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More "Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the use of" tobacco. The sixth is "that you drink not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie Tobacconists are wont"—there must be no alliance, in short, between the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The suggestion ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... she was already a child of Him who had asked this, and she might look for none but good gifts from Him. And what was commanded immediately after seemed to her so simple, so easy to obey, and yet so wise. She thought it over a little, and saw that in this precept—of which it was said that it was all the law and the prophets—there was in fact a rule which, if it were obeyed, must keep all mankind guiltless, and make every one happy. These words, she thought, should be written over every door and on every heart, as the winged sun was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.[278] So nearly, indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than ordinary audacity had assumed for the motto on his standard the blasphemous device: "'Double 's death' has conquered 'Verily.'"[279] But the strictness ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... 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 or bodies of such ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... the world and its 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, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... the sacred awfulness of his responsibility, and of the fulness of his resources. So the appeal now is not merely to be like-minded, and to be watchful for unity. He asks them now to use fully for a life of holiness the mighty fact of their possession of an Indwelling God in Christ. The details of precept are as it were absorbed for the time into the glorious power and principle—only to reappear the more largely and lastingly in ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... chronicle, and trace the remaining career of El Zagal. His short and turbulent reign and disastrous end would afford a wholesome lesson to unprincipled ambition, were not all ambition of the kind fated to be blind to precept and example. When he arrived in Africa, instead of meeting with kindness and sympathy, he was seized and thrown into prison by the caliph of Fez, Benimerin, as though he had been his vassal. He was accused of being the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... demand of yours would readily be granted, and the most obstinate even would be obliged to give way. Therefore, mighty lords, we have consented, for the honor of God, for the sake of the King, and in obedience to that precept of the Gospel, which you profess: 'Love not your friends only, but your enemies also', urgently to beseech you: Do away with this misery! Remember, that they are your Christian brethren, your neighbors; that they speak your own language; that ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... admiration, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:—"Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto." There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cheek more than 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 as religiously as Sunday. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the rascal has consoled himself already, and found a new mate. Let us, too, follow the precept of Horace, so far as we may, and enjoy the present day. The poet may let the future go as it will, but I cannot, for, unfortunately, I am ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... position was not an enviable one to flesh and blood; but to one who had renounced all worldly ties, and who only desired to suffer like his Lord, it was full of promise. His mission was soon discovered; and though he complied with the apostolic precept of flying, when he was persecuted, from one city to another, he was at last captured, and then the long-desired moment had arrived when he could openly announce his ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... his great learning and judgement, hath very well observed in his Comment upon this Aphorisme; Hippocrates speaketh here onely of those purging medicines, which are strong, and vehement, or hot and fiery; and that this precept is to take place in most hot Regions, but not in these cold Countries, as France, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... animal, vegetable, nor mineral, neither male nor female, yet often produced between both; it exists from two to six feet high, is often spoken of in romances, and strongly recommended by precept, example, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... of agriculture is simplicity itself, sir. It is all founded on one beautiful commercial precept. Our friends round about here [with a wave of the hand, indicating the country side]—our old folks—whenever they got a guinea put it out of sight, made a hoard, hid it in a stocking, or behind a brick in the chimney. Ha! ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Jesus should perish, if the high and fine moral precepts of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and all the great teachers of the pagan world should cease to exist, if there were not a printed moral precept on earth, morality would not be touched. It is not these that have created morality. It is the natural moral nature of man that has written all the commandments, whether they have come to us by the hand of Moses or of Gautama or Mohammed ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... his advice, and set out in the highest glee, wishing for no better sport than to try the firmness of my resolutions on this head, though, it must be confessed, I was fully more inclined to follow the precept enjoined upon me by another friend, who, by way of improving ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... mutual intercourse of civilized nations and confirming the principles of equality, equity and comity which underlie their relations to one another. This right is not created by treaties; it is recognized by them as a necessity of national existence, and we apply the precept to other countries, whether it be conventionally declared or not, as fully as we expect its ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... which nothing was to be learned which he might not learn at Athens among his countrymen, for whose reformation, besides, he thought his labors ought to be devoted, rather than to that of strangers. And as moral philosophy is a science which is taught better by example than by precept, he laid it down as a rule to himself, to follow and practise all that right reason and the most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Marston had bestowed much care upon Lorenzo and Franconia; he had indulged and idolised the latter, and given the former some good advice. But advice without example seldom produces lasting good; in truth, precept had the very worst effect upon Lorenzo,—it had proved his ruin! His singular and mysterious departure might for a time be excused,—even accounted for in some plausible manner, but suspicion was a stealing monster that would play upon the deeply tinctured ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... as well as on land, he knows how to provide for the liberty as well as for the wants of his guests. He understands also the fine art of conversation, which consists of silence as well as speech. And when it comes to angling, Izaak Walton himself could not have been a more profitable teacher by precept or example. Indeed, it is a curious thought, and one full of sadness to a well-constituted mind, that on the Ristigouche "I. W." would have been at sea, for the beloved father of all fishermen passed through ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... been, Doctor, to some extent." At hearing this the Doctor made very evident signs of discontent. "You cannot alter the ways of the world suddenly, though by example and precept you may help to improve them slowly. In our present imperfect condition of moral culture, it is perhaps well that the company of the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Lessing: "The schoolmaster holds the future in his hands." The religious law is a system of instruction, the synagogue is a school. It will redound to the eternal honor of Judaism that it raised the dissemination of knowledge to the height of a religious precept. At a time when among the Christians knowledge was the special privilege of the clergy, learning was open to every Jew, and, what is still finer, the pursuit of it was imposed upon him as a strict obligation. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... I have heard that he was impatient of inquiries which related to diet; thinking, I suppose, that after the age of childhood, in ordinary cases, each person might regulate it best for himself. But from an almost entire abstinence from fermented liquors, he was, both by precept and example, a strenuous adviser. "He believed," says Miss Edgeworth, in her Memoirs of her Father, "that almost all the distempers of the higher classes of people arise from drinking, in some form or other, too much vinous ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Church. Since union through the truth is the only method authorised by Holy Scripture, we must teach and teach and teach. That is the task of our divinity schools and of the clergy in preparing their candidates for confirmation: line upon line and precept upon precept, definite and clear instruction should be given so that the future heads of families may know and value their privileges, and the whole population will be impressed by the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... instances, one time when at his lodgings, he interpreted those words of Christ personally, "Sell all that thou hast and distribute to the poor," when, without the formality of selling, he thought the precept might be more summarily fulfilled, and therefore, one morning he tumbled every thing he had in his room, through the window, into the street, that the poor might help themselves; bed, bolsters, blankets, sheets, chairs! ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... little in my way to be thoroughly read, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a book up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example as, to my heart's core, I was convinced could ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... when Tom 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
... universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a lawyer, and as such you will permit the smile at your mention of the equity court. You would not be allowed to enter its doors. For its first precept is: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. Are your hands clean? I think not—neither your hands nor Orcutt's. But, the matter will never reach the courts. There is no question of a technical error ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... this reason 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 religious ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... do not use dispensations, nor receive the sacraments; they pay no respect to images, rosaries, bulls, neither do they hear mass, nor divine services; they never enter the churches, nor observe fasts, Lent, nor any ecclesiastical precept; which enormities have been attested by long ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lips in a stern silence, and had no word of pity for her daughter. It shocked her proud heart that one of her girls should have behaved in a manner so unworthy the precept which she had endeavoured to teach, for she knew well that Lilias would have felt no qualms in preparing for her marriage, if Ned's story had been one of success ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... where He has led; Men count my haltings o'er; I know them; yet, though self I dread, I love His precept more. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... apostate had succeeded in exalting himself "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped."(78) He had dared to change the only precept of the divine law that unmistakably points all mankind to the true and living God. In the fourth commandment, God is revealed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and is thereby distinguished ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... she seemed to have looked upon earth in the light of eternity. In that light, rank and title, with all their lofty associations and splendid accompaniments, faded away, while true nobleness, the nobleness which dwells in the Christian precept "Love your enemies—do good to those that despitefully use you," stood out in all its beauty ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... anecdotes and general fund of bright reading matter is such as excites the vivid imagination of the young, without leaving a trace of wild and unbridled adventure to torture their minds to a longing for border acts of cowboy heroism. There is a moral precept in every page, and an abundance of thrilling adventure to awaken the lethargy of any boy or girl. We cheerfully commend it to parents as a valuable adjunct to the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... moral precept, solidarity, as interpreted by Bakounine, is a very excellent thing. But to set up this a morality, which by the way is not at all "absolute," as principle "inherent" in humanity and determining human nature, is playing with ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... note with Reland, that the precept given to the priests of not drinking wine while they wore the sacred garments, is equivalent; to their abstinence from it all the while they ministered in the temple; because they then always, and then only, wore those sacred garments, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the temple at Mecca, over which is a lofty building, from which the name is by some said to be derived—Caaba, high. Mr. Ferguson, in his account of "The Holy Sepulcher," thus describes it: "The precept of the Koran is, that all men, when they pray, shall turn toward the kaaba, or holy house, at Mecca; and consequently throughout the Moslem world, indicators have been put up to enable the Faithful to fulfill this condition. In India ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... wives and wives their husbands? We have already seen that in the text-book for Japanese women, the "Onna Daigaku," not one word is said about love. It may be stated at once that love between husband and wife is almost as conspicuously lacking in practice as in precept. In no regard, perhaps, is the contrast between the East and the West more striking than the respective ideas concerning woman and marriage. The one counts woman the equal, if not the superior of man; the other looks down upon her as man's inferior ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... It is not simply a question of their being brought into the world sound and strong. Their long infancy which in the biological as well as in the legal sense, lasts until they are grown up, should be spent in surroundings which can minister, by example and precept, to moral and intellectual development. Surely no such end can possibly be attained when man and woman ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... intelligence,—men of skill, men of light and leading, college-bred men, black captains of industry, and missionaries of culture; men who thoroughly comprehend and know modern civilization, and can take hold of Negro communities and raise and train them by force of precept and example, deep sympathy, and the inspiration of common blood and ideals. But if such men are to be effective they must have some power,—they must be backed by the best public opinion of these communities, and able to wield for their objects and aims such weapons as ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... religious gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next; for these characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by being inherited from the example and precept of other human beings, and not from an original and spiritual source. The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a race of lower and narrower souls than their progenitors had been. The latter were stern, severe, intolerant, but not superstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She did not refuse, and there was a whispering between her and those next her in debate of the question. But it was closed by the loud, austere voice of one of the believing matrons in the apostolic mandate, "Let your women keep silence in the churches." The text was not closely apt; it was not a precept obeyed in the revivals of any of the sects in Leatherwood; it was especially ignored in the meetings of the Dylks believers; but its proclamation now satisfied the yearning always rife in them to affiliate their dispensation with ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... indication that the Virginians had any great love for intellectual exertion. When the amiable attorney-general of Charles II. said to the Virginian commissioners, pleading the cause of learning and religion, "Damn your souls! grow tobacco!" he uttered a precept which the mass of the planters seem to have laid to heart. For fifty years there were no schools, and down to the Revolution even the apologies bearing that honored name were few, and the college was small and struggling. In some of the great families, the eldest sons would be sent to England and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... legislator! In war contending, by the wager of battle, for the independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race; ever manifesting amidst its horrors, by precept and example, his reverence for the laws of peace and the tenderest sympathies of humanity: in peace soothing the ferocious spirit of discord among his countrymen into harmony and union; and giving to that very sword, now ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... contributed to the amusement and instruction of a numerous class of his fellow creatures. The present volume consists of no dry didactic dissertations on an art unteachable by written rules, and in which, without long and often dear-bought experience, neither precept nor example will avail; but it contains a sufficiency of sagacious practical advice, and is enlivened by the narration of numerous angling adventures, which bring out, with force and spirit, the essential character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... wood and forest folk of Germany, spirits inhabiting the forests, who stood in friendly relation to man, but are now so disgusted with the faithless world, that they have retired from it. Hence their precept— ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... consists of the Judge Advocate and two inhabitants of the colony, appointed by precept from the governor, and takes cognizance of all pleas where the amount sued for does not exceed L50 sterling, (except such pleas as may arise between party and party at Van Dieman's Land) and from its ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... sentence of the apostle pronounces that "the forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils." WESLEY, who published "Thoughts on a Single Life," advised some "to remain single for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but the precept," he adds, "is not for the many." So indecisive have been the opinions of the most curious inquirers concerning the matrimonial state, whenever a great destination has ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the faselus must be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and moral precept] That's all right! Only, Mr Bly, I can't absolutely answer for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 and essential things ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... "The precept for life in general and for every one is: Exhibit only thy spiritual, thy life, in the external, and by means of the external in thy actions, and observe the requirements of thy inner being ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... 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
... comports with the domestic persecutions authorized by the same monarch during his profligate reign. It is still more lamentable to reflect how little a similar spirit of toleration was encouraged, either by precept or example, in other of the New England Colonies." (Commentaries, etc., Vol. I., ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the importance of Christianity ought we to be filled by such descriptions as these? Yet, in vain have we "line upon line and precept upon precept."—Thus predicted, thus prayed and longed for, thus announced and characterized and rejoiced in, this heavenly treasure poured into our lap in rich abundance we scarce accept. We turn from it coldly, or at best possess it negligently, as a thing ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... arose and joined the company, who, encouraged by the precept and example of Michael Lambourne, and consisting chiefly of persons much disposed to profit by the opportunity of a merry meal at the expense of their landlord, had already made some inroads upon the limits of temperance, as was ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... lord King,' said Milo at large; 'but I draw this distinction. You are not so guilty as you suppose; for in this world the father maketh the son, both in the way of nature and of precept. In heaven it is otherwise. There the Son was from the beginning, co-eternal with the Father, begotten but not made. In the divine case there was pure sacrifice, and no guilt at all. In the earthly case there was much guilt, but ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of a boys' camp depends upon leadership rather than upon equipment. Boys are influenced by example rather than by precept. A boys' camp is largely built around a strong personality. Solve the problem of leadership, and you solve the greatest problem ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... had added the colossal fortune of a beautiful heiress, whose extravagances aggregated less than his own solely through the limitations of her sex. Yet, were it not for the self-imposed handicap of adhering strictly to the somewhat old-fashioned precept that jewels should be acquired only through affectionate beneficence, Mrs. Fernmore might have succeeded in surpassing the princely prodigalities of her lord ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... influence for righteousness, moulding his people in that simplicity of life and independence of spirit, which in all times have been preeminent as features in the Dutch character. Into the homespun of common life, he wove the threads of gold, revealing by life and precept that type of religion which is not "too bright and good for ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to the precept of Horace that I have begun by plunging in media res. Now that every one is asleep—the beautiful Colomba, the colonel, and his daughter—I will seize the opportunity to acquaint my reader with certain details of which he must not be ignorant, if he desires to follow ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... human nature in general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by precept, what we are eagerly to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... ye so late with Dominie Grier? To tell you the tale of my going on foot to the town of Edinburgh that I might preserve pure the doctrine and precept of the parish of Rowantree? Ay, to tell of it I am ready, and with right goodwill. Never a day do I sit under godly Mr. Campbell but I think on my errand, and the sore stroke that the deil and Bauldy Todd gat that day when I first won speech with ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty. To the reverie, rather than the investigation, to the dream, rather than the deliberation, of the architect, we recommend it, as a branch of art in which instinct will do more than precept, and inspiration than technicality. The correspondence of our villa architecture with our natural scenery may be determined with far greater accuracy, and will require ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... wholesome respect for their ancestors, and familiarity with the Jewish law were instilled into the minds of all children. Music and dancing were taught in every household, not for pleasure, but as a means of religious expression. By prayer and holy living, by precept and example, by word and deed, the father discharged the duty committed to him by God, leading his children by careful watchfulness toward the ideal manhood which was revealed to him by the teachings ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... felt in the lives of the people. I don't want a religion that I put away with my Sunday clothes, and don't take out till the day comes round again; I want something to see and feel and live by day-by-day, and I hope you 'll be one of the true ministers, who can teach by precept and example, how to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Book, and ours was a mingling of history, poetry, and prophecy, of precept and folk-lore, even such as the modern reader finds within the covers of his Bible. This Bible of ours was our whole literature, a living Book, sowed as precious seed by our wisest sages, and springing anew in the wondering eyes and upon the innocent lips of little children. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... skilled labor. He has the means to carry his ideas into practice, and actively engages in the work of instructing and building up the boys in a knowledge of the useful arts. He believes in religion, morality, and social and political virtue. He insists upon practice in addition to precept and theory, as well in the inculcation of the duties of social life as ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... we dare not attack him; and if he be weary of the world, or of his own villainies, he has nothing to do but die, and then his reputation is safe. For these excellent casuists know just Latin enough to have heard a most foolish precept, that de mortuis nil nisi bonum; so that if Socrates, and Anytus his accuser, had happened to die together, the charity of survivors must either have obliged them to hold their peace, or to fix the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... mine 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 hands ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... is enough. Confiding in your sound heart and strong honor, I turn you thus betimes on the world. Have I done wrong? Prove that I have not, my child. Do you know what a very good man has said? Listen and follow my precept, not example. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is to be obtained by faith, and from these premises the further conclusion is logically deducible, that we cannot make ourselves any better in order to receive it, but that we must take it as we are. And so we arrive at and adopt the pithy precept of John Wesley, "Expect it by faith—expect it as you are—expect ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... manner of life up to admiration, what is all that compared to the Gospel message? The claim may be well made: a fine sermon, a splendid exposition; but, after all, nothing more comes of it than precepts, expositions, written comments. The precept, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," remains a mere array of words. When much time and effort have been spent in conforming one's life to it, nothing has been accomplished. You have pods without ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... This was an extension of the arms in the shape of a cross; if anyone wants to know how difficult a practice this is let him try it for, say, fifteen minutes. Regarding recitation of the Divine Office it was of counsel, and probably of precept, that is should not be from memory merely, but that the psalms should all be read. For this a good reason was given by Maelruin, i.e. that the recitation might engage the eye as well as the tongue and thought. An Irish homily refers to the mortification ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... that work given to the poor should be work that cost something to the giver. This principle, regarded by her as an illustration of the text, "Shall I give unto the Lord my God that which has cost me nothing?" ran through all her precept and her practice. When in some public distress we children went to her crying, and asking whether we could not help the little children who were starving, her prompt reply was: "What will you give up for them?" And then she ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... in this world that is of any practical good whose vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath, the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or habits that offend and disable, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Reason to suspect us of Flattery in the Relation given of them, the Motive of their Publication being only to encourage Virtue in both Sexes, by showing the Amiableness of it in real Characters. And if it be true (as certainly it is) that Example has more Efficacy than Precept, we may be bold to say there are few fairer, or more worthy Imitation.—The Sons and Daughters of the greatest Families may give additional Lustre to their Nobility, by forming themselves by the Model here presented to them; and those of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... mathematician to determine the amount of that probability. The case, then, is as follows:—Among all the various systems one must be true. We cannot lay our finger for certain on the true one, but we can take that which has the highest degree of probability in its favour, and thus follow the precept of Butler to which we have already referred. A mathematician would describe his process by calling it the method of least squares. Since Herschel's discovery, one hundred years ago, many an astronomer using observations ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... falling, told her, without looking at her very particularly, that there was nothing the matter, only to keep yourself "quite quiet and still;" and the ship rolling at the same moment, he pitched head-foremost out of the cabin, showing practically how much easier precept is than example. As we shall no doubt have a norther after this, which may last three days, our promised land is still ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... it was now too late; the savages had passed on to some distance. I, however, explained to Matilda the beauty of the divine precept, 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you,' asking her how she would have liked to be detained by the savages, and what, then, would be the suffering of her own mamma? She was thoughtful for a moment, and then, embracing Minou and me, 'You ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... else has the poet shown equal virtuosity in the handling of unusual meters. Nowhere among his works is there greater variety or harmony of verse. Though not the most serious, this is the most pleasing of his poems. Espronceda follows the Horatian precept of starting his story "in the middle of things." In the first part he creates the atmosphere of the uncanny, introduces the more important characters, and presents a striking situation. Part Second, the most admired, is elegiac in nature. It pleases by its ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the benefactors ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... practised, and concerned only the rich widows, who refused to be burned; but now, since the Brahmans have been caught in the false interpretation of the Vedas, with the criminal intention of appropriating the widows' wealth, they insist on the fulfilment of this cruel precept, and make what once was the exception the rule. They are powerless against British law, and so they revenge themselves on the innocent and helpless women, whom fate has deprived of their natural protectors. Professor Wilson's demonstration of the means by which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and intimacy need not exclude form. Manners and morals are not exclusive of each other. If the marriage ceremony included the vow to be polite, it might leave out almost everything else. The home should be the place where tolerance, courtesy, and emotional control are taught both by precept and example. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... up the interest of the meeting to some who would hardly have cared to listen to a sermon out of the kirk, or on a week night. A few who were only occasional hearers on the Sabbath liked these informal discussions of precept and doctrine, as they would have liked the discussion of any other matter, for the mere intellectual pleasure to be enjoyed, and, as may be supposed, opportunities for this kind of enjoyment did not often ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but His own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to allow you a seventh day for rest; or, if you thought that hard upon you, we would not refuse you half your time: if you came out, like some great monarch, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... master. Here, on the spot, I am told the nephew received from a certain Professor Federau instruction in art, and I have before me a drawing, the earliest that has come to my knowledge, which proves that the pupil was at least painstaking. The subject, in accordance with the father's precept, is Homeric, the well-known meeting of Ulysses and Telemachus.[6] After the prevailing manner of the period, the style is classic, according to the French school of David, and a Greek portico appropriately finds a place in the background. Young Overbeck discovered in ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... 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 ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... elevate man to the highest perfection of which he could conceive. "And no greater praise can be given to a work of heathen morality than to say, as may be said of the ethical writings of Aristotle, that they contain nothing which a Christian may dispense with, no precept of life which is not an element of Christian character; and that they only fail in elevating the heart and the mind to objects which it ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... every play of this period, it is the unveiling of a lie. See yourselves as you are, the man of science seems to be saying to us. Here are your 'pillars of society'; they are the tools of society. Here is your happy marriage, and it is a doll's house. Here is your respected family, here is the precept of 'honour your father and your mother' in practice; and here is the little voice of heredity whispering 'ghosts!' There is the lie of respectability, the lie hidden behind marriage, the lie which saps the very roots of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and direction can be given is it becoming to stamp it as official? it is lamentable inconsiderateness to expect fishermen to be able to dodge the weather by such guidance; and it is time to stop this easily concocted nostrum for notoriety; for it is vague and inconclusive in every precept, and has scarcely an assertion which is not contradicted by ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... wherefore he should prepare himself to resume his journey with the pilgrims on the following day. To this Ignatius answered that his resolution was very fixed, and he did not think that anything would keep him from executing it. If the precept did not bind him under pain of sin, he would not allow any fear to keep him from carrying out his desire. The Provincial said he had authority from the Holy See to detain those he thought fit, and to even excommunicate those who would not obey when stopped by him, and he thought in this case it ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... his heart to school, Nor dares to move unpropp'd upon the staff Which Art hath lodg'd within his hand,—must laugh By precept only, and shed tears by rule. Thy Art be Nature! the live current quaff, And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool Have kill'd him, Scorn should write his epitaph. How doth the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... beauties. It will not become clear to his comprehension by our pouring upon it all at once a sudden and overpowering blaze of light in the way of explanation. Such a process rather confounds him. Here again let us fall back upon the method of the great Teacher, "Line upon line, precept upon precept." We will first patiently conduct our boy through one of the simplest operations of arithmetic, say, a sum in addition. The next day we will conduct him again through the same process, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... pasty, and topping up with a two-pound perch, washed down by a great jug of ale, he smiled upon us all and told us that his fleshly necessities were satisfied for the nonce. 'It is my rule,' he remarked, 'to obey the wise precept which advises a man to rise from table feeling that he could yet eat as much as he has ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that, though there be ill company, you will partake of good fare. If I say it myself, there's no better master of the flesh pots outside of Paris than at this hostelry. The rogues eat as well as the king's gentlemen. Feasting, then fasting, is their precept." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... beginning,—only a sympathy broad enough to take our little planet and all her human tribes in its arms, deep enough to go beneath the skin in which men differ, to the heart's blood in which they agree,—only pains and patience, faith and forbearance,—only a national obedience to that profound precept of Christianity which prescribes service to him that would be greatest, making the knowledge of the wise due to the ignorant, and the strength of the strong due to the weak. The costs of freedom would have been paid in the patient lifting up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... one precept, in addition to those which, as originally laid upon him, he has discharged, shall receive favor from above, and is equal to him who has ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... streets; they had diverted themselves at weddings or the husking-bee, or by walking in the woods, or by drinking in a tavern. But no frivolous and superstitious world of Anti-Christ compassed them about to point the moral of the harsh Puritan tale. Their Puritanism was induced by precept and example rather than by the compelling impact of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution, by unnecessarily informing them what he is going to sing, or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing; but, according to the precept of Horace:— ...
— English Satires • Various
... as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy [34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course, eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their guilt." Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a sort of grim conscientiousness colouring ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... that it may be always ready to our hand. For instance, we have laid down among the rules of life (IV:xlvi., & Note), that hatred should be overcome with love or high- mindedness, and not required with hatred in return. Now, that this precept of reason may be always ready to our hand in time of need, we should often think over and reflect upon the wrongs generally committed by men, and in what manner and way they may be best warded off by high-mindedness: we shall thus associate the idea ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the brave that were. In civil courage, moral courage, or courage shown in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same law is true. Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and is good to be taught to men, women, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... the Amsterdam International Congress they voted for a resolution extolling the 'tried and victorious policy based on the class war,' and on their return to England referred to the class war as a 'shibboleth' and as a 'reactionary and Whiggish precept, certain to lead the movement away from ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... to write others, be sure of that; and you will do well, my dear friend, for your own sake and for ours, to follow the precept of Denis Diderot: "My friends, write stories; while one writes them he amuses himself, and the story of life goes on, and that is less gay than the ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... observer in private, and by stealth imbibed, from parental precept or example, the sentiment of a national religion, suppressed, not extinguished, or in the gloomy absence of all indications of it, remained unsolicited by any rival mode of worship to bestow his apostacy upon an alien creed. Thus the minds ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... or make a fuss, as you call it (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, and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the question ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... wardmote are held by the aldermen of each ward, for choosing ward-officers, and settling the affairs of the ward, the Lord Mayor annually issuing his precept to the aldermen to hold his wardmote on St. Thomas's Day for the election of common councilmen and other officers; they also present such offences and nuisances at certain times to the Lord Mayor and common ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... A throne compassyd of his riall se; Aboughte whiche shortly to conclude, Of hevenly angelles was[225] a gret multitude, To whom was gevyn a precept in scripture, Wreten in the front of the highe stage, That thei shuld do there ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... sent for, in conformity with a precept of the countess, who preferred a bone-setter at hand to the first surgeon in the world three hundred miles off. A horribly-complicated dressing, bristling with splints and bandages, was applied to the leg, with very respectful but formal ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... throwing myself out of bed, "the nearest expression to Mrs Russell's that I know of is, 'Take care of Number One.' It is an older precept, and most likely a wiser one; and henceforward I will be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... desires would ultimately be absorbed into the godhead. It does not seem that Kabir made any exact pronouncement on the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and re-birth, but as he laid great stress on avoiding the destruction of any animal life, a precept which is to some extent the outcome of the belief in transmigration, he may have concurred in this tenet. Some Kabirpanthis, however, have discarded transmigration. Bishop Westcott states that they do ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... (1) said, "which is the right course that a man should choose for himself? (2) That which is a pride to him who pursues it and which also brings him honor from mankind. Be as scrupulous about a light precept as about a grave one, for thou knowest not the grant of reward for each precept. Reckon the loss incurred by the fulfilment of a precept against the reward secured by its observance (3), and the gain gotten by a transgression against the loss it involves. Consider three things, ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... to the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul's love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal. Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by their association ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the crowd around the temple, in the procession with its victims and its worshippers who walk to music, in the language of the noisy market-people; wherever you go, you are accosted, confronted, publicly, shamelessly, now as if a precept of religion, now as if a homage to nature, by all which, as a Christian, you shrink from ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Caecilius perhaps forgot, when he employed his always adventurous talents in so ambitious an attempt as a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero: and, possibly, if it were a thing obvious and easy for every man to know himself, the precept had not passed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to say. And remember the commandment, Honour thy—" But she broke down, when she too remembered it, and bore in mind that the precept would have called upon her daughter to honour the memory of the deceased Earl. "But if you cannot do it for love, you will never do it ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... was saying," I was here with a small party, and had fine sport picking, but the next day a precept, at the suit of Peter Gravespeech, was served upon Hull and myself, (the two gentlemen of the party,) issued from "Pettifogger's Delight," as the office of Squire Tappit, the justice, was called throughout ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... a verse from the precept addressed by St Paul to Timothy, as to the conduct necessary in a spiritual pastor and guide, and it was immediately evident that the good clergy of Barchester were ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of life, are learned from example and not from precept. Men and women, are only children of a larger growth, they are imitative creatures with a natural instinct to choose other, higher, and better lives as models. Hence the great value of travel as an educator. The larger the area covered ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... and the special goodness of Mr Clayhanger and of Maggie, yes, and of her little Clara; and the pride which they all had in Edwin, and the unique opportunities which he had of doing good, by example, and also, soon, by precept, for others younger than himself would begin to look up to him; and again her personal pride in him, and her sure faith in him; and what a solemn ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... instruction had been such as we all receive. He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but evil behavior never ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... 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, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... mankind. History—tradition itself—goes not back to a time when statutes, confessedly human, or professedly divine, were capable of controlling the fierce fires that blaze within the blood—when all-consuming Love was cold Reason's humble slave and Passion yielded blind obedience unto Precept. Although the heavens have been ever peopled with threatening gods and the great inane filled with gaping hells; although kings and courts have thundered their inhibitions forth, and society turned upon illicit love Medusa's ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 's the spring-time o' your life, When seed is sown wi' care and toil, And hopes are high, and fears are rife, Lest weeds should rise the braird to spoil. I 've sown the seed, my bairnies dear, By precept and example baith, And may the hand that guides us here Preserve it ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of any other object, such as sensual pleasure, fame, or the like; but solely because he has knowledge of God, or is convinced that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good. (34) The sum and chief precept, then, of the Divine law is to love God as the highest good, namely, as we have said, not from fear of any pains and penalties, or from the love of any other object in which we desire to take pleasure. (35) The ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... 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 ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... away with my Sunday clothes, and don't take out till the day comes round again; I want something to see and feel and live by day-by-day, and I hope you 'll be one of the true ministers, who can teach by precept and example, how to get and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... our labours is, it is as nothing compared with the torrent of evil which has called us out, and the conclusion which has been forced upon me is, that we should—every one of us, man, woman, and child—hold and pertinaciously enforce the precept that war among civilised nations is outrageous and intolerable. Of course we cannot avoid it sometimes. If a man will insist on fighting me, I have no resource left but to fight him; but for two CIVILISED nations to go to war for the settlement ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... was, to be on the best of terms with the sultan, and to hope to introduce reforms in his rule by degrees. The resident took the old school copy-book moral into consideration, that example was better than precept, and knowing full well that any sweeping code of rules and regulations would produce distaste, certain hatred, and perhaps a rising against the English rule, he determined to introduce little improvements by degrees, each to be, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... us; and herein is placed before us the secret of his greatness and strength. This firm assertion of the highest right his consciousness recognises, amid all difficulty, hardness, and disappointment; this persistent endeavour by precept and example to rouse men to a truer and better life than their own varied self-seekings; this unflinching struggle against everything false, mean, and base,—these things make him a power in the State before which King and Pope are compelled to bow in respect or fear. ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... can never be surprised; we know that death is always near, and it should therefore always be expected." "Young man," answered the philosopher, "you speak like one who has never felt the pangs of separation." "Have you, then, forgot the precept," said Rasselas, "which you so powerfully enforced?{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} consider that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same." "What comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... "You teach by precept and example too. Cruel teacher! Enough, this pleasure is too sweet. Love must be looking at us ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... December number of the "Contemporary Review." Whilst delivering severe lectures upon want of candour and impartiality, and preaching temperance and moderation, the practice of the preacher, as sometimes happens, falls very short of his precept. The example of moderation presented to me by my clerical critic does not seem to me very edifying, his impartiality does not appear to be beyond reproach, and in his tone I fail to recognise any of the [Greek: epieikeia] which ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... easy. If a year goes bad with one, let the others see to make it up. Live united, do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven." So Thompson spake; such was the legacy he left to those who knew from his good precept and example how to profit by it. My friendship with his children has grown and ripened. They are thriving men. Alec has inherited the nature of his father more than any other son. All go smoothly on in life, paying little regard to the broils and contests ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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 was routed ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... sent by him, for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well; teaching that this submission and obedience is to be clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men. Also that they, according to the Apostle's precept, exhort, that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for the king, and all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty; for this is good and ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... of Mind, this holy Officiousness (if I may be allowed to call it such) which is recommended to us by the Apostle in that uncommon Precept, wherein he directs us to propose to ourselves the Glory of our Creator in all our most indifferent Actions, whether we eat or drink, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... her and her 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 buy a toy to a child. Even in the smallest matters the munificent man will act ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... his brain, he wished that his mother were lying there too, beside his father, dead in the body but alive forever to him in that which is undying in woman; to be cherished still, still honoured; to be loved, and still obeyed in the memory of precept and teaching; to be his mother always, and he to be in thought her child, even until the grey years should be upon him, and the Bridge of Fear ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Swedish lady was replaced by a young Swiss tutor, who was versed in gymnastics to perfection. Music, as a pursuit unworthy of a man, was discarded. The natural sciences, international law, mathematics, carpentry, after Jean-Jacques Rousseau's precept, and heraldry, to encourage chivalrous feelings, were what the future "man" was to be occupied with. He was waked at four o'clock in the morning, splashed at once with cold water and set to running round a high pole with a cord; he had only one meal a day, consisting of a single ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... neutrality as a positive political ideal: then the ethical solution of the dark questions of the right and wrong of the war, and the methods of warfare become a torturing and hopeless problem, and, in considering the future, the weakness and impracticability of what one has accepted as a legal precept becomes evident. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... a dishonest man among our forefathers. If, therefore, any of you or any of your children should take to dishonest ways, it will not be because it runs in our blood: it does not belong to you. I leave this precept with you: Be honest." If, therefore, in the following pages I fall into any errors, I hope they will be dealt with as honest mistakes, and not as indicating that I have forgotten our ancient motto. This event ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... works, is the "Essay on Criticism," which, if he had written nothing else, would have placed him among the first critics and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactic composition, selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it: he that delights himself with observing that such powers may be soon ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... aged mother's perplexities was that the Lord should want her to live on in such a helpless and useless condition, while her daughters, who might be so useful, must die; but oh, how successful she had by precept and example taught those daughters that "He hath done all things well!" How patiently she suffered whatever she thought was the Lord's will! How sweet was her constant thanksgiving! Said a pious Christian neighbor, whose poor health restricted her attendance at church, "When I'm hungry for ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... President of the United States warned us against entangling foreign alliances. The present President of the United States subscribes to and follows that precept. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... memory, and delivery are overlooked. Accordingly, the Treatise neatly fits into the category of a Renaissance rhetoric on style. It is this school which recognized the traditional five Ciceronian parts of rhetoric, but considered style to be the most significant precept. The Treatise is not the first to support an emphasis wholly on style, nor the foremost. We know that Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cicero's works on rhetoric, and Quintilian's Institutes discussed the significance of style, but they had a broad view. However, in England, ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... expect me to stultify all your training, both your example and precept—for lo! these many years—by setting my left hand to gossip about my ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... character, thereby bringing the real qualities of the subject to the front, and believing, also, that the biographies of the noblest men only should be written for the young, since "example is more powerful than precept," the author sends forth this humble volume, invoking for it the considerate indulgence of critics, and the blessing ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... contracted may be corrected or even displaced by conscious teaching, yet, in times of excitement, intentionally acquired modes of speech often fall away, and individuals relapse into their really native tongue. Secondly, manners. Example is notoriously more potent than precept. Good manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information. Despite the never ending play ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... for he that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is his name." And so it has been, and ever will be, as long as the sun illumines the earth. For more than nineteen centuries the people and nations have joyfully repeated the angel's words, "Blessed art thou among women." By precept of the Church we add the words "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," in order to join to our praise of Mary that of Jesus, from whom and on whose account she received all her privileges, and for whose sake she ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... such a manner that he may, if possible, be restored. Simple sequestration of the insane man is an outrage upon him and upon our humanity. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is the divine precept, which, if we follow it as we ought, will lead us to search for our fallen comrades in the alms-houses and penal institutions and reformatories, and sometimes in the outhouses or cellars of private homes, to our shame, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... of England. Nature and the great nations of antiquity suggested the former; the force and pressure of the times demanded the latter. It is from such demands that our chief institutions arise. By precept we may be taught their propriety; by example we may see their advantages. But until the necessity is personally felt they are sure to be neglected; and men wonder at their want of prescience and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... individuality. In so trespassing you are guilty of impertinence. This is obvious. And yet one of the chief activities of home-life consists in prancing about at random on other people's private lawns. What I say applies even to the relation between parents and children. And though my precept is exaggerated, it is purposely exaggerated in order effectively to balance the ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... in the march of civilisation the gradual triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who preached humanitarian communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to the bourgeois, who were satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe and grew rich, following the precept of Guizot, as well as to the workers who overthrew it. It is significant that the journal of Louis Blanc, in which he published his book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK (1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES. The political question as to the due ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Adelaide Palliser turned round and looked at him, still understanding nothing. Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you'll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over. This had been a precept in the life of Mr. Spooner, verified by much experience, and he had resolved that he would be guided by it on this occasion. "Ever since I first saw you, Miss Palliser, I have been so much taken ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... there has grown up in them the belief that State education will check ill-doing.... This belief in the moralising effects of intellectual culture, flatly contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori.... This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions of the age.... Not by precept, though heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action, often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And yet this truth, which mental science clearly teaches, and which is in harmony ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... His cardinal belief and precept was, as with Socrates, that the bios anexetastos is not to be lived by man. As we have seen, the freedom of the reason was so dear to him, that he counted it an abuse for a parent to instil his own convictions into the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... worship, at least in the nations of higher civilization. These votaries were engaged in keeping alive the myth, in impressing the supposed commands of the deity on the people, and in imitating him in example and precept. Thus they had formed a lofty ideal of man, and were publishing this ideal to their fellows. Certainly this could not fail of working to the good of the nation, and of elevating and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... is such as excites the vivid imagination of the young, without leaving a trace of wild and unbridled adventure to torture their minds to a longing for border acts of cowboy heroism. There is a moral precept in every page, and an abundance of thrilling adventure to awaken the lethargy of any boy or girl. We cheerfully commend it to parents as a valuable adjunct to the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... title learning Of the earth's protector high, Shall, whene'er his form discerning, On it gaze with steadfast eye, And at times shall offer dresses, Offer fitting drink and food. He ten thousand joys possesses, And escapes each trouble rude. Whoso into deed shall carry Of the law each precept, he Through all time alive shall tarry, And from birth and death be free. Foutsa, thou, who best of any Know'st the truth of what I've told, Spread the tale through regions, many As the Ganges' sands ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... Neutral position for us to assume. If we sustain not this noble enterprise, both by precept and example, then is our influence on the side of Intemperance. If we say we love the Cause, and then sit down at our ease, surely does our action speak the lie. And now permit me once more to beg of you to lend your aid to this great ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... also be observed, judging from present indications, that no probability exists of the passage of such an act by a majority of both Houses, either in the present or the next Congress. Surely under these circumstances we ought to be restrained from present action by the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... mind. And then, too, where amongst ourselves do we find so earnest a longing and endeavor to gain freedom, the highest good, as among the animals? Where such a regular and well-balanced life from generation to generation, without instruction or precept?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to act well towards him; as says St. John (1 Ep. 3), 'Let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth.' But to wish and to act well towards anyone implies that we should succour him when he is in need, and this is done by almsgiving. Hence almsgiving is a matter of precept. But because precepts are given in things that concern virtuous living, the almsgiving here referred to must be of such a kind as shall promote virtuous living. That is to say, it must be consonant with right reason; and this in turn implies ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... noble principles, and seeks to elevate man to the highest perfection of which he could conceive. "And no greater praise can be given to a work of heathen morality than to say, as may be said of the ethical writings of Aristotle, that they contain nothing which a Christian may dispense with, no precept of life which is not an element of Christian character; and that they only fail in elevating the heart and the mind to objects which it ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... will continue to labour more and more in this world of things, and less and less in any other world, because here we begin to see things as they are—the deepest things of God and of man, that is. Also, because I have the precept, and the example, and the experience of God's greatest and best saints before me here. Because, also, our full and true salvation begins here, goes on here, and ends here. Because, also, teaching these things and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... to laugh" is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the question ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... him, in order to render it well-modulated, to roll it out from the lowest tone to the highest, and to draw it back by making use of an ascending and descending scale; and he himself went through this exercise every morning in bed, according to the precept of the Greeks. Pecuchet, at the time mentioned, worked in the same fashion: each had his door closed, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... have produced four children in twenty years cannot be said to have ignored the precept "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth" because they have so selected the times for the conceptions of their children as to enable them to give those children a better upbringing rather than have selfishly left the sequence of their ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... precept, "Keep wine and water apart," is conveyed at the close of a lyric distinguished in other respects for the brutal passion of its drunken fervour. I have not succeeded in catching the rollicking swing of the original verse; and I may observe that the last two stanzas seem to form a separate song, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... neither. 'Twas still my father's precept—"Better owe A yard of land to labour, than to chance ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... commit an untactful action—in that consisted the chief precept of Doubelov's life. He knew very well that this or that action was not good in itself, and that the chief thing was "how they would look upon it"—they, that is, the authorities. The authorities were favourably inclined towards Doulebov. He had already ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... you and I are alone together, to tell me some story—it must be a true one, mind—of some good man or woman, or boy or girl, who has shown moral courage just where I didn't show it. 'Example is better than precept,' they say, and I am sure it is a great help to me; for I shan't forget Christopher Columbus and his steady moral ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... so desirable, 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 ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... affirm on the field of battle her adhesion to this precept, though uttered by German lips. In defense of it, Portuguese will fight side by side with Englishmen, as they fought with them at Aljubarrota, side by side with Frenchmen, who fought with them at Montes Claros. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... "Mingere cum bombis res est saluberrima lumbis." A precept to be found in the "Regimen Sanitatis," or "Schola Salernitana," a work in rhyming Latin verse composed at Salerno, the earliest school in Christian Europe where medicine was professed, taught, and practised. The original text, if anywhere, is in the edition published and commented ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... plain and wholesome, because well-cooked, food, plenty of cleanliness and fresh air, besides the elevating and refining influence of a home where Christian living was inculcated, not so much by precept as by practice. God "setteth the solitary in families," not boarding-houses or institutions; but that is the only true family which takes care "in all its ways to acknowledge him." If such families all over our land would open the arms of their exclusiveness each ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... essentially a desert bird, and here the comparison is good because it lays its eggs in the waste far from water which it must drink morning and evening. Its cry is interpreted "man sakat, salam" (silent and safe), but it does not practice that precept, for it is usually betrayed by its piping " Kata! Kata!" Hence the proverb, "More veracious than the sand-grouse," and "speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth," is Komayt's saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, "The ash-coloured Katas ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... going to these posts—where they were relieved every two or three months—the men were instructed with regard to Albanian customs, and no case occurred of any transgression. So rigidly did they enforce the precept that anyone who tried to violate or carry off a woman was, if he persisted, to be shot, that last year, at Tropolje in Gashi, when the girl in question was said to be not unwilling, they pursued the abductors, and in the subsequent battle there were fatalities on both sides. The Serbian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... master Epicurus—as most men do who differ from him in opinion—but still why you disagree with him whom I consider as the only man who has discerned the real truth, and who I think has delivered the minds of men from the greatest errors, and has handed down every precept which can have any influence on making men live well and happily. But I imagine that you, like my friend Triarius here, like him the less because he neglected the ornaments of diction in which Plato, and Aristotle, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... called thy son." This is repentance. This is the first move man makes in the way of approach to the feast the Lord has prepared. "Man liveth by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This embraces all of Revealed Truth. Every law, every precept, every prophecy, every parable has some outflowing, healing virtue, some life-imparting power. We touch the hem of its garment when we read or hear in sincerity of heart. O sinner, come and partake of this feast, and thy soul ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and as we have premised, what a beautiful exercise for the intellect to discover in the political doings of his Grace—in those acts which ultimately knock at your cupboard-doors—only a practical illustration of the divine precept of doing unto all men as ye would they should do unto you! Well, you pray for your daily bread; and with a profane thought of the price of the four pound loaf, your feelings are suddenly attuned to gratitude towards those who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... which generations of venerating descendants have bestowed upon them, and appear as human characters. Though engaging in a great and difficult task, and while solving many problems, they nevertheless denied their own fundamental precept of the right of a man to worship God according to the dictates of his ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... think that in this particular the book falls short of the design of its author. There was this enormous difference between life in the Island of Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey, tradition is heaped upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon precept, until every citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords of a code from which he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and that it is an island is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this case, a life which has real power and force. The life in French Canada ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... arguments on the natural rights of every citizen, pressed as they have been on the nation's conscience for the last thirty years in securing freedom for the black race, and so grandly echoed on the floor of Congress during the past winter. We can not add one line or precept to the comprehensive speech recently made by Charles Sumner in the Senate, to prove that "no just government can be formed without the consent of the governed;" to prove the dignity, the education, the power, the necessity, the salvation of the ballot ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... 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 ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... chance sent him but fifty auditors he spoke with just as much feeling. His sermons were full of wit, often homely but never coarse. He knew how to interest tired men; how to keep the children awake. He interspersed anecdote with injunction, and precept with homely happenings. He yearned to better this life, and to evolve souls ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... feeling its worth, and the importance of simplifying it to the young, in order to awaken their interest, she bestowed special attention on catechetical instruction. Not satisfied with having Scripture truths committed to memory, she explained and inculcated them, with line upon line and precept upon precept, drawn from her own knowledge and experience. I can not think that this spiritual instruction interfered in the least with the other, but rather was a handmaid to it, furnishing a pleasant as well ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... criticism, showing what the experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success, and may thus, to borrow Horace's own metaphor of the whetstone, impart to others a quality which it is itself without. Perhaps I may be allowed, for a few moments, to combine precept with example, and imitate my distinguished friend and colleague, Professor Arnold, in offering some counsels to the future translator of Horace's Odes, referring, at the same time, by way of illustration, to my ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... while we censure their tenets, let us not adopt their errors; errors which would be infinitely more inexcusable in us, who, from the clearer views which revelation has given us, shall not have their ignorance or their doubts to plead. It were well if we availed ourselves of that portion of their precept, which inculcates the improvement of every moment of our time, but not like them to dedicate the moments so redeemed to the pursuit of sensual and perishable pleasures, but to the securing of those which are spiritual in their nature, and ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... vagabonds and "masterless" men.(5) He proceeded southward by easy stages, accompanied by a long retinue of Scotsmen, until he reached Theobald's, at that time the mansion house of Sir Robert Cecil, but soon to become a royal hunting-lodge. On the 19th the mayor issued his precept to the livery companies to prepare a certain number of members to accompany the mayor in his attendance upon the king, who was shortly expected in the city. It was intended that not only the mayor and aldermen but also the full number of 500 of the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... 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
... in exalting himself "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped."(78) He had dared to change the only precept of the divine law that unmistakably points all mankind to the true and living God. In the fourth commandment, God is revealed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and is thereby distinguished from all false gods. It was as a memorial of the work of creation ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... nourishment, or rest, Hygeia's blessings, Rapture's burning tear, Or the life-blood that mantles in-my breast! If in my heart the love of Virtue glows, 'Twas planted there by an unerring rule >From thy example the pure flame arose, Thy life, my precept,—thy good works, my school. Could my weak pow'rs thy num'rous virtues trace, By filial love each fear should be repress'd; The blush of Incapacity I'd chace, And stand, Recorder of thy worth, confess'd But ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... be noted in this version. The singular refrain "I am God, thy God"—which does not appear at all in the received version—occurs ten times, being, as it were, a solemn ratification of the Divine sanction given at the end of each separate precept. If this be so, the first two commandments, as they are commonly reckoned, are here fused into one, and the tenth place is taken by a commandment which does not appear in the received version ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... a sudden resolution that had come to her. Encouraged by Mrs. Travilla's precept and example, she had been, for months past, industriously training herself in the use of firearms, and kept her loaded revolver at hand; and now she would create a diversion in her husband's favor, keeping the raiders at bay at the front ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... in the children of a nation. All youthful hearts do well to covet wealth, wisdom and leverage power! But man should remember that the chief value of prosperity is in its capitalization of personality, and the rendering of others sensitive to example and precept. Should man forget this, earth will hear no sadder cry than his when, closing the life career, he exclaims: "While thy servant was busy here and there ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... waters of Israel?" It is like the complaint of the popular prophets in the time of Hezekiah, whose taste demanded stronger flavor than the noble simplicity of Isaiah, "Thou givest us only line upon line, precept upon precept." It breathes the spirit of the Ephesian Christians who, when they heard St. John's repeated maxim of "Little children, love one another," said, "Is this all that he has to tell us?" It expresses the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... loss, was Princeton's gain. He made men better, not alone physically, but morally. His work has been uplifting along all lines of university activities. In character and example he is as great and untiring as in his teaching and precept. The final and definite knowledge of his determination to leave Michigan is a severe blow to the students all of whom know and appreciate his work. Next to President Angell, no man of the University of Michigan, in the last ten years, has exerted a more wholesome influence ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... twenty years no less than nine hundred and fifty-four thousand divorces have been granted in the United States. Two thirds of these divorces were granted to aggrieved wives. In spite of the anathemas of the church, in the face of tradition and early precept, in defiance of social ostracism, accepting, in the vast majority of cases, the responsibility of self support, more than six hundred thousand women, in the short space of twenty years, repudiated the burden of uncongenial marriage. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... lecture on the "Havamal," identifying in the ancient Northern poem those precepts which laid down later qualities of English character; for the Oriental reader it would be easier to identify the English traits in Thackeray or Dickens or Meredith if he could first consider them in a dogmatic precept. But the lecture gives us, I think, an extraordinary insight into ourselves, a power of self-criticism almost disconcerting as we realize not only the persistence of ethical ideals in the past, but also the possible career of new ethical systems as they may permeate the books written to-day. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the brave that were. In civil courage, moral courage, or courage shown in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same law is true. Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and is good to be taught to ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... ways they were equal to any nation of our own world of which I had knowledge. None are more skilled in the arts, few are better architects or boast purer laws. Moreover, they were brave and had patience. But their faith was the canker at the root of the tree. In precept it was noble and had much in common with our own, such as the rite of baptism, but I have told what it was in practice. And yet, when all is said, is it more cruel to offer up victims to the gods than to torture them in the vaults of the Holy Office ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... so sacred and so clear as imperatively to demand the sacrifice of men's lives, of their families and their fortune. They resolved to give up everything, not to escape from actual oppression, but to honour a precept of unwritten law. That was the transatlantic discovery in the theory of political duty, the light that came over the ocean. It represented liberty not as a comparative release from tyranny, but as a thing so divine that the existence of society must be staked to prevent even the least ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... discussed the subject in the Gazette, literally giving line upon line and precept upon precept. Nor did he seem to make much of an impression for many months. But, finally, a strip of brick pavement having been laid down the middle of Jersey Market, he succeeded in getting the street ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... of old. "That precept descended from Heaven." Know thyself! Is that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. But never yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what he acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his left hand. He concluded the pantomime with a loud laugh, which he could command at all times extempore. — Notwithstanding his disorder, he did not do penance at supper, nor did he ever refuse his glass when the toast went round, but rather encouraged a quick circulation, both by precept and example. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the necessity of relinquishing the prerogative of our race, and being contented with recipient silence. There is another precept of a kindred nature to be observed, namely, not to talk too well when you do talk. You do not raise yourself much in the opinion of another, if at the same time that you amuse him, you wound him in the nicest point,—his ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... who had raised a large fortune by very indirect means, confess his life had been contrary to every precept of the Gospel; but that he hoped the pardon of Heaven for all his sins, as he intended to devote one of his daughters to a ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... ineffectual fires of the fetich-house, and lifted the grovelling thoughts of idolaters heavenward. His language, like the new juice of the vine, made its way to the very roots of Negro dialects, and gave them method and tone. In the song and narrative, in the prayer and precept, of the heathen, the Arabic comes careering across each sentence, giving cadence and beauty ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... thought, as I fear too many papas do, that this duty belonged exclusively to his wife. This we think is a grave mistake. Children cannot be taught too early the lesson of obedience; and often it happens that the weakness or tenderness of a mother prevents her from enforcing this very salutary precept. ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... perchance, by the fear of discovery. This is quite apart from the teaching that it is the duty of all men to obey all laws, a proposition so general that it has no effect. Even those who make the statement do not follow the precept, and the long list of penal laws that die from lack of enforcement instead of by repeal is too well known to warrant the belief that anyone pays serious attention to such a purely academic statement. ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men;' but the master tells him, 'Tsze, you have not attained to that.' It would appear from this reply, that he was aware of the difficulty of obeying the precept ; and it is not found, in its condensed expression at least, in the older classics. The merit of it is Confucius's own. When a comparison, however, is drawn between it and the rule laid down by Christ, it is proper to call attention to the positive ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... beneficent influence on his life and conduct. If our hearts go out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love, and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept—If you would have all the world love you, you must first ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Gap that a visit to it could not be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of Asheville. In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us to make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region. We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was with high anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm, foggy morning. We followed a very good road through a broken, pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. (Hist. Parl. i. 322-27.) The Dignitaries, 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Scotch are an intelligent people is generally acknowledged. 2. That the moon is made of green cheese is believed by some boys and girls. 3. That Julius Caesar invaded Britain is a historic fact. 4. That children should obey their parents is a divine precept. 5. I know that my Redeemer liveth. 6. Plato taught that the soul is immortal. 7. Peter denied that he knew his Lord. 8. Mahomet found that the mountain would not move. 9. The principle maintained by the colonies ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... institution back to their low-down homes on the borders of rice fields and cotton plantations, where their fathers and mothers have toiled in slavery, and by an inspiration that is divine, will dissipate the dark memories of the past, and will show, by precept and example, that sanctification of spirit and purity of life will shape the destiny of their race for coming time. Again we ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... sends children there to be educated, they can do so with perfect safety to their Pagan, Mohammedan, or infidel superstitions or opinions. They will not, through the whole course of instruction, hear a prayer, a lecture, or a single advice, lesson, or precept of the Church; they will, as far as the State plan of teaching extends, remain ignorant of the "holy name of God," or the Blessed Trinity, or the Lord's Prayer, or the Ten Commandments, or the Gospels, or ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the light of eternity. In that light, rank and title, with all their lofty associations and splendid accompaniments, faded away, while true nobleness, the nobleness which dwells in the Christian precept "Love your enemies—do good to those that despitefully use you," stood out in all its beauty ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... added, with the prim politeness of a child who accosts a guest according to rule and precept. Ellen had never, in fact, had a young man make a formal call upon her before. She reflected now, both with relief and trepidation, that her mother was away, having gone to her aunt Eva's. She had an instinct which she resented, that her mother and this young man were on two parallels which ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ease and convenience, in order that he might enter into the pursuits and amusements of his children, was united with an unremitting endeavor to maintain a high standard of moral and religious feeling. Thus by example as well as by precept did he evince his deep concern for their best welfare. As years passed on, his cordial sympathy with their interests, and his anxiety as far as possible to share his own with them, gave an additional power to his influence, not easily estimated." Such were the simple and natural ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... democratic republic is the best form of government yet devised, and that the ideals and institutions of the great republic taken together must and do work out in a prosperous, contented, peaceful, and righteous people; and also to exercise, through precept and example, an influence for good among the nations of the world. That destiny seems to us brighter and more certain of realization to-day than ever before. It is true that in population, in wealth, in knowledge, in national efficiency generally, we have reached a place far beyond the farthest ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... among His competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which He only hath given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... vice and immorality were very prevalent among professing Christians. Still among all classes there were notable examples of true piety, and ardent zeal for the propagation of the truth. The excellent queen-mother, Kaahumanu, by her precept and example did much to advance the cause of religion. I must tell you of another native lady, Kapiolani, the wife of Naike, the public orator of the kingdom, by whose courage and faith one of the most terrible of the old superstitions ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from her mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her forte In another direction lies, work is her sport (Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and red Bunker's hill). Dear, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... depends upon the force of example rather than of precept. Parents must be scrupulously just and truthful to the child, for his quick perception will detect the slightest deceit, and the evil impression made on his mind may be lasting. They must confidently expect conduct from him of a high moral ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... illegality, because he appeared to be irritated by such an obstacle to his will and to transfer his irritation against the law to the one who raised it as an objection. I think that he was especially resentful toward any one who volunteered criticism based on a legal provision, precept, or precedent, apparently assuming that the critic opposed his purpose on the merits and in order to defeat it interposed needless legal objections. It is unnecessary to comment on the prejudice which such an attitude ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, 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 to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... not know at first whether to honour this bold young man with an answer. But there is a precept in the law which declares that every inquirer must be answered, so one of them said curtly and roughly: "Of course a man ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... facts that happened long after their death. But I am deceived, if a better comment could be anywhere collected, upon the moral part of the Gospel, than from the writings of those excellent men; even that divine precept of loving our enemies, is at large insisted on by Plato, who puts it, as I remember, into the mouth of Socrates.[7] And as to the reproach of heathenism, I doubt they had less of it than the corrupted Jews in whose time they lived. For it is a gross piece ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the fragrance of the honeysuckle were no longer about them. Miss Tupper in the calmer light of the day considered her words with due regard to precept and standard. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... 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 ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... two Nirvanas;—that of entire passionlessness attained in this life, and the consummate Nirvana entered at death. The saint does not need to wait for death for his redemption, nor must he hasten his death in order to enjoy it fully; Buddha, by example and by precept, forbids any such anticipation. Death seals that which was already won, there is no return from the Nirvana of death to any further life. This, however, does not amount to an assertion that the dead Arahat has no ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... love one's neighbour as oneself was, he said, the first and greatest law. And in the Sermon on the Mount he requires the passion to be felt in such strength as to include those whom we have most reason to hate—our enemies and those who maliciously injure us—and delivers an imperative precept, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... When the Czar, by his malevolent obstinacy, finally brought these two men to accord, it was deemed needful to adopt various devices in order to shatter the forces which Russian diplomacy had succeeded in piling up in its own path. But here again we are reminded of the Horatian precept— ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... The precept is sound, and its due application Is fraught with undoubted advantage to some, But I'm free to remark that my own situation Represents a recalcitrant re-sidu-um; Clocks I cannot abide with their truculent ticking— A nuisance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... to maintain among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes, their powers, and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix in their minds by example, more effectual than precept, a solemn fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:—these were the objects which I proposed to myself, and which the loftiest intellect, or the amplest opulence, might be well employed in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... doing his eight days' work of preparation at the Lighthouse Battery, between the 12th and the 20th, Amherst, whose favourite precept was 'slow and sure,' was performing an even more arduous task by building a road from Flat Point to where he intended to make his trenches. This road meandered over the least bad line that could be found in that country of alternate rock, bog, sand, scrub, bush, and marshy ponds. ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... France, so entirely reasonable, so profitable, so pacific, and so harmonious with ours, would spread. Conquering Germany could not resist its influence. Nations are taught by example more than by precept, and either is better than force. Other nations would follow; nor would Russia, elevated by her great act of Enfranchisement, fail to seize her sublime opportunity. Popular rights, which are strongest always in assured peace, would have ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... unalterable; the fashions of clothes and furniture have remained the same for ages; suttees are so ancient as to be mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus; justice is still administered at the palace-gates as of old; in short, "every usage is a precept of religion and a ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... continued Mr. Griffith, "that 'a perfect start is our first and greatest assurance of a perfect finish.' And nowhere is this precept more truly exemplified than in vocal tone production. The tone must have the right beginning, then it will be right all through. A faulty beginning is to blame for most of the vocal faults and sins of singers. Our country is full of beautiful natural voices; through lack of understanding ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... me now as a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice, to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so having showed him the way to crock his hough, (example is better than precept, as James Batter observes,) I taught him the plan of holding the needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing that it was a part not very particular, and not very likely to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... California without a single defeat. As captain and manager of a ball team Mr. Wright had few equals, and no superiors, as his subsequent history in connection with the Boston and Philadelphia Clubs will prove. He was a believer in kind words and governed his players more by precept and example than by any set of rules that he laid down for their guidance. As a player at the time of this trip he was still in his prime and could hold his own with any of the younger men in the outfit, while his knowledge of the English game proved almost invaluable to us. Harry Wright died ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... That which God commands.] He alludes to the precept- "Render unto Caesar the things ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... sea-coast running northward. It comes into its more proper line at a celebrated sea-marsh called Cameria,[524] concerning which the oracle said "Ne moveas Camarinam," and the transgression of which precept brought on a pestilence. The road here is a wild pass bounded by a rocky precipice; on one hand covered with wild shrubs, flowers, and plants, and on the other by the sea. After this we came to a military position, where ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... would of necessity desire and choose that his friend should commit offences very frequently, so as to give him, so to speak, the more numerous handles for fault-finding, and on the other hand one would be vexed, pained, aggrieved by all the right and fitting things that friends do. This precept then from whomsoever it came, amounts to the annulling of friendship. The proper rule should be, that we exercise so much caution in forming friendships, that we should never begin to love a friend whom it is possible that we should ever hate; but even in case we should have been unfortunate ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions.' This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, fraud, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a very natural antipathy to Pope . . . but they have been joined in it by . . . the whole heterogeneous mass of living English poets excepting Crabbe, Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice, have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's poetry with my whole soul." There is ten times more poetry, he thinks, in the "Essay on Man" than in the "Excursion"; and if you want ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... insignificance, if not of dishonour? For it was dishonour to live with a man she could not love, whether her heart cherished another image or was merely vacant. A dishonour to which innumerable women submitted, a dishonour glorified by social precept, enforced under ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue. It is therefore the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice. We beg you to be assured that the Senate will at all times cheerfully cooperate in every measure which may strengthen ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Illustrious foe And teacher, Nelson: blest and over blest In thy outgoing at the noon of strife When glory clasped thee round; while wayward Death Refused my coaxings for the like-timed call! Yet I did press where thickest missiles fell, And both by precept and example showed Where lay the line of duty, patriotism, And honour, in that combat ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... has been, that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a social growth—a phase of progress. It has taken wars and persecutions, revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... at present like a monster threatening to swallow up the moral life of man; you by precept and by example have been teaching him to disgorge. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... indulging in cant; and the genuineness of the sentiment which dictated those words is therefore above suspicion. To work vigorously, to do well whatever he (or she) has to do, is a real pleasure to the Utopian child. Indeed his whole being is a living response to the familiar precept: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... doubt is excellent, for it is certainly true that I have missed every pigeon which I tried to shoot with these confounded little rifles. But if you could demonstrate in practice what you so kindly set out in precept, the value of your ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... capitalist class, alarmed at the amazingly rapid growth of anti-militarism in this country, is endeavoring, through church and government, to combat this just sentiment, and by law and precept to create an artificial respect and love for the soldiers' uniform and the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc Moon Her office ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... lamentable inconsiderateness to expect fishermen to be able to dodge the weather by such guidance; and it is time to stop this easily concocted nostrum for notoriety; for it is vague and inconclusive in every precept, and has scarcely an assertion which is ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... not think it amiss further to observe on this head, as it will now show that precept and example always went hand and hand with her, that her dairy at her grandfather's was the delight of every one who saw it; and she of all who saw ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... abbot hath ever nourished enmity and discord among his brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions.' This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... voted for a resolution extolling the 'tried and victorious policy based on the class war,' and on their return to England referred to the class war as a 'shibboleth' and as a 'reactionary and Whiggish precept, certain to lead the movement away from the real aims ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely 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 and his example[99]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... expatiating on its beauties. It will not become clear to his comprehension by our pouring upon it all at once a sudden and overpowering blaze of light in the way of explanation. Such a process rather confounds him. Here again let us fall back upon the method of the great Teacher, "Line upon line, precept upon precept." We will first patiently conduct our boy through one of the simplest operations of arithmetic, say, a sum in addition. The next day we will conduct him again through the same process, or through ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... in some of the clumsy fictions of the late Ettrick Shepherd, to say nothing of the edifying legends about the Romish saints which the good people of southern Europe are taught to swallow as gospel. Finally, be it remembered, that Oriental story-tellers have never subscribed to Horace's precept,— ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... all the rest,— The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest," The things named "pants" in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;" One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the manuscripts of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. See doc. no. 87, and notes. The trials had taken place on May 8 and 9, and Kidd was now under sentence. He was hanged at Wapping on the shore of the Thames, May 23, 1701. The precept, or order for his execution, at Wapping "infra fluxum et refluxum maris" (i.e., between high-water and low-water mark, according to admiralty custom), is quoted in Marsden, Law and Custom of the Sea ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... heart glowed at seeing the son of a monarch whom they were accustomed to regard with veneration and love; and as people who lived in the habitual belief that to "fear God and honour the King" is a "united precept," every mark of respect and attachment was exhibited on both occasions. When his Royal Highness came the second time, as captain of the Pegasus, the homage, which had been paid to him at the first visit, as son of their sovereign, was mingled with respect to himself. Some there are ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... said Agrius, "his most important precept: 'If you wish to drink freely and dine well in company, you should eat five leaves of raw cabbage steeped in vinegar, before ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... such an obstacle to his will and to transfer his irritation against the law to the one who raised it as an objection. I think that he was especially resentful toward any one who volunteered criticism based on a legal provision, precept, or precedent, apparently assuming that the critic opposed his purpose on the merits and in order to defeat it interposed needless legal objections. It is unnecessary to comment on the prejudice which such an attitude ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... action to the word, and in less than ten minutes I had auricular evidence that, as far as the sleep was concerned, he was carrying his precept most ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... as having said that "a work-shop is worth a battalion." This precept he managed to put into action even during the first dark days of 1914, and the interior development of Morocco proceeded side by side with the strengthening of its defenses. Germany had long foreseen what an asset northwest Africa would be during ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... are the most eligible paths for man to choose? All such as are an ornament to those who tread therein; and get them honor from man. Be also as careful of the observance of a light precept, as of a weighty one; because thou knowest not the due reward of the precepts, and balance the loss sustained by the omission of a precept against its recompense, and the reward of sin against its loss of happiness. Consider also three things, and thou wilt not transgress. Understand what is ...
— Hebrew Literature
... him entirely. Nothing, my dear daughter, is more contrary to common sense and to Holy Scripture than this. Are we not told, Wives, be obedient to your husbands? Had Mr. Warrington lived, I should have endeavoured to follow up that sacred precept, holding that nothing so becomes a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,—this church which ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret hearts and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... American institution of learning. They have believed in democracy because they believed in the nobility of man; they have served society because they have looked upon the possession of learning not as conferring a privilege but as laying on a duty. They have taught and practised the precept that the greater man's power the greater his obligation. The supreme choice is righteousness. It is that "moral power" to which Professor Tyler referred as the great contribution of college men to the cause of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of superiority, greater strength, higher culture, leading to a claim to dominate the minds and the lives, the destinies, of others, and then in its arrogant self-assertion to override all laws and all restraints imposed by justice. It is the exact opposite of the Christian precept: "Let each esteem other better than himself." This, like some other Christian precepts, may never have been meant to express the whole truth, but only that side which men are naturally apt to neglect. It was hardly necessary to insist that men should defend themselves against attack, maintain their ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... characters, and in the trifling business of the idle world,—yet I think she has principles, and a good heart,—[with a glow of conjugal tenderness.] but in a partner for life, Sidney, (you know your own precept, and your own judgment)—affection, capricious in its nature, must have something even in the external manners,—nay in the very mode, not only of beauty, but of virtue itself— which both heart and judgment must approve, or our happiness in that ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his breast or his brow the cross of the Lord, and let him who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his shoulders; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said, 'He that doth not take up his cross and follow me, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the Reason? Would it chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it man the dominions, that might be serene, by the treasures it wastes-by the wars it provokes? Self-knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept, "KNOW THYSELF." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle. But what old heathen oracle has told ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those people who're always harping about the youth of his day and generation being so much better than the present. That's all humbug. But what does get me is, that you youngsters don't profit more by the experience of an old man like me who's been married three times. Line upon line and precept upon precept, I have preached this thing to my boys for the last ten years, and what has it amounted to? Not a single white bride has ever been brought to Las Palomas. They can call me a matchmaker if they want to, but the evidence ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... really part of his passion for collecting 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 gives plenty, in The Border Minstrelsy. The long ancient romantic ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... physic." The very same fault it was, which the prophet reprehends in Asa king of Judah, that he relied more on physic than on God, and by all means would have him to amend it. And 'tis a fit caution to be observed of all other sorts of men. The prophet David was so observant of this precept, that in his greatest misery and vexation of mind, he put this rule first in practice. Psal. lxxvii. 3. "When I am in heaviness, I will think on God." Psal. lxxxvi. 4. "Comfort the soul of thy servant, for unto thee ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Robert Eden deliver a lecture in the school-room—one of a course he is delivering upon anatomy, or rather upon different parts of the human body—and demonstrating the utility of cleanliness, the danger of drunkenness, and mixing precept with information for the benefit of as mixed an audience as ever was assembled, but who seemed much interested and very attentive. There were many of the gentry of Battersea, male and female, the tradespeople, workmen, ...
— 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
... identical with ours, but in order to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept laissez faire 38, which the eighteenth century derived from Colbert, it has been an important, if not a final step in the making of method. The strongest and most impressive personalities, it is true, like ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... inebriate asylum not only affords, says the same authority, "effectual removal of the patient from temptations and associations which surrounded him in the outer world, but by precept and example it teaches him that he can gain by his reformation, not the ability to drink moderately and with the least safety, but the power to abstain altogether. With the restraint imposed by the institution, and the self-restraint accepted on the part of the patient, are remedial ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... civilised government would be its eventual insensibility to the appeal of a "just war." Under any governmental auspices, as the modern world knows governments, the keeping of the peace comes at its best under the precept, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." But the case for peace is more precarious than the wording of the aphorism would indicate, in as much as in practical fact the "big stick" is an obstacle to soft speech. Evidently, in the light of recent history, if the peace is to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... "We have 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
... there can be no impotence in us, with respect to obtaining it, besides the disapprobation of the will; and that inability which consists in disinclination, never renders any thing improperly the subject of precept or command. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... mount, where He has led; Men count my haltings o'er; I know them; yet, though self I dread, I love His precept more. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the overvaluing of pleasures. Accordingly, temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek philosophers —stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences—was with him, as with them, almost the central point of educational precept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large place in my childish remembrances. He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence, responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Nec deus intersit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... can be applied to a human being, was especially applicable to him. He was a hearty man, a large-hearted man that is to say. He was perhaps the largest-hearted man I ever knew. I think he made a nearer approach to obeying the divine precept, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," than one man in a hundred thousand. His benevolence, his active, energising desire for good to all God's creatures, and restless anxiety to be in some way active for ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth—which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fallacies, there has grown up in them the belief that State education will check ill-doing.... This belief in the moralising effects of intellectual culture, flatly contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori.... This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions of the age.... Not by precept, though heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action, often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And yet this truth, which mental science clearly teaches, and which is in harmony with familiar sayings, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... this book were viewed through a medium which the writings of the Camissard apostle had suggested. His constructions of the text were hasty, and formed on a narrow scale. Every thing was viewed in a disconnected position. One action and one precept were not employed to illustrate and restrict the meaning of another. Hence arose a thousand scruples to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He was alternately agitated by fear and by ecstacy. He imagined himself beset ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... and much later, there were many heathens, and vice and immorality were very prevalent among professing Christians. Still among all classes there were notable examples of true piety, and ardent zeal for the propagation of the truth. The excellent queen-mother, Kaahumanu, by her precept and example did much to advance the cause of religion. I must tell you of another native lady, Kapiolani, the wife of Naike, the public orator of the kingdom, by whose courage and faith one of the most terrible of the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 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
... sheikh, understand that we Christians desire to follow that precept, not from cowardice or a mean spirit, but from obedience to our Lord and Master; and would you therefore wish to induce me and my companions to abandon a faith inculcating so pure and holy a precept? Understand ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... the taking of usury greatly exercised the minds of men of that day. The church on traditional grounds had forbidden it, and her doctors stood fast by her precept, though an occasional individual, like John Eck, could be found to argue for it. Luther was in principle against allowing a man "to sit behind his stove and let his money work for him," but he weakened enough to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... existence and substance and nature of the soul, asserted that there was no such thing as a soul at all. It is, indeed, the most difficult thing imaginable to discern the soul by the soul. And this, doubtless, is the meaning of the precept of Apollo, which advises every one to know himself. For I do not apprehend the meaning of the God to have been that we should understand our members, our stature, and form; for we are not merely bodies; nor, when I say these things to you, am I addressing ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... believe, to carriages and 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 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... thousands of hours trying to subjugate impossible muscles. Chopin, who found out most things for himself, saw the waste of time and force. I recommend his advice. He was ever particular about fingering, but his innovations horrified the purists. "Play as you feel," was his motto, a rather dangerous precept for beginners. He gave to his pupils the concertos and sonatas—all carefully graded—of Mozart, Scarlatti, Field, Dussek, Hummel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Hiller and, of Schubert, the four-hand pieces and dances. Liszt he did not favor, which is natural, Liszt having ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... vineam, vel arbustum constituere volet, seminaria prius facere debebit, was the precept of Columella, l. 3. c. 5. speaking of vineyards and fruit-trees: and doubtless, we cannot pursue a better course for the propagation of timber-trees: For though it seem but a trivial design that one should make a nursery of foresters; yet it is not to be imagin'd, without the experience of it, what ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... [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 the tents of Shem," to mean that the ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... first place observe that Aristotle is not giving a precept here, but only making historical mention of a peculiarity which he observed in the Grecian examples before him. But what if the Greek tragedians had particular reasons for circumscribing themselves within this extent of time, which with the constitution of our theatres no longer exist? ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... many of the great reforms needed, and these she unhesitatingly set down. How much has since been done which she advocated for the education of women, and how much they have already benefited both by her example and precept, is perhaps not yet generally enough known. Her religious tone is always striking; it was one of the moving factors of her life, as with all seriously thinking beings, though its form became much modified with the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... ask you to write others, be sure of that; and you will do well, my dear friend, for your own sake and for ours, to follow the precept of Denis Diderot: "My friends, write stories; while one writes them he amuses himself, and the story of life goes on, and that is less gay than the ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... thoughts to publish the falsest, as well as the most impudent paper that ever was printed, writ a previous discourse about lying, as a necessary introduction to what was to follow. The first paper was the precept, and the second was the example. By the falsest paper that ever was printed, I mean the 'Examiner' Numb. 17, in which he pretends to give an account of what the Duke of Marlborough has got by his services." The writer in the "Medley," ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... never known to join in the inhuman sport of hunting wolves for pleasure, because, as he said, although they may not be wolf-children, they do but obey an instinct which was given them; and to be kind-hearted is to obey a precept which was given us. And, owing to the introduction into Portugal of the Book in which this commandment is to be found, wolf-children have become scarcer, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... only made a considerable progress in sciences universally studied, but in others, revealed but to few, and lying under censure from the blindness of superstition. But while my Guardian laboured to enlarge the sphere of my knowledge, He carefully inculcated every moral precept: He relieved me from the shackles of vulgar prejudice; He pointed out the beauty of Religion; He taught me to look with adoration upon the pure and virtuous, and, woe is me! I have obeyed him but ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... our natural constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote regions of the East: but it was reported that from some ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a stream, which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses: It slipped from politics to puns, It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels, or ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... was an extension of the arms in the shape of a cross; if anyone wants to know how difficult a practice this is let him try it for, say, fifteen minutes. Regarding recitation of the Divine Office it was of counsel, and probably of precept, that is should not be from memory merely, but that the psalms should all be read. For this a good reason was given by Maelruin, i.e. that the recitation might engage the eye as well as the tongue and thought. An ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... looked proud to be wearing the old uniform again. The sadness and trouble was all in the retrospect, not in the outlook. Tommy Atkins, with his great, simple, conspicuous vices and his obscure, surprising, and enduring virtues was unconsciously putting into practice the precept of a certain Old Buccaneer: No regrets; they unman the heart we ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Magazine, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the "strange specimen of oscitancy" which another (it is, in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook. To such trifles as these last the precept of non offendar maculis may safely be applied, although Fielding, wiser than his critics, seems to have foreseen the necessity for still ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... framer of a lay As soft as evening in his favorite May; Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble, And quit his books, for fear of growing double"; Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; Convincing all, by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose insane, And Christmas stories, tortured into rhyme, Contain the essence ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... 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 faith ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... during which Carmichael's face had changed, "you are incorrigible. For years we have been trying to make you a really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are distinctly worse than when we began—more lazy, miserly, and uncharitable. It ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Maine Woods,"—such are the titles he affects. He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right, provided that love is made subservient to a holier one. But your first duty is, in the words of our Saviour, "to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Obedience to this precept involves a great many other duties, but none of these should interfere ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... but, 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, but never (virtue forbids) for action, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... resolved not to move out of his own sphere, not unlike Baldwin, a shoe-maker's son, (and a shoe-maker), in the days of yore, who published a treatise on the shoes of the ancients, having a firm resolution strictly to observe this precept, Ne sutor ultra crepidam. ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... in this assembly about a lady (of the royal household). The prosperity of our kingdom is at an end. Alas, the Kauravas are even now engaged in sinful consultations. Ye Kauravas, take to your heart this high precept that I declare. If virtue is persecuted, the whole assembly becometh polluted. If Yudhishthira had staked her before he was himself won, he would certainly have been regarded as her master. If, however a person staketh anything at a time when he himself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mere experiment on unmeaning forms, or than ringing indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty. To the reverie, rather than the investigation, to the dream, rather than the deliberation, of the architect, we recommend it, as a branch of art in which instinct will do more than precept, and inspiration than technicality. The correspondence of our villa architecture with our natural scenery may be determined with far greater accuracy, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... should observe him; "yes, let her know I'm there." At this time Captain Boodle—or Doodles, as he was familiarly called—had again ascended to the billiard-room, and was hard at work. "Let her know that I'm there," repeated Archie, mentally. Everything was contained in, that precept. And he, with his hands before him on his knees, went through the process of steadying a horse with the snaffle-rein, just touching the curb, as he did so, for security. It was but a motion of his fingers, and no one could see it; but ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... concise elegance of Phaedrus, and the native graces of La Fontaine. Fifteen moral and political sentences are illustrated in a series of apologues: but the composition is intricate, the narrative prolix, and the precept obvious and barren. Yet the Brachman may assume the merit of inventing a pleasing fiction, which adorns the nakedness of truth, and alleviates, perhaps, to a royal ear, the harshness of instruction. With a similar design, to admonish kings that they are strong only in the strength of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... was immediately followed, and that functionary directed that the body should be removed from where it was to the nearest public-house, and immediately issued his precept for an ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Is this any new thing? Was it not said already, that he is "without uniquity, and his ways judgment?" But, alas! how ignorant are we of God, and slow of heart to conceive of him as he is, therefore is there "line upon line, and precept upon precept," and name upon name, if it be possible, that at length we may apprehend God as he is. Alas! our knowledge is but ignorance, our light darkness, while it is shut up in the corner of our mind, and shines not into the heart, and hath no influence on our practice. And the truth ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... most Christian spirit exterminated many,) on the contrary, they are equally free men with the Yankees, and have the same privilege of reducing free men to slavery with their Republican neighbours. The Black Indians, following the precept and example of the White Republicans, have now an immense number of slaves; and in this case, it is not the more civilized who holds his fellow man in bondage, but the less civilized, indeed, savages. So the world is improving and progressing in the Western Hemisphere! ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... justly exposed a precept delivered by some ancient writers, that a man should live with his enemy in such a manner, as might leave him room to become his friend; and with his friend in such a manner, that if he became his enemy, it should ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its heart's content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient, because, as it was always wide of the mark, it often distracted attention very conveniently from operations that would have been defeated or hindered by publicity. A precept which I endeavored vainly to popularize early in the war, "If you have anything to do go and do it: if not, for heaven's sake get out of the way," was only half carried out. Certainly the capable people went and did it; but the incapables would by no means get out of the way: they fussed and bawled ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... consideration of courage. Nothing was more prized and praised in Old Japan. In those days it was the deliberate effort of parents and educators to develop courage in children. Many were their devices for training the young in bravery. Not content with mere precept, they were sent alone on dark stormy nights to cemeteries, to houses reputed to be haunted, to dangerous mountain peaks, and to execution grounds. Many deeds were required of the young whose sole aim was the development of courage and daring. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... graduates and ex-students go, they teach by precept and example the necessary lesson of thrift, economy, and property-getting, and friendship ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... or his superior, to behave himself modestly and with respect. Yet free from flattery or empire. Not with insolence or precept; but as the prince were already furnished with the parts he should have, especially in affairs of state. For in other things they will more easily suffer themselves to be taught or reprehended: ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... of the urban proletariate to hate the very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom the suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried to emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had brought to cities of the past.[480] The appeal to history and to nobler motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the nation. No President of the United States, from the beginning of the Republic, ever excelled him in essential preparation for the tasks of the office. By a thorough acquisition of abstract knowledge, by clear and convincing precept and by a firm and diligent practical application of the outstanding principles of statecraft, no occupant of the Executive chair up to his advent was better furnished for a notable administration of public affairs. And Wilson's Administration has been notable. Its achievements, ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... delicious rarity! I know That all, we always find; but always all, Charms not the palate, critically fine. Archestratus, in culinary lore Deep for his time, in this more learned age Is wanting; and full oft he surely talks Of what he never ate. Suspect his page, Nor load thy genius with a barren precept. Look not in books for what some idle sage So idly raved; for cookery is an art Comporting ill with rhetoric; 'tis an art Still changing, and of momentary triumph! Know on thyself thy genius must depend. All books of cookery, all helps ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the Christian virtues. Jesus was eminently sane. He was no fanatic. He gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. The individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. Nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... Masonry, which is to be faithful to the best interests of mankind. Labor, by precept and example, to elevate the standard of Masonic character, to enlarge its sphere of influence, to popularize its teachings, and to make all men know it for the Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, and Good-will on earth among men; of Liberty, Equality, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... instructing me, that a Load of Riches bring, instead of Felicity, a Load of Troubles; and that the only Source of Happiness is Contentment. Go, therefore, you who have too much, and give it to those who are in want; so shall you be happy yourselves, by making others happy. This is a Precept from the Almighty, a Precept which must be regarded; for The Lord is about your Paths, and about your Bed, and spieth ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... civilisation the gradual triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who preached humanitarian communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to the bourgeois, who were satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe and grew rich, following the precept of Guizot, as well as to the workers who overthrew it. It is significant that the journal of Louis Blanc, in which he published his book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK (1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES. The political question as to the due limits between ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... interest. He still showed none when the speaker said again, that because the pestilence was once more with us—that was in the terrible visitation of 1878—he had devoted his second discourse to the hideous crime of a great city whose voters and tax-payers do not enable and compel it to keep the precept, "Be thou clean." I thought of the clean little home from whose master beside me came no evidence that he thought at all. But the moment the preacher declared his purpose to consider now the application of this great command to the individual life and character ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... to attend to his advice, and set out in the highest glee, wishing for no better sport than to try the firmness of my resolutions on this head, though, it must be confessed, I was fully more inclined to follow the precept enjoined upon me by another friend, who, by way of improving the captain's ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... have thought that truest nobility lay in choosing a life in the midst of suffering and woe for the purpose of alleviating it, and who have acted on their opinion. This lesson, however, is not so frequently learnt by us through precept as in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... number of the "Contemporary Review." Whilst delivering severe lectures upon want of candour and impartiality, and preaching temperance and moderation, the practice of the preacher, as sometimes happens, falls very short of his precept. The example of moderation presented to me by my clerical critic does not seem to me very edifying, his impartiality does not appear to be beyond reproach, and in his tone I fail to recognise any of the [Greek: epieikeia] which Mr. Matthew Arnold so justly admires. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... recourse was had to an accusation of sorcery. The idea of handing him over to the ecclesiastical authorities was briefly discussed, but proofs were necessary, and the judges hesitated. It is a principle of justice, which has become a precept in law, that in cases of uncertainty the accused has the benefit of the doubt; but at the period of which we are writing, these truths were far from being acknowledged; guilt was presumed rather than innocence; and torture, instituted to force confession from those who could not otherwise be convicted, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... appearance of winding among hills, is in fact, on the left side, limited by the sea-coast running northward. It comes into its more proper line at a celebrated sea-marsh called Cameria,[524] concerning which the oracle said "Ne moveas Camarinam," and the transgression of which precept brought on a pestilence. The road here is a wild pass bounded by a rocky precipice; on one hand covered with wild shrubs, flowers, and plants, and on the other by the sea. After this we came to a military position, where Murat used to quarter a body of troops ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... things cannot be 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 ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... 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 ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... being freed, and, if possible, by honest and honourable means; for I always remembered the old adage; and I trust it has ever been my ruling principle, that honesty is the best policy; and likewise that other golden precept—to do unto all men as I would they should do unto me. However, as I was from early years a predestinarian, I thought whatever fate had determined must ever come to pass; and therefore, if ever it were my lot to be freed nothing could prevent me, although ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... precepts which laid down later qualities of English character; for the Oriental reader it would be easier to identify the English traits in Thackeray or Dickens or Meredith if he could first consider them in a dogmatic precept. But the lecture gives us, I think, an extraordinary insight into ourselves, a power of self-criticism almost disconcerting as we realize not only the persistence of ethical ideals in the past, but also the possible career of new ethical systems as they may permeate the books written to-day. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... certainly effect. This does not therefore present itself to him as an object of ambition. We have many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle: "Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede. Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he could ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... one side, there was a manifest principle on the other—a principle so sacred and so clear as imperatively to demand the sacrifice of men's lives, of their families and their fortune. They resolved to give up everything, not to escape from actual oppression, but to honour a precept of unwritten law. That was the transatlantic discovery in the theory of political duty, the light that came over the ocean. It represented liberty not as a comparative release from tyranny, but as a thing so divine that the existence of society must ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Herbert, is worth a hundred schoolmasters. In the home she is "loadstone to all hearts, and loadstar to all eyes." Imitation of her is constant—imitation, which Bacon likens to "a globe of precepts." But example is far more than precept. It is instruction in action. It is teaching without words, often exemplifying more than tongue can teach. In the face of bad example, the best of precepts are of but little avail. The example is followed, not the precepts. Indeed, precept at variance with practice is worse than useless, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... a parliament held at Coventry, 6th Henry VI. whereunto by special precept to the sheriffs of the several counties, no lawyer, or person skilled in the law ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... for cardinal tenet the sacredness of life, the inmates of the great monasteries nevertheless did not hesitate to appeal to arms, at any time, in defence of their temporal privileges or in pursuit of their ambitious designs. Yet the discredit attaching to such a flagrant discrepancy between precept and practice might not have produced very signal result had not the twelfth century brought the Gen-Hei struggle, which plunged the empire into a state of turbulence and reduced the lower orders to a condition ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose first precept is ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... brighter moments. Alas, it is not always so. Heavily weighs 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 the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... see her and her 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 buy a toy to a child. Even ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas; that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... fashions of clothes and furniture have remained the same for ages; suttees are so ancient as to be mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus; justice is still administered at the palace-gates as of old; in short, "every usage is a precept of religion ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... from the repetition of nuptials. The successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... many. Penloe's ideas are so radical that it gives us a shock all over even to think of attempting to bring the people to that mode of living. The thought we have concerning our sex is instilled into us by custom, precept and example, so that from earliest infancy to introduce such an innovation as Penloe proposes would apparently, to our minds, seem like undermining our social structure and its very foundations. While we admit the state of society is morally low, yet ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... bent over them and put food and drink to their lips. Many an office of loving mercy to the sick and dying did he and Roger perform ere daylight faded from the sky; and before night actually fell, the Father had by precept and example got together a band of helpers ready and willing to tend the sick and bury the dead, and the people felt that the terrible panic which had fallen upon them, and caused every one to flee away, had given place to something ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the Pythian of old. "That precept descended from Heaven." Know thyself! Is that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. But never yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what he acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... disease." "At that rate," said the squire, "my bread is like to be rarely buttered o' both sides, i'faith. But, I hope, as by the blessing of God I have run mad, so I shall in good time grow valiant, under your honour's precept and example." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... horror of them. At the same time I have taught him to love, and to do good to his neighbour, whoever that neighbour may be, and whatever may be his failings. Falsehood of every kind I included in this precept as forbidden, for no one can love ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
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