhood and history unite to bequeathe and perpetuate certain fixed notions. Before the frequent intercourse now existing between Europe and the United States, we derived our impressions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of course, prescriptive. But given its age and its purpose this ought not to be construed in the contemporary, pejorative {4} sense. Collado, as Rodriguez and indeed all the grammarians of the period, felt obligated to train their ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... men have begun to question the prescriptive right of this "great gyant Asdryasdust, who has choked many men," to choke them also because he had worked his wicked will on their fathers. It occurred to an inquiring mind here and there that if the representation of men's action and passion on the theatre could be made interesting, there ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of its origin and development, and in order to understand this curious reversal of the ordinary rule in the cactus tribe we must look at the circumstances under which the race was evolved in the howling waste of American deserts. (All deserts have a prescriptive right to howl, and I wouldn't for worlds deprive them of the privilege.) Some familiar analogies will help us to see the utility of this arrangement. Everybody knows our common English stone-crops—or if he doesn't he ought ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... character. It is wholly devoted to them, and it aims at originality in both. It is seeking out for itself new paths, in a spirit of earnestness, and with an undoubted ability which must lead to a new era. The writers may err somewhat at first, show themselves too defiant of prescriptive rules, and mistake extravagance for originality; but this fault (inherent in youth when, conscious of its powers, it first sets up for itself) will after a while work its own cure, and with experience will come soberer action. But we cannot contemplate this ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Christianity in the various districts of the island; and the emigrant population are usually in attendance on their teaching. The census is an imperfect index of actual strength, the smaller sects exerting proportionately more influence. When the claims of prescriptive authority are finally exchanged for a reliance on moral power these discrepancies will disappear, and a vast apparatus, already supplied by the state and private zeal, will bring within reach of every colonial family some form of Christian ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... usually reckoned the prescriptive right of kings; at least, they are supposed to be officially incapable of literary eminence. And yet it is a curious fact, that, of those idiomatic works which literature will not "let die," of those marked productions which survive by their individuality, three, at least, bear the impress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various |
