"Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that our countrymen might there enjoy good health, and also be of signal benefit, by leading the multitude of industrious inhabitants to cultivate cotton, buaze, sugar, and other valuable produce, to exchange for goods of European manufacture; at the same time teaching them, by precept and example, the great truths of our ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... the most important poets of the century, though he can not be called in any large sense one of the greatest. His importance is due to the emphasis that he placed on the element of form both by his precept and by his practice. The directness and sincerity of the emotional cry are lost sight of in the pursuit of exquisite and perfect workmanship in the representation of outward beauty. L'Art, p. 190, sums up his poetic art. Later poetry has been profoundly influenced by this doctrine. His natural ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... less than the outer barbarian, Left him to die in his ignorant sin; Have you no principles, humanitarian? Have you no precept — ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... desired consequence is not really effected by the observance of a magical ceremony, so the dreaded consequence does not really result from the violation of a taboo. If the supposed evil necessarily followed a breach of taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common sense. It is not a taboo to say, "Do not put your hand in the fire"; it is a rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Collins, of the City of Pittsburg, stands among the men of note; and we could not complete this list of usefulness, without the name of Mr. Collins. Raised a poor boy, thrown upon the uncertainties of chance, without example of precept, save such as the public at large presents; Mr. Collins quit his former vocation of a riverman, and without means, except one hundred and fifty dollars, and no assistance from any quarter, commenced speculating in real estate. And though only rising ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... keeping the language of the home uniform throughout our world-wide community. Purely intellectual development beyond the matter of language we may leave for a space. There remains the distinctive mental and moral function of the home, the determination by precept, example, and implication of the cardinal habits of the developing citizen, his general demeanour, his fundamental beliefs about all the common ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Sylvia Armytage. But pride, or vanity if you prefer it, denied her here. Sylvia was an inexperienced young girl, as she herself had so often found occasion to remind her cousin. Moreover, she fostered the fond illusion that Sylvia looked to her for precept, that upon Sylvia's life she exercised a precious guiding influence. How, then, should the supporting lean upon the supported? Yet since she must, there and then, lean upon something or succumb instantly and completely, she chose a middle ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee. Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, 'Put it up'? Or did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, when they would have had fire from heaven to ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in word and deed, such as endeared him to all classes, but especially to those whose humble condition in life gave them the strongest claim upon his virtues, both as a man and a pastor. Difficult, indeed, would it be to find a minister of the gospel, whose practice and precept corresponded with such beautiful fitness, nor one who, in the midst of his own domestic circle, threw such calm lustre around him as a husband and a father. A temper grave but sweet, wit playful and innocent, and tenderness that kept his spirit benignant to ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... parchment on which were written various portions of the Mosaic law, for the Jews believed that these ligaments had power to avert every kind of evil, but especially to drive away demons. as appears from the Targum on the Canticles," etc. We see that the Babylonian precept was to bind holy sentences "around the head" and others "right and left of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... think of, any more than I dream of, playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to me; what I long for is knowledge—some other knowledge than comes to us in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand all this better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere in which I have always lived. To break a window and let in light and air—I feel as if at last I ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 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 best ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... evident that he who expects the favor of fortune in return for his observance of precept is mistaken. The "work that is wrought under the sun" makes no special provision for him during his lifetime. Unless the cry of vanity is to be the last word there must be a reinterpretation of the promise of God. This appears in the new ideal of patient submission, and the chastened ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... retired veteran, who has all his life profited by this great precept of lecturing strategy, I forgot all about it just when it would have been most useful. I was fatuous enough to imagine that a number of propositions, which I thought established, and which, in fact, I had advanced without challenge on former ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by his precept ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... province. The fact is this: Some rash young fellows of the place got in and set up a statue of the Emperor in the Jews' synagogue. Agrippa the Great made complaints to Petronius concerning this injury. Whereupon Petronius issued a very sharp precept to the magistrates of Doris. He terms this action an offence, not against the Jews only, but also against the Emperor; says, it is agreeable to the law of nature that every man should be master of his own places, according ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... 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 ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... point, a new author has just given us the following precept and criticism: "Never connect by or, or nor, two or more names or substitutes that have the same asserter [i.e. verb] depending on them for sense, if when taken separately, they require different forms of the asserters. Examples. 'Neither you nor I am concerned. Either he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... very well as a precept; but what has that to do with our names, and how did you make that out of ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... the rules of politeness in the every-day life of their own households can never deceive others into thinking them well bred on "company" occasions. Ease and refinement of manners are only acquired by habitual practice, and parents should early accustom their children by both precept and example to observe the requirements of good behavior and politeness at table. Elaborate details are not necessary. We subjoin a few of the more simple ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Mount, in which He embodied such a wealth of moral precept and spiritual counsel, He warned against investments in that which would divert the affections from the great purpose of life. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." "For where your treasure ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... sd Bridgett Bishop als Olliver from their Majties Goale in Salem aforesd to the place of execution and there cause her to be hanged by the neck until she be dead and of your doings herein make returne to the Clerk of the sd Court and precept And hereof you are not to faile at your peril And this shall be sufficient warrant Given under my hand & seal at Boston the Eighth of June in the ffourth year of the reigne of our Sovereigne Lords William & Mary now King & Queen over ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... during a woman's pregnancy, and after the child is born to burn a lamp for three nights and days—a fire, indeed, is declared to be better—"so that the demons and fiends may not be able to do any damage and harm." By way of enforcing this precept we are told that when Zoroaster was born, a demon came at the head of a hundred and fifty other demons, every night for three nights, to slay him, but they were put to flight by seeing the fire, and were consequently ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... (1865-68) and "Anna Karenina" (1875-78); has written many works since, all more or less in a religious vein, and in the keenest, deepest sympathy with the soul-oppression of the world, finding the secret of Christianity to lie in the precept of Christ, "Resist not evil," and exemplifying that as the principle of his own ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numerous Undignified,—who indeed are properly little other than Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. For one example, out of many, mark that plausible Gregoire: one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and screamed aloud. But John was too sincerely religious to cherish a revengeful spirit. The wrong done to him was as great as one mortal could inflict upon another; but he had learned the divine precept not to render ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... "I kept the precept;—by the sword Compell'd to win me bread, A soldier's life of storm and strife For forty years I led, Yet ne'er by this reluctant arm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed—that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, 'Let your yea be yea, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... what during the next six weeks I told that youth, by precept, by homily, and by making the solution so obvious that he could work it ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... surrounding It, and I shook with an awful thunder of sound. ... Today I have been happy to tears, and in the blue afternoon on the cliffs with my mother, I shared "Endymion" and "Epipsychidion." ... I do not understand why silence is spoken of as a precept. To me it is the living attribute of God. ... How nobly scornful is Sir Aubrey ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... and foster with parental hand The living talent of our native land. O! may we still, to sense and nature true, Delight the many, nor offend the few. Though varying tastes our changeful Drama claim, Still be its moral tendency the same, To win by precept, by example warn, To brand the front of Vice with pointed scorn, And Virtue's smiling ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... his cause, has been obliged to forget the command recorded in "the beggarly elements," to have been given from Mount Sinai, "thou shalt not speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment." Exod. xxiii, 2. There are, however, cases in which lawyers allow that this precept may be dispensed with, particularly if the cause be of great importance: and more particularly still when the ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... Again, at the bottom of the veriest frondeur with English blood in his veins, in his most defiant moment there lies a conviction that after all something known as common sense is the measure of life, and that to work hard is a demonstrated precept of common sense. Carlylism exactly hits this and brings it forward. We cannot wonder that Byronism ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... man shall his blood be shed." The apologist of our fathers, for carrying into effect the law making witchcraft a capital offence, tells us in reply, in the first place, that this passage is not of the nature of a precept, but merely of an admonition; that it does not enjoin any particular method of proceeding, but simply describes the natural consequences of cruel and contentious conduct; and that it amounts only to this: that quarrelsome, violent, and bloodthirsty persons ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... conscience. It is no exaggeration to say the world is wholly the ear to hear the news from the goddess of peace. A time will surely come, if our purpose be steady and our resolution firm, when universal peace will be restored, and Shakya Muni's precept, 'not to kill,' will be realized ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... 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 a native of Madrid, a priest, and one of long service in his order—formed an agreement with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... estimated, over 50,000 adherents whose worship is a jumble of perverted Christian mysticism and idolatry. The Baibailanes of Negros are not entirely pagans; there is just a glimmer of Christian precept mingled in their belief, whilst the scores of religious monomaniacs and saint-hawkers who appear from time to time present only a burlesque ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... individuals. You cannot be said to have 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 ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... of ambition with me is long past and gone, and when that day of retribution, which, as it cometh to all, so it shall come to us, is drawing nigh, I may say that it ever has been my fervent and steadfast prayer to be able to illustrate in my humble life the precept of my pious friend. ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... name by which our old schoolmaster was endeared to his boys; a kindly, simple-minded, worthy man, teaching, as well as scholastic subjects, behaviour, morals, truth, loyalty; and these as much by example as by precept, impressing ever upon us the virtue of thoroughness in all we did and of truth in all we said. Since those days I have seen many youths, educated at much finer and more pretentious schools, who have benefited by modern educational methods, and on whose education ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... to Schir James Hammyltoun, in parte payment of the rest of his comptis for the warkis of Lynlythqw and Blakness, at the Kingis command, be ane precept, iij^c. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... a shrewd, level-headed man of affairs, who knew Lord Clarendon in the way we know men we have to see on business matters, whose speeches we can listen to, and whose conduct we discuss and criticise. "Gently scan your brother-man" is a precept Marvell never took to heart; nor is the House of Commons a place where it is either ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... was well disposed toward Samaria, and often preferred the Samaritans to the orthodox Jews. If, at other times, he seems to forbid his disciples preaching to them, confining his gospel to the Israelites proper,[3] this was no doubt a precept arising from special circumstances, to which the apostles have given too absolute a meaning. Sometimes, in fact, the Samaritans received him badly, because they thought him imbued with the prejudices of his co-religionists;[4]—in the same manner as in our ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... my brighter moments. Alas, it is not always so. Heavily weights on me at times the burdensome reflection that I cannot honestly say I am confident as to the exact shape of the once-seen, oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... page, the Brethren explained their own interpretation of those commandments. "Lest it should be thought," they said, "that they seek, perhaps, some subterfuge in the pretended indeterminate nature of Scripture-style, they know very well that it becomes them to understand every precept and obligation in the same manner as the generality of serious Christians understand the same (and this is a thing, God be praised, pretty well fixed), or, if at all differently, then always stricter." The purpose ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... We have to see what was done by our poet to awake that voice again and to put fresh life into those instincts. Only let us remember that more permanent good is done in this world by a beautiful nature giving itself its natural expression, than by precept or denunciation; and beware of attributing to Virgil more direct consciousness of his mission than he really felt. It is the nature of the man that is of value to us in our studies, as it was to the Romans in their despair, a nature ruled by sweet, calm feeling, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... thou inquire what thi[n]g Iu[-] stice is / whereof it cometh / what partes it hath / & what is the office or effect of euery parte / than hast thou dilige[n]tly serched out the hole nature of Iustice / & handeled thy simple theme accordyng to the precept[e]s of Logicians / to whom our auctour leueth suche mat[er]s to be discussed of the[m] / how beit somwhat y^e Rhetoricia[n]s haue to do with y^e simple theme / & asmoche as shall be for theyr entent he wyll shew hereafter. For many tymes the oratour must vse bothe diffinicions & diuisions. ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... whom this man related the incident told him he was acquainted with the lady, who was a great lover of flowers and an earnest follower of the precept: "Scatter your flowers as you go, for you may never travel the same road again." He said she added greatly to the beauty of the landscape along the railroads on which she traveled, by her custom of scattering flower seeds along ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin, a bottle of Burgundy to the xerif of Mecca. We are guided by precept, by habit, by taste, by constitution. Hitherto our sentiments on poetry have been delivered down to us from authority; and if it can be demonstrated, as I think it may be, that the authority is inadequate, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... in anger assuredly; but biding its time, which the anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians being told not to let the sun go down upon it. Precept which Christians now-a-days are perfectly ready to obey, if it is somebody else who has been injured; and indeed, the difficulty in such cases is usually to get them to think of the injury even while the Sun rises on ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... off that disturb you. [5:13]For you are called to liberty, brothers, only make not your liberty an occasion for the flesh, but by love serve one another. [5:14]For all the law is fully contained in one precept; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. [5:15]But if you bite and devour one another, see that you be not consumed ...
— The New Testament • Various
... have always 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 ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... points Confucius frequently insisted, and strove both by precept and example to impart the spirit they reflected on all around him. In the presence of his prince we are told that his manner, though self-possessed, displayed respectful uneasiness. When he entered the palace, or when he passed the vacant throne, his countenance changed, his legs bent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... who it is that thus opens his Hand and fills the World with Good. The Apostle instructs us to take advantage of our present Temper of Mind, to graft upon it such a religious Exercise as is particularly conformable to it, by that Precept which advises those who are sad to pray, and those who are merry to sing Psalms. The Chearfulness of Heart which springs up in us from the Survey of Nature's Works, is an admirable Preparation for Gratitude. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... ground. But once more he saves himself by giving a wider definition both to thought and action, both to "well knowing and to well doing", than is common with moralists. By the former most moralists are apt to understand the bare "precept", thought as crystallized in its immediate bearing upon action. By the latter they commonly mean the passive rather than the active virtues, temperance and self-restraint rather than energy and resolve. From both these limitations ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... just in its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed. The war has been waged on our part with scrupulous regard to all these obligations, and in a spirit of liberality which was ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... perturbed in the course of 1916 at the sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, working men had for some time been convinced, but the great statesmen who had so ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... through the rules of their order or their particular devotion should be assigned the district to which they were to go, not permitting them to pursue their voyage by way of Filipinas or any other part of the Western Indias, but by way of Eastern India—notwithstanding that the precept for the propagation and preaching of the gospel is common to all the faithful, and especially charged upon the religious—we consider it fitting that the missions and entrances of Japon be not limited to only the religious of the Society ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... boasted of his conquests among the women, nor affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering the grand precept of Zoroaster, "When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should they even bite thee." He was as wise as it is possible for man to be, for he sought to live with ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... agree with Spinoza, but is he not right when he says, "The first precept of the divine law, therefore, indeed its sum and substance, is to love God unconditionally as the supreme good—unconditionally, I say, and not from any love or fear of aught besides"? And again, that the very essence of religion is belief in "a Supreme Being ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the happiness of which you spoke, to whom shall we owe it, mother?" demanded Percy, feelingly; for he too, attracted by his mother's emotion, had joined the group. "Whose care, under God's blessing, has made us as we are, and taught us, not only by precept but example, how to conduct ourselves and our children? yours and my father's; and if indeed in after years our children look up to us and bless us as we do you, oh, my mother, the remembrance of you will mingle with that blessedness, and render ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... principal cause of them in the present condition and habits of the adult part of the labouring classes. We shall find, very frequently, that infant crime is the only natural produce of evil, by the infallible means of precept and example. I do not intend to assert, that the majority of parents amongst the poor, actually encourage their children in the commission of theft; we may, indeed, fear that some do; as in the instance of the two little girls detected in shop-lifting, whose case was detailed ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... sense of the primary importance of the moral law; and in others, as in Jeremy Taylor, by their hold upon the concrete imagery of a traditional theology; whilst to some, the mystic vision is strangely blended with an acceptance of the epicurean precept, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Sir Thomas Browne seems to be held back from abandoning himself to the ecstasies of abstract meditation, chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour. There is a closer connection than we are always willing to admit between humour and profanity. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... been a doubt of the truth of the proverb that example is better than precept, the behaviour of the young men and maidens of Pitcairn, after the wedding just described, would have cleared that doubt ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... daughter. She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are blushing for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their unusually munificent mistress. I shall give you "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" of Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his pagan standard. "There is a real greatness," he says, "even in the way that some men will ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... head slave, whose wife he had made free, and promised the same boon to him, if he conducted himself well a few years longer. I thought it right to intimate my view of the nature of slavery and the slave trade, and that I deemed it wholly inconsistent with the plain precept "do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." This he did not attempt to controvert, yet he stated in extenuation, that the law permitted the trade in slaves, though he should be as willing as any one to have the system abolished, if the State would grant them ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... are also in the epistle before us several others, in which the sentiment is the same with what we meet with in Saint Matthew's Gospel, and two or three in which we recognize the same words. In particular, the author of the epistle repeats the precept, "Give to every one that asketh thee;" (Matt. v. 42.) and saith that Christ chose as his apostles, who were to preach the Gospel, men who were great sinners, that he might show that he came "not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... hidden windows, frightened by the despotic governor, to whom any commiseration that should be shown to the poor archbishop was regarded as a detestable crime. The soldiers took the archbishop to the gate on the river, called Santo Domingo, where the prelate, complying with the precept of Christ, shook off the dust from his shoes; and, bathed in tender tears, he threw five little stones at the ingrate walls of Manila. It was noted that one of them touched the leg of Don Pedro de Corcuera (sargento-mayor of the camp, and chief of that impious execution), where ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... 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 your final instructions ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... could be found ready and willing to take hold of it, and aid the inventor in introducing it into use. But farmers as a class are proverbially cautious, and disinclined to change from established customs and usages; it often requires "line upon line and precept upon precept," aided, too, by almost a free gift of the article, to induce them even to give a new agricultural implement a fair trial,—a plough, for instance, that will do better work, with a fourth to a third less draught; the old and ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... Wydeawake, ten years agone, Toil'd to arouse dull old Britain betimes, By example—he shouldered his rifle alone, By precept—he showered his letters and rhymes,— With bullets he peppered old Sherborne's hillside, With ballads and articles worried the Press,— The more he was sneer'd at, the stronger he tried, And would not be ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the author came to revise the material, he found sins against taste which his zeal for righteousness could not suffice to atone for. He did not hesitate to omit the proofs of these, and so far to make himself not only a precept, but an example in criticism. He hopes that in other and slighter things he has bettered his own instruction, and that in form and in fact the book is altogether less crude and less rude than the papers from which it has here been ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... far rather have had the easy thought that they had been on the other side of the ballot. But this was mere human sentimentality at the thought of the passing of one man's life. This thing was necessary, necessary for example and precept. A man had slain another. He was guilty; he must die. The argument was as old ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Christ taught, that He also did, according to Acts 1:1: "Jesus began to do and to teach." But He taught (Matt. 15:11) that "not" all "that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man": and this is contrary to the precept of the Law, which declared that a man was made unclean by eating and touching certain animals, as stated Lev. 11. Therefore it seems that He did not conform His ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... easy for a student of literature to support the proposition that Shakespeare can be, and ought to be, represented on the stage. But it is difficult to define the ways and means of securing practical observance of the precept. For some years there has been a widening divergence of view respecting methods of Shakespearean production. Those who defend in theory the adaptability of Shakespeare to the stage are at variance with the leading managers, who alone possess the power of conferring on the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... us in the conduct of nineteen volumes of this Miscellany, that the most effectual method of conveying instruction, or aiding the progress of knowledge, is by combining it with amusement; or, in other words by at once aiming at the head and heart. The world is already too full of precept upon precept; and a smattering of principles is too often found in the place of practice. How can this order of things be improved but by setting forth duties as innocent pleasures, sweetening utility with entertainment, and garnishing fact with fancy. A man need not study Adam Smith's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... beg your pardon, but I go to church and I have had 'Love one another!' dinned into my ears. What is to become of that precept, eh?" ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 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 he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... add that while there may be an honest difference of opinion regarding the efficacy of legislative enactments in overcoming or restraining the drink habit, there should be little doubt that a whole-hearted, persistent, precept-and-example effort of the medical profession exerted as individuals on their patients and the families of their patients, and as associations on the community at ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... of Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to Men's Business and Bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... school-room looked down on the lodge kitchen and parlour, and her discontent was a matter of vanity with her parents, as a sign of her superiority, while plausibility and caution were continually enjoined on her rather by example than by precept, and she was often aware of her mother's indulgence of erratic propensities in religion, unknown either to her father or ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or three decisions which, at the time of making them, we know to be weighty. Depend upon it that, if we have not learned the habit of committing the daily-recurring monotonous steps to Him, we shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pastimes. Health and strength for the growing babies were promoted by proper exercises, a good carriage and graceful movement of little arms and legs being duly considered. Polite manners, and the correct use of language were taught by precept and example. More than all, the juvenile minds were, directly and indirectly, drilled to acquire the habit ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... his precept to the Sheriff of Staffordshire, in which Perry lies, to bring with him twelve lawful and discreet knights; and the same to the Sheriff of Warwickshire, of which Witton is part, to ascertain ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... goods of this world but for a season; the Lord—as correctives to honor and riches—the Lord has placed sufferings, sickness, and death; and no one," added she, with a melancholy smile, which proved she made the application of the funeral precept to herself, "no man can take his wealth or greatness with him to the grave. It results, therefore, that the young gather the abundant harvest prepared for them by ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he hesitates not to stupify those noble faculties which he cannot hope to extinguish, and with which he has been endowed by the God of nature, for wise and benevolent purposes. And will you, gentlemen, by precept and example, longer sanction such a course of conduct,—conduct so degrading to us as intelligent beings, and as conservators ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... time. "If Plato's page No wiser precept teaches, Then I'd renounce that doubtful sage, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Eckhart's "spark" and Tauler's "image." It is significant that the author tells us that we cannot see with both eyes together; the left eye must be shut before we can use the right.[270] The passage where this precept is given shows very plainly that the author, like the other fourteenth century mystics,[271] was still under the influence of mediaeval dualism—the belief that the Divine begins where the earthly leaves off. It ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... social possibilities than the former, because it implies a sympathetic rather than an antagonistic organic attitude. It is certainly in virtue of susceptibility to the opinion of others that society works—through public opinion, fashion, tradition, reproof, encouragement, precept, and doctrine—to bring the individual under control and make him a member of society; and it is doubtful whether this could have been accomplished if a peculiar attitude of responsiveness to opinion had not arisen in sexual relations, reinforcing the more general ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... in perfect sincerity, and, although they might not conform to the standards of so-called civilization, they are surely purer in God's sight than those of millions who pattern theirs by printed precept." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... noble, and aims so lofty, that not his country alone, but the whole of mankind, benefited by his work. It is no exaggeration to say that he has raised the standard of civilization, and the world to-day is undoubtedly better for both the precept and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... contained in the major, is a task left to the judgment of the inquirer in each particular case. Something is here intrusted to individual understanding; whereas in the Koran, from the circumstantiality of the rule, you are obliged mechanically to rest in the letter of the precept. The Christian Scriptures, therefore, not only teach, but train the mind to habits of self-teaching in all moral questions, by enforcing more or less of activity in applying the rule; that is, in subsuming the given case ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort out what is intended for example, what only as narrative,—what to be understood literally, what figuratively,—where one precept is to be controlled and modified by another,—what is used directly, and what only as an argument ad hominem,—what is temporary, and what of perpetual obligation,—what appropriated to one state ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of infancy, childhood, and boyhood, passed as the father could have wished. A young Nazarene could not have been bred up with more rigour. All that was evil was withheld from his observation—he only heard what was pure in precept—he only witnessed what was ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... attend on Monday at the Town Hall and take the necessary oath, 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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, not designed, not intended ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... complication and a character in action commonly resemble gleaners who are intent only on picking up the cars of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they wax over-eager for the little trifles, and make too much of them. Observers should begin upon the precept, that not all we see is worth hoarding, and that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale with what we know of the situation, before we commit ourselves to a measurement. And they may be accurate observers without being good judges. They do not think so, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my father's precept—"Better owe A yard of land to labour, than to chance Be debtor ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... of the [Hebrew: hkma yonit] (Greek wisdom). When Ben Zoma desired to study the [Hebrew: sfrim hitsonim], and asked of his teacher at what hour of the day it was lawful to do so, he received the reply that it was permissible at an hour which was neither day nor night; for the precept was to study the Torah by day and night, as it is said, [Hebrew: ] (Josh. i. 8). Bar Kappara, indeed, a rabbi of the third century, explained Genesis ix. 27, "God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... allurements, it behooves us to be ever watching, if we are never to stumble and to fall. Had our nature never been corrupted by original unfaithfulness, had our first parents never turned away from God and transgressed His sacred precept, all our present ills would never have existed. But now it is different. We are born into the world a weakened people; each one of us has had an implicit part in the first transgression; we all, like erring sheep, have gone ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... arguments was that if men only read and studied the Scriptures for themselves in their own mother tongue, whatever that tongue might be, they would have power to judge for themselves how far the practice of the church differed from apostolic precept and from the teachings of Christ, it was thought equally advisable to keep out of the hands of the people the translated Scriptures, which might produce such heterodox changes in their minds; and all efforts ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with example and precept, and, as usual, irritation died a speedy death in the presence of his bright, cheery personality. While they were still laughing and cheering each other on to fresh exploits, a lad from the post office passed along the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the "Wertherian malady" to a whole generation, but he himself emerged triumphant and unscathed. The hurricane which wrecked so many powerful intellects spared his own. After the Italian journey he never ceased by example and precept to recommend harmony and balance, and he became so completely the perfect type of intellectual and artistic sanity that the world has forgotten the Bohemian days of Frankfurt and Leipzig, the merry days of Weimar, the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Republic and after leading an ephemeral existence have 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 to allow the press full liberty, but ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... sudden stimulus to him against whom it was directed; the old precept that he who strikes first strikes best, John Steele seemed fully to appreciate. His heavy stick flashed in the air, rang hard; the way before him cleared, he did not linger. But close behind now the others came fast; his door, however, was near. Now he reached it, fitted the heavy key. Had it turned ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... "Mormonism" it is assumed that no discussion of Christianity in general nor of the philosophy of Christianity is required. The "Mormon" creed, so far as there is a creed professed by the Latter-day Saints, is pre-eminently Christian in theory, precept, and practise. In what respect, then, may be properly asked, does "Mormonism" differ from the faith and practise of other professedly Christian systems—in ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... pleasures and labours, although more especially connected with home; since none could perform their religious duties with less ostentation, with more single-hearted sincerity—none could more carefully follow the precept, to "give with simplicity," than Miss Wyllys, and the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... for the sake of any gratification, however small. Accustomed to battening on the hopes of humanity,—accustomed to taking stock in human degradation, and declaring dividends upon enforced ignorance and crime,—existing only while every canon of the common law is annulled, and every precept of morals and civilization set at nought,—could it be expected to pause just when, or rather just because, it had apparently found the richest possible prey? Could it be expected to withhold its fang for no other reason than that its fang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... taken by Aurelian from Zenobia were such standards, Persici Dracones. The Persians represented Ormuzd and Ahriman by two serpents, contending for the mundane egg. Mithras is represented with a lion's head and human body, encircled by a serpent. In the Sadder is this precept: "When you kill serpents, you will repeat the Zend-Avesta, and thence you will obtain great merit; for it is the same as if you had killed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... build so much on their ceremonies and petty traditions of men that they think one heaven is too poor a reward for so great merit, little dreaming that the time will come when Christ, not regarding any of these trifles, will call them to account for His precept of charity. One shall show you a large trough full of all kinds of fish; another tumble you out so many bushels of prayers; another reckon you so many myriads of fasts, and fetch them up again in one dinner by eating till he cracks again; another produces more bundles ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... early years of the National Dramatic Company. Because of this old association, Dublin audiences insisted in 1902 in seeing humor in his Peter Gillane in "Cathleen ni Houlihan." For all this past, however, Mr. Fay was intent on serious drama, and, with the precept and example of Mr. Russell and Mr. Yeats always present to him in the early days of the National Theatre Company, and with what he had gathered from the experimental performance of Irish plays by "The Irish Literary Theatre," he advanced surely in his art ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... sublime indifference, this stoical ataraxia, of God; and, since the precept of charity always has failed to promote social welfare, let us look to pure reason for the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... one of his pupils, "to think with the wise, but speak with the vulgar." This is a precept specious enough, but not always practicable. Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Into his creations, Shakespeare pours wide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or shut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great sense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and dried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life itself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents this sense of varied life as manifested or objectified in his creations, i.e., his characters. In Othello, ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... course. In my judgment it would speedily become their duty to go to their respective homes. They had been the leaders of the people, had sought and accepted high office at their hands, and it was for them to teach the masses, by example and precept, how best to meet impending troubles. Possibly they might suffer annoyance and persecution from Federal power, but manhood and duty required them to incur the risk. To the credit of these gentlemen it should be recorded that they followed ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... 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 school ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... and reformation the incident," was the theory of the old school. The New school reverses the order to "Reformation the principle and punishment the incident." Obviously this course renounces the old principle of retaliation and vengeance and embraces that indicated by Christ in his precept "bear ye ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... path of folly? Can you | | thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves unspotted from | | the world, or call yourselves the children of a pure God? O thou | | spiritual blind guide! Where are you leading the people to by precept | | and example? You have led and allowed the nations to walk into the | | ditch. | | | | Habit is harder to serve than a king, and its taxes are greater, for | | they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... the pen, and to correctors for the print, to direct such peple as teach childern to read and write English, and the reading must nedes be such as the writing leads vnto, thererfor, (sic) befor I medle with anie particular precept, to direct the Reader, Iwill thoroughlie rip vp the hole certaintie of our English writing, so far furth and with such assurance, as probabilitie can make me, bycause it is a thing both proper to my argument, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... This precept would not keep the fruit very long unless protected by a closefitting cover and sterilization. Cf. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... which we will treat more particularly later on, is to the effect that the obelisk was raised to the memory of Alcfrid, son of that King of Northumbria, who decided to celebrate Easter according to the Roman precept. Alcfrid died about the year 664, and thus when we consider the similarity of the ornamentation, and the character of the runes on both obelisks, there seemed good reason for ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... precept, Patrick, we cannot keep here, as we are not near the church. But the second, 'to abstain on the days commanded,' we can keep. Do you ever eat meat ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... things, not so much facts, dates, and figures, as principles, ideas, and sentiments, which they endeavour to teach. The scholar is made familiar with what he is told by observation and experience whenever it is possible, for that is how Nature teaches. Precept, they say, is good, and example is better; but an ideal of perfection is ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.—By degrees, discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil. This makes it easier for the superficial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the most intimate association with their pupils and their families. Some of them, we know, were compelled to struggle hard to overcome their instinctive repugnance to such intimacy. All of them taught by implication, and some by precept as well, that the Southern whites who held themselves apart were enemies to the blacks. That these teachers did some good is undoubted, but whether in the end a true balance would show more good than harm is not ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... 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
... refuge in that "thaetige 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 ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... to resemble Him, is the sum of all duty; and in the measure in which we approximate thereto, we come to perfection. So, then, there are here just two points that I would briefly touch upon now—the one is the sublime precept of the text, and the other the all-sufficient motive enforcing it. 'Be ye imitators of God as'—because you are, and know yourselves to be—'beloved children,' and it therefore behoves you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... through the window at the moonlight; there's poetry for you. Go out into that if you want sonnets.' Of course, he never takes his friends' advice; he has long known that they know nothing whatever about it. He is probably quite ignorant of metrical law, but one precept instinct taught him from the beginning, and he finds it expressed one day in Wordsworth (with a blessed comfort of assurance—like in this little, O, may be like, somehow, in the great thing too!): 'Poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity.' The wandlike moments, he ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... draws nigh," and continued, "you should always be careful to impress upon them that they should not infringe upon the rights of others; and our brethren should be very careful not to infringe upon their rights, thus cultivating honor and good principles in their midst by example, as well as precept." ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... the Hebrew people to lend and never to borrow. They have obeyed his precept, except in art; to that they have lent or given nothing. There is no national Jewish art. For music only do they show artistic genius, and that is European and not Oriental. As illustrating their ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... rival name With all thy vices and but half thy shame! Quick to the letter of the precept, quick To the example of the elder Nick; With as great talent as was e'er applied To fool a teacher and to fog a guide; With slack allegiance and boundless greed, To paunch the profit of a traitor deed, He aims to make ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 your ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... not to the ballads we must go for example—precept of this or of any kind there is none—in the bourgeois and respectable virtues; of the sober and chastened behaviour that comes of a prudent fear of consequences, of a cold temperament and a calculating spirit. The good or the ill done by the heroes and heroines of the Romantic Ballad ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... place franchised or priuiledged, where the said officer or officers may not lawfully intromit or intermeddle, that then the Maior, shirifes, baylifes, and other head officers, or ministers, within euery such citie, borough, towne incorparate or place or places franchised, vpon a precept to them, or any of them, to be directed from the gouernour or gouernours, Consuls and assistants of the said fellowship, in number and forme aforesaid, vnder the common seale of the sayd fellowship and communaltie for the time being, shall and may attach and arrest the body ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... descent, it would seem that the home in which the great philosopher's childhood was spent was an impoverished one. It was obvious at least that the young Galileo would have to be provided with some profession by which he might earn a livelihood. From his father he derived both by inheritance and by precept a keen taste for music, and it appears that he became an excellent performer on the lute. He was also endowed with considerable artistic power, which he cultivated diligently. Indeed, it would seem that for some time the future astronomer entertained the idea of devoting ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... confidence in cheating. If justice were cheap, sure, and speedy, few such things could be. It is because it has become (through the vile dealing of those courts and the vermin they have called into existence) a positive precept of experience that a man had better endure a great wrong than go, or suffer himself to be taken, into Chancery, with the dream of setting it right. It is because of this that such nefarious ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... present darkness. Let me ask you a question: Who will be answerable for the ignorance and crimes of the poor natives— they who have never had the light presented to them, or you who might, by your example and precept, have offered it to them and ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... much she might dislike the thing in making, and she used to sail down to the press-room as soon as the paper was out, and, picking up the paper from the folder, she would stand reading her page, line upon line, precept upon precept, though every word and syllable was ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... therefore proved satisfactorily, and with more than moral certainty, that an exception occurs to the general law of not speaking untruly, viz. when it is impossible to observe a certain other precept, more important, without telling a lie. Some persons indeed say, that in the cases of impossibility which are above drawn out, what is said is not a lie. But a man who thus speaks confuses ideas and denies the essential ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... excesses of the revolution, I have not withheld my tribute of applause from those institutions, which, being calculated to benefit mankind by the gratuitous diffusion of knowledge, would reflect honour on any nation. In other respects, I have not been unmindful of that excellent precept of TACITUS, in which he observes that "The principal duty of the historian is to rescue from oblivion virtuous actions, and to make bad men dread infamy and posterity for what ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... nearly invariably after a general financial collapse we witness a religious "revival." Age, full of care and fear, is thus prompted to piety, willing, as La Rochefoucauld remarks, to do good by precept when it can no longer do evil by example. The inhabitants of swampy, fever-ridden districts are usually devout. The female sex, always the weaker and often the worsted one in the struggle for existence, is when free more ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the Jewish nation even forbade his people to ask "the cause that the former days were better than these;" "for," he adds, "thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this." Far different would be the modern precept of a British monarch. Rather let the English subject "enquire diligently concerning this," for he cannot fail to enquire wisely. Let him enquire, and he will find that "the former days" of England were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... when once the rhythm of his musical verse had excited his mind to be itself, the force and simplicity of his emotion transfuse and transform these abstractions. Godwin's "universal benevolence" was with him an ardent affectionate love for his kind. Godwin's cold precept that it was the duty of an illuminated understanding to contribute towards the progress of enquiry, by arguing about perfection and the powers of the mind in select circles of friends who meet for debate, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... once. Don Quixote saw a certain amount of reason in this; still, he asked his squire to do his utmost to restrain himself against any such rash impulse in the case of members of the knighthood. And Sancho Panza swore that he would keep this precept ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... article not printed. Practice, however, is more than precept, and I shall continue to do ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... antiquities. The theory of Fairyland here (as in many other Scottish legends and witch trials) is borrowed from the Pre-Christian Hades, and the Fairy Queen is a late refraction from Persephone. Not to eat, in the realm of the dead, is a regular precept of savage belief, all the world over. Mr. Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies may be consulted, or the Editor's Perrault, p. xxxv. (Oxford, 1888). Of the later legends about Thomas, Scott ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... is to come up to our notion "Happy" will need good Friends. Are we then to make our friends as numerous as possible? or, as in respect of acquaintance it is thought to have been well said "have not thou many acquaintances yet be not without;" so too in respect of Friendship may we adopt the precept, and say that a man should not be without friends, nor again have exceeding ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... was, by example and precept, constantly insisting on the initiative of the subordinate. "The Second in Command will ... have the entire direction of his line to make the attack upon the enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or destroyed.... Captains are to look to their particular line as their rallying ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... say so—downward, certainly. Rousseau embroidered these paradoxes with a thousand sweet sentiments: he shut his eyes to history, to facts, to the real savage, the very disagreeable "primitive man," as he may yet sometimes be seen. "Follow nature" was his one great precept: then you will scourge away the false and conventional, and life will grow pure and simple; there will be no rank, no cunning law devised to keep men from their rights, no struggle for life, no competition. All France panted and groaned to emulate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Thy course direct.' And many a precept more He gave, and careful as he bound the wings Upon the shoulders of the boy, his cheeks Were wet with tears, and in the task his ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... sharp debates in Congress. Jefferson had led his party into power as the special champion of States' Rights and the special opponent of national sovereignty. He and they rendered a very great service to the nation by acquiring Louisiana; but it was at the cost of violating every precept which they had professed to hold dear, and of showing that their warfare on the Federalists had been waged on behalf of principles which they were obliged to confess were shams the moment they were put to the test. But the Federalists of the Northeast, both in the Middle States and in New England, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... virtue and devotion, which view was borne out by his after character; for although the proclamation may be considered in the light of a dead letter as regards actual operation, it was enforced, or recommended, by his example; and example hath a louder tongue either than precept, proclamations, or laws. From the beginning to the close of his long reign, George III. manifested a decent, moral, and religious life, which doubtless had very beneficial effects ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
