"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
... therefore again to be rejected. Lord Persiflage had declared that nothing could be done for him, and therefore he ought to be rejected. But the Marquis clung to his daughter. As the man was absolutely a Duke, according to the laws of all the Heralds, and all the Courts, and all the tables of precedency and usages of peerage in Christendom, he could not de-grade himself even by any motion of his own. He was the eldest and the legitimate son of the last Duca di Crinola,—so the Marquis said,—and as such was a fitting aspirant for the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... who disputed the privileges of the Cardinalship. Lord Scudamore, Ambassador in ordinary from England to France[274], would not see Cardinal Richelieu: he sent to tell him that he was expressly ordered to visit no one who assumed in his own house the precedency of the Ambassadors of Kings. The English had been induced to take this step by the representation of the Protestants, that to suffer a Cardinal to take the upper hand of an Ambassador was to acknowledge ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... benefit which he could receive from the pope. He was anxious to remain in communion with the see of Rome. He was willing to acknowledge in some innocuous form the Roman supremacy. But it could be only on his own terms. The pope must come to him; he could not go to the pope. And the papal precedency should only again be admitted in England on conditions which should leave untouched the Act of Appeals, and should preserve the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... became very generous, disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret, preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water, brought out for his private delectation. There were no ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during a two-days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin battened down, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray |
