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More "Precept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart, and trusting to that to form the manners, many begin with the manners, and leave the heart to chance and influences. The golden rule contains the very life and soul of politeness: 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.' Unless children and youth are taught, by precept and example, to abhor what is selfish, and prefer another's pleasure and comfort to their own, their politeness will be entirely artificial, and used only when interest and policy dictate. True politeness is perfect freedom and ease, treating others just as you love to be treated. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... 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, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... religions that sprang up swiftly and as swiftly decayed, hinted vaguely at the birth of a child,—offspring of a pure Virgin—a miraculously generated God-in-Man—an absolutely Sinless One, who should be sent to remind Humanity of its intended final high destiny, and who should, by precept and example, draw the Earth nearer to Heaven. I would here ask you to note what most people seem to forget,—namely, that since Christ came, all these shadowy types and prefigurements have CEASED; a notable fact, even to skeptical minds. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to your affectionate flock; and after as many years of life as shall be for his service, and to your own comfort, give us a happy meeting in those regions of blessedness, which you have taught me, as well by example, as by precept, to aspire to! ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... brought on some sharp debates in Congress. Jefferson had led his party into power as the special champion of States' Rights and the special opponent of national sovereignty. He and they rendered a very great service to the nation by acquiring Louisiana; but it was at the cost of violating every precept which they had professed to hold dear, and of showing that their warfare on the Federalists had been waged on behalf of principles which they were obliged to confess were shams the moment they were put to the test. But the Federalists of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... requires. If we tarry at the dying, we shall stop short of His perfection. We are to be dead to sin; but I nowhere find in Scripture that we are to die to love and happiness. That is man's gloss upon God's precept." ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... theirs, whether in the intellectual or the moral world. This was the help he steadfastly hoped to give the people, that interacting union of intellectual freedom and moral discernment which may be furthered by good education and training, by precept and example, that basis of all social health and prosperity. And if, as he said, he would like to be remembered as one who had done his best to help the people, he meant assuredly not the people only of his native land, but the wider world to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... herein my Viking at times waxed oracular. And many's the hour we glided along, myself deeply pondering in the stem, hand upon helm; while crosslegged at the other end of the boat Jarl laid down patch upon patch, and at long intervals precept upon precept; here several saws, and there ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... book withhold: Be some few errors pardon'd though observ'd: An humble author to implore makes bold. Thy kind indulgence, even undeserv'd, Should melancholy wight or pensive lover, Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim Our blossoms cull, he'll find himself in clover, Gain sense from precept, laughter from our whim. Should learned leech with solemn air unfold Thy leaves, beware, be civil, and be wise: Thy volume many precepts sage may hold, His well fraught head may find no trifling prize. Should crafty lawyer trespass on our ground, Caitiffs ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is enlightened—here it is not. Every American will sacrifice a portion of his private interests to preserve the rest; we would fain preserve the whole, and oftentimes the whole is lost. Everybody I see about me seems bent on teaching his contemporaries, by precept and example, that what is useful is never wrong. Will nobody undertake to make them understand how what is right may be useful? No power upon earth can prevent the increasing equality of conditions from inclining the human mind to seek out what is useful, or from ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... to meet nobly the possibilities of unwedded life, than even the duties of marriage. Marriage is so perfectly natural a state, that it reveals its own laws; and a simple, healthful, happy, trusting love, will guide woman more wisely than much precept. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Byron did not adopt Locke's philosophy he at least paid the greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by following ever more closely his best precept, which is to the effect that to love truth for the sake of truth is an essential part of human perfection in this world, and the fertile soil on which is sown ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... there had 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 ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... General Drummond), during the conflict within the fort, performed extraordinary acts of valour. In the hottest of the battle he presented himself, encouraging his men, both by example and precept. But at the very moment when victory was declaring in favour of the British arms, some ammunition which had been placed under the platform ignited, and a dreadful explosion was the result, by which the greater part of the British forces, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... teaching, but it appears that Mr. Speaker is not infrequently compelled to repeat his lesson. It is "line upon line and precept ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... is no passion which steals into the heart more imperceptible and covers itself under more disguises than pride." Still, if in such memoirs there be found landmarks of precept or example that will smooth the ruggedness of Youth's pathway, the success of its mission should disarm invidious criticism. For the great merit of history or biography is not alone the events they chronicle, but the value of the thought they inspire. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... had never ceased to impress upon him that every public man should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate, as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the Athenaeum. His first published writing ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the incident," was the theory of the old school. The New school reverses the order to "Reformation the principle and punishment the incident." Obviously this course renounces the old principle of retaliation and vengeance and embraces that indicated by Christ in his precept "bear ye one ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... equity, with all their means of evasion and postponement, give scoundrels confidence in cheating. If justice were cheap, sure, and speedy, few such things could be. It is because it has become (through the vile dealing of those courts and the vermin they have called into existence) a positive precept of experience that a man had better endure a great wrong than go, or suffer himself to be taken, into Chancery, with the dream of setting it right. It is because of this that such nefarious ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... contradictory, yielded only confusion and mental unrest. But this brief biography exhibits to us His entire career, sets each eager listener down beside Christ while He unrolls each glowing parable, each glorious precept, each call to inspiration and the higher life. Thus books acquaint us with the best men in their ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 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 rigid ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... 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
... people consented to the war. Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were desperately to suppose that, learned divines like ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... one political precept pre-eminent above all others and acknowledged by all, it is that which dictates the absolute necessity of a union of the States under one government, and that government clothed with those attributes and powers with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... abstain from evil speaking, and make a general mention of them in our prayers; but our attachment to them should be of the race, ardent and exalted character—it would be so in heaven, and we lost immeasurably by not beginning now. "As I have loved you, so ought ye also to love one another," was a precept continually in his mind, and he would often murmur, as though unconsciously, "'As I have loved you'—'as I have loved you'"—then burst out with the exclamation, "Oh, the love of ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... shall beginne to foile your land, in such sort also as hath beene mentioned in the former Chapters, onely with this obseruation that if any of your lands lie flat, you shall then, in your foiling, plough those lands vpward and not downeward, holding your first precept that in this soile, your lands must lie high, light, and hollow, which if you see they doe, then you may if you please in your foiling cast them downeward, because at Winter ridging you may set ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... She rides secure, and mocks the threatening blast! 510 Born in thy house, and in thy service bred, Nursed in thy arms, and at thy table fed, By thy sage counsels to reflection brought, Yet more by pattern than by precept taught, Economy her needful aid shall join To forward and complete thy grand design, And, warm to save, but yet with spirit warm, Shall her own conduct from thy conduct form. Let friends of prodigals say what they will, Spendthrifts ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sooner had he gained Waverley's consent to lengthen his visit for a few days, than he laboured to remove the grounds upon which he conceived he had meditated a more early retreat. 'I would not have you opine, Captain Waverley, that I am by practice or precept an advocate of ebriety, though it may be that, in our festivity of last night, some of our friends, if not perchance altogether EBRII, or drunken, were, to say the least, EBRIOLI, by which the ancients designed those who were fuddled, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... he unfolds elaborately the sense of his allegory, as he expounded it to his friends in Dublin. "To some," he says, "I know this method will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly by way of precept, or sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises." He thought that Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had thus written poetry, to teach the world moral virtue and political wisdom. He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... we care for him, and in such a manner that he may, if possible, be restored. Simple sequestration of the insane man is an outrage upon him and upon our humanity. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is the divine precept, which, if we follow it as we ought, will lead us to search for our fallen comrades in the alms-houses and penal institutions and reformatories, and sometimes in the outhouses or cellars of private homes, to our shame, where errors of judgment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... setting at nought and despising the forms and ceremonial limits which are drawn round females in modern society. It is true, she was sequestrated from all female company, and could not learn the usual rules of decorum, either from example or precept; yet such was her innate modesty, and accurate sense of what was right and wrong, that she would not of herself have adopted the bold uncompromising manner which struck me with so much surprise on our first acquaintance, had she not been led to conceive that a contempt ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... much honoured for 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, England, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... one so dear! O welcome guest, though unexpected here! Who bid'st me honor with an artless song, Affectionate, a mother lost so long. I will obey,—not willingly alone. But gladly, as[335-1] the precept were her own; And, while that face renews my filial grief, Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,— Shall steep me in Elysian[335-2] revery, A momentary dream ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... lived to see thousands of men and women to whom I gave the pledge in their youth, wearing it still as a garland about their brows, and their children, by precept and example of parents, keep step with the onward ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Worth and the Worthy The Moral Force Participation To—— The Present Generation To the Muse The Learned Workman The Duty of All A Problem The Peculiar Ideal To Mystics The Key The Observer Wisdom and Prudence The Agreement Political Precept Majestas Populi The Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy Astronomical Writings The Best State To Astronomers My Faith Inside and Outside Friend and Foe Light and Color Genius Beauteous Individuality Variety The imitator Geniality ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying, at the same time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is, to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do for ever, then, disclaim your interference in my province. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Church to the first day of the week. We ask by what authority, and are very much mistaken if an examination of all the texts of the New Testament, in which the first day of the week or Lord's day is mentioned, does not prove that there is no divine or Apostolic precept enjoining its observance, nor any certain evidence from scripture that it was, in fact, so observed in the times of the Apostles. Accordingly we search the scriptures in vain, either for an Apostolic precept, appointing the ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... the Sunday school until her mother was taken sick; and though she was only eleven years old, she had a very good idea of her moral and religious duties. "Honor thy father and thy mother," the commandment says; and she could think of no better way to obey the divine precept than to support her mother when there was no one else upon whom she could rely. Little by little their earthly possessions had passed away. Mrs. Redburn had never learned how to save money; and when the day of adversity ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... had days ago begun to cultivate the acquaintance of one of the baggage men. This man at once attracted me by his shifty eyes and unhealthy red complexion. It hag often been a Secret Service precept with me: "Give me a hard drinker or a man who is fast and I'll land him nine times out of ten." Well, the baggage master was no exception. I decided to ply him with liquor to make his tongue run away. I made it my business to see that this ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... 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 ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the worship of images depends very much upon it, for if it be only an explication of the first, then, unless one takes images to be gods, their worship is lawful, and so the heathens were excused in it, who were not such idiots; but if it be a new and distinct precept, then the worshipping any image or similitude becomes a grievous sin, and exposes men to the wrath of God in that severe manner mentioned in the end of it. And it is a great confirmation that this is the true meaning of it, because all the primitive writers[20] of the Christian ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... on, and the men who exercise it are called 'Quakers' and 'poor-spirited' and 'chicken-hearted' and the like. Social life among us is in flagrant contradiction of this Beatitude; and as for national life, all 'Christian nations' agree that to apply Christ's precept to it would be absurd and suicidal. He said that the meek should inherit the earth; statesmen say that the only way to keep a country is to be armed to the teeth, and let no man insult its flag with impunity. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... vixen, as you say. I have an admirable receipt to cure a termagant wife.—Never fear, Joseph, but thou shalt be master of thine house. If she be very troublesome, I can teach thee how to break her heart in a twelvemonth; and honestly too;—or the precept would not be mine. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... is Hibernian, but the brutality is our own. A few ill-gained pounds reconcile the enormity to the owner—and the cheapness and expedition of the conveyance give it public sanction: but humanity is outraged by the same: human sympathies are seared; and the noble precept, that "the merciful man is merciful to his beast," is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... grace extend To me, careful wretch, which have me sore abused Thy precept breaking, O Lord, I mean to amend, If now thy great goodness would have me excused, Most heavenly Maker, let me not be refused, Nor cast from thy sight for one poor sinful crime; Alas! I am frail, my whole kind ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and felt my ears growing red with mortification. Too late, I remembered that the new-comer in a community should guard his tongue among the natives until he has unravelled the skein of their relationships, alliances, feuds, and private wars—a precept not unlike ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... not to the ballads we must go for example—precept of this or of any kind there is none—in the bourgeois and respectable virtues; of the sober and chastened behaviour that comes of a prudent fear of consequences, of a cold temperament and a calculating spirit. The good or the ill done by the heroes and ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... for continued and tranquil happiness by the example and precept of their friends; and the time passed swiftly in the pleasant learning, and in the novelty of the life led by the Leonards. This indeed merits a closer study than can be given here, for it is the life led by vast numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who love both the excitement of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... every school gives more than her salary commands and puts heart power into every act. By example and precept the lessons are taught and growth follows in response to cultivation. But the schools are handicapped by lack of time for much personal care, by lack of facilities for the best of instruction and by the multiplicity of things that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... which they might have had a cartload), the observation of Lent, is no part of it, since they neither taught nor practised any of these things. Vows of celibacy are not more contrary to nature, than to the positive precept of St. Paul. He mentions a very common case, in which people are obliged, by conscience, to marry. No mortal can promise that case shall never be theirs, which depends on the disposition of the body as much as a fever; and 'tis as reasonable ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the better instincts of humanity had gone down. We have to see what was done by our poet to awake that voice again and to put fresh life into those instincts. Only let us remember that more permanent good is done in this world by a beautiful nature giving itself its natural expression, than by precept or denunciation; and beware of attributing to Virgil more direct consciousness of his mission than he really felt. It is the nature of the man that is of value to us in our studies, as it was to the Romans in their despair, a nature ruled by sweet, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... time-honored wren who cried "I helps" as she let a drop of water fall into the sea. At this moment the clergyman from the chapel-of-ease on the Raise arrived at the Moss, and Matthew prepared to put his precept ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... always had the teaching of example as well as precept, from their father," remarked Violet with a look of loving appreciation up into his face; "so that it would be strange indeed if they ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... 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 its whole story to the reader. Hence ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Doubting of every matter that cannot be demonstrated to you clearly, by which an attempt might be made to insinuate mysteries in matters of religion, and hereby lead you away from the holy truth. Fourthly. Never do anything to another that you would not have done unto you. The last precept, well understood and followed on all occasions, is the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be the best after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of negation. He desires no more than to show that revealed religion confers no advantages which are not already secured by natural religion. "The revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not find recommended and practised under the law of nature; therefore it has taught us nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought us no new truth; for what is a truth but a proposition referring ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... sound distinction. Probably it was some commercial-minded lodger or beach-chatterer, from whom he picked up the opinion that nowadays, to get on, you must run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—a precept which he quotes with cynical gusto but carries out only so far as suits his feelings. He aims at being businesslike, but the businesslike side of his character is the more superficial. Pride will not allow him to boggle over bargains. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of loves prayse, That all the woods theyr ecchoes back rebounded, As if they knew the meaning of their layes. But mongst them all which did Loves honor rayse, No word was heard of her that most it ought; But she his precept proudly disobayes, And doth his ydle message set at nought. Therefore, O Love, unlesse she turne to thee Ere cuckow end, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... first hymns I read in it afforded me great consolation. It was written by a man who had been a sailor like myself, and one who had been almost as wicked as myself, but who has since done a vast deal of good, by means of precept and example. This hymn-book I now read in common with my bible. But I cannot express the delight I felt at a copy of Pilgrim's Progress which this same Lascar gave me. That book I consider as second only to the bible. It enabled me to understand and to apply a vast deal ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bruce, in reporting to the Foreign Office Mr. De Norman's death, is still more striking; and it has an additional interest as being eminently characteristic of the writer: 'It has not been my fortune,' he says, 'to meet with a man whose life was so much in harmony with the Divine precept, "not slothful in business, serving the Lord." With a consistency unparalleled in my experience he brought to bear on the discharge of every duty, and to the investigation of every subject however minute, the complete and undivided attention ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... that count as little this bond of blessed brotherhood, wrought by our fathers' mighty hands and bleeding hearts—we tell you, sorrowing and in tears, that your pretence is foul hypocrisy. Ye have reversed the first precept of the gospel, for your wisdom is a dove's, and your harmlessness a serpent's. Ye have not the first principle within you either of religion or philanthropy, or common human benevolence. Your principle is the principle of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the voyage, measures are taken to procure a crew. Slave-traders employ for this the services of 'runners,' who constitute a caste of pariahs of the most degraded kind. A conscientious scruple would seem never to enter into their calculations. They would hardly recognize a precept of the decalogue except by the circumstance of its violation. Earning their livelihood thus basely, debauchery and crime constitute their every-day history. These persons keep a record of the names of men who have served on slave ships, or been guilty of mutiny, or other ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... rule was observed by Aristotle in his own case; but we are unable to say whether the rule was made before or after his marriage, which is a fact of much importance when we consider the wisdom of the precept, and the real principles and philosophy of its famous author. Moreover, regardless of one-half of creation, he has neither stated the age at which females are marriageable, nor given us that of his own wife. This neglect ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... he, nodding, "an altogether wise precept and one I have had by heart ever since she blessed my sight. I must introduce you to her at the earliest—the very ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... keeping the language of the home uniform throughout our world-wide community. Purely intellectual development beyond the matter of language we may leave for a space. There remains the distinctive mental and moral function of the home, the determination by precept, example, and implication of the cardinal habits of the developing citizen, his general demeanour, his fundamental beliefs about all the common and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... 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
... 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... strong. I try to serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You have 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 calmness and impartiality. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the path of folly? Can you | | thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves unspotted from | | the world, or call yourselves the children of a pure God? O thou | | spiritual blind guide! Where are you leading the people to by precept | | and example? You have led and allowed the nations to walk into the | | ditch. | | | | Habit is harder to serve than a king, and its taxes are greater, for | | they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, on body, mind and | | pocket. You ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... taste of their customers, and cooked their dishes to their palates. The Palladium is understood to be the clerical paper, and from the clergy I expect no mercy. They crucified their Savior who preached that their kingdom was not of this world, and all who practise on that precept must expect the extreme of their wrath. The laws of the present day withhold their hands from blood. But lies and slander ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... these two contraries in one and the same folly—if the fortunes of humanity, whether at war or at peace, were not equally a burden to his mind. By all means let us keep faithful to our efforts to be good; but in spite of ourselves we take this precept a little in the sense of the placards: 'Be good to animals.' How hard it is, in the midst of daily duties, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... from nature alone—that he is something which transcends nature. For that (according to Strauss) nature, in originating man, not only intended to transcend herself, but really did transcend herself and, that she succeeded in her intention, we can infer from the moral precept which Strauss gives: "Do not forget for a moment, that thou art human; ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... 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 ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... 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 ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... vain recreation on this day were by law forbidden, according to the terms of the proclamation, it was not held to be a violation of the precept that all the nice old aunties should bring their knitting work and sit gently trotting their needles around the fire; nor that Uncle Bill should start a full-fledged romp among the girls and children, while the dinner was being set on the long table in ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the Mount, in which He embodied such a wealth of moral precept and spiritual counsel, He warned against investments in that which would divert the affections from the great purpose of life. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... social stratification of my new home, where the excellent principles of high thinking and plain living were highly recommended for all who could not reverse the precept, struck me, a neophyte, as for all the world like that of a cathedral town in England, except that these visiting patrons of religion and learning were treated with a reverence and respect found only in America. Surely it must have amused them, had they not been so used to it; for they were quite ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... irretrievably shameful dereliction of duty on the part of any 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. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... to the grave drunkards; often, I am sure, in company with the very men whose example they thought so safe, but which led them to certain ruin. It is an awful thought, Jack, that we have been the means of misleading others, either by example or precept; and one that will weigh like lead upon the conscience of many a man on his death-bed. No, no; my motto is, "TOUCH NOT, TASTE NOT, HANDLE NOT." The wise man of Scripture knew what he was about when he said, "Look not upon the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... last charge had reference to the recent removal of tradesmen's stalls from Chepe. No defence appears to have been allowed Hervy. The charges were read, and he was then and there declared to be "judicially degraded from his aldermanry and for ever excluded from the council of the city"; a precept being at the same time issued for the immediate election of a successor, to be ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... sixteenth century were born Claude Gellee and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... usage. At present it is seldom required, except on the removal of the master of the Mint from his office. Upon a memorial praying for a trial of the Pix by this officer, a summons issues to certain members of the privy council to meet on a day fixed. The Lord Chancellor also directs a precept to the wardens of the Goldsmith's company, requiring them to nominate a competent number of able freemen of their company, skilful to judge of, and to present the defaults of the coin, if such be found, to be of a jury. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive and profitable. He has written a live book of one, who, "though dead, yet speaketh." It is replete with facts, and lessons of wisdom. The virtues are taught both by precept and example, and the vices are held up in all their deformity to warn and save. Religion, too, receives its just tribute, and wears ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... here portrayed to 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 ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... 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 out all ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... better than precept, Furneaux did not reprove the giggler. Lying there, screened even in broad daylight by the bulk of the rock and some hazels growing vigorously in that restricted area owing to the absence of foliage overhead, he listened to the voices of the night, never dumb in a large wood. Birds fluttered uneasily ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... and therefore again I say, that one scholar in a family 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
... obligation be stronger on grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy? Sec. 69. The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... 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
... first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc Moon Her office they prescribed; to the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... time for prayers and breakfast at nine; directly after breakfast I go into the kitchen; sometimes, it is only necessary to give orders or instructions, but generally I find that practice is much better than precept, and I see to the soup myself, and make the pudding—the joint can take ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... these words. To proceed, then, regularly and PULPITICALLY, I will first show you, my beloved, the necessary connection of the two members of my text 'suaviter in modo: fortiter in re'. In the next place, I shall set forth the advantages and utility resulting from a strict observance of the precept contained in my text; and conclude with an application of the whole. The 'suaviter in modo' alone would degenerate and sink into a mean, timid complaisance and passiveness, if not supported and dignified by the 'fortiter in re', which would also run into impetuosity ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... by half-past ten every respectable inhabitant was sworn. Accompanying the summons was a notice, signed by Messrs. Townsend and Kent, clerics to the magistrates, informing the parties that 'by disobedience to the precept a penalty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The Yankee women, scraggy, scrawny, and hard as whip-cord, breed like Norway rats, and they fill all the brothels of the continent.... But they multiply—the only scriptural precept they obey—and boast their millions. So do the Chinese; so do the Apisdae, and all other pests of the animal kingdom. Pull the bark from a decayed log, and you will see a mass of maggots full of vitality, in constant motion and eternal gyration, one crawling over one, and another creeping under ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... have not yet the suggestions of sexual desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may, in individual cases, either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the class; neither in ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... 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 of conscious correction and instruction, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... clean, but also those of our officials. Otherwise, vainly does a good Judge guard himself from receiving money, if he leaves to the many under him licence to receive it on their own account. But we, both by precept and example, show that we aim at the public good, not at private and ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... his country alone, but the whole of mankind, benefited by his work. It is no exaggeration to say that he has raised the standard of civilization, and the world to-day is undoubtedly better for both the precept and the example of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and also be of signal benefit, by leading the multitude of industrious inhabitants to cultivate cotton, maize, sugar, and other valuable produce, to exchange for goods of European manufacture, at the same time teaching them, by precept and example, the great truths of our holy religion." Water-carriage existed all the way from England, with the exception of the Murchison Cataracts, along which a road of forty miles might easily be made. A small steamer on the lake would do more good in suppressing ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... is not simply a question of their being brought into the world sound and strong. Their long infancy which in the biological as well as in the legal sense, lasts until they are grown up, should be spent in surroundings which can minister, by example and precept, to moral and intellectual development. Surely no such end can possibly be attained when man and woman mate ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... his own hands, accompanying each friendly offer with an affectionate smile, which went straight to the hearts of the forlorn and half-starved guests. This was a language which was every way intelligible, the language of universal humanity, in which the noblest precept is, to be kind to enemies and to feed ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... it well. The elements of a true female character should be carefully studied. It would be well if some strong hand should write out the moral philosophy of Girlhood as a book for schools and academics as well as families, that every young woman might have line upon line and precept upon precept, in the formation of her character. All desire to possess a true character, but all do not know how to ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... degree was a certain intemperance of language, which led her to reply to the insidious questions of the devil; in appearance this forgetfulness was very slight. To answer a question, give an explanation requested of you, clear up a doubt, render an account of a precept of the Lord, seem at first sight something natural and permitted. It is quite easy to be deceived in this matter. We readily convince ourselves that we are actuated by laudable motives in such like conversations—motives for ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... something of that," said Balafre, "and I hope your Majesty will believe that if he acted wrongfully, it was in no shape by any precept or example, since I never was so bold as to unhorse any of your Majesty's most illustrious house, better knowing ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... through the rules of their order or their particular devotion should be assigned the district to which they were to go, not permitting them to pursue their voyage by way of Filipinas or any other part of the Western Indias, but by way of Eastern India—notwithstanding that the precept for the propagation and preaching of the gospel is common to all the faithful, and especially charged upon the religious—we consider it fitting that the missions and entrances of Japon be not limited to only the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... Scriptures insist much more earnestly and fully on some things than on others, it is our wisdom to follow, in this respect, the leadings of the Holy Spirit. It will be the aim of the enlightened believer to give to each doctrine and precept of revelation the place and prominence assigned to it in the Bible. Especially will he be careful that no obscure or doubtful passage of Scripture be allowed to contradict the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... this view was invoked the time-honored principles of the Monroe Doctrine and its great corollary, Washington's advice against becoming entangled in European affairs. Our first president, in his farewell address, established a precept of national conduct that up to the time we were drawn into the European war, had become almost a principle of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... progressive lessons 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 by the traveler, the wider the field of experience ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... suggests itself to him, would seek for some other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are always greatly in favour of his finding a better word. Ut tanquam scopulum sic fugias insolens verbum, is the wise advice of Caesar to the Roman Orators, and the precept applies with double force to the writers in our own language. But it must not be forgotten, that the same Caesar wrote a Treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the principles ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... has said," 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 ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... conversion. As often employed by professional evangelists, there is so much of clap-trap that it must bring the whole subject of religion into contempt with sensible people. It is amazing to me that, in view of its entire lack of Scripture precept or example, the light and knowledge of this day, and its frequent failures, it, and the whole system of which it is an essential part, are ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... of a stick, trembled slightly. But his northern temperament, sentimental but cautious and clear-sighted, too, in its idealistic way, predominated over his impulse to make a clean breast of the whole deadly absurdity. According to the precept of transcendental wisdom, he turned his tongue seven times in his mouth before he spoke. He made then only a speech of thanks, nothing more. The colonel listened interested at first, then looked mystified. At ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Prince! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee. Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, 'Put it up'? Or did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... into words, and avoided making use of deductions from practice other than a few obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedure involves, of course, the omission of some important elements in the history of the theory of translation, in that it ignores the discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... 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 (Navy Records Society), ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... how many of us act like this physician? If we don't practice in every particular the professions we make, and try to influence the lives of others, and lead the lives of Christians according to Christian precept, the world will go ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... collector?—believes that the use of the questions following each chapter will be found practical and useful in the work of both clubs and classes. Practice, however, is still more important than precept. The student might easily learn this book "by heart" and yet be unable to play a perfect scale. Let him ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, 'to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... manners; so much so, that he's more pleasing to watch than even grown-up persons. There is no one, therefore, who sees him without falling in love with him. But you'll say: 'why is he then beaten?' You really aren't aware that at home he has no regard either for precept or for heaven; that he comes out with things that never suggest themselves to the imagination of grown-up people, and that he does everything that takes one by surprise. The result is that his father and mother are driven to their wits' ends. But wilfulness is natural ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the present period of our 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 cause of the dissensions and downfall of the kingdom of Granada, and, the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... it from His servant's mind to wish to decry the authority of the Book of Books. This he believed to consist, in great part, of inspired utterances, and, for the rest, to be the wisest and ripest collection of moral precept and example that had come down to us from the ages. Without it, one would be rudderless indeed—a castaway in a cockleshell boat on a furious sea—and from one's lips would go up a cry like to that wrung from a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... in any situation in life in which deference to higher opinion is compelled by the nature of an undertaking, the young will do well to consider the wisdom of the precept, "Be patient with ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... 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 the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... will 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 ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... 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 ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... 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 ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... of such teaching? Surely that we are not to be satisfied with keeping the letter of the law, but are to keep it in our hearts. So clear is this that the Church has completely abandoned the letter of the last precept. No one except a Quaker refuses to take an oath. Every bishop on the bench has done so, and every incumbent of a living. Nowhere throughout the Sermon on the Mount have Christians felt themselves bound to a literal or legal interpretation of its teaching. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... 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 ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... hint, when 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 courage ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... is resolved to do great matters in pulling down the shops quite through the City, as he hath done in many places, and will make a thorough passage quite through the City, through Canning-street, which indeed will be very fine. And then his precept, which he, in vain-glory, said he had drawn up himself, and hath printed it, against coachmen and carrmen affronting of the gentry in the street; it is drawn so like a fool, and some faults were openly found in it, that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... were infinitely better provided for than the laboring poor of other countries of the world, and were generally happier than millions of white people in the world." Such arguments the clergy supported and endeavored to reconcile with Christian precept. Rev. Dr. Richard Furman, president of the Baptist Convention of South Carolina,[2] after much inquiry and reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that "the holding of slaves is justifiable by the doctrine and example contained in Holy Writ; ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... do as well without Tim's precept and example, and neither she nor Sally May was sorry when Nancy declared they could have just one more jump—they had no idea how stiff they ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... restrictions, which the case may require or bear, to be made by the hearer's or interpreter's discretion; whence many seemingly formal prohibitions are to be received only as sober cautions. This observation may be particularly supposed applicable to this precept of St. Paul, which seemeth universally to forbid a practice commended (in some cases and degrees) by philosophers as virtuous, not disallowed by reason, commonly affected by men, often used by wise and good persons; from which consequently, if our religion did wholly debar us, it would seem chargeable ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... I had decided, 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 ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... 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 ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... proper 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 his neighbour ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... under Plots, and wonderful occurences, cannot be accounted Pastoral; for that it might be agreeable to the Person it treats of, it must be plain and simple, such as Sophocles's Ajax, in which there is not so much as one change of Fortune. As for the Manners, let that precept, which Horace lays down in his Epistle to the Pisones, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... Do right, do right! She had almost never been told, do not do wrong, but always do right, and this meant simply and only, be a Christian. It was such a noble way to step upward from the beginning; not easy, oh, no, far from that, so often doing wrong in spite of precept and example, so often hesitating, until the delay weakened the power of doing right; yet so often, with hope and prayer to aid her, planting her foot firmly on the upper ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... 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 written nothing ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... because the adoption of such a maxim would have had a similar tendency with the subjugation of the passions in producing the same end. For it seems absurd, they conceive, to suppose that wars should cease, and that no precept should have been held out that they were wrong. But the more enlarged interpretation of the words in question furnishes such a precept, and therefore another foundation seems to have been laid in Christianity for the same end. They admit, therefore, the larger interpretation ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... 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 ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... decorations went beyond all my former experience; dates and names were wrought in lines of pastry and frosting on the tops. There was even more elaborate reading matter on an excellent early-apple pie which we began to share and eat, precept upon precept. Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word BOWDEN, and consumed REUNION herself, save an undecipherable fragment; but the most renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old Bowden house made of durable gingerbread, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... which prevails between them acts with creative power upon the young mind, and awakens every germ of goodness within it. This invisible and incalculable influence of parental life acts more upon the child than all the efforts of education, whether by means of instruction, precept, or exhortation. If this be a true picture of the vast influence for good of the institution of marriage, what must be the moral degradation of that people to whom marriage is denied? Not content with depriving them of all the higher and holier enjoyments of ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... archery. Now Marian always maintained that archery, on their own lawn, and among themselves, was a very pretty sport; and for the sake of consistency with her own principles, she very diligently shot whenever the Faulkners were not there, and did her very best, by precept and example, to make Clara fit her arrows to the string in her own direct and purpose-like way, draw the bow-string to her ear with a steady effort and aim, instead of a fitful jerk or twitch; and in fact shoot, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wept, and not only did he pray for one week, or one month, but he kept on praying. He prayed "day and night." Having many duties to perform, of course he was not always on his knees, but in heart he was ever before the throne of grace. It was not hard for him to understand and obey the precept, "Pray without ceasing." He began the work in prayer, continued in prayer, and the last recorded words ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... be resorted to by one who would be very particular in his correspondence,—"employant pour cela le plus beau papier dore, sechant l'ecriture avec de la poudre d'azur et d'argent"; and Moore repeats the precept in the example of M. le Colonel Calicot, according to the text of Miss Biddy, in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... "A noble precept," said I, with enthusiasm. "Of all vices, indiscriminate hospitality is the most pernicious. It allows us neither conversation nor dinner, and realizing the mythological fable of Tantalus, gives us starvation in the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that there was one in the immediate vicinity of the white house, and that if he would accompany me I would show him the way. All this I did purposely in a very affable and obliging tone and manner; for I hold that example is infinitely better than precept, and always endeavour, if possible, to overcome evil with good. I offered my arm to the old woman, who thanked ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... to me admissible that the surrender of self, which continues to be with me the highest of everything, should allow of a direct object as its means. I used to have a holy respect of the majority. Now, when I see how many imbeciles go to make up that majority I am no longer afraid to throw over any precept that has filtered into my head, and if ever there was a revolutionist in thought, it is I. Foolish beliefs and hobbies have become adorned with so much that appeals to the sense of the beautiful that one clings even to that, but then that is another element which can envelop rational ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... faculty of digesting and arranging as well as of retaining, has converted his mind into a mighty magazine of knowledge, from which, with the precision and correctness of a kind of intellectual machine, he pours forth stores of learning, information, precept, example, anecdote, and illustration with a familiarity and facility not less astonishing than delightful. He writes as if he had lived in the times and among the people whose actions and characters he records and delineates. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... proposed and promised to us upon asking, it clearly evinces that there can be no impotence in us, with respect to obtaining it, besides the disapprobation of the will; and that inability which consists in disinclination, never renders any thing improperly the subject of precept or command. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... This pious precept, while it stood In his remembrance, kept him good When nobody was by him; For though no human eye was near, Yet Richard still did wisely fear The ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... brought up at home, both by precept and by his father's example, never to seat himself at the dining table or in the family sitting-room until his mother is seated, will not need to be told that he should rise in a crowded street car and give his seat to an elderly woman. He will do it so instinctively that it will not ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... from 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 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Origine and Use of Satire. The Excellency of Epic Satire above others, as adding Example to Precept, and animating by Fable and sensible Images. Epic Satire compar'd with Epic Poem, and wherein they differ: Of their Extent, Action, Unities, Episodes, and the Nature of their Morals. Of Parody: Of the Style, Figures, and Wit proper to ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... 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 bodily movements that are to go hand in hand with the music. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in her character was distinctly marked by her educating the daughters of pious ministers at half price. This was setting an example worthy of imitation. It was a conduct conformable to scriptural precept. Said Paul, "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... [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 ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... to me the gutter or kennel was what the brook Kidron was to Shimei: death was denounced against him should he cross it, doubtless because it was known to his wisdom who pronounced the doom that, from the time the crossing the stream was debarred, the devoted man's desire to transgress the precept would become irresistible, and he would be sure to draw down on his head the penalty which he had already justly incurred by cursing the anointed of God. For my part, all Elysium seemed opening on the other side of the kennel; and I envied the little ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... some slight noises, she saw the room all in a blaze, and a great number of luminous crosses, with scraps of writing here and there very legible, among which the precept to ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... 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 of the rising generation, who were engaged in favour of the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... 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 Macaulay, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... her soul to a life of weary 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, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgement. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.—'Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little.'—Nay, but by men of strange lips and with another tongue will he speak to this people: to whom ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... hospital work, so it is best for the leaders to have lectures, lessons, and demonstrations. There is danger in a "little knowledge" of such an important subject. So we shall only say that the one important Scout precept of obeying orders is in a hospital of paramount importance. ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... a fundamental principle of the Jewish religion. They are to be preserved with the greatest care. Indeed, the Rabbis assert that the single precept of the phylacteries is equal in value to all the commandments.[27:1] The Talmud says: "Whoever has the phylacteries bound to his head and arm, and the fringes thrown over his garments, and the Mezuza[27:2] fixed on his door-post, is safe from ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... precept, Tom, as you will find,' observed the mate to me. 'I never tell men to do what I am not ready to do myself. That's the reason they obey me ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... in every school gives more than her salary commands and puts heart power into every act. By example and precept the lessons are taught and growth follows in response to cultivation. But the schools are handicapped by lack of time for much personal care, by lack of facilities for the best of instruction and by the multiplicity of things that must be done. Under the best ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... deceived, God is mocked. Such as all nations and people sow, such they shall reap at the hand of the just God. And then your many and great privileges, above the children of other people, will add weight in the scale against you, if you choose not the way of the Lord. For you have had line upon line, and precept upon precept, and not only good doctrine but good example; and which is more, you have been turned to, and acquainted with, a principle in yourselves, which others too generally have been ignorant ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... quietly making good that shrewd Southerner's prophecy: he was "doing his own thinking;" neither was he telling to anybody what this thinking was. Throngs came and went, and each felt called upon to leave behind him some of his own wisdom, a precept, advice, or suggestion, for the use of the President; perhaps in return he took away with him a story which was much more than full value for what he had given; but no one found out the working of the President's mind, and no one could say that he ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... obey'd, it seems, by a Gentleman preferably to the Commands of Christ. If there are Cases wherein from want of a due provision in Governments against some sort of Injuries it may be thought that Men are excusable in asserting their own Cause, yet thus much is at the least certain, That this Precept of Forgiveness could not be transgress'd against, as it very frequently is, by Men professing to believe the Authority of the Scriptures, if such were indeed fully perswaded that it was a divine Command which prohibited the ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... quantity of oil be poured upon a sound board, let a burning coal be put in the midst of it, and the oil will quickly flee back from its enemy, and seek the conservation of itself. This is, therefore, the first precept of the law of nature, that man seek his own conservation, and avoid his own destruction. Whereupon this conclusion necessarily followeth, that he may repel violence with violence. Secondly, As man is a living creature, the law of nature teacheth him to propagate and conserve ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of 1545 was approaching, and the fulfilment of the precept of confession, which marks the farthermost frontier of Catholic observance, within which even the most lax must remain under penalty of excommunication ipso facto, afforded the Bishop his opportunity. He withdrew from all his clergy, except the dean and canon of his cathedral ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... than a few obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedure involves, of course, the omission of some important elements in the history of the theory of translation, in that it ignores the discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable limits. The chief emphasis has been ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... at a loss. For, on the one side, the three ladies they addressed themselves to (whom we have named already) were ever at the very top of the fashion, and abhorred all that were below it but the breadth of a hair. On the other side, their father's will was very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from their coats one thread without a positive command in the will. Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides, so neatly sewn you would swear they were all ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... 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
... 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 by you that,—that,—in point ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... 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 hour ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... innumerable examples, confirming story by stories, how much the wisest senators and princes have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus, Alphonsus of Aragon (and who not? if need be). At length, the long line of their disputation makes a point in this, that the one giveth the precept, and the other ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... 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 ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... 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 as profitable variety, awakening ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... adat, precept, regulation, religious observance. antoh, spirit, good or evil. atap, a shelter, consisting of a mat resting on upright saplings, often erected in ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Fullfillment of Obligations on her Part to be performd by Virtue of all Treaties— and, An unalterable Determination to discharge her National Debts with all possible Speed.—If, my honord Friend, the leading Men in the United States would by Precept & Example disseminate thro' the lower Classes of People the Principles of Piety to God, Love to our Country & universal Benevolence, should we not secure the Favor of Heaven & the Honor & Esteem of the wise and virtuous Part of ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... you think, because I'm a clerk, that I'm not one of the intellectuals. I'm a reading man, a thinking man. I read in a book—a high class six shilling book—this precept: Affirm your manhood. It appealed to me. Ive always remembered it. I believe in it. I feel I must do it to recover your respect after my cowardly behavior. Therefore I affirm it in your presence. I tell that man ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... for he has mentioned with gratitude the humanity of one lady, whose name I am now unable to recollect, and to whom, therefore, I cannot pay the praises which she deserves for having acted well in opposition to influence, precept, and example. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... is a supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law found in the precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow or similar means. But we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. The snow may even be actually warmer than the part to which it is applied. But even if it were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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
... a satisfactory state of military discipline, Smith varied this irksome work by an occasional review, or by the still more exciting exercise of a reconnaissance in force, thus adding practice to precept, and bringing regiments and brigades to act coherently together. In all this he handled his division skillfully and well, and consequently soon had the satisfaction of showing those in authority over him that it was in admirable ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... 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 ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... telling him a great many times every day not to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have been all the time doing those very things before him, and there is no proverb that strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which weighs example over against precept. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... in these things alone that improvement appeared. Incited partly by the precept and partly by the example of Lilias, a great change soon became visible in her appearance and manners. There was a decided attempt at neatness in her rather shabby garments; and a look from Lilias, or even the remembrance ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... 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 Holy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... effect seized each member of his household,—forcibly it spoke in word and action! 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 surface, and soar above in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 needed Divine ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... time, 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
... a writer? Then remember that the one great precept underlying all successful literary work is, Look into thine own heart and write. Be true. Be fearless. Be loyal to the promptings of your own soul. Remember that an author can never write more than he himself is. If he would write more, then he ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... urge that the epithet worse than civil could justly be employed after the depiction of the slaughter at Pharsalia, but that here it is out of order and suddenly attacks the reader who was thinking of no such thing. It offends against the precept of Horace: ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... ta'en a due and wary note upon't: With whispering and most guilty diligence, In action all of precept, he did show me ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... it has the 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 and cannonade ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... are not ignorant of the good old maxim that the early bird gets the worm, and the few hours' daylight they enjoy during the winter months makes it doubly necessary for them to observe this precept. We were all up a good hour before sunrise, my companion making the tea, while our driver was harnessing the horses, but this time not three abreast, for the road was bad and narrow; so we determined to have two small sleighs with a pair of horses to each, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... 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 sitting down to ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... how you could have done anything else," laughed Mrs. Vardell. "You shut him up to it, you know, Sadie. After your precept, to have said nothing nice would have meant that there was nothing ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... says that they were "Strips of parchment on which were written various portions of the Mosaic law, for the Jews believed that these ligaments had power to avert every kind of evil, but especially to drive away demons. as appears from the Targum on the Canticles," etc. We see that the Babylonian precept was to bind holy sentences "around the head" and others "right and left of the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... when you drop in to 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Lo, their answer at last! deg.33 "Has Persia come,—does Athens ask aid,—may Sparta befriend? Nowise precipitate judgment—too weighty the issue at stake! Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to the Gods! Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds In your favour, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast: Athens must wait, patient as we—who judgment ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... 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, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... 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
... known in the Middle Ages as Monarcha Medicorum, were prized for more than four centuries. He had a Hippocratic belief in the powers of nature and in the superiority of prevention to cure. He was an optimist and held strongly to the Talmudic precept that the physician who takes nothing is worth nothing. Rabbi ben Ezra was a universal genius and wanderer, whose travels brought him as far as England. His philosophy of life Browning has depicted in the well-known poem, whose beauty of diction and clarity ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... was to be their one or their paramount storehouse of materials for objects to be represented; the study of her was to be deep, and the representation (at any rate in the earlier stages of self-discipline and work) in the highest degree exact; executive methods were to be learned partly from precept and example, but most essentially from practice and experiment. As their minds were very different in range and direction, their products also, from the first, differed greatly; and these soon ceased to have ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Ruthwell Cross to be productions of the latter half of the seventh century. The inscription, of which we will treat more particularly later on, is to the effect that the obelisk was raised to the memory of Alcfrid, son of that King of Northumbria, who decided to celebrate Easter according to the Roman precept. Alcfrid died about the year 664, and thus when we consider the similarity of the ornamentation, and the character of the runes on both obelisks, there seemed good ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... 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 at ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... characters, whose actions are well known, and of those who, whatever claim they may have to distinction, are not so, ARISTOTLE has delivered a precept with his accustomed sagacity. If Achilles, says the Stagirite, be the subject of our inquiries, since all know what he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions, without stopping to detail; but this would not serve for Critias; for whatever relates ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... observ'd: An humble author to implore makes bold. Thy kind indulgence, even undeserv'd, Should melancholy wight or pensive lover, Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim Our blossoms cull, he'll find himself in clover, Gain sense from precept, laughter from our whim. Should learned leech with solemn air unfold Thy leaves, beware, be civil, and be wise: Thy volume many precepts sage may hold, His well fraught head may find no trifling prize. Should crafty lawyer ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... be expected to take an interest at once and by mere will in any subject, but where an earnest and serious Attention has been directed to it, Interest soon follows. Hence it comes that those who deliberately train themselves in Society after the precept enforced by all great writers of social maxims to listen politely and patiently, are invariably rewarded by acquiring at last shrewd intelligence, as is well known to diplomatists. That mere stolid patience subdues impatience sounds like a dull common-place saying, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... I think, a familiar precept to educators, that children should not have their literature too much simplified for them. We are told that they like something beyond them, and that it is good for them to have a sense of mystery and power beyond the sense they grasp. That may be true; but if so it does not ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... answer, when found, is more prolific in results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, and draws ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... A.D. 1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus ecclesiae per terram nullatenus est ducenda. He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather exception, of the first crusade, (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. pars ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 that where it is practised, blood feuds, and the many other causes which produce the ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... out a reasonable and right method of comfort, for he, too, in his way, was sorry for the girl, who bravely struggled to be cheerful, in spite of her own private grief, for his mother's sake. He felt as if high principle and noble precept ought to perform an immediate work. But they do not, for there is always the unknown quantity of individual experience and feeling, which offer a tacit resistance, the amount incalculable by another, to all good counsel and high ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... annual feast. 2. Gen. xvii. 3. Grounding their opinion on Gen. xvii. 14, &c. 4. Luke i. 31. 5. Matt. i. 21. 6. Phil. ii. 8, 9, 10. 7. Matt. xxviii. 18. 8. The Jews generally named their children on the day of their circumcision, but this was not of precept. There are several instances of children named on the day of their birth, (Gen. xxx.) which could not be that of their circumcision by an express law requiring the interval of eight days from their birth; the child being presumed too weak and delicate to undergo the operation sooner, without ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... in reporting to the Foreign Office Mr. De Norman's death, is still more striking; and it has an additional interest as being eminently characteristic of the writer: 'It has not been my fortune,' he says, 'to meet with a man whose life was so much in harmony with the Divine precept, "not slothful in business, serving the Lord." With a consistency unparalleled in my experience he brought to bear on the discharge of every duty, and to the investigation of every subject however minute, the complete ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... fault. Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to Nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability of temper; and ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... charity, Abdallah. He has favoured my enterprise, and I will practise his precept. See ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... error of a comma. No man ever spoke with effect who cannot hesitate without being overwhelmed, blunder without a blush, or be bewildered by his own impetuosity, without turning back to retrace. En avant is the precept for the orator, as much as it is the principle of the soldier. Mackintosh has to learn these things; but he has a full mind, a classic tongue, and a subtle imagination, and these constitute the one thing needful for the orator, comprehend all, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... helpless rabbit fascinated by a snake. Nothing that she had ever learned, either by direct precept from the old starling, or as the result of her own observation of life, had prepared her to cope with this. Outrageous as were his words and tone, she could only show that she resented them by implicitly accusing him of making love to her; and her flurried ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... for this I had days ago begun to cultivate the acquaintance of one of the baggage men. This man at once attracted me by his shifty eyes and unhealthy red complexion. It hag often been a Secret Service precept with me: "Give me a hard drinker or a man who is fast and I'll land him nine times out of ten." Well, the baggage master was no exception. I decided to ply him with liquor to make his tongue run away. I made it my business to see ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... allow himself to think that an injury should be forgiven unless the man who did the injury repented of his own injustice. As to giving his coat to the thief who had taken his cloak,—he told himself that were he and others to be guided by that precept honest industry would go naked in order that vice and idleness might be comfortably clothed. If any one stole his cloak he would certainly put that man in prison as soon as possible and not commence his lenience till the thief should at any rate affect to be sorry for his fault. Now, to his thinking, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... it was that, as before observed, it was his spirit that he communicated to the navy rather than a system, admirable as was the strategic system embodied in his methods of blockade. It was by personal influence rather than by formulated precept that Hawke inspired his service, and earned a just claim to be reckoned the greatest force of ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... secrets of that Art, in Number and Species; in two Books, the first teaching by precept and example, the Operations in numbers, whole and broken. The Rules of Practice, Interest, and performed in the more facil manner by Decimals, then hitherto hath been published; the excellency and ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... in itself, better suited to refine and elevate the affections, and removes one farther from the scenes and objects of temptation. If we add to this, that the student is usually under a more uniform superintendence, and comes more frequently and habitually under the influence of moral precept and religious observances, and that the fact of his supposed dangers makes him more a subject of parental solicitude and counsel and prayer, his advantage is still proportionably increased. And in respect to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... characterises the folk-lore of Japan. The Ainos, in their humble way, are addicted to moralising and to speculating on the origin of things. A perusal of the following tales will show that a surprisingly large number of them are attempts to explain some natural phenomenon, or to exemplify some simple precept. In fact they are science,—physical science and moral science,—at a very early stage. The explanations given in these tales completely satisfy the adult Aino mind of the present day. The Aino fairy-tales are not, as ours are, survivals from an earlier stage of thought. They spring out ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... 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 ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... conjugial covenant, and thence an entire separation, and after this a full liberty to marry another wife. The one only cause of this total separation or divorce, is adultery, according to the Lord's precept, Matt. xix. 9. To the same cause are to be referred manifest obscenities, which bid defiance to the restraints of modesty, and fill and infest the house with flagitious practices of lewdness, giving birth to adulterous immodesty, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The beautiful precept, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you," is drawn from our Lord's sermon on the mount, and should be observed by all professing Christians. But unless we are truly his children, we can never observe this great command as ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... the old adage that example is better than precept, his mother taught him at an early age to observe the good and bad qualities of the persons he met. The study of character she justly felt to be most important, and yet it is not one of the subjects taught in schools except ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... capricious taste, who are rather likely to lead half-instructed workmen astray, than to put them in the proper road." In the poetical epistle which concludes the preface, he tells us that he had almost observed the Horatian precept: his poem having cost eight years labour. The opening of it may probably be quite sufficient to give the reader a proper notion of its character ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Compliance with the precept in the Old Testament, "Love ye the stranger[1]," becomes a delight as well as a duty in such an instance as that about to be recorded, especially when we consider the affecting injunction conveyed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, "like stalwart soldiers." The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... worship of images depends very much upon it, for if it be only an explication of the first, then, unless one takes images to be gods, their worship is lawful, and so the heathens were excused in it, who were not such idiots; but if it be a new and distinct precept, then the worshipping any image or similitude becomes a grievous sin, and exposes men to the wrath of God in that severe manner mentioned in the end of it. And it is a great confirmation that this is the true meaning of it, because all the primitive writers[20] of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... early years of the National Dramatic Company. Because of this old association, Dublin audiences insisted in 1902 in seeing humor in his Peter Gillane in "Cathleen ni Houlihan." For all this past, however, Mr. Fay was intent on serious drama, and, with the precept and example of Mr. Russell and Mr. Yeats always present to him in the early days of the National Theatre Company, and with what he had gathered from the experimental performance of Irish plays by "The Irish Literary Theatre," he advanced surely in his art until his withdrawal from the company in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... answered well. It kept 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 ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... 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, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... crone might have been one of the highest types of human perfection. She wronged nobody; she had no power to wrong. Nobody wronged her; it was never worth it. She really was at peace with all the world. This obeys the most exalted injunctions. Every precept is kept here. But this tale of the Squire and the girl took root in her head. She must have been dazzled by the immensity of the event. It probably appealed to her as would a grand picture of the burning ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... authority, and rendered obligatory upon every citizen. Its morality is constituted by its authoritative prescription, and not by its fulfilling the primary ends of the social institution. A bad law is still a law; an ill-judged moral precept is still a moral precept, felt as such ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... expressions, not even so much as 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
... Reform Within the Church.—Many attempts were made, chiefly on the part of individuals, to work a reform of abuses within the church. Many devout men, scholars engaged in theological research and living lives of purity, sought by precept and example to bring about better spiritual and moral conditions. Others sought to bring about changes in ecclesiastical government, not only in the "reforming councils" but through efforts at the papal court and in the strong bishoprics. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... is assumed that no discussion of Christianity in general nor of the philosophy of Christianity is required. The "Mormon" creed, so far as there is a creed professed by the Latter-day Saints, is pre-eminently Christian in theory, precept, and practise. In what respect, then, may be properly asked, does "Mormonism" differ from the faith and practise of other professedly Christian systems—in ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real life is chronicled by external events,—how much we live a second and a higher life in our meditations and dreams. Brought up, not more by precept than example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator, this was the hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness of prayer; and if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions) this ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 of wrong with the idea of this precept, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... is, that every thing is liable to abuse; and when did the abuse of the most precious and best of things lead us to the conclusion that they were in their own nature bad? Our Saviour himself declared it; the whole law and the Prophets, the entire body of these sacred books, all inculcate the same precept to love God and mankind. And must not such writings embrace the truth—truth adapted to all times and ages? must they not ever constitute the living word of the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... opposition made to the serving of legal process on the brig William Tell, and he presumes the representations made on that subject to the Minister of France, will have the effect of opening a free access to the officer of justice, when he shall again present himself with the precept of his court. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his person. After this, he was very careful about his food and drink; he locked himself in at night, and entrusted the key of the apartment to only a few. He ordered one, who was the author of the treason (and he was the one that was suspected), that in virtue of his [the provincial's] holy precept, he should not come into the convent of Manila, but that he should prepare to embark for Nueva Espana where they should take from him the cowl. Thereupon this individual, Fray Juan de Ocadiz—who was a native ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... 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
... man as a monk has. In battle, he said, a soldier must act as such, and fight stoutly against the enemy, and take life as well as risk his own; but after the fight is over he should show himself merciful, and if he cannot follow out the precept to love his enemies, he should at least be compassionate and kind to them. But above all, he should never oppress the helpless, should comport himself honourably and kindly to women and children, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... you might be obsessed with a desire to find her residence that you might pass it occasionally and wonder in a dreamy sort of a way what she might be doing, but the girl herself must never know it. That would be contrary to every precept of the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... 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 needed Divine ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had got on well with her description of this room, had pointed out the portrait of Prince Arthur, once a resident at the hall, had introduced that of Will Somers, my lord's jester, as glibly as if Will were a playmate of her own, had deciphered for us the excellent moral precept carved in old English beneath the royal arms, "Drede God and honour the King," and was proceeding rapidly with an array of measurements and dates, when I unluckily interrupted her,—I think it was to ask some question about the tapestry. She looked at me reproachfully, indignantly,—just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... presence, an 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
... the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own hands; the images of brass and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... there dwelt a nobleman of good birth, who attended the schools that he might learn how virtue and honour are to be acquired among virtuous men. But although he was so accomplished that at the age of seventeen or eighteen years he was, as it were, both precept and example to others, Love failed not to add his lesson to the rest; and, that he might be the better hearkened to and received, concealed himself in the face and the eyes of the fairest lady in the whole country round, who had come to the city ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... brief, what during the next six weeks I told that youth, by precept, by homily, and by making the solution so obvious that he could ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... pulsations of our blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying, at the same time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is, to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do for ever, then, disclaim your interference in my province. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... visible, the ambassador of intelligence. Every energetic passion, every deep sentiment, is accordingly announced by a sign of the head, the hand or the eye, before the word expresses it." Thus, the actor and the orator, if they do not conform to this precept, have ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... but with the failures among Lay Chelas; there have been partial successes too, and these are passing gradually through the first stages of their probation. Some are making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by good example and precept. If they persist, well for them, well for us all: the odds are fearfully against them, but still "there is no impossibility to him who Wills." The difficulties in Chelaship will never be less until human nature changes and a new order ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the capacity to serve our nation as useful citizens, it is unobtainable by any one who is content to let his mind slumber." Then again we suffer from the low ideal which leads us to worship success. From his earliest years a boy learns from his surroundings, if not by actual precept, to strive not so much to be something as somebody. The love of power rather than fame may be the "last infirmity of noble minds," but it is probably the first infirmity of many ignoble ones. Herein lies the justification of the criticism of a friendly alien. "You pride yourselves on your incorruptibility, ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the benevolence of Heaven, and the virtue of my ancestors, my apparel was rich and fine, and as what days my fare was savory and sumptuous, I disregarded the bounty of education and nurture of father and mother, and paid no heed to the virtue of precept and injunction of teachers and friends, with the result that I incurred the punishment, of failure recently in the least trifle, and the reckless waste of half my lifetime. There have been meanwhile, generation after generation, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... friends from 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
... of argument, there were still some who chose the left-hand path because they verily believed that this was the only right way. They, too, justified their course by arguments, line upon line and precept upon precept. And each band tried to make its following as large as it could. Some men stood all day by the side of the rock, urging people to come with them to the right or to the left. For, strangely enough, although each man had his own journey to make, and must cross the river ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and 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
... independence, the French express in a precept of three words, 'Vivre de peu,' which I have always very much admired. 'To live upon little' is the great security against slavery; and this precept extends to dress and other things besides food and drink. When DOCTOR JOHNSON wrote his Dictionary, he put in the word pensioner ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... negative 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 prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... another of life commits two grievous wrongs: one towards his victim, whose most important right he violates, and one towards God, who has a right to the life and service of His creatures. "Thou shalt not kill" is a precept as deeply engraven on the human heart by reason itself as it was on the stone tables of ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... I beg your pardon, but I go to church and I have had 'Love one another!' dinned into my ears. What is to become of that precept, eh?" ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 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 ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... be given to oral and written expression in connection with the reading of history, geography, industrial studies, civics, sanitation, and the like. Facility and accuracy in oral and written expression are developed through practice rather than through precept. They are perfected through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good models rather than through the advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put to work is ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... be very presumptuous of me if it did, my dear father," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "and would argue that precept and example had done nothing for me. Come, Wilton," he added, "come in to my help, for here are father and son flinging so hard at each other, that I shall get my teeth dashed down my throat before I've done. Now tell me, did you ever see such a napkin as that in the house of a ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... affectionate undeviating Friends of the Monarchy and Constitution, were for ever deprived of their Properties! To remunerate the others, the most inveterate and implacable Enemies of EITHER! Doing Good for Evil is a Divine Precept, and certainly includes a most sublime Moral; but rendering Evil for Good, is such a Principle as must carry Horror with ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... or unlawfulness of the worship of images depends very much upon it, for if it be only an explication of the first, then, unless one takes images to be gods, their worship is lawful, and so the heathens were excused in it, who were not such idiots; but if it be a new and distinct precept, then the worshipping any image or similitude becomes a grievous sin, and exposes men to the wrath of God in that severe manner mentioned in the end of it. And it is a great confirmation that this is the true meaning of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... ridiculing and contemning any individual woman of their acquaintance whom they suspect of entertaining such a longing. They must wish and not wish; they must not give, and certainly must not withhold, encouragement—and so it goes on, each precept cancelling the last, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "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 ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to Nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability of temper; ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... ye held less than the outer barbarian, Left him to die in his ignorant sin; Have you no principles, humanitarian? Have you no precept — ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... own, Than precept better is; For Creswell she was safe, When she lived a private Miss. And a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... other things, from a given set of conditions, the consequences necessarily followed. With man, the word law changed its meaning; and instead of a fixed order, which he could not choose but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobey ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... me to add that while there may be an honest difference of opinion regarding the efficacy of legislative enactments in overcoming or restraining the drink habit, there should be little doubt that a whole-hearted, persistent, precept-and-example effort of the medical profession exerted as individuals on their patients and the families of their patients, and as associations on the community at large, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and an order of mind that, yet being no order, is made the sport of any sophister with a wit for paragram. Thus it always is that mere example is of little avail without precept,—of which, however, it is an important condition,—and that the successful directors of men be not those who go to the van and lead, unconscious of the gibes and mockery in their rear, but such rather as drive the mob before them with a smiting ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... dearer than life, in his hand. Not only self-preservation, which the proverb and Scripture recognise as a legitimate motive, but higher considerations, dictate compliance with the ruling forces of our times, as far as may be. Conscience only has the right to limit this precept, and to say, 'Let the brute roar, and never mind if you do forfeit your life. It is your duty to say "No," though all the world should ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... By precept, and still more by example, he taught his people to bear their burdens heroically, their prosperity with humility, their adversity with pious resignation. He had little patience with indecision, still less with querulousness and complaints. With those of his class, he believed that one's "first fruits" ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... indebted for all these Entertainments of Sense, and who it is that thus opens his Hand and fills the World with Good. The Apostle instructs us to take advantage of our present Temper of Mind, to graft upon it such a religious Exercise as is particularly conformable to it, by that Precept which advises those who are sad to pray, and those who are merry to sing Psalms. The Chearfulness of Heart which springs up in us from the Survey of Nature's Works, is an admirable Preparation for Gratitude. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... should the love of these younger brothers be for one another! How humbling that there should be so much that is sadly and strangely unlike the spirit which our blessed Master sought to inculcate alike by precept and example! Individual Christians, why these bitter estrangements, these censorious words, these harsh judgments, this want of kind consideration of the feelings and failings of those who may differ from you? Why are your friendships ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... grammar; but beyond this the peculiarity of the case has not been much considered. Montaigne, however, gives us details which seem full of suggestion to scientific educationists. "Without art, without book, without grammar or precept, without whipping, without tears, I learned a Latin as pure as my master could give;" and his first exercises were to turn bad Latin into good.[151] So he read his Ovid's Metamorphoses at seven or eight, where other forward boys had the native fairy tales; and a wise teacher led him later through ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... science must be rebuilt from its foundation in conformity with their scheme. This sort of thing has done infinite mischief to the progress of economic science; and one of Mill's great merits is, that both by example and by precept he steadily discountenanced it. His anxiety to affiliate his own speculations to those of his predecessors is a marked feature in all his philosophical works, and illustrates at once the modesty and comprehensiveness ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... 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 ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Appollo yf he on erth be wyth my brennyng chare I shall hy{m} co{n}found In feyth quod neptunus & he kepe these He may be well sure he shall be drownd A syr sayd Mars this haue we wel found That ony dysubeyed oure goodly precept We may well thynk ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the model of his permanent character, and to imbibe the elements of his future career; and here the instinctive delicacy of the young female, one of the characteristic ornaments of the sex, is to be expanded into maturity by precept and example! Is it strange, under such circumstances, that an early and invincible repugnance to the acquisition of knowledge is imbibed by the youthful mind? that the school-house is regarded with unconcealed aversion and disgust, and that parents who have any ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... account it for nothing, Halbert, that I should have the power of giving you a lesson of patience, and submission to the destinies of Providence? Methinks there is use for the grey hairs on the old scalp, were it but to instruct the green head by precept and by example." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Use of Satire. The Excellency of Epic Satire above others, as adding Example to Precept, and animating by Fable and sensible Images. Epic Satire compar'd with Epic Poem, and wherein they differ: Of their Extent, Action, Unities, Episodes, and the Nature of their Morals. Of Parody: Of the Style, Figures, and Wit ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... 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 eternal in ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... 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 allow ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... boasted of his conquests among the women, nor affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering the grand precept of Zoroaster, "When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should they even bite thee." He was as wise as it is possible for man to be, for he sought to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... QUERIES" may, among many other benefits, improve spelling by example as well as precept. Let me make a note on two words that I find in No. 37.: sanatory, p. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... work. The scope of this book is insufficient for a complete course of instruction in hospital work, so it is best for the leaders to have lectures, lessons, and demonstrations. There is danger in a "little knowledge" of such an important subject. So we shall only say that the one important Scout precept of obeying orders is in a hospital of paramount importance. Disobedience is certainly ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... season of 1545 was approaching, and the fulfilment of the precept of confession, which marks the farthermost frontier of Catholic observance, within which even the most lax must remain under penalty of excommunication ipso facto, afforded the Bishop his opportunity. He withdrew from all ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of God. 3. I answer negatively, it is not. The sword is not the means which God hath ordained to propagate the gospel: "Go and teach all nations;" not, go and subdue all nations, is our Master's precept. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... to make our friends as numerous as possible? or, as in respect of acquaintance it is thought to have been well said "have not thou many acquaintances yet be not without;" so too in respect of Friendship may we adopt the precept, and say that a man should not be without friends, nor again have ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... their information, ever have become aware of their existence. There was near the door of his cave a spreading tree; but he only knew that it was there by the fall of its leaves or flowers; the tree itself he never saw, as he carefully observed the precept not to look upwards, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... ask them in return, have they at hand A plain behest for acting in their way? If such they have let them without delay Spread wide the fact and let the truth be known. I should have nothing further then to say, Except my error thankfully to own. But friends, as yet none ever have such precept shown. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... her young one by offering his own life as a substitute. In one of the priceless panels of Bôrôbudûr in Java this legend is beautifully used. [Footnote: Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting, p. 123.] It must indeed have been almost more impressive to the Buddhists even than Buddha's precept. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that point to Christ ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of Definition we have a Type for our director. A type is an example of any class, for instance, a species of a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 I should ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... you 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 right? I am ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... scientific preparations did not stop M. de Brogue: he gave the order to charge, and adding example to precept, urged his horse to a gallop. The rebels in the first rank knelt on one knee, so that the rank behind could take aim, and the distance between the two bodies of troops disappeared rapidly, thanks to the impetuosity of the dragoons; but suddenly, when within thirty paces ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... undoubtedly prevailed from periods of remote antiquity. The wise monarch of the Jewish nation even forbade his people to ask "the cause that the former days were better than these;" "for," he adds, "thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this." Far different would be the modern precept of a British monarch. Rather let the English subject "enquire diligently concerning this," for he cannot fail to enquire wisely. Let him enquire, and he will find that "the former days" of England were days of discord, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories 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 were originally built up has been demolished ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... class females," and maid-servants in particular, can only be brought about in one way. The reaction in favor of a neat and simple style must come from above, and not from below; in the way of example, not of precept. When "ladies of position and fortune" cease to lavish their thousands on millinery, their copyists in the nursery and kitchen will cease to spend their wages on a similar object. When every one above the rank of a governess ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... officer to every one of you. But none of you can regret his terrible end so much as I do; for I feel that I am to some extent to blame for it. A certain wise man has said, 'Of the dead speak nothing but good;' and it is well to carry out this precept, so far as is possible. There are occasions, however, when the truth—the whole truth—must be told, even though it reflect discredit upon those who are gone; and this is one of them. I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the Aeneid. Yet, after all this labour, he intended to devote three years entirely to its farther amendment. Horace has gone so far in recommending careful correction, that he figuratively mentions nine years as an adequate period for that purpose. But whatever may be the time, there is no precept which he urges either oftener or more forcibly, than a due attention ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... seem, however, that Dr. Hart accepts this theory as 8 methodological precept. See his contribution to "Subconscious Phenomena" (quoted above), especially ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... 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 extension ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... 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
... his experiences a final artistic expression. He communicated the "Wertherian malady" to a whole generation, but he himself emerged triumphant and unscathed. The hurricane which wrecked so many powerful intellects spared his own. After the Italian journey he never ceased by example and precept to recommend harmony and balance, and he became so completely the perfect type of intellectual and artistic sanity that the world has forgotten the Bohemian days of Frankfurt and Leipzig, the merry days of Weimar, the repulsive vulgarity of his drunken mistress and wife, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... step, I 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
... be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward ornaments of decency and decorum. And this precept, my worthy disciples, if you read with due attention, you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced by examples in the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... impression is now increased by my deeper knowledge of the substantial value of your compositions and my fuller appreciation of the great services you have rendered to Church Music. That you act as admirably in practice as in precept is evident in other of your works, but especially in the Mass and the Te Deum which were performed here on the Emperor of Austria's name-day in the Church of the Anima under the leadership of our dear friend Haberl [On the 4th October, 1869] Both of these works are of ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... down the same principle in the form of a precept "Masters give unto your servants that which is JUST and EQUAL." Col. iv. 1. Thus not only asserting the right of the servant to an equivalent for his labor, and the duty of the master to render it, but condemning all those relations between master and servant which were not founded upon ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... may 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 of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... of imagining the truth, so as to explain the divine jealousy implied in the precept of loving God exclusively and supremely, is, for all its patent limitations, the most generally serviceable. Treated as a strict equation of thought to fact, and pushed accordingly to its utmost logical consequences, it ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... 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 thoroughly into practice. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... Charles Hodge, in his "Theology," vol. i. p. 152, says, "Protestants hold that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the word of God, written under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, and are therefore infallible, and consequently free from all error, whether of doctrine, of fact, or of precept." And again (p. 163), "All the books of Scripture are equally inspired. All alike are infallible in what they teach." Such is the doctrine now held by the great majority of Christians. Intelligent pastors do not hold it, but the body of the laity ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... signify inflict, mete out, dispense, and blows, medicine, etc., are said to be administered: a usage thoroughly established and reputable in spite of pedantic objections. Enforce signifies also to present and urge home by intellectual and moral force; as, to enforce a precept or a duty. Compare ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to laugh" is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... his pupils, "Do not be afraid to commit your thoughts to paper in all the fervour and glow of your first conception: when you come to look at them the next day, you will find this gone off to a surprising degree." As this was no ill precept for literary composition, even so in our actions and moral conduct we shall be in small danger of being too warm-hearted and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... hearts upon. We see the effects of that principle in the moral degradation of idolaters. Gods lustful, cruel, capricious, make men like themselves. We see it working upwards in Christianity, in which God becomes man that men may become like God, and of which the whole law is put into one precept, which is sure to be kept, in the measure of the reality of a man's religion. 'Be ye therefore imitators of God, as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... evenerit tibi; altera quod tibi natum et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera quod universi gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo permansionis ipsius procurandae ([Greek: tes euodias kai tes synteleias kai tes symmones autes]) ex parte causa est.' This precept is not the most reasonable of those stated by that great emperor. A diligas oportet ([Greek: stergein chre]) is of no avail; a thing does not become pleasing just because it is necessary, and because it is destined for or attached to someone: and what for ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... facts, dates, and figures, as principles, ideas, and sentiments, which they endeavour to teach. The scholar is made familiar with what he is told by observation and experience whenever it is possible, for that is how Nature teaches. Precept, they say, is good, and example is better; but an ideal of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... England has had no queen, no magistrates, no laws, no lawful authority whatsoever; and that to own allegiance to any English magistrate, sir, or to plead in an English court of law, is to disobey the apostolic precept, 'How dare you go to law before the unbelievers?' I tell you, sir, rebellion is now not merely permitted, it is ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, 'to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... (Economie Politique ii. p. 38) compares the precept of the Roman "Quid est agrum bene colere? bene arare. Quid secundum? arare. Tertio stercorare" with the adage of the French farmer "Fumez bien, labourez mal, vous recueillerez plus qu'en fumant mal et en ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Christianity, while it transposed the human ideal and dwelt on the superhuman affinities of man, did not abandon the notion of a specific humanity. On the contrary, such a notion was implied in the Fall and Redemption, in the Sacraments, and in the universal validity of Christian doctrine and precept. For if human nature were not one, there would be no propriety in requiring all men to preserve unanimity in faith or conformity in conduct. Human nature was likewise the entity which the English psychologists set themselves to describe; and Kant was so entirely dominated ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... undoubtedly have succumbed. His father saw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint expeditions of the two services—a precept which the soldier of an island power would have found it difficult ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... prospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulate to glory:—"Make the most of existence," say their early poets, "for soon comes the dreary Hades!" And placed beneath a delightful climate, and endowed with a vivacious and cheerful temperament, they yielded readily to the precept. Their religion was eminently glad and joyous; even the stern Spartans lost their austerity in their sacred rites, simple and manly though they were—and the gayer Athenians passed existence in an almost perpetual circle of festivals ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... gazed at it through the windows of her upper rooms, and awaited the arrival of "a few friends" to tea. Miss Tippet's heart was animated with feelings of love to God and man; and she had that day, in obedience to the Divine precept, attempted and accomplished a good many little things, all of which were, either directly or indirectly, calculated to make human ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... inclinations, but 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 of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... branches of a forest tree, so, in spite of King or Court, there were even now some reckless souls, scornful of new-fangled modern ways and more than content to follow in the footsteps of their grandsires, who still held fast to precept and practice of what seemed to them "the good old days." It is true their reiving partook now somewhat more of the nature of horse-stealing pure and simple. No longer were fierce raids over the English Border permissible; not now could they, practically with impunity, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... that you lost your cause of Intromission, because I yet think the arguments on your side unanswerable. But you seem, I think, to say that you gained reputation even by your defeat; and reputation you will daily gain, if you keep Lord Auchinleck's precept in your mind, and endeavour to consolidate in your mind a firm and regular system of law, instead of picking up ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... has obeyed the precept which you have judiciously delivered. You may be interested, Madam, to know what are the conclusions at which Mr. J. J. Flournoy of Athens, Georgia, has arrived. You shall hear, Madam. He has gone to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... parent for child. The sadness of the world 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 mind ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... sheet of white paper, any characters may be engraven; these laudable endeavours, by which we may reasonably expect the rising generation will be greatly improved, render particularly due to you, any examples which may teach those virtues that are not easily learnt by precept and shew the facility of what, in mere speculation, might appear surrounded with a discouraging impracticability: you are the best judge, whether, by being made public, they may be conducive to your great end of benefiting the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... reading old sermons, and old prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving old lessons, and old warnings, upon new subjects, as well as old ones, to the young ladies of her neighbourhood; and so pass on to a good old age, doing a great deal of good both by precept and example in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Jefferson had led his party into power as the special champion of States' Rights and the special opponent of national sovereignty. He and they rendered a very great service to the nation by acquiring Louisiana; but it was at the cost of violating every precept which they had professed to hold dear, and of showing that their warfare on the Federalists had been waged on behalf of principles which they were obliged to confess were shams the moment they were put to the test. But the Federalists of the Northeast, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... as to assure a sharp analysis of 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
... forgiven on either side. But if anything can palliate the act, it is that system of determined hostility which for years has been levelled against an institution which they believe to be righteous and founded upon divine precept. But I think this is not the hour for justification or for crimination. I am convinced that the integrity of the Union can only be preserved by withholding the armed hand at this crisis. And pray Heaven, our government may ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... wait for stated times and occasions to bestow evidences of love and good will upon others, but like a flower in bloom spreads the fine perfume of friendship upon all who come within the charmed presence. Intuitively and unconsciously does the owner of these virtues follow the precept set forth by the philosopher: "I shall pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." And in expressing ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... way; but he was aware of a certain tendency in Henrietta's mind to merge the reverence and respect she owed to her parents, in a dreamy unpractical feeling for the father whom she had never known, whose voice she had never heard, and from whom she had not one precept to obey; while she lost sight of that honour and duty which was daily called for towards her mother. It was in honour, not in love, that Henrietta was wanting, and with how many daughters is it not the same? It ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... precise period at which the pope and his adherents were gaining the greatest ascendancy in the Christian world. The doctrine of transubstantiation was now in the highest vogue; and along with it a precept still more essential to the empire of the Catholic church, the celibacy of the clergy. This was not at first established without vehement struggles. The secular clergy, who were required at once to cast off their wives as ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... opposed to might. He tore off the plaster of moral cancerous ulcers, now so prolific on the body politic of the world, and held high the treachery, the bigotry, the superstition, the damnably dirty doings of a generation that accepts hidebound dogmas for the ultima thule of reasoning and truth; precept for right and in reality worships at the shrine of exploded fables and crowns, by its own acts, the parrot as its preceptor—lives and dies, having no desire to do anything that somebody has not done before! Is it any wonder that such a man as W. C. Brann should fall a victim ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fireside tale of the primitive may be a narrative, true or imaginary, or a sort of fairy story, a fable or a parable, intended mainly for the edification of the young and obviously pointing a moral or emphasizing some useful truth or precept. And here we do recognize symbolism, much in the nature of historical record. But the special class of stories regarded by the primitive as sacred, his sacred myths, are embodied in ritual, morals, and social ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... Stra '(From there is) no return on account of scriptural statement'— has, owing to the special character of the contents, a definite order of internal succession. This is as follows. At first the precept 'one is to learn one's own text (svdhyya)' enjoins the apprehension of that aggregate of syllables which is called 'Veda,' and is here referred to as 'svdhyya.' Next there arises the desire to know of what nature the 'Learning' enjoined is to be, and how it is to be done. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... enthusiasm for nature involves a scarcely less uncompromising dislike of convention. He had no success at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Unlike Rodin, he entered those precincts and worked long within them, but never sympathetically or felicitously. The rigor of academic precept was from the first excessively distasteful to his essentially and eminently romantic nature. He chafed incessantly. The training doubtless stood him in good stead when he found himself driven by ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... the faulty Translation of this Text of Aristotle by Gaza: and tho' the parvity or lowness of Stature, be no Impediment, because we have frequently seen such Dwarf-Men, yet we did never see a Nation of them: For then there would be no need of that Talmudical Precept which Job. Ludolphus[E] mentions, Nanus ne ducat Nanam, ne forte oriatur ex iis Digitalis ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... comfortably seated on the creature's back. The fellow we refer to did that. We do not say or think that all Arabs are cruel; very far from it, but we hold that, as a race, they are so. Their great prophet taught them cruelty by example and precept, and the records of history, as well as of the African slave-trade, bear witness to the fact that their "tender mercies" are not and never have ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... to do good. I am merely refusing to obey these rules for our guidance, which are obviously drawn up to safeguard man's property and privilege. Whenever I can find a man-made precept, that will I carefully disobey; whenever the ruling powers seek to guide me through my conscience, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... think we may discover a principal cause of them in the present condition and habits of the adult part of the labouring classes. We shall find, very frequently, that infant crime is the only natural produce of evil, by the infallible means of precept and example. I do not intend to assert, that the majority of parents amongst the poor, actually encourage their children in the commission of theft; we may, indeed, fear that some do; as in the instance of the two little ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... a very good rule when he said, "A preposition is a very bad word to end a sentence with;" but it is sometimes easier to follow his example than his precept. In general, the strength of a sentence is improved by not placing small ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... 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
... would have 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 guilty should ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... 1500 years (during the period in which the Church was dominant); it was this that had killed the urge to search and seek for the truth, which is the goal of all science, the means by which humanity is set on the road to progress. This was the damnable precept foisted on the minds of men which enslaved them throughout the ages, and from which we are just emerging. This was the precept that plunged the world into the Dark Ages, and retarded the advance of mankind ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... plane of morality and chastity, which is pleasing to contemplate, and for which she can thank only the principles of Protestantism, for Protestantism teaches, by both precept and example, as she looks to the only true standard of morality that ever existed, which is the Holy Bible. But Catholicism looks only to a standard which the Pope of Rome sees fit to establish, and a standard of morals ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
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