"Precedency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the cowardly and knavish cunning of one who, without regard to the laws prescribed, employs the most unfair means to vanquish his competitor. Those who disputed the prize in the several kinds of combats, drew lots for their precedency ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... academy might begin, and I believe nothing would so soon explode the practice as the public discouragement of it by such a society; where all our customs and habits, both in speech and behaviour, should receive an authority. All the disputes about precedency of wit, with the manners, customs, and usages of the theatre, would be decided here; plays should pass here before they were acted, and the critics might give their censures and damn at their pleasure; ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... that, in so far as they were at all capable of an intellectual pleasure, those parts would be most attractive which were least occupied with the present business and the momentary details. This order of precedency in the interests of the speech held even for them; but to us, removing at every annual step we take in the century, to a greater distance from the mere business and partisan interests of the several cases, this secondary attraction is not merely the greater ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey--Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Chaerecrates. "Would you have me break the ice; I, who am the younger brother? Do you forget that among all nations the honour to begin is reserved to the elder?" "How do you mean?" said Socrates. "Must not a younger brother give the precedency to the older? Must he not rise up when he comes in, give him the best place, and hold his peace to let him speak? Delay, therefore, no longer to do what I desire you; go and try to appease your brother. He will receive you with ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the tribunal; and the attentive silence which they preserved was sometimes interrupted by loud bursts of clamor or of applause. In the presence of this formidable assembly, the two emperors were called upon to explain the situation of public affairs: the precedency of rank was yielded to the royal birth of Constantius; and though he was indifferently skilled in the arts of rhetoric, he acquitted himself, under these difficult circumstances, with firmness, dexterity, and eloquence. The first part of his oration seemed to be ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
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