"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacred calls of my country." He referred to the "kind of power, the exercise of which cost one king of England his head and another his throne." Such language, publicly spoken, was new. His argument was, to Englishmen, irrefutable. No precedent, no English statute, could stand against the Constitution. "This writ, if declared legal, totally annihilates" the privacy of the home. "Custom-house officers might enter our houses when they please, and we could not resist them. Upon bare suspicion ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be sure, precedent was with him, logic; but—of a sudden—but a minute had passed—his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf at one's feet there springs ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... sharply pointed roofs. To relieve the monotony of the horizontalism, a simple arcading has been inserted in the wall spaces above the central window, and above the aisle windows (plain lancets) on the right and left. Independently of the question of precedent, the absence of a doorway in this front is quite intelligible at the present day, when the church wall almost touches the narrow public pavement, and the close street of lofty business houses allows no room for perspective, or ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... the seizure of the Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of the population ambitious of Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to defend our Island from foreign invasion. But I tell those jackanapeses, sir, that while I admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of kidnapping such youths after the expiration of their several terms of imprisonment as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship; and packing them off to sea again whenever they venture to take the air on shore; ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... enormously unusual; a deed assuredly without precedent in the annals of the Five Towns. And he, Denry, had done it. The cost was prodigious, ridiculously and dangerously beyond his means. He could find no rational excuse for the deed. But he had done it. And men again wondered. Men had wondered when he led the Countess out to waltz. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... U-53 were intended as a demonstration to test American feeling as to whether Germany could attack on this side of the water munition and other vessels bound for Allied ports. It appeared a bold attempt to create a new precedent by overriding one laid down in 1870 by President Grant, who ruled that American waters must not be used by other nations for belligerent purposes. Outside the three-mile limit, however, German submarines could operate ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... advice in national and party politics whenever practicable. To bind oneself to follow the political dictation of Leo the Thirteenth, and to consider such obedience to the Pope as indispensable to salvation, would be to create a precedent. Pius the Ninth was no statesman at all, and there are plenty of instances in history of Popes whose political advice would have been ruinous, if followed, though it was often formulated more authoritatively and more dictatorially than the injunctions ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... doubtful morality, religion came forward with a sweet but serious smile, and said to her companion, "My dear friend, or sister, in this case I permit you." And on the contrary, if religion felt over sensitive or scrupulous, law had fifty arguments of safety, and precedent, and high authority to justify her. But, indeed, we may observe, that in a religious attorney these illiberal scruples do not often occur. Mr. M'Slime knew the advantages of religion too well, to feel that contraction ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... indifferent hopes of success. A few days ago he sent me his correspondence with Senor Posada, who observes that the vice-queens alone had the privilege of the entree, and seems to hesitate a good deal as to the advisableness of granting a permission which might be considered a precedent for others. However, I think he is too amiable to resist our united entreaties. I hold out as an argument, that C—-n, being the duplicado of the queen herself, my visit is equal to that of the vice-queen, which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... established in the Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction. Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The claim was not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... me know?" Mr. Longdon reflected. "I'm sure I can't say—it's a sort of thing for which I haven't a measure or a precedent. In my time women didn't declare their passion. I'm thinking of what the meaning is of Mrs. Brookenham's wanting you—as I've heard ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the best. Several answers have also been sent to the second part of the question, and all agree that the gentleman on the left had no shadow of excuse for causing the lady's nose to rest in the jelly. Such a proceeding is totally without precedent in ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... manoeuvres of which I was the victim, held the ministers in execration, clearly perceiving they were obedient to a foreign impulse, and the vile agents of people, who, in making them act, kept themselves concealed; they were moreover afraid my case would have dangerous consequences, and be made a precedent for the purpose of establishing a ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... clearly enough that there must be some covert motive for such deep and unaccountable anxiety: he dexterously set forth the various arguments that might be urged by government against a man of Dalton's character; the ill example, the dangerous precedent of one so circumstanced taking his place amongst honourable men, and so forth; mooting a variety of points, in order that he might judge of Sir Robert's object by his ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... more advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a pity this admirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to grow by this time into general imitation, when such an authority serves it for a precedent. Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second so useful an example, but it seems there is an unhappy expense usually annexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of my head, as it is very ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... branch, the seed Of evil, scattered long ago, will sprout And bloom carnation thoughts that dull the soul With subtle sweetness! Oh! coward that I am! Bound down, as to a rock, to form and place, By iron chains of worldly precedent, While my desires like eagles tear my breast, And make of me a base Prometheus. O, God! I married all the family of sins, When I espoused the pleasantest; I am Become a liar through my lechery, A thief of reputation through my cowardice, And—puh! the rest but follow in the train ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... church's duty not to consist only in bearing witness unto the truth, and justifying Christ's confessors and martyrs, in their faithful adherence unto it, but also in testifying against sin, and condemning the wicked for their wickedness; for which, also, we have the precedent of the reformed and covenanted church of Scotland, both before and during the defection and wickedness of the forementioned period. Likeas, the presbytery did, and hereby do declare and ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... oftentimes had said— Write what thou seest in letters large of gold, That livid are my votaries to behold, And in a moment made alive and dead. Once in thy heart my sovran influence spread A public precedent to lovers told; Though other duties drew thee from my fold, I soon reclaim'd thee as thy footsteps fled. And if the bright eyes which I show'd thee first, If the fair face where most I loved to stay, Thy young heart's icy hardness when I burst, Restore ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the rules of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. To which poetry would be made subsequent, or, indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate. I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina were also in debt for similar amounts. Everybody thought the resources of the United States were inexhaustible; and everybody seemed willing to tax future generations beyond all precedent in order to develop ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... which he turned to the Judge. "My Lord, we that are of counsel for the crown desire to do nothing that is hard where a person's life is at stake. We yield to the prisoner any indulgence for which your Lordship can find a precedent in your reading; but no more: and so we leave the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow. 'Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is not a convenient precedent at all. Far from it. At ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... revision of the commercial treaties. The Tsung-Li-Yamen was to be reformed and the ceremonial for the reception of foreign ministers modified as the powers should demand. Compliance with these terms was declared to be a condition precedent to the arrangement of a time limit to the occupation of Peking and of the provinces by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... surprise for the lady of the Manor. The clergyman of her own parish,—a man, who by all accepted rule and precedent ought to have been after her at once, asking for subscriptions to this fund and that fund, toadying her for her position, and begging for her name and support, had not even noticed her absence from divine service on Sundays! She did not know whether to be relieved or dissatisfied. Such ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... you have drunk about two gallons of unwholesome liquids, and eaten a pound or two of unwholesome solids. These medicines have co-operated with the malady. The disorder lies, not in the hemorrhage, but in the precedent extravasation that is a drain on the system; and how is the loss to be supplied? Why, by taking a little more nourishment than before; there is no other way; and probably Nature, left to herself, might have increased your appetite to meet the occasion. But those two worthies ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... for there were among the Justices several of the supporters of the Sons of Liberty; and their refusal, under their own hands, to quarter the soldiers in town would justify a removal. He recommended that this reform should be by Act of Parliament, and that by beginning in the County of Suffolk a precedent might be established for a like exercise of authority as to other places. Such an act, with a royal instruction to the Governor as to appointments, was looked upon as of such value for the restoration of authority, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... face was apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their experience. They were at a loss how to ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... in itself, isn't it?" said his father. "It is an interesting fact, however, that Latin and the Latin text continued to be the language of the printed book for some time; this was not only because of an established precedent, but because the Renaissance in Italy revived an interest in classic literature. But by and by people demanded books in their native tongue. They wished to read something besides the classics—literature that was alive and a part of their own era. The written novello, or story, began to ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... began again, and the woman used every effort to make herself understood. The governor did his best to understand her, but no progress was made toward comprehension. She even followed Cayamo's precedent in drawing a line on the floor from north to south, designating the southern end as Tupoge, the northern end as Puye, for thus much she had kept in memory. Then she pointed out on that line the spot where Topanashka had been killed, and said, "Uan save," and made the gesture-sign for killing. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... this precedent as an excuse for digressing at a moment when I have burned down a small settlement, dispatched a fellow being, and left my heroine alone in the company of an escaped convict who has just developed insanity as ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... There's precedent in Bristol's case The great collector—preacher-farmer; And in the case of that divine Who shrives the soul of ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... Cynthia Greene, it now remained for the Mystic Seven to turn their attention to the matter of Maudie Heywood. The situation was growing acute. Maudie had been ten days at the Grange, and in that brief space of time she was already beginning to establish a precedent. She was a tall, slim girl, with earnest eyes, a decided chin, and an intellectual forehead. Work, with a capital W, was her fetish. She sat during classes with her gaze focused on her teacher, and a look of intelligent interest that surpassed everyone else in the Form. Miss Gibbs turned instinctively ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... liability of the State, under the operation of the charter of the bank, attached so soon or whenever the bonds were legally executed to the bank, and the execution of the mortgages was neither a condition precedent to the pledge of the faith of the State, nor the condition on which the State bonds were to be executed and delivered.' 'It does not appear from the facts that the bonds were sold for less than their par value. Held that the sale was neither illegal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... head, knowing now what Erickson was driving at. "Well, I may as well be frank. I'm—I committed suicide. That's how drunk I was. There hasn't been a suicide in the Miller family in centuries. It took a skinful of liquor to set the precedent." ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found himself without standing for opposition. At any rate, the papers won instant appreciation from his editor and publisher, and from the readers of their periodical, which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in its circulation. But those were days of simpler acceptance of the popular rights of newspapers than these are, when magazines strictly guard their vested interests against them. 'The New York Times' and the 'St. Louis Democrat' ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... evil stroke when Burke, whose whole soul was bound up in order, peace, and gently enlarged precedent, found himself face to face with the portentous man-devouring Sphinx. He who could not endure that a few clergymen should be allowed to subscribe to the Bible instead of to the Articles, saw the ancient ...
— Burke • John Morley
... have pitched himself upon the floor and bellowed. For, a soul of chicken and wine, lightly elated, is easily dashed; and if he had but said to Lord Suckling that, it might as well be deferred, the thing would have become a precedent, and his own debt might have been held back. He went on saying, as he rushed forward alone: "Never mind, Suckling. Oh, hang it! put it in your pocket;" and the imperative necessity for talking, and fancying what was adverse to fact, enabled him to feel for a time as if he had really acted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was against all precedent to go to sea without looking at the ship, Bush and I appointed ourselves an examining committee for the party, and walked down to the wharf where she lay. The captain, a bluff Americanised German, met us at ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the river that the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out was got ready. The women shrieked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... look sick. I hope you'll get the V.C. or something—the Head'll be sure to give us a half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's newspaper when he leaves it lying about—you know how he swanks about it—said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... send her priests to the altar in habiliments that were fashionable before the fall of the Roman Empire, in token of her immovable conservatism? And, lastly, does not the Law, lumbering on in the wake of progress, symbolise its subjection to precedent by head-gear reminiscent of the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... One precedent established, it was easy to make another. Tennessee was admitted in 1796, without scruple, on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had the satisfaction of seeing an object reared that bore in its outlines, a striking resemblance to a vinegar-cruet. There was less opposition to this model than to the windows; for the settlers were fond of novelty, and their steeple was without a precedent. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... century and a half assumed the chances of rebellion and the certain perils of civil war, rather than submit to have Right infringed by Prerogative, and the scales of Justice made a cheat by false weights that kept the shape but lacked the substance of legitimate precedent. We are forced to think that there must be a bend sinister in the escutcheon of the descendants of such men, when we find them setting the form above the substance, and accepting as law that which is deadly to the spirit while it is true to the letter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... seen that this would be no everyday affair, when the pilot, with difficulty, prevailed upon Tryphaena to undertake the office of herald, and propose a truce; so, when pledges of good faith had been given and received, in keeping with the ancient precedent she snatched an olive-branch from the ship's figurehead and, holding it out, advanced ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Christ Church was significant. Men felt that the days of monasteries were past, and the Church was ready to welcome and to extend the New Learning. But his changes were a dangerous precedent; as Fuller says with his usual quaintness: "All the forest of religious foundations in England did shake, justly fearing the King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood." Henry, however, when he swept away the monasteries, ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... virtues, that it is apt to determine a man's sudden adhesion to an opinion, whether on a personal or impersonal matter, without leaving him time to consider his grounds. The adhesion is sudden and momentary, but it either forms a precedent for his line of thought and action, or it is presently seen to have been inconsistent with his true mind. This determination of partisanship by temper has its worst effects in the career of the public man, who is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... bare Concealment of what was found, as in the former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called it a Distinction without a Difference, and absolutely insisted, that when once all Pretensions of Honour and Virtue were given up in any one Instance, that there was no Precedent for resorting to them upon a second Occasion. In short, poor Conscience had certainly been defeated in the Argument, had not Fear stept in to her Assistance, and very strenuously urged, that the real Distinction between the two Actions, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... so frightful with the heartless and cruel insensibility of the son, that the sight chilled their blood. The sentiment was only the more common, from the silent but general conviction, that the unfeeling criminal must be permitted to escape. There was, indeed, no precedent for leading the child of a prince to the block, unless it were for an offence which touched the preservation of the father's interests. Much was said in maxims and apophthegms of the purity and necessity of rigid impartiality in administering the affairs of life, but neither had attained ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Anglo-Indian fitness of things that the Governor-General should promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this composition it is unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's observation that in it 'the words "justice and necessity" were applied in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English language,' and Sir Henry Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the views and conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood which a Russian statesman ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and the other brethren. They decided the question whether it was necessary to be circumcised. See Acts 15, 1-31. The apostles were inspired, hence could have made the decision, without the assistance of the lay brethren; but it appears they desired no such prerogative. This precedent justifies the laity in being in council with the clergy for the purpose of deliberating on the most important ecclesiastical matters. Christians, in common, are called 'a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people,' and they are 'to show ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... and again, on investigation, be found to be only the English spirit shooting ahead faster than it can advance in England. When, in a particular matter, it appears as if England was coming to conform to American precedent, it is, in truth only that, having given the impulse to America, she herself is following with less speed than the younger runner, but with such ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, that in proportion to the strength of character required for the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, whether respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and their success in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... discontented nobles, won from his brother the affections of the young king, and believing every thing ripe for an attack on his usurped authority, he designed to bring forward in the ensuing parliament a proposal for separating, according to ancient precedent, the office of guardian of the king's person from that of protector of the realm, and for conferring upon himself the former. But he discovered too late that he had greatly miscalculated his forces; his proposal was not even permitted to come to a hearing. Having rendered himself further ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... rule, apparently an invention of Collado's, has no precedent in Rodriguez or in linguistic derivation. The n in this construction is the contracted form of the classical mu, the source for what Collado calls ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... one writing for which above all others Mr. Mill's disciples will love his memory is his essay "On Liberty." In this undertaking Mr. Mill followed the noble precedent of Locke, with greater largeness of view and perfection of work. Locke's four letters "Concerning Toleration" constitute a splendid manifesto of the Liberals of the seventeenth century. The principle, that the ends of political society are life, health, liberty, and immunity from harm, and not the ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... their guns. At the eviction a man had funked, frightened out of his seven senses. The police declined all responsibility, but offered to guard the farm for a shilling per man per day. MacAdam thought this proposal without precedent, and left the police to their own devices, driving along the twenty miles of hilly road, with sorry steeds that refused the last hill, so that the loads had to be pushed and carried up by the men. This was at eight or nine in the morning, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... fortune of the author to take part in a movement without precedent in the history of the world, and the incidents concurrent with, together with those subsequent to that movement, have furnished the material for this book. It has been the object of the writer to weave into the story of his actual experiences an account ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... have an undeniable freshness of outlook on the Roman alphabet. He treats it with a freedom and variety and a certain disregard of precedent—induced, perhaps, by his schooling in Blackletter—that often produces delightful, though sometimes, be it added, direful results. But if the extreme and bizarre forms be thrown aside the designer may ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... thing ought to be done and I think can be.' At the period of the session at which the Bill was introduced, the opposition of even half-a-dozen determined men could have at any stage achieved its ruin. Thanks, however, to the good feeling the precedent of the Act of 1903 and the admirably conciliatory temper displayed by the labourers themselves in their agitation had engendered, the Bill went triumphantly through and has been crowned with glory in its practical application. I never pass ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... swallow the information suavely by the help of a classical precedent, and said, with a gracious smile, "Then I perceive we must have played the part of AEneas and Anchises—" But before he had got so far, the idea had been quite too much for Dermot, who cried out, "Pick-a-back! With his boots sticking out on both sides! Thank you, Dora. Oh! my uncle, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Central America bestirred themselves to throw off the Mexican yoke. On July 1,1823, a Congress declared the region an independent republic under the name of the "United Provinces of Central America." In November of the next year, following the precedent established in Mexico, and obedient also to local demand, the new republic issued a constitution, in accordance with which the five little divisions of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... that the general statute is sufficiently liberal to provide relief in all proper cases of destroyed United States bonds, and I believe that the act above referred to constitutes an evil precedent. It is not, however, so objectionable as to call for my formal disapproval, and I have allowed it to become a law under the constitutional provision, contenting myself with communicating to the Senate, in which the bill originated, my disapproval of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... creature symbolizes some of our human arts and initiations. Once organized by genius and consecrated by precedent, they become mighty elements in history, revelling amid the wealthy energy of life, exhausting the forces of the intellect, clipping the tendrils of affection, becoming colossal in the architecture of society and dorsal in its traditions, and tyrannizing with the heedless power of an element, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... events, a warning that youth must be served and that the doddering oldsters were to give place to those who could stand up under the stern and exacting tests of warfare. Such rash ardor was not according to precedent. Harrison promptly relieved the impetuous Croghan of his command and sent a colonel to replace him. But Croghan argued the point so eloquently that the stockade was restored to him next day and he won his chance to do or die. Harrison consolingly informed him that he was to retreat if attacked by ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... Bell had been in the habit of making such demands, the housekeeper would have continued to rebel. As it was, she had grave doubts of the wisdom of establishing such a dangerous precedent as compliance with the absurd request. But Raymond Mortimer's distress was so genuine, and the pleasure of the picnic so obviously rested on her surrender, that she made it, albeit slowly and with groans and dismal predictions. The boy's face ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... answered, considering the matter gravely. "Tell you what you do," he went on, "let the mule have his head! Let him go just where he wants to. It is the instinct of animals to follow precedent, same as men. A man will follow a cow path until it becomes a city street, and a cow, a horse, or a mule will follow a trail previously used—if only passed over once! Let the mule have his head, and he may take us to the place where ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... rather than to coin a new one, has only been done rarely. The Latin substitution of the combination th for the simple single [theta], was exceptionable. It was a precedent, however, which now begins to be ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... determine the nature of the voyage, to ascertain whether, by destination, by cargo, or by persons carried, the obligations of neutrality were being infringed. If there was reasonable cause for suspicion, the vessel, by accepted law and precedent, might be sent to a port of the belligerent, where the question was adjudicated by legal process; but the actual captor could not decide it on the spot. On the contrary, he was bound, to the utmost ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... traditional hero, Roque Guinart, who figures in the second part of Don Quixote. The revolt against the house of Austria in 1640, and the War of the Succession (1700-1714), gave a great stimulus to Catalan brigandage. But it was then put down in a way for which Italy offers no precedent. A country gentleman named Pedro Veciana, hereditary balio (military and civil lieutenant) of the archbishop of Tarragona in the town of Valls, armed his farm-servants, and resisted the attacks of the brigands. With the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... monarch who wore it more than three thousand years ago. The gold coins with the head of Alexander the Great are some of them so fresh one might think they were newer than much of the silver currency we were lately handling. As we have been quoting from the poets this morning, I will follow the precedent, and give some lines from an epistle of Pope to Addison after the latter had written, but not yet published, his Dialogue on Medals. Some of these lines have been lingering in my memory for a great many years, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sense of danger was not so near as that of loneliness—of a pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its master's soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken something out of the house with it. 'Lizabeth had known this kitchen for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night it was unfamiliar, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men, what the question always is,—not ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the Step-Pyramid where ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... So I have rendered {tetraphaleron} which literally signifies having four cones. The cone was a tube into which the crest was inserted. The word quatre-crested may need a precedent for its justification, and seems to have a sufficient one in the cinque-spotted cowslip ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a later period, barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a misdemeanour. But a recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men. The weapon which had reached Fenwick might reach Duncombe. A bill of pains and penalties was brought in, and carried through the earlier stages with less opposition than might have been expected. Some Noes might perhaps be uttered; but no members ventured to say ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his dignified spouse swings slowly to and fro, conning the pages and the colored plates of the current fashion journal. Surely in the telltale word "rusticantur" you and I and the rest of human nature find a worthy precedent and much encouragement for our practice of loading up with plenty of good reading before we start for the ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... purpose of committing the nation to that theory. Its annexation was the prologue, as the Mexican war was the first act in the secession drama, and as the epilogue is the suppression of the rebellion on Texan soil. Texas is an exceptional case, and forms no precedent, and cannot be adduced as invalidating the general rule. Omitting Texas, the simple fact is, the States acquire all their sovereign powers by being States in the Union, instead of losing ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... things to say that an assailed boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of his impulses to himself. I understood no more than the people who called upon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of his racial surroundings and associations. For you must understand that there was no idea of any sort of "career" in my call. Of Russia or Germany there could ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... There is ample precedent, in this election year, for me to present you with a huge list of new proposals, knowing full well that there would not be any possibility of your passing them if ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... to do such a thing? It never had been done, of course, in all the world; but the essence and the object of the whole day's run were that it should defy all precedent. There were few people, however, of those on board who in their hearts dared harbor any hope; especially as the engine which was to be tried at this crucial moment was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... way, crowding to applaud Coquelin cadet, Fragson, and other budding celebrities. It was here that the poets first had the idea of producing a piece in which rival cabarets were reviewed and laughingly criticised. The success was beyond all precedent, in spite of the difficulty of giving a play without a stage, without scenery or accessories of any kind, the interest centring in the talent with which the lines were declaimed by their authors, who next had the pleasant thought of passing in review the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... life. Neither had the outspoken, kind-hearted gentlewoman any particular application of her speech in her mind when she said sorrowfully—"Dear! dear! how grieved he would be if he knew how worn out you were, Miss Dora. He thought that his coming to the hospital would not only serve as a precedent, it would be the simplest, safest, least troublesome plan where he himself was concerned, though if he would have let me, I should have been only too glad to have turned my back on 'Robinson's' for a time, and done what I could for him. There is enough difference in our ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... similar action on the part of the Executive. In all such cases, it is the first step that is most difficult, and before making the one now proposed, you should, as I think, weigh well the importance of the precedent about to be established. No one can hold in greater respect than I do, the honorable gentleman who negotiated this treaty; but in thus attempting to substitute the executive will for legislative action, he seems to me to have ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... old Burgundian law, the right of female succession was not without precedent, the general inclination of popular sentiment was definitely against it; and while Helene by her father's will was authorized during her life to claim the rule of Gruyere, that will directed that his nephew Jean of the cadet branch of the family should succeed ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... of Continental Defense deplored the lack of precedent. But actually none was needed. You just don't drop four miles of dead or dying alien flesh on Seattle or any other part of a swarming homeland. You wait till it flies out over the ocean, if it will—the most commodious ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn
... there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Another] abbrev. In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to {Yet Another}, following the precedent set by UNIX 'yacc(1)' (Yet ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... a like sacrifice; and this he did on behalf of patrician and plebeian alike. Here the victorious general was to deposit his spoils, reaching the temple in the solemn procession of the triumphus, and wearing the ornamenta of the deity himself; for here, contrary to all precedent in the worship of Romans, there was an image of the god wrought in terra cotta and brought from Etruria.[505] It is in connection with such solemn events as these that we may find the origin of those ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... an alliance as debasing to a civilized lady. In their eyes, the Englishman was a barbarian; and though the Norman might well marry the Englishwoman, if she had beauty or wealth, it was a dangerous precedent to allow the Englishman to marry the Norman woman, and that woman a princess. Beside, there were those who coveted Edwin's broad lands; Roger de Montgomery, who already (it is probable) held part of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... back drawing room, which was divided from the front by blue satin and white lace portieres. Her deadly pallid face gleamed out from the shadows in startling contrast to her jet black hair and the black dress which, against all precedent, she wore on this the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms Pins, wooden ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Asiatic empire. But it may at least be said that he did nothing to make the ultimate solution of the question more difficult, and his flattering reception of Lord Macartney's embassy was an important and encouraging a precedent for English diplomacy ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a precedent which will last the men of Forty-Mile to the end of time,' he prophesied. Then he coiled the rope about his arm and led his followers out of doors, just in ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... it might have survived, for the hill people had "the habit of standing." They had set a precedent of fertility and hardihood and the will to live for a matter of centuries.... But there had come influences over which not even the carefully nurtured stubbornness of 300 years could prevail.... The railroad and the concrete highway and ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... exit is always at hand to furnish the means of flight from the dungeon or other imminent peril. The dread of ridicule, that conscience of all poets who write for the world of fashion, is very visible in the care with which he avoids all bolder flights as yet unsanctioned by precedent, and abstains from everything supernatural, because such a public carries not with it, even to the fantastic stage of the opera, a belief in wonders. Yet this fear has not always served as a sure guide to Metastasio: besides such an extravagant use of the "aside," ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... against Bolivar. The vice-president was forced to resign, and Arismendi was elected in his stead. His first action was to appoint Marino head of the army of the East. The substitution of a military president for a civilian was a vicious precedent which, unfortunately, has been followed in many instances by the Spanish American countries. Arismendi proved, nevertheless, a good vice-president, and retained the cabinet appointed by Bolivar. Affairs were in this condition when news arrived of ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... distinctions of good society, and the general exhilaration that prevailed in our party, I was far from being perfectly happy. To own the truth, I had left my heart in Picardie. I do not say I was in love; I am far from certain that there is any precedent for a pocket-handkerchief's being in love at all, and I am quite sure that the sensations I experienced were different from those I have since had frequent occasion to hear described. The circumstances which called them forth ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... the acceptance of Negroes in the Union army camps as contraband, on the ground that they were being used by the Confederates to build fortifications and the like and, if returned to the seceding territory, would be of further use in opposing the Federal troops. General Butler set this precedent when he was in charge of the forces at Fortress Monroe. At first there was some hesitation as to whether the administration should adopt such a policy. Butler's course, however, was approved by Cameron, the Secretary of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... written his Sword and Buckler in 1602 (if it were the same man), he still called his Muse "young" in 1613. I cannot call to mind any precedent for the form of stanza adopted by him, consisting, as it does, of six ten-syllable lines, rhyming alternately, followed by a twelve-syllable couplet. None of the other stanzas contain personal matter; the grief of the author of Great Britain's Sun's-set seems as artificial as might be expected; ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... precedent, no reason why, if the majority desire anything, a Legislative sanction should not be given to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... what had happened. Yancoo's reputation had been grimly asserted. Every one now dreaded him anew. Again he was king. Though it was contrary to all precedent to point the death-bone at a member of the tribe, yet had Yan-coo made a law unto himself and his own justification, and the proudest testimonial to his skill was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... henceforth he must live by it or else begin life over again in another sphere. At all events, for a term of years, his personal prosperity depends upon the use he can make of his hold upon the public goods. He is not individually to be blamed, perhaps, for he follows a precedent as widely recognized as it is universally pernicious. It is the system that is to be blamed, the general belief that a man can, and justly may, support himself by clinging to a set of principles of which he does not honestly ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... that a dangerous precedent would be established; that forest fires would be sure to originate from the locomotive's sparks, and that the Poquette woods were the center of the ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... without balloting. In the consciousness of his good intentions, and according to his way of thinking and the conception he had of himself, he believed that he deserved such a distinction, which, indeed, was not conformable to law or precedent. Consequently, when his suit was rejected, he fell into ill humor and disgust, vowed that he would never accept of any place, and, in order to render it impossible, procured the title of Imperial Councillor, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 27, 1621, the House of Lords sentenced John Blount to pillory, imprisonment, and labour for life, for counterfeiting a Lord's protection. This was the first case of imprisonment beyond the session, by the House of Lords. The first precedent for their infliction of fines appears about two years afterwards, when they sentenced one Morley to pay 1,000l., and condemned him to the pillory for a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various |
