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Dictum   /dˈɪktəm/   Listen
Dictum

noun
(pl. L. dicta, E. dictums)
1.
An authoritative declaration.  Synonyms: pronouncement, say-so.
2.
An opinion voiced by a judge on a point of law not directly bearing on the case in question and therefore not binding.  Synonym: obiter dictum.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dictum" Quotes from Famous Books



... uti, frui maluit relictaque Roma Campaniam Tarentumque peragrare, ubi mox et ipse et exercitus ardor elanguit adeo ut vere dictum sit Capuam Hannibali Cannas fuisse. Si quidem invictum Alpibus, indomitum armis Campani—quis {5} crederet?—soles et ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... wide and elastic. On this all writers are agreed. 'The just price of things,' says Aquinas, 'is not fixed with mathematical precision, but depends on a kind of estimate, so that a slight addition or subtraction would not seem to destroy the equality of justice,'[1] Caepolla repeats this dictum, with the reservation that, when the just price is fixed by law, it must be rigorously observed.[2] 'Note,' says Gerson, 'that the equality of commutative justice is not exact or unchangeable, but has a good deal of latitude, within ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... unreasonableness, angers and a thousand evils and dissensions; fill it and it is a comfort, promoting good-fellowship, kindliness and abounding virtue. Hence, instead of saying of a man—"He has a good heart"—should not the dictum be rather—"He is the happy possessor of an excellent stomach regularly and adequately filled?" For truly how many actions, evil and good, may be directly traced to the influence of this most important organ! Thus, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... your stay here," came the ruler's dictum to interrupt his line of thought. "For the first half of that period you will tell me of your world and answer whatever questions I may ask. During the rest of the interval, I will explain some of the things you wish ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... at this time a new philosophic idea was advanced—giving the lie to Miss Francis' dictum that no new thoughts were being thought—which was, briefly, that the Grass was essentially a good thing in itself; that the world had not merely made the best of a bad situation, but had been brought to a beneficent condition through the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... mode of commencing conversation. It might indeed be supposed to refer to the course of Gluck's thoughts, which had first produced the dwarf's observations out of the pot; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to dispute the dictum. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... sound a word of caution against certain attitudes which have become prevalent and which can be well illustrated in the field of medicine. In this respect, direct suggestion is under the ban. For example, a dictum, 'Never remove the symptom unless the cause is understood,' is much emphasized. Its validity is greatly open to question, since much of medical practice is direct symptom removal, as only ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... the smallest particle of the substance is the same in nature as that of the largest quantity. Hence that action is to reduce the very efficiency of the nerves of the eye, which it is of such immense importance to nurse to the uttermost. No mere dictum, however strongly expressed, can hold for a moment against this transparent reason. Hence, if a person must take alcoholic liquor, the cure of inflammation in his eyes, and of the thickening of the transparent portions of ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... de republica putem dictum, et quo possim longius progredi, nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum esse illud, sine injuria non posse, sed hoc verissimum, sine summa justitia rempublicam regi non posse."—Cic. Frag. lib. ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... say the facts on which you reason are universally admitted: a gratis dictum which I flatly ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... bit his lip; he had come to America hearing that it was a land of liberty but he had found an undreamed of tyranny which had entered his workshop and controlled his choice of workmen, and as much as he deprecated the injustice, it was the dictum of a vitiated public opinion that his field of occupation should be closed against the Negro, and he felt that he was forced, either to give up his business ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... to what depths of vain, egocentric brooding has that dictum led! But we are discarding, now, such a mischievously narrow view of the Cosmos, though our upbringing is still too rhetorical and mediaeval to appraise its authors at their true worth. Youth is prone to judge with the heart rather than the head; youth thrives on vaporous ideas, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... The dictum of Lord Chief Justice Holt: "As soon as a slave enters England he becomes free,"[4] was succeeded by the decision of the Court of King's Bench to the same effect in the celebrated case of Somerset v. Stewart,[5] when Lord ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... at least a million definite facts relating to the reign of Henry VIII.; and it is obvious that the task of selection has become heavy as well as invidious. Mr. Froude has expressed his concurrence in the dictum that the facts of history are like the letters of the alphabet; by selection and arrangement they can be made to spell anything, and nothing can be arranged so easily as facts. Experto crede. Yet selection is inevitable, and arrangement essential. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... talked about in private life. It is impossible altogether to approve of the Penciller—his absurdities were too marked, and his indiscretions too many—yet it is probable that few who have followed his meteor-like career will be able to refrain from echoing Thackeray's dictum: 'It is comfortable that there should ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... refuse to consider the question under any new aspect. It is settled, once and for all. The books are balanced, shut and sealed. The wisdom of a past generation exhausted the question. Its dictum is to be received as gospel. Little needs to be said here. Such declarations demand the utmost stretch of Christian charity. They betray an ignorance which, in a popular teacher, is unpardonable, and a blind acquiescence in the conclusions of ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... the Gracchi! how we all respect you, tronante in the comfortable cathedra of virtue inexpugnable, perhaps unassailed. Your dictum must stand for the present. The court is with you. But I believe other balances will weigh the strength of temptation, the weakness of human endurance, the sincerity of repentance, and the extent of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... strike question was settled in that week below, and Johnny McLean held the ringleaders now in the hollow of his hand. Terence O'Hara opened his eyes and delivered a dictum two hours after he was carried home. "Tell thim byes," he growled in weak jerks, "that if any wan of thim says shtrike till that McLean child ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... fire. There was one brought in who had certainly been hit by one of their own bullets, and in the back too." Other soldiers say the same, and add that if it weren't for dread of their officers the Germans would surrender wholesale. "Take the officers away, and their regiments fall to pieces," is the dictum of one of the Somerset Light Infantry, "and that's why we always pick off the ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... adfirmet ipse, refellat alios: nihil se scire dicat nisi id ipsum, eoque praestare ceteris, quod illi quae nesciant scire se putent, ipse se nihil scire, id unum sciat, ob eamque rem se arbitrari ab Apolline omnium sapientissimum esse dictum, quod haec esset una omnis sapientia non arbitrari sese scire quod nesciat. Quae cum diceret constanter et in ea sententia permaneret, omnis eius oratio tamen in virtute laudanda et in hominibus ad virtutis studium cohortandis consumebatur, ut e Socraticorum libris, maximeque Platonis, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... been the result of his continued failures in life and final absolute ruin. He fretted and fumed and was very wretched,—and at last expressed his opinion that legal steps should be taken to punish the "People's Banner." Now it had been already acknowledged, on the dictum of no less a man than Sir Gregory Grogram, the Attorney-General, that the action for libel, if taken at all, must be taken, not on the part of the Prime Minister, but on that of Phineas Finn. Sir Timothy Beeswax ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the "Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... doing what she could to reach Sarajevo before the archducal party arrived, and as her companion hopefully assured her, with a fair chance of success. If Marishka could see Sophie Chotek, all her troubles would be over, for then the Wilhelmstrasse would not care to oppose the dictum of the Duchess in favor of one who whatever her political sins in Germany's eyes, had made ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... the detective turned his attention to the doctor, approaching him with a bad feeling of weakness, and not being satisfied with the dictum of ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn

... imprisoned for threescore years and ten in a tenement of clay, preparing for a better and higher existence. It reverses the position of things on earth—placing the crown of kings on the head of the toiling labourer, and making "the last first and the first last." Its very essence lies in the dictum of the old monks, "Laborare est orare" ("Work ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... "Dictum est in superioribus quod post combustionem illam vetera fere omnia chori diruta sunt, et in quandam augustioris formae transierunt novitatem. Nunc autem quae sit operis utriusque differentia dicendum est. Pilariorum ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a matter ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... me"), only once in St. Mark (ix. 37), only twice in St. Luke (ix. 48; xx. 13), but in the Fourth Gospel He is said to be sent of God about forty times. [84:1] In one discourse alone, that in John vi., Jesus asserts no less than six times that He is sent of God, or that God sent Him; so that the dictum, "This representation of the Logos as angel is not only foreign to, but opposed to, the spirit of the Fourth Gospel," is absolutely ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... the Poet's dictum "change is of all things most pleasant" is true, is "a baseness in our blood;" for as the bad man is easily changeable, bad must be also the nature that craves change, i.e. it is neither ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... Lady of all Beautiful Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition, "according to its own scheme and division." It is the neglect of this implication which has caused the demurs. "'Natural!'" and "'true!'" they say, "why, the Pastoral is the most frankly and in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... a poet prevents his contemporaries from fixing their attention exclusively upon the merits of his verse, in how much better case is posterity, if the poet's personality makes its way into the heart of his poetry? We have Browning's dictum on ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... The attitude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the dictum that, "As priests and independent of all human organisations, we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in every proceeding where the interests of Catholics as well as the interests of Irish nationality are involved." This prelate rescinded the wholesome ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... over material conditions, by virtue of his intelligence and freedom, is also an important element which, in these studies, we should not depreciate or ignore. We must accept, with all its consequences, the dictum of universal consciousness that man is free. He is not absolutely subject to, and moulded by nature. He has the power to control the circumstances by which he is surrounded—to originate new social and physical conditions—to determine his own individual ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the husband of Mathilde Marchesi, and himself a famous singer, said that prepared or instructed mechanical effort to get more breath results in less, he said what is true only if the instruction is wrong. His dictum, if accepted unreservedly, would leave the door open to all kinds of "natural," haphazard and go-as-you-please methods of breathing, the "simplicity" of which consists in simply being incorrect. The physiology ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... by a certain Jemmy Flowers, who charged sixpence for each "draw"; Puss was turned out of a bag and chased by dogs, her chance being to reach and climb a group of trees near the river, known as the "Brocas Clump." Of the quotations, "a Yorkshireman hippodamoio" (p. 35) is, I am told, an obiter dictum of Sir Francis Doyle. "Striving to attain," etc. (p. 33), is taken not quite correctly from Tennyson's "Timbuctoo." Our crew were "a solemn company" (p. 57) is probably a reminiscence of "we were a gallant company" in "The Siege of Corinth." ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... rule, I attach little faith to such generalities; in this case, I am sure, rightly. Forgetting his dictum of "absolute incompatibility" (p. 449), Dr. Kuyper, at p. 520, shows that, as far as he is concerned, it is only relative; for in speaking of England, ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... need to have archaeological tastes in order to visit these little towns; alike scenery and people are charming, and the tourist is welcomed as a guest rather than a customer. But whether at Jouarre, or anywhere else, he who knows most will see most, every day the dictum of the great Lessing being illustrated in travel: "Wer viel weisst hat viel zu sorgen—" "Who knows much has much to look after." The mere lover of the picturesque, who cares nothing for French history, literature, and ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... way, I had always tried to act on the knowledge. But this writer proves to me that I shall have to begin all over again. 'Morality,' he says, 'depends upon cerebral oxidation.' That's a terrible dictum for a simpleminded man. If I am not cerebrally oxidised, or oxidally cerebrised, in the right degree, it's all over with my hopes of leading a moral life. I'm quite sure that a large number of people are worrying over that article, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... raspberries will prepare the way for the advice to follow, and enable the proprietor of the Home Acre to act intelligently. Sensible men do not like to be told, "You cannot do this, and must not do that"—in other words, to be met the moment they step into their gardens by the arbitrary dictum of A, B, or C. They wish to unite with Nature in producing certain results. Understanding her simple laws, they work hopefully, confidently; and they cannot be imposed upon by those who either wittingly or unwittingly give bad advice. Having explained the natural ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... only two patrons of literature in all England who thought him worth a hundred pounds, and of these two, one was a bookselling firm in Fleet Street. It really seemed as if the world at large engrossed the dictum of the 'London Magazine,' of the wealthy having no business to assist poets while the poor rates are in existence. The two hundred and twenty pounds collected for Clare from eighteen patrons of literature, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... and hold it fast and hold it high. Of course when we said success we didn't mean exactly what Mrs. Highmore for instance meant. He used to quote at me as a definition something from a nameless page of my own, some stray dictum to the effect that the man of his craft had achieved it when of a beautiful subject his expression was complete. Well, wasn't Limbert's ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... esset natura montis. 7. Pro his orator verba fecit et rogavit cur consules navis ad plenem summi periculi locum mittere vellent. 8. Legatis convocatis demonstravit quid fieri vellet. 9. Nuntius referebat quid in Gallorum concilio de armis tradendis dictum esset. 10. Moneo ne in reliquum tempus pedites et ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... the trader and his assistant some time to examine the furs and put a price on them. The Indians had no resource but to accept their dictum on the point, for there were no rival markets there. Moreover, the value being fixed according to a regular and well-understood tariff, and the trader being the servant of a Company with a fixed salary, there was no temptation to unfair action on his part. When the valuation ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... food and drink are necessary to life is so generally accepted by mankind, that few venture to dispute the dictum of Virchow relative to Louise Lateau, "Fraud or miracle." But although it is impossible so far as we know for individuals to continue to exist for months and years without the ingestion of nutriment into the system, it is undoubtedly true that under certain circumstances life can ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... considerations, both purely personal. Elysian fields and green countries do not agree with all temperaments. Many men are perfectly and causelessly miserable in the damp heats of Western India and the Brazil. We must in their case simply reverse the Wordsworthian dictum, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... not accept this unuttered social dictum that he should be kept at arm's length because he had suffered a ghastly disarrangement of his features while acting as a shield behind which the rest of society rested secure. No, he would never accept that as a natural ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... If Spinoza's dictum be true, that "a wise man's meditation is not of death but of life," then Andreyev is surely not a wise man. Some philosophers might have written their works even without a guarantee against immortality, ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... heart, and to repeat without the qualifications of David when certain aspects of supernatural narrative are introduced—Omnis homo mendax! But lest I should appear to be discourteous, I should like to add a brief dictum from the Magus Eliphas Levi. "The wise man cannot lie," because nature accommodates herself to his statement. In a polite investigation like the present, there is, therefore, no question whether Doctor Bataille is defined ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... this position in which he placed himself assumed in his own mind. Friendly critics excuse him: an interpretation of the Dred Scott decision which explained it away as an irresponsible utterance on a subject outside the scope of the case, a mere obiter dictum, is the justification which is called in to save him from the charge of insincerity. His friends, today, admit that this interpretation was bad law, but maintain that it may have been good morals, and that Douglas honestly held ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... upon usury) of never keeping promises, of never giving anything in charity, agrees but too well with the few records we possess of the man of Stratford. And therefore Stratfordians are obliged to accept Halliwell-Phillipps' dictum that this tract called Ratsei's Ghost refers to the actor of Stratford and that "he needed not to care for them that before made him proud with speaking their words upon the stage." How is it possible that Stratfordians can continue ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of the Spencervale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings. The Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one or two parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... in encouraging these expressions, not only because of the general obligation of the college to make the most of aptitudes which, neglected in youth, may never again be so vigorous, but also because of the truth in Aristotle's dictum that insight is shaped by conduct. Hence the work in ethics should be linked up wherever possible with student self-government and other participation in the management of the college, and with philanthropics like work in settlements or in social reform ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... volumes, merciless recitals, now and again, of the shortcomings of his associates or servants; a cold blooded misrepresentation of his son; a sneer for the affair with Ina Thornhill, with the dictum, sound enough no doubt, that the girl herself did the courting, and that she had no conscience—"The extreme society type of parasite," he put it. And then the account of his break ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... what dramatists term "a psychological moment," and, according to Berkeley, one of the axioms of psychology is that it never transcends the limits of the individual. Most certainly, at that moment, the truth of this dictum was demonstrated in a manner which would have surprised even ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... the London Agreement and, Dante, a celebrated dictum of, Danube Commission, the, Danzig, allotted to Poland, Dardanelles, the, freedom of: Versailles Treaty and, De Foville's estimate of wealth of France, Denikin, Denmark acquires North Schleswig, Disarmament conditions fulfilled ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... eyes and around our own threshold. The Pax Britannica—the orderliness of British rule—had to be preserved in the vast spaces of the North and West of Canada. Thousands of potentially lawless men were surging through our mining country in the Yukon, challenging Canadian administration with the dictum that huge frontier mining camps had necessarily to be outlaw regions where every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And it became the duty of the Mounted Police to back the administration of law, to answer the challenge of lawless men, and to prove to them and to the world that ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... precedents, the courts in some later decisions have refused to look upon competition as good regardless of its motives and of its consequences. In a federal case[10] the judge, in a brief and acute dictum, recognized the evil of a rate war that would result from threats of definite cuts. They impair "the usefulness of the railroads themselves, and cause great public and private loss." The court's opinion was no doubt largely influenced ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... potes imaginare. Nam Gubernator, ut totus mundus noscit, semper fuit laudator Classicorum. ("Omne ignotum pro magnifico," intelligis; habeo illum illic, nonne? Hoc quoque est inter nos.) In facto, pro momento ego fui "percussus omnis cumuli," ut dictum est. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... This dictum was only the redundancy of discontent; but when, in the light of subsequent events, it was remembered, and special gifts of discernment were attributed to Silas Boyd, he did not disclaim them, for he felt that his words were surely inspired by some ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... displayed as in a show-case to every comer, and the settled purpose to deceive by the direct verbal falsification, there is a long series of intermediate positions. The commercial maxim that one is not bound to teach the man with whom one is dealing how to conduct his business, and the lawyer's dictum that the advocate is under no obligation to put himself in the position of the judge, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness.' See post, under Aug. 29, 1783. Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, i. 88) says that 'St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that passage in Terence, Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius, railed at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. Pereant qui ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... been a good-natured one. Giving himself a sounding blow on the chest for emphasis, he declared the Calaisiens to be an infinitely more moral people than the Marseillais—and washed down his own dictum with an enormous glass of biere blanche. I am rather fond of going to sleep after dinner; so I secured my nap on cheap terms, by feigning an interest in the Picard virtues, and accordingly enjoyed a profound rest, disturbed only at intervals by a monotonous and expostulatory "allons donc!" ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... did not confine himself to science. He indulged in various personalities, to the smartest of which, a parody of Sydney Smith's dictum ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... than any mere dictum of etiquette is the fundamental code of honor, without strict observance of which no man, no matter how "polished," can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... migrating free negro became a slave if he but entered within the jurisdiction of a seventh; and an eighth, from its extent, and soil, and mineral resources, destined to incalculable greatness, closed its eyes on its coming, prosperity, and enacted, as by Taney's dictum it had the right to do, that every free black man who would live within its limits must accept the condition of slavery for ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... obligation to work in terms of the community. Even the prejudices, the shortsightedness of the community were things to be considered, to be dealt with tenderly. Hence his unwillingness to force reforms upon a community not ripe to receive them. In one of his greatest speeches occurs the dictum: "A universal feeling whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded."(17) Anticipating such ideas, he made in his Clay oration, a startling denunciation of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... the eighteenth century regarded such a thing as out of the question. As I have said, I tell this story to show what the British public will put up with if you mention the word oratorio. Voltaire's dictum needs revision thus: "Whatever is too improper to be spoken (in England) is sung, and whatever is too improper to be sung on the stage may be sung in ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... man's honor is questioned—his honor as a fighting man—it is the dictum of centuries of chivalry that he shall not seek to avoid the combat. A great fortune was at stake, many millions of dollars and the possession of a valuable mine, and yet Rimrock Jones did not move. He walked around the town and held conferences with his friends until word came ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... be interested, when the door opened and Beach, the butler, came in, accompanied by Ashe. In the bustle of the interruption Mr. Peters escaped, glad to be elsewhere, and questioning for the first time in his life the dictum that if you want a thing well done you must ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... which would benefit those who were deprived, or outcast, or bereft. But Theodore was too young and too energetic to be contented with the life of a philanthropist, no matter how noble and necessary its objects might be. He had already accepted Emerson's dictum: ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... of roses. It required courage to make a setting of "Ah, 'Tis a Dream!" so famous through Lassen's melody; but Hawley has said it in his own way in an air thrilled with longing and an accompaniment as full of shifting colors as one of the native sunsets. I can't forbear one obiter dictum on this poem. It has never been so translated as to reproduce its neatest bit of fancy. In the original the poet speaks of meeting in dreams a fair-eyed maiden who greeted him "auf Deutsch" and kissed him "auf Deutsch," but the translations all ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... being who in popular conception is compounded of red-tape and sealing-wax and spends his life in spoiling the Ship of State by saving halfpennyworths of tar—it is not a dry-as-dust treatise on the art of scientific parsimony, but a lively plea for wise expenditure. Mr. HIGGS is no believer in the dictum that the best thing to do with national resources is to leave them to fructify in the pockets of the taxpayers—"doubtful soil," in his opinion; nor is he afraid that heavy taxation will kill the goose with the golden eggs. It may be "one of those depraved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various

... are seen here. He was a rash man who ranked the flying buttresses as a sign of defective construction, indicating structural weakness, meaningless and undecorative ornament, and what not. Few have agreed with this dictum, and few ever will after they have seen Paris, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... English population clustered thickest in the old settled east, but grew thinner and thinner towards the Welsh and Cumbrian border. Altogether, the historical evidence regarding the western slopes of England bears out Professor Huxley's dictum as to the thoroughly Celtic ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... enticed unthinking youth to sin, and fallen into discredit among some weaker Christians. 'They submit indeed to use it in divine psalmody, but they love the driest translation of the Psalms best.' Watts bade them look into their Bibles and observe the boldness of its poetic imagery, rejected the dictum of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... whose authoritative tones the world's opinion will probably be pivoted—whose pen by casual ridicule or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune of some pains-taking literary labourer—whose dictum carelessly dispenses local honour or disgrace, and has before now by sharp sarcasms, speaking daggers though using none, even killed more than one over-sensitive Keats—this monarchic We is but a frail ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... several times, a number of times; many a time, full many a time; frequently &c 136. Phr. ecce iterum Crispinus [Lat.]; toujours perdrix [Fr.]; cut and come again [Crabbe]; tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow [Macbeth]; cantilenam eandem canis [Lat.] [Terence]; nullum est jam dictum quod non dictum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... and others, accepting Caesar's dictum that "the system (of Druidism) is thought to have been devised in Britain, and brought thence into Gaul," maintain that the Druids were priests of the Goidels in Britain, who imposed themselves upon the Gaulish conquerors of the Goidels, and ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... would seem hard to trace any illustration of the doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of romance. George Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... that "the foremost poet of a nation is that poet most widely read and truly loved by it," and added that, in this respect, Longfellow was easily first in America. No doubt many people will agree with this dictum; and, indeed, the test of popularity is difficult to disregard. But it is not at all a true test, as we can see easily enough if we attempt to apply it to art, or to music, or to public affairs. Popularity is ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... Scotch manners, and Scotch religion" was not, Matthew Arnold insisted, a beautiful world, and it was, he held, a disadvantage to Burns that he had not a beautiful world to deal with. This famous dictum is a standing challenge to any critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. It is true that when Burns took this world at its apparent worst, when Scotch drink meant bestial drunkenness, when Scotch manners meant shameless indecency, when Scotch religion meant ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... the dictum of the artist Reinagle, that "eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with their beaks" (see Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xviii. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 226, note 1); or, possibly, had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... answered Jasmine, quite forgetful of the celebrated dictum of Confucius: "Be truthful." "She is just one year younger than I am," she added, thinking ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... began to emphasize at this time his familiar dictum that learning to do the common things of life in an uncommon way was an essential part of real education. Probably the reverse of this dictum, namely, learning to do the uncommon things of life in a common way—would have more nearly corresponded to the popular conception ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... word by the spoken, to interpret such parts of his "book" as were unintelligible, to reconcile conflicting statements, and to fit the older legislation to changed circumstances. As the religious head of the community, his dictum became law; and these logia of the Prophet were handed around and handed down as the unwritten law by which his lieutenants were to be guided, in matters not only religious, but also legal. For "law" to them was part and parcel of "religion." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... truth, and necessity—these must be the constant standards by which you test the efficiency of your expositions, and, indeed, that of every explanatory statement. This dictum should be written on your brain in letters most plain. And let this apply not alone to the purposes of exposition but in equal measure to your ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... man and his prospective wife and permitted with other nupa women, and a host of other questions. We do not even learn when access is permitted to a piraungaru spouse. We have, it is clear, far too few data to be able to estimate the value of the dictum of Messrs Spencer and Gillen that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe." If their views are based only on the facts they have given us, they have clearly overlooked ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... Philemon, I blame not the individual, but the age; not the task, but the task-master; for surely the same exquisite and unrivalled beauty would have been exhibited in copying an ode of Horace, or a dictum of Quintilian. Still, however, you may say that the intention, in all this, was pure and meritorious; for that such a system excited insensibly a love of quiet, domestic order, and seriousness: while those counsels and regulations which punished a "Clerk for being a hunter," and restricted "the intercourse ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of God can be proved, has died out under the light of discussion: had the only lights shone from the pulpit and the prison, so great a step would never have been made. The question now is as above. The dictum that Christianity is "part and parcel of the law of the land" is also abrogated: at the same time, and the coincidence is not an accident, it is becoming somewhat nearer the truth that the law of the land is part and parcel of Christianity. It must ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... working sums in algebra, or extracting cube-roots; and while he pretends to be poring over the great book (the cases of the parties) before him, he is in reality absorbed in his own calculations. Nevertheless, he from time to time starts up, and throws in a question, a dictum, or a lecture, just as if he had been ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... always pretty—at least she has been told she is pretty, and she fully accepts the dictum. She has also been told she is clever, and she thinks she is. The actual fact is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... of dress pantaloons, and who broke fresh ground by his investigation of the comparative merits of isinglass and of starch in the preparation of shirt-fronts. There are old fops still lurking in the corners of Arthur's or of White's who can remember Tregellis's dictum, that a cravat should be so stiffened that three parts of the length could be raised by one corner, and the painful schism which followed when Lord Alvanley and his school contended that a half was sufficient. Then came the supremacy of Brummell, and the open breach ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... indifferences which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence; but summed up in the dictum of the last and highest science, that Motion seems to be Matter and Matter seems to be Motion, yet "we are probably incapable of discovering" what either is. History had no need to ask what either might be; all it needed to know was the admission ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... shade. But the mere fact that these varieties are not known in the cities should not preclude their popularity in suburban and town gardens and in the country, where every householder is monarch of his own soil and can satisfy very many aesthetic and gustatory desires without reference to market dictum, that bane alike of the market gardener and ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... [Footnote 291: "Nonne alias dictum fuit quod Francia per mulierem desolaretur, et postea per Virginem restaurari debebat?" Evidence given by Durand Lassois in Trial, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... return its Recorder to parliament.(424) Charles was therefore obliged to look elsewhere. His choice fell upon William Lenthall, who was the first to realise the position of a Speaker in times of political controversy, and who throughout his career acted up to his famous dictum, that "he had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, save as the House was pleased ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... applied to the limits and the idea of inequality to the benefits of action. Thus the formula of justice becomes: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man "—a law which finds its authority in the facts, that it is an a priori dictum of "consciousness after it has been subject to the discipline of prolonged social life," and that it is also deducible from the conditions of the maintenance of life at large and of social life. From this law follow various particular corollaries or ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... treaties can certainly contribute in a great measure to maintain and fortify peaceful relations. But strength must depend on readiness for war. The dictum still holds good that the weak becomes the prey of the strong. If a nation can not or will not spend enough on her defensive forces for her to be able to make her way in the world, then she falls back into the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... multivotis] sermonibus intelligendis illud consumere opus non sit. [Eheu! quantas strages paravere verba nubila, quae tot dicunt ut nihil dicunt;—nubes potius, e quibus et in rebus politicis et in ecclesia turbines et tonitrua erumpunt!] Et proinde recte dictum putamus a Platone in Gorgia: os an ta onomata eidei, eisetai kai ta pragmata: et ab Epicteto, archae paideuseos hae ton onomaton episkepsis: et prudentissime Galenus scribit, hae ton onomaton chraesis tarachtheisa kai taen ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum." ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... have given much to be back in his lonely squalid lodgings now. Too late did he realise how wise had been the dictum which had warned him against making or renewing ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... hat on Sundays, and led the psalm singing in the Presbyterian Church. In the summer time, when the church windows were open, the leader's voice could be heard a mile away. My childish misgivings about the distribution of the good things of life were quieted in the Sunday School by the dictum: "It is the will of God." My first knowledge of God was that He was a big man in the skies who dealt out to the church people good things and to others experiences to make them good. The Bible was to me God's book, and a thing to ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... seen, initiate the complicated forces, processes and expressions of sex. The dictum of the founder of modern pathology, Virchow, that Woman was in effect an appendix to the ovaries, has long been taken to apply to her psychic traits as well as somatic. Her mind, like her skin, her hair and her pelvis, is a product of the ovarian endocrines. But these determinations ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... But it would be unreasonable for us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply culpable because, while he showed in most matters an exceptionally enlightened liberality of opinion and practice, in this one particular he declined to deny the scientific dictum of previous ages and the popular belief of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... ex hedera, cissybium dictum, ratione duplici conviviis summe est accomodum: imprimis, quod hedera vini temulantiam, arcere fertur: deinde quod cauponum fraudes, qui vinum aqua miscent, eo poculo deprehenduntur.'—Memorabilium, Utilium ac Jucundorum Centuriae Novem, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "De Praescrip." xxii. "Latuit aliquid Petrum aedificandae ecclesiae petram dictum?" Tertullian here speaks of the doctrine as already current. Even after he became a Montanist, he still adhered to the same interpretation—"Petrum solum invenio maritum, per socrum; monogamum praesumo per ecclesiam, quae super illum, aedificata omnem gradum ordinis sui de monogamis ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Church, but of the Curate; and the few loyally unwilling to condemn a clergyman, but disgusted at the affair, and staggered by his management. Perhaps the rabid and ribald violence of the hostile party did Mr. Smith good with the respectable; and there were many, too, whose dictum was—'Felix Underwood says it is all right!' At any rate, though the Bishop was memorialised, it was in a much better spirit than had been likely at first; and it was not to be done without notice to the Rector. And when this was over, every one as usual went to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... optional, whilst it is obligatory on all barristers, whether English or otherwise, to defer to the judge's interpretation of the law in every case—appeal afterwards being the only remedy. As to the dictum that "the two races are not equal and will not blend," it is open to the fatal objection that, having himself proved, with sympathizing pathos, how the West Indies are now well-nigh denuded of their Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... only folly but sheer madness; and he will be the more confirmed in this opinion when he learns that, according to certain grave Persian writers, Layla was really of a swarthy visage, and far from being the beauty her infatuated lover conceived her to be: thus verifying the dictum of our great dramatist, in the ever-fresh passage where he makes "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" to be "of imagination all compact," the lover seeing "Helen's beauty in the brow of Egypt!"—Notwithstanding all this, the ancient legend of Layla and Majnun has proved an inspiring ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... that either metal should not be money. Congress has therefore, in my judgment, no power to demonetize silver any more than to demonetize gold; no power to demonetize either any more than to demonetize both. In this statement I am but repeating the weighty dictum of the first of constitutional lawyers. "I am certainly of opinion," said Mr. Webster, "that gold and silver, at rates fixed by Congress, constitute the legal standard of value in this country, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... be worn for from six to eight weeks, after which the patient is allowed up with crutches, which he usually requires to use for three or four weeks longer, before he can bear his weight upon the limb. The old dictum of Nelaton, that the treatment of fracture of the thigh should last for a hundred days, is a safe working-rule. In fractures of the shaft an ordinary Thomas' knee splint, or a "walking calliper splint" which is fixed to the heel of the boot, may be worn ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... experience has verified the dictum of the Serbian and Bulgarian Generals in the war of 1913, namely, that "two months in the field are necessary in order to get at the full value of reserves." Our infantry is now accustomed to the rapid and thorough "organization" of the defensive. In August it neither liked nor had the habit of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought to be read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, after an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while literature in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of modern thought. The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended largely upon what one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the new environment fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of wading through the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... an interview with his wife and family; and, secondly, the fact that there were letters in cypher found in his possession, and that a direct invitation to the Sultan to rescue him by force was among the impounded documents ("Quod requirebat dictum Teucrum ut mitteret ex galeis suis ad accipiendum et levandum eum de dicto loco"), proves that the appeal to the Duke of Milan was bona fide, and not a mere act of desperation. (See The Two Doges, pp. 101, 102, and Berlan's I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... general acquaintance with mystical theology and philosophy is very desirable in the interests of the English Church at the present time. I am not one of those who think that the points at issue between Anglo-Catholics and Anglo-Protestants are trivial: history has always confirmed Aristotle's famous dictum about parties—[Greek: gignontai ai staseis ou peri mikron all' ek mikron, stasiazousi de peri megalon]—but I do not so far despair of our Church, or of Christianity, as to doubt that a reconciling principle must and will be found. Those who do me the honour to read ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... of, knight of the shire for Lancashire. Kelso. Kenilworth, Dictum de. Kenilworth Castle. Kennington. Kensham. Kent; earldom of. Kent, Earl of, Hubert de Burgh. See Burgh. Kent, Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of. See Edmund. Kerry (Wales); Vale of; scutage of. Kervyn de Lettenhove's edition of Froissart. Kesteven, South. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... example, do justice either to Genesis or to St. Paul to say, as has been said, that according to their representation, 'Death—not spiritual, but natural death—is the direct consequence of sin and its specific penalty.' In such a dictum, the distinctions again mislead. To read the third chapter of Genesis in this sense would mean that what we had to find in it was a mythological explanation of the origin of physical death. But does any one believe ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... the editions of this council, Osius with the two priests. Vito and Vincent, is first named among the subscribers. Socrates also names them first, and before the patriarchs. Osius Episc. Cordubae, ita credo, ut sup. dictum est. Vito et Vincentius presbyteri urbis Romae. Egypti Alexander Episc. Antiochiae Eustathius, &c. (Socr. l. 1, c.13.) It is then false what Blondel (de la primante de l'Eglise, p. 1195) pretends, that St. Eustathius ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... justified his policy by the dictum: "Necessity knows no law," evidently meant that necessity also recognizes no law of truth. In any case, he remained faithful to the traditions of his country. Although the German Press is both venal and supine, we shall see that it has done the world a service and played its own Government a ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... whereas the connotation of a general term, such as 'sheep,' consists of intrinsic qualities. Hence, then, the scholastic doctrine 'that individuals have no essence' (see chap. xxii. Sec. 9), and Hamilton's dictum 'that every concept is inadequate to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... partem euentum consilij mei considerem. Accedit, quod praeter omnem expectationem meam ab omnibus tuis ciuibus, quibus comaliqua consuetudo mihi contigit, tanta passim humanitate acceptus essem, vt iam (sit hoc saluo pietate a me dictum) suauissimae Anglorum amicitiae ferme aboleuerint desiderium et Pannoniarum et Budae meae, quibus patriae nomen debeo. Quas ab caussas cum saepenumero animus fuisset significationem aliquam nostrae huius voluntatis ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... well also to keep on record the striking dictum of Lord Kelvin, addressed to the students of University College.[3] "Science," he told ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... serious form I should be unwilling to do so, for there is surely enough ponderous literature on the subject, and although some may resent in a book what often helps to make a lecture attractive, I think I can rely on the fact that many people agree with the dictum of Horace: ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... profession I would choose before it," said Rex. "I should like to end my life as a first-rate judge, and help to draw up a code. I reverse the famous dictum. I should say, 'Give me something to do with making the laws, and let ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... the year 1910, the daily papers announced that before the beginning of 1911 every Priest in the Diocese was required to take an oath to oppose and resist Modernism and to obey in all things the dictum and dogmas of His Holiness. As everyone knows that under the term Modernism is included all progress, investigation, and civilization condemned by the Vatican, everything that even questions the dogmas and despotism of Rome, the meaning of this ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... substantial equality between the parties. In proportion as one party is in a position of vantage, he is able to dictate his terms. In proportion as the other party is in a weak position, he must accept unfavourable terms. Hence the truth of Walker's dictum that economic injuries tend to perpetuate themselves. The more a class is brought low, the greater its difficulty in rising again without assistance. For purposes of legislation the State has been exceedingly slow to accept this view. It began, as we saw, with the child, where the case ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... maxims from the dark ages that seem to form the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level a year before Bloch wrote. So ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... syllogism, because the validity of moods in this figure may be tested directly by their complying, or failing to comply, with a certain axiom, the truth of which is self-evident. This axiom is known as the Dictum de Omni et Nullo. It may be ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... Cagliostro figure in every account of eighteenth-century magicians, it is only in exclusively Judaic or masonic works, not intended for the general public, that we shall find any reference to Falk. Have we not here striking evidence of the truth of M. Andre Baron's dictum: "Remember that the constant rule of the secret societies is that the real authors ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... expression from the Supreme Bench in 1820 to the effect that the name United States as here used should include the District of Columbia and other territory, it was no part even then of the decision actually rendered, and it would be absurd to stretch this mere dictum of three quarters of a century ago, relating then, at any rate, to this continent alone, to carry the Dingley tariff ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... repeated in detail all previous arguments, and expressed a fervent hope that Monseigneur would withdraw the request. It would, in the end, be more to Monseigneur's advantage, etc. Back and forth travelled the commissioner between States and duchess. The latter simply reiterated her dictum that Mary must certainly set forth to visit her father in May, with an adequate escort, in whose ranks must appear three prelates, three or four barons, fifty knights, and notable men from the "good ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady." - "Neither the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... third question he was supported by almost half the Committee, and only failed to carry his amendment against the Government through a dictum of the then Attorney-General, that the Law of Nuisance could not be invoked to stop picketing. This law has, however, since been invoked against the pickets of the Hotel, Club, and Restaurant Workers' Union, and under it several members ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... explained in the chain of twelve links. The Madhyamika theory that objects have no absolute and independent existence but appear to exist in virtue of their relations is a restatement of this ancient dictum. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... rival. The Dred Scott case afforded the occasion for a decision. Of the nine judges on the Supreme Bench seven were Democrats, and of these five were appointed from slave-States. A better opportunity for the South to obtain a favorable dictum could never be expected to arise. A declaration by the Supreme Court of the United States that under the Constitution Congress possessed no power to prohibit slavery in the Federal Territories would by a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... openly. "It is your surest hold upon her. I shouldn't cavil at it, if I were you. To Anne you are the sum total of human knowledge. Your dictum is the last word to be said ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... Priest adopted the feelings and taken up the inheritance of the old. One of his favourite aphorisms is the strange one, that the living are more and more governed by the dead. As is not uncommon with him, he introduces the dictum in one sense, and uses it in another. What he at first means by it, is that as civilization advances, the sum of our possessions, physical and intellectual, is due in a decreasing proportion to ourselves, and in an increasing one to our progenitors. The use he makes of it is, that we ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... of all great art, and showed that whatever men drew at all ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly, not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things),' proceeding to the following curious dictum,—'If you can paint one leaf you can paint the world.' The Pre-Raphaelite laws 'lay stern on the strength of Apelles and Zeuxis, put Titian to thoughtful trouble, are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed!—the above-named Titian has done ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... impute no motives to the honoured men who hold the doctrine. They are doubtless as sincere in their belief as we are in ours. It did seem to us, at one time, that God could convert men if He wished it; but the dictum of Chillingworth—"the Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants," overturned that idea. The words of Jesus, "How often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . but ye would not," showed that Jesus was wishful to save the people; but His wish was not realised, because ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... crowd by serving up raw morsels of crude humor and pathos for the unthinking to wheeze and blubber over, knowing that these members of the audience will excite their more phlegmatic neighbors by contagion. The practical dictum that every laugh in the first act is worth money in the box-office is founded on this psychologic truth. Even puns as bad as Mr. Zangwill's are of value early in a play to set on some quantity of barren spectators and get the house accustomed to a titter. Scenes like the foot-ball ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... fitness of the idea pleased her. She had always understood that humorists were marked by a deep-dyed melancholy, that the height of unhappiness was a vantage-ground from which to view the joke of existence. She would test the dictum; now, if ever, she would write humorously. The material was at hand, seething and crowding in her mind, in fact—the monumental dullness and complacent narrowness of the villagers, the egoism, the conceit, the bland shepherd-of-his-flock pomposity of John ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population are 'mostly fools,' but little profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... a great authority, holds that early popular poetry is "improvised and contemporary with its facts" (Histoire poetique de Charlemagne). If this dictum be applied to such ballads as "The Bonny Earl o' Murray," "Kinmont Willie," "Jamie Telfer" and "Jock o' the Side," it must appear that the contemporary poets often knew little of the events and knew that little wrong. We gather the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... the production of dynamos and arc lamps as they then existed? Even though this young man at Menlo Park had done some wonderful things for telegraphy and telephony; even if he had recorded and reproduced human speech, he had his limitations, and could not upset the settled dictum of science that the internal resistance must equal ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... which, had it been carried out, would, in all probability, have ended in the fall of British rule in India. "In an extraordinary situation extraordinary resolution is needed," was the saying of the Great Napoleon, and to no crisis in our history was this dictum more applicable than that at Delhi in September, 1857. Mutiny and rebellion spread their hydra heads over the land, disaffection was rife in the Punjab, our only source of supply for operations in the field; and nought could ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... forgive me for putting her in the wrong over it," he said to himself. Then he turned the doctor's dictum over in his mind; he tried to believe that Goriot was not so dangerously ill as he had imagined, and ended by collecting together a sufficient quantity of traitorous excuses for Delphine's conduct. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... some other limit. But I must first mention the sentiment which used to call forth Scipio's severest criticism. He often said that no one ever gave utterance to anything more diametrically opposed to the spirit of friendship than the author of the dictum, "You should love your friend with the consciousness that you may one day hate him." He could not be induced to believe that it was rightfully attributed to Bias, who was counted as one of the Seven ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero



Words linked to "Dictum" :   judgement, directive, judgment, opinion, jurisprudence, law, declaration, legal opinion



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