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Licence   /lˈaɪsəns/   Listen
Licence

noun
1.
Excessive freedom; lack of due restraint.  Synonym: license.  "The intolerable license with which the newspapers break...the rules of decorum"
2.
Freedom to deviate deliberately from normally applicable rules or practices (especially in behavior or speech).  Synonym: license.
3.
A legal document giving official permission to do something.  Synonyms: license, permit.



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"Licence" Quotes from Famous Books



... you'd meet in a day's walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him, says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you round here again or if he does, says he, I'll have him summonsed up before the court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And he after stuffing himself till he's fit to burst. Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the yard. How dared people think she would marry him?—that she was so undignified, infatuated and unfastidious as to yoke herself to a slow, common boor? Her indignation flamed against the scandal-mongers ... that Woolpack! She'd like to see their licence taken away, and then perhaps decent women's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... the closing of the Spot, saying that he was going to Bertha Holcomb's home. No trace has been found of either to date. Doubtless the reader has noted advertisement in the papers, appealing to the authorities to report any one of Watson's description applying for a marriage licence. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... knows, a coachman typical of the period of the book, and the "Belle Savage" (the spelling of "savage" here follows the fashion of the period referred to) was where he started and ended his journeys in London. But the anecdote related by his son of how he was hoodwinked into taking out a licence to marry Mrs. Clarke contains the chief of the only two actual references to the fact that his head-quarters were the "Belle Savage," as he called it. It is certainly recorded that he started from the "Bull" in Whitechapel when he drove the Pickwickians ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... danger. Somehow everybody feels the Bank is sure to come right. In 1797, when it had scarcely any money left, the Government said not only that it need not pay away what remained, but that it must not. The 'effect of letters of licence' to break Peel's Act has confirmed the popular conviction that the Government is close behind the Bank, and will help it when wanted. Neither the Bank nor the Banking Department have ever had an idea of being put 'into liquidation;' most men would think as soon of 'winding ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... the Burmese monarchs was rigidly suppressed. After the Second Burmese War no record was ever made in the Yazawin that Pegu had been torn away from Burma by the British. The folk songs are the truest and most interesting national literature. The Burmese are fond of stage-plays in which great licence of language is permitted, and great liberty to "gag" is left to the wit or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... cut the hair of the village, a trade learned by him when he was in the army. He professed strong Republican principles, though he was afraid to express his opinions too strongly, in case of losing his licence. An old rivalry subsisted between him and Macqueron, a neighbouring tavern-keeper with whom he was always on the point ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... periods in the life of a lover; for should he then chance to meet a heart free to respond to his ardent passion, and that no cruel father, relentless guardian, or richer lover interposes to overthrow his hopes, he may with the aid of a licence, a parson, and a plain gold ring, be suddenly launched into the calm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... [70] fountain of Dirce still haunted by the virgins of Thebes, where the infant god was cooled and washed from the flecks of his fiery birth, becomes typical of the coolness of all springs, and is made, by a really poetic licence, the daughter of the distant Achelous—the earliest born, the father in myth, of all ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... for exiles, his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of an unknown God, have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me most, and they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did not last long: Madame Dumas got a little post—a licence to sell tobacco—and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his great Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the stage—Racine and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously—till he saw Hamlet: Hamlet ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked before breakfast on a terrace overlooking all the vale ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wonder and a little alarm in his face as he was brought into the room where the superintendent and Green sat. There are many rules the infringement of which will imperil a licence, and he was not quite sure that he might ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... it's on account of the spectacle you present—a spectacle to be hidden from the eye of ingenuous youth: that of a man neglecting his own fiddle to blunder away on that of one of his fellows. We can't afford such mistakes, we can't tolerate such licence." ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... and Noll went up to Cambridge. The magistrates took away his licence for allowing gambling to go on at his house. He stuck on at the lock-house for some time, and then disappeared suddenly. They said he was wanted for some bit of swindling or ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... possessing the two social divisions with the untranslated names MATTERI and KIRARU. These tribes range from Lake Eyre southward, perhaps, as far as the sea. Their peculiar custom is unknown to the Euahlayi, but Mrs. Parker does not inform us concerning any recognised licence which may, as is usual, accompany their Boorah assemblies, or their 'harvest home' of gathered ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... were now commanders and post captains, while he remained almost without hope in a subordinate position. He was pretty certain to be senior of the mess in whatever ship he sailed, and that was his only consolation, as it gave him some little authority, and full licence to growl to his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... commonly much stronger than the rulers themselves, the money spent among them is more efficacious in securing the exclusive enjoyment of the wife than if it had been paid in taxes or fees to them for a marriage licence.[4] The pride of families and tribes, and the desire of the multitude to participate in the enjoyment of such ceremonies, tend to keep up this usage after the cause in which it originated may have ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... ear a pinch, upon which the animal snapped at his thumb, and bit it so seriously that the man was obliged to apply to the doctor. When this was reported to me by the surgeon, I began to think my four-footed friend was either getting rather too much licence, or that too many liberties were taken with him, so I gave orders that in future he should be let alone. Nevertheless, Jacko contrived to bite two more of the people, one of whom was the sergeant, the other the midshipmen's boy. These were ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... fifty questions that night, and nobody any the wiser for them. Notes were taken of everything: the time I set out, where my father was born, what they paid me for the job, the address of the garage, Christian name and surname of Abraham Moss—whether I'd had my licence endorsed or kept it clean—until at last, able to stand it no longer, I told the inspector plainly that this wasn't Colney Hatch, and the sooner he ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... corresponding portraits of individuals: there is the family picture of the father and mother and the old servant of the timocratical man, and the outward respectability and inherent meanness of the oligarchical; the uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat, in which the young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong as he pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far country (note here the play of language by which the democratic man is himself represented under ...
— The Republic • Plato

... which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command. ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet the redemption of the four little Pecks was stayed. Enjoying untrammelled leisure they swarmed about the ship as if they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to check their licence as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the hold. They were especially to be trusted to dive between the legs of the stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the languid ladies. Their ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... principle of such a close identification of the ecclesiastical and civil, as that all offences against morality and church discipline were to be also dealt with and punished by the state, more than questionable. But to men living in the sixteenth century and just emerging out of the ignorance and licence which the old church had tolerated, and longing to be moulded into a community really holy and self-denying and quickened to a higher life—enthused with a longing to reach loftier heights in it—the iron discipline of Calvin and Knox was welcome as requiring only ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... employment, and there is a proof of the extent and productiveness of the gold deposits, I would propose that the licence fee be gradually increased, in such a manner, however, as not to be higher than the persons engaged in mining can readily pay. My authority for issuing that proclamation, seeing that it refers to certain districts of continental America, which are not, strictly speaking, within ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... think you know, an enthusiastic student of Egyptian antiquities. He was also, or thought he was, in love with my unworthy self. He found this mummy in a royal tomb at Memphis. He—well, I suppose, stole it—of course under the usual licence from the Khedive—and sent it home to Dad. Now comes the mystery. That was the mummy of Nitocris, the daughter of the great Rameses, and it was the dead ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... good reason to resent the licence with which his private affairs had been obtruded on the public in Pater Brey,[139] but in the same year Goethe made him the main subject of another production which raises equally our astonishment at the manners ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... daughter of her father, had already, young as she was, counted her lovers by the score—lovers chosen indiscriminately, from Royal princes to grooms and common soldiers. She was already sated with the licence of the most dissolute Court of Europe, and to her the young Cossack of the beautiful face and voice, and rustic innocence, opened a new and seductive vista of pleasure. She lost her heart to him, had him transferred to her own Court as her favourite singer, and, within a few ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... had the opportunity of becoming the earliest College in Cambridge. Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, obtained in 1280 a licence from King Edward I. to introduce a certain number of scholars of the University into the Hospital, to be governed according to the rules of the scholars of Merton. The regular canons and the scholars were to form one body and one College. The Bishop gave additional ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... same. The Stoics aspired to the repression of all emotion, and the Epicureans to freedom from all disturbance; yet in the upshot the one has become a synonym of stubborn endurance, the other for unbridled licence. With Epicureanism we have nothing to do now; but it will be worth while to sketch the history and tenets of the Stoic sect. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was born in Cyprus at some date unknown, but his life may be said roughly to ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... the goods and negroes, if they would give us 120,000 dollars for the whole. They told us that trading in these seas with strangers, especially the English and Dutch, was so rigidly prohibited, that they would have to give more than the original cost in bribes, to procure licence to deal with us, and could not therefore assure us of payment, unless we agreed to take a low price. Finding it therefore not worth while to waste time, and knowing we should run much risk in treating with them, we at length resolved to set them all ashore, hoping the Morels and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... said, assume a licence to sin, and without any reason, at I confess that some profane men, to whom religion is a burden, may, the simple dictates of their lusts conclude that Scripture is everywhere faulty and falsified, and that ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... 'tis a new way, sure enough, to make reparation to the feelings of a father, after having seduced daughter under the plea of a false marriage, performed by a sham priest, and a forged licence! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... evident, that he encouraged her in her wild licence, and affected, if he did not feel, the most decided admiration for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... lady, madam," said the prince; "and for such you speak the truth. But to men there is permitted such a field of licence, and the good behaviour asked of them is at once so easy and so little, that to fail in that is to fall beyond the reach of pardon. But will you suffer me to repeat a question, put to you at first, I am afraid, with some defect of courtesy; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... companyons of my iourney, verie fauourablye, and with a familiar readines and virginlike iestures, tooke holde of mee, one by the right hande, and the other by the left, and reuerently obteyning licence, first of the Queene, and takyng theyr leaue of the rest, went out the same way that ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... had sometimes a temporary power, but more frequently were repelled with insult and derision. In pursuit of this object he encountered the most imminent perils, and underwent incredible fatigues, hunger, sickness, and solitude. The licence of savage passion, and the artifices of his depraved countrymen, all opposed themselves to his progress. His courage did not forsake him till there appeared no reasonable ground to hope for success. He desisted not till ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... acts and sufferings of an imaginary Byron. The Dream is "picturesque" because the accidents of the scenes are dealt with not historically, but artistically, are omitted or supplied according to poetical licence; but the record is neither false, nor imaginary, nor unusual. On the other hand, the composition and publication of the poem must be set down, if not to malice and revenge, at least to the preoccupancy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... organization and ritual. With this view a book of Canons was issued in 1636 on the sole authority of the king. These Canons placed the government of the Church absolutely in the hands of its bishops; and made a bishop's licence necessary for instruction and for the publication of books. The authority of the prelates indeed was jealously subordinated to the supremacy of the Crown. No Church Assembly might be summoned but by ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... I bought a number of steerage passages from the Holland American Line and the ladies resold them in the ballroom. We had to do this because the Holland American Line had no licence to sell steerage tickets in Germany; but by buying two or three hundred at a time direct from the Company, I was enabled to peddle them out in our ballroom to those Americans who, in their eagerness to reach their own country, were willing ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... Henry Binneman paid "vi and a copie" to the Stationers' Company for the right to print "the Briefe Course of the Accidents of the Deathe of Mr. Serjeant Lovelace;" and on the 30th of August following, Richard Jones obtained a licence to print "A Short Epitaphe of Serjeant Lovelace." This was the same person who is described in the pedigree as dying in 1576. His death happened, no doubt, like that of Sir Robert Bell and others, at the Oxford Summer assizes for 1576. See Stow's ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... stung our souls out of all reason. When we were dismissed—to the tune of twenty-three pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence—we waited for Pallant to join us, while we listened to the next case—one of driving without a licence. Ollyett with an eye to his evening paper, had already taken very full notes of our own, but we did not wish to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... Brothers was kindled to a still greater love of the worship of God, but in after time, when the new and larger church in the monastery was builded and consecrated, the dedication of this former chapel was transferred to the latter by licence of the Bishop, but as was more seemly, it was dedicated first to St. Mary and afterward to St. Agnes. After this, when nearly three years had gone by, the desire of the Brothers to build a monastery burned fiercely within them, and the elder amongst them especially, with ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis

... stimulate his followers to practise self-control and endurance: self-control in the matters of eating, drinking, sleeping, and the cravings of lust; endurance of cold and heat and toil and pain. He had noticed the undue licence which one of his acquaintances allowed himself in all such matters. (2) Accordingly he thus ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... vulgar. Certainly it amounted to a continual advertisement for him; an infinitely more effective advertisement than, for instance, a sandwichman at eighteen-pence a day, and costing no more, even with the licence and the shoeing. Moreover, a sandwichman has this inferiority to a turnout: when you have done with him you cannot put him up to auction and sell him. Further, there are no sandwichmen in the Five Towns; in that democratic and independent neighbourhood nobody would deign ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... giving a new name, does not take away the former name: a legacy given by that name might be taken. In most of the Acts of Parliament for this purpose there is a special proviso to prevent the loss of the former name. The King's licence is nothing more than permission to take the name, and does not give it. A name, therefore, taken in that way is by voluntary assumption." (15 ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various

... naturally felt inclined to have recourse, for means of defence, to the same instruments which the Catholics used against them. They were surrounded by Catholic bands, inclined to pillage and murder, and it was no wonder that they felt irritated by a measure which appeared to give licence to the lawless. A meeting of Protestant noblemen and gentlemen, held in Dublin, put forth a manifesto, enumerating the various grievances of which they thought themselves entitled to complain, and calling upon all their brethren to be vigilant and true to their own ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the magistrates of the city; being the amount of sums received from musicians for licence to ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... remained a possession of the bishops of Carlisle until the reign of Edward VI., when, by licence of the King, it was sold by Bishop Aldrich in 1547 to Edward, Lord Clinton. {12e} In the reign of Mary he was compelled to re-convey it to the see of Carlisle. {12f} Queen Elizabeth took a lease of it under the then possessing bishop, in which she was succeeded by James I. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... "terrible khamseen" or sirocco. Travellers' tales about having to bury yourself in the sand, or at least swathe head and body in folds of cloth, in order to avoid being choked with grit, I know. The real thing is bad enough without resorting to poetic or journalistic licence, though some will do that anyhow. It is sufficiently trying to grow hot and perspire so freely that the driving dust, the scavenger drift of chaos and the ages, caught by the moisture, courses down the features and trickles from the hands in so many miniature turbid streamlets. During a dust-storm ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... events that were to follow. All the other practical jokes exploded of themselves, and left vacancy; all the other fictions returned upon themselves, and were finished like a song. But the string of solid and startling events— which were to include a hansom cab, a detective, a pistol, and a marriage licence—were all made primarily possible by the joke about the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... and who had discovered for the thoughts and feelings of that age—so deeply agitated and so elevated by mighty joy—a poetical expression which, if not exactly the highest, was sound, adroit, and national. We have already mentioned(31) the troubles into which his licence brought him with the authorities, and how, driven presumably by these troubles from Rome, he ended his life at Utica. In his instance likewise the individual life was sacrificed for the common weal, and the beautiful ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the sheer assumption, which is surely a fallacy, that suppressio veri is always and not only sometimes suggestio falsi, I do not see that he exceeded a due licence in this matter, while that he was wise in his generation there can be no doubt. He wanted to influence the average Englishman, and he knew perfectly well there is nothing the average Englishman dislikes so much as guarded and elaborately conditioned statements. The immense popularity and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... was indeed entirely correct. For Maud Lindesay, accustomed all her life to the homage of many men, and having been brought up in a great castle in an age when chivalrous respect to women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of Letters, practised irritation like a fine art. She was brimful of the superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and playful ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... I went off to the north of England, on a visit to a clergyman, who had invited me. He had already suffered for doing this on a previous occasion, in the diocese of Oxford; where the bishop took away his licence, because he had me to preach for him. The real cause of offence was, that there was a revival in the parish; and complaint was made to the bishop, that people were kept up till "all hours of the night, howling and ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... changes in society and government change their duty about religion, and are, some of them, sorely puzzled as to their duty to God: and others ready to take advantage of the change to throw off their duty to God, and run into licence and schism ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... does not exist or is temporarily in abeyance: (b) free love, the relationships of the unmarried: (c i.) temporary polyandry or polygyny of married people, where the unions are limited and recognised by custom: (c ii.) marital licence where the husband is complaisant in the face of public opinion: (c iii.) adultery where neither the husband ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... the whole population for more than a thousand leagues; and imposed a tribute [so heavy that no one could be owner of a mazorca of maize, which is their bread for food, nor of a pair of usutas, which are their shoes, nor marry, nor do a single thing without special licence from Tupac Inca. Such was the tyranny and oppression to which he subjected them]. He placed over the tucuricos a class of officers called Michu[108] to ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... Clarendon. Before we follow her on her very early morning visit to her cousin's, we must take leave to pause one moment to remark, not in the way of moralising by any means, but simply as a matter of history, that the first little fib in which Lady Cecilia, as a customary licence of speech, indulged herself the moment she awoke this morning, though it seemed to answer its purpose exactly at the time, occasioned her ladyship a good deal of superfluous toil and trouble during the course of the day. In reply to the first question ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... brill, after adhering for a moment to her cheeks, fell to the ground and burst with a flop like that of a wet clout. This brutal act threw Florent into a fury. The beautiful Norman felt frightened and recoiled, as he cried out: "I suspend you for a week, and I will have your licence withdrawn. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... Rochester nor to Town Malling fits in with the narrative, but this is not material. Dickens, with the usual "novelist's licence," found it convenient often-times to take a nucleus of fact, and surround it with a halo of fiction, and this may have been one of many similar instances. His wonderfully-gifted and ever-facile imagination was ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... full of compassion to the work of His own hand, if they will cease from doing evil and learn to do well, pray for grace to repent, and endeavour with that measure which will be given, if sincerely asked for; for at what time soever a sinner repents (but observe, this is no licence to sin, because at any time we may repent), for that day we may not live to see; and so like the fool in the parable, our lamps be untrimmed when we are called upon. Remember, that to forsake vice is the beginning of virtue; and virtue certainly is ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... fertility of the plains; but men who had been born or had lived in the West were now settled in the East. They had stories to tell, and their testimony was emphatic. In 1856 the Imperial authorities had intimated to Canada that, as the licence of the Hudson's Bay Company to an exclusive trade in certain regions would expire in 1859, it was intended to appoint a select committee of the British House of Commons to investigate the existing situation in those territories and to report upon their future status; and ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... within due bounds to keep, Their Maker licenses the sheep The leaves excessive to retrench. In troops they spread across the plain, And, nibbling down the hapless grain, Contrive to spoil it, root and branch. So, then, with licence from on high, The wolves are sent on sheep to prey; The whole the greedy gluttons slay; Or, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... the nature of Blank Verse, by the lines running into each other at proper intervals. Each line of the first eight, rhimes four times, and the order in which those rhimes should fall is decisive. For the ensuing six there is more licence; they may, or may not, at pleasure, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... which men engage (Said I to myself - said I), The Army, the Navy, the Church, and the Stage, (Said I to myself - said I), Professional licence, if carried too far, Your chance of promotion will certainly mar - And I fancy the rule might apply to the Bar (Said I to myself - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... impracticable. In the first place there was but one staircase, at the bottom of which was the open door of the room in which the policeman was sitting; and then, the woman of the house was very firm in declaring that she would connive at nothing which might cost her and her husband their licence. "You've got to face it," said the woman. "I suppose they can't make me get out of bed unless I pleases," said Patience firmly. But she knew that even that resource would fail her, and that a policeman, when aggravated, can take upon him all ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... lost in the Eastern lines. Some prophesied that the Revolution in Russia was but the beginning of a movement which should destroy all autocratic Governments and, with the establishment of that movement, the end of war would come. Then little by little it leaked out that liberty had become a licence,—that the Russian Army had become disorganized,—that the Socialistic element among the Russians had demanded peace at any price. Soldiers refused to fight, men deserted by the thousand, while Russian soldiers fraternized with ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... over Belgium after it was pacified, the logic of German methods became clear. What was haphazard in their reign of terror was due to the inevitable excesses of a soldiery taking the calculated redress ordered by superiors as licence in the first red passion of war to a war-mad nation, which was sullen because Belgians had not given up the keys of the gate ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... by reason of like causes, they bring before us what conjectural research has prepared us for. The first supposition is neither impossible nor incredible. The slow spreading-out in hostile regions would allow of the preservation of some examples of preference for unrestrained licence at the expense of constant hostility, in place of a modified peacefulness at the expense of restricted freedom in matters so dear to the human animal as sexual choice and power. The second supposition contains an element ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but the wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared even them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her audience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and reached the bottom with many wounds in her ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... the spot, where, in the silent brake, the harebells, now waxing rare and few, yet lingered—or where the mystic ring on the soft turf conjured up the associations of Oberon and his train. That superstition gave licence and play to his full memory and glowing fancy; and Shakspeare—Spenser—Ariosto—the magic of each mighty master of Fairy Realm—he evoked, and poured into her transported ear. It was precisely such arts, which to a gayer and more worldly nature than Madeline's ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... makes the second vowel in this name long or short to suit the exigencies of the verse. Other Indian poets have followed his example, and the same licence will be ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... honestly to the work. He had to survey ten parishes, covering a tract of not less than fifty miles each way, and requiring him to ride two hundred miles a week. Smuggling was then common throughout Scotland, both in the shape of brewing and of selling beer and whiskey without licence. Burns took a serious yet humane view of his duty. To the regular smuggler he is said to have been severe; to the country folk, farmers or cotters, who sometimes transgressed, he tempered justice with mercy. Many stories are told of his leniency to these last. At Thornhill, on a fair day, he was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... be wondered at when one considers the matter? Nature, who seldom makes a mistake where primitive mankind is concerned is by no means infallible when dealing with the artificial conditions of our Western civilisation. In the East where greater sex licence is allowed, it seems quite safe to trust Nature and follow the instincts she implants. Not so in our hemisphere. The young man and maid who fall under passion's thrall are temporarily blind and mad; their judgment is obscured, their reasoning powers non-existent, nothing ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... we hear of licence being granted by Richard II to dig stone in Cheylesmore Park, first for Grey Friars Gate, and later for Spon Gate, "near his Chapel of Babelake." The walls so built were of imposing extent and dimensions, being three yards in breadth, two and a quarter ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... besides Dolls in Caleb Plummer's room. There were Noah's arks, in which the Birds and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you; though they could be crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the smallest compass. By a bold poetical licence, most of these Noah's arks had knockers on the doors; inconsistent appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... poetic licence, the poet refers to the fact that this barred-out lover is to be the progenitor of the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... the tediousness of time, is gaming. An attachment to this vice accompanies the lowest Chinese wherever he goes. It is said that in one of our eastern colonies, where Chinese are encouraged to settle, they pay to the government the annual sum of ten thousand dollars for a licence to keep gaming tables ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... transcribe his impressions with accuracy for further reference. The style was excellent, and the minute details given were often of high antiquarian interest; but the record throughout was marred by gross licence. Adrian Temple's life had undoubtedly so definite an influence on Sir John's that a brief outline of it, as gathered from his diaries, is necessary for the understanding of ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... any fact; it is taking an allowed poetical licence. A painter of portraits retains the individual likeness; a painter of history shows the man by showing his actions. A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... an elegant dishabille, she receives the visits of her friends. It is secure against observation, or interruption of any kind whatever. It, in short, is the sacred palladium of female indiscretion. Much of this mischievous licence may, I think, be easily traced to the treatment of the younger and unmarried women. They are confined under a superintendance which is as rigorous, as the licence allowed to their mothers is unbounded. All those affections which begin in their early years to develope themselves—all ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is ignorant, Eccl. Pol. Lib. 1. Sect. 6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... Viceroy of Ireland, Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1794; Lord President of the Council, 1801; Chancellor of Oxford University; High Steward of Bristol and Lord Lieutenant of Notts.; he assumed the additional name of Cavendish by royal licence in 1801. He received his early education at Eton, but in after life declared that he got nothing out of Eton except a sound flogging. It was not claimed for the Duke that he was a man of brilliant attainments, but he was the soul of honour, and for this ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... If they make a fair trial impossible, it matters not. They have given their tired readers a new sensation; they have stimulated gossip in a thousand tenement houses; justice may fall in ruins so long as they sell another edition. And nobody protests against their unbridled licence, not even when they have made it an affair of the utmost difficulty and many weeks ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... the arias and ballets, and the impossibility of being able to get the lady-singers ready to begin in time, the operas seldom finished till after twelve o'clock on Saturdays. The Bishop of London had therefore sent to inform Kelly that if the curtain did not drop before midnight, the licence should be taken away and the house shut up. Against this fiat there was no appeal, and for two or three weeks running, Kelly was obliged, on Saturday night, to order the closing of the performance in the midst ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... much as Rs. 60, is paid. No stigma is incurred, however, if a girl should remain unmarried till she arrives at adolescence, but, on the contrary, a higher price is then obtained for her. Sexual licence either before or after marriage is considered a venial offence, but a woman detected in a liaison with a man of one of the lowest castes is turned out of caste. Widow marriage and divorce ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... The coincidences at least are curious. If "SHAKES his furious SPEARE" in Histriomastix refers to Shakespeare in connection with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and Chettle were doing a Troilus and Cressida for a company not Shakespeare's, then there were TWO Troilus and Cressida in the field. A licence to print a Troilus and Cressida was obtained in 1602-3, but the quarto of our play, the Shakespearean play, is of 1609, "as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain's men," that is, by Shakespeare's Company. Now Dekker ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... and has taken out a licence, it seems to me, for praising you, for he praised and praised. Somebody has told him (who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library) that he came away 'quite astounded by the versatility of your learning'—and that, to complete the circle, you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... (for such as are the Laws of Nature,) and rejecteth the counsell of the Apostles, that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes, and all Children and Servants to obey they Parents, and Masters, in all things. And for their Faith, it is internall, and invisible; They have the licence that Naaman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it. But if they do, they ought to expect their reward in Heaven, and not complain of their Lawfull Soveraign; much lesse make warre upon ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... to the ancestors in the Nanga, 429; initiation of young men in the Nanga, drama of death and resurrection, sacrament of food and water, 429-432; the initiation followed by a period of sexual licence, 433; the initiatory rites apparently intended to introduce the novices to the ancestral spirits and endow them with the powers of the dead, 434 sq.; the rites seem to have been imported into Fiji by immigrants ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... (as thei war informed) he had reteared him self after his treassonable fact: We call his fact treassonable, becaus that thrie dayis befoir he had send his especiall servand, Maister Michaell Balfour, to us to Edinburgh, to purchese of the Lordis of the Counsall licence to come and speak us; whiche we granted, efter that he had promesed, that in the meantyme he should neather hurte us, neather yitt any till us appertenyng, till that he should writt his answer agane, whitther ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... keep modern weapons out of the hands of the natives. Having complied with the regulations and declared our ammunition, our rifles and guns are restored to us with pretty little souvenir marks on the butts. We next apply for a special licence to shoot big game, and this is promised, but as it takes time to prepare will be ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... is in you in order to reach it. Do more than this; resolve that when you enter this covenant you will carry into it as clean a conscience about the past as you expect her to have who gives her happiness into your keeping. One sex can substantiate no claim to licence, or even indulgence in this matter, that can be morally denied to the other. There are events in life that are worth more than it costs to meet them well; marriage is pre-eminently one of them, and you can, if you elect to do so, enter ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... foremen broke down government fences and fed out all the ranger horse feed. Tom Carroll wrote to Superintendent Smith; later to Washington. The authorities, however, refused to revoke the cattleman's licence. At Christmas time, when Carroll was in White Oaks the foreman and his two sons jeered at and insulted the ranger in regard to this matter until the latter lost his temper and thrashed all three, one after ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... And from the see (whose bounty to the just And needy is gone by, not through its fault, But his who fills it basely, he besought, No dispensation for commuted wrong, Nor the first vacant fortune, nor the tenth), That to God's paupers rightly appertain, But, 'gainst an erring and degenerate world, Licence to fight, in favour of that seed, From which the twice twelve cions gird thee round. Then, with sage doctrine and good will to help, Forth on his great apostleship he far'd, Like torrent bursting ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... of Gisburne. He was elected by the prior and canons of Carlisle, in 1278, without royal licence; so the king (Edward I.) fined the chapter 500 marks, and refused his assent. Eventually Pope Nicholas III. quashed the appointment on the grounds that it had been technically wrong, and then nominated Ireton to the vacant ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... dignitary, in a very conciliatory tone, "you may be as angry with me as you like, but I find from our good vicar that the fellow Hanson has applied to him for a licence, and I cannot let you throw away my little friend Harriet without giving you warning, that a long and bitter repentance will follow such a union. There are emergencies in which it becomes a duty to throw aside professional niceties, and to sacrifice etiquette to the interests of an old ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford

... these dreadful years they will be as black rabbits to brown for numbers. For the truth on morality in France we must go back, I suspect, to that general conclusion about the French character—the swift passage from head to heart and back again, which, prohibiting extremes of puritanism and of licence, preserves a sort ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... singularite des images trop orientales, d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltante, n'auront pas de peine a se persuader qu'il s'agit de la Divinite, bien que cette conviction soit vivement discutee par les moullahs musulmans, et meme par beaucoup de laiques, qui rougissent veritablement d'une pareille licence de leur compatriote a 1'egard ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... the great zeal, courage, and perseverance, manifested by him on divers occasions, and particularly of his able and gallant conduct in the glorious and decisive victory obtained over the French fleet, at the mouth of the Nile, on the 1st of August last, his royal licence and authority, that he, and his issue, may bear the following honourable augmentations to his armorial ensign: viz. "A chief, undulated, argent—thereon, waves of the sea; from which, a palm-tree issuant, between a disabled ship on the dexter, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... friend Mr Allan Sanderson, who would make all the arrangements for the sale of the cattle they had spoken of at their meeting on the previous year. The price had risen somewhat, he observed, in consequence of the demand for salt-beef for the fleet, and the licence-fees, which, against all right and justice, they were compelled to pay to King William, who, worthy as he had been in other respects, had committed the same grievous sin of which the King of Israel had been guilty when he neglected to hue Agag in pieces, in not taking away the life ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... grain, With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain: The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share, Ease of their toil, and partners of their care: The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl, Smoothed every brow, and opened every soul: With growing years the pleasing licence grew, And taunts alternate innocently flew. But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclined, Produced the point that left a sting behind; Till friend with friend, and families at strife, Triumphant malice raged through private life. Who felt ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... happened was this. It appears that a lay brother, named Diego de Leon, part of whose business it was to tidy Luis de Leon's cell, stumbled one day upon the original manuscript of the vernacular version of the Song of Solomon, copied it without leave or licence, and allowed so many transcriptions of his copy to be made that it became absolutely impossible for the translator to control or recall them afterwards.[66] Manifestly Diego de Leon did not venture to remove the original ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... of passengers, who were formerly endangered by persons shooting small birds along the hedges bordering roads. Nor may he shoot at all, not so much as fire off a pistol (as recently publicly proclaimed by the Metropolitan police to restrain the use of revolvers), without a licence. But on the river people do as they choose, and there does not seem to be any law at all—or at least there is no authority to enforce it, if it exists. Shooting from boats and from the towing-path is carried on in utter defiance of the licensing law, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies



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