"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assurance for those in whose favour they were conceived; and indeed the murder of the Duke's grandfather at the Bridge of Montereau, in presence of the father of Louis, and at an interview solemnly agreed upon for the establishment of peace and amnesty, was a horrible precedent, should the Duke be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... charge me that I advance a new policy, with that precedent before your eyes? Would you be willing to resign, now that you are powerful, in respect to other parts of the laws of nations, that which you have boldly taken in respect to one part of them, when you were yet comparatively weak? Or would ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 'Only a precedent,' said Blanche, blushing a little, but still grave. 'We have had some experience, you know. Our corps was one of the earliest enrolled, and Hector managed it almost entirely. It was the reason we have not been able to come here ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at Lutai, a few miles to the north of Tientsin, and told never to do such rash and indiscreet things again. That means the end of any attempts to control. For the Boxer partisans in Peking allege that the soldiers actually hit and killed a good many men, which is quite without precedent, and is upsetting all plans. On such occasions it is always understood that you fire a little in the air, warwhoop a good deal, and then come back quietly to camp with captured flags and banners as undeniable evidences of your victory. This has been the old method ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... sure that you cannot stop wheat growing on Sundays. There is good precedent for plucking its ears on the Sabbath, and that ought to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... is only intended to prove that Switzerland has nothing to fear from Germany's precedent in invading Belgium. But he never mentions Belgium's maritime interests, Antwerp and the extensive seacoast on the North Sea. He is oblivious to the fact that Germany's desire to possess these was the sole motive for precipitating war and invading Belgium. To ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... of antiquity spoke with deep reverence of the more ancient ancients of the ages, and revered all that they said and did. And the rural Chinese to-day says that what did for the sages of olden times must do for him to-day. The conservative instinct leads the Chinese to attach undue importance to precedent, and therefore the people at Hong-shih-ai, knowing that the village has been in the same pitiable condition for generations, live by conservatism, and make no effort whatever ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... subordination be the criterion of merit, these soldiers were worthless indeed. Yet when their exploits have rung through all America, it would be absurd to deny that they were excellent irregular troops. Their victories were gained in the teeth of every established precedent of warfare; they were owing to a singular combination of military qualities in the men themselves. Without discipline or a spirit of subordination, they knew how to keep their ranks and act as one man. Doniphan's regiment marched ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and having us around him on family festivals. He used to direct and superintend our games with the strictness that some parents do the studies of their children. He was very particular that we should play the old English games according to their original form, and consulted old books for precedent and authority for every 'merrie disport;' yet I assure you there never was pedantry so delightful. It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 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
... example of the application of the principles of right and wrong, as at present understood, to the investigation of the continued soundness of an accepted precept of law. In the judgments of Lord Stowell there are many such examples; and guided as he was by precedent and authority, he could not be said to have been led by anything but the principles of universal justice. At no time does he appear for a moment to have hesitated in putting aside precedent, when the true doctrine was unsatisfied. Mr. Justice Story acted on the same ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... popular romance, while, forsooth, in yonder hammock 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 scene ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Smith with a warrant for polygamy in the social usages of the Arab sheiks three thousand years ago. It has opened a sacred refuge for every lie and wrong; no wildest form of which could fail to find some precedent within these Hebrew histories, which tell the story of a people's upward growth from savagery. It has furnished an arsenal stocked with proof texts, from which, through many generations, priests and doctors have armed themselves to war ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free Governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... accessories; let those who search in them be granted all honour, all respect. It is only when they preach or teach these preliminaries, these accessories, to be more important than Literature itself—it is only when they, owing all their excuse in life to the established daylight, din upon us that the precedent darkness claims precedence in honour, that one is driven to utter upon them this ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... on pain of some awful 'itis,' to exceed three cigarettes a day. With the first instalment you had provided me with cigarettes for the year. So what should I do in these circumstances but follow the precedent set by your family? Only, instead of a dormouse and a stamp-album, I chose to purchase smartness. I spent the three remaining instalments on ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... window; shouting, 'Please his Majesty to look at these; we have been still worse treated than the Arnolds!' And indeed, I have understood the Law-Courts, for some time after, found great difficulty to assert their authority: the parties against whom judgment went, taking refuge in the Arnold precedent, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... file his claim for damages, and it will have attention. The contingent fee will yet be a misdemeanor. Also, it will be possible for plain citizens to be able to go before a Court of Equity and be heard without regard to law and precedent and attorney's quillets and quibbles, which so often hamper justice. Justice should be cheap and easy, instead ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and piety, well contemplated the bad precedent," said the other, with much consternation in his countenance at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means bearing any resemblance to a stag's.... "I have, I have," replied the other, interrupting him; "say no more; I am sick at heart; you ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... hogshead, took it out to the wreck; and having knocked out one head, he slung pigs of lead round his improvised diving-bell, made a seat inside it, rigged it to his derrick and air-pumps, and then asked the diver to go down in it. The diver having very naturally refused, Eads on the spot set himself a precedent which, during his after life, he never broke,—saying that he would not ask an employee to go where he would not trust himself, he got inside his hogshead and was lowered into the river. His assistants were unused to ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... on the color and color-phases of after-images, there is ample precedent in the researches of von Helmholtz, Hering, Hess, von Kries, Hamaker, and Munk. It is therefore justifiable to assume the possibility of making accurately the four simple judgments of shape and color described above, which are essential to ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... comes to a scraping, I can hold my own even with wrestlers, but I had no means of appearing awe-inspiring[E], merely by the aid of my tongue, to so many as forty such big chaps before me. Believing, however, that it would set a bad precedent to show these country fellows any weakness, I lectured rather loudly and in brusque tone. During the first part the students were taken aback and listened literally with their mouths open. "That's one on you!" I thought. Elated by my success, I kept on in this tone, when one who looked the ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... ever imitate the admirable precedent? Were I a young man, and an owner of land, assuredly I would do so. Choose some goodly tree, straight-soaring; cut away head and branches; leave just the clean trunk and build your house about it in such manner that the top of the rooted timber rises a couple of feet above your bedroom floor. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... usage and general consent. The chiefs, in pronouncing their decisions, are not heard to say, "so the law directs," but "such is the custom." It is true that, if any case arises for which there is no precedent on record (of memory), they deliberate and agree on some mode that shall serve as a rule in future similar circumstances. If the affair be trifling that is seldom objected to; but when it is a matter of consequence the pangeran, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the lawfulness of discharging even this imperious duty on the Sabbath had been gravely considered in the Councils of those who had sent him. Happily they had found, or thought they had found, in some of the narratives of the sacred volume, a sufficient precedent ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... was not quite familiar with this well-established precedent. His sisters were not enough of the village to be asked either to walk or drive with the local swains, and he had been away for several years. For two Sundays he walked with Martie, and then ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... of the Queen's resignation they had no precedent; for the solemnity of the King's coronation they had many; and the same is at large, with all the circumstances and ceremonies thereof, set down by one of their authors, Wexionius (Epit. Descriptionis Sueciae, lib. v. c. 6), from ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... of reign and sweetness of a crown, That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops To thrust his doting father from his chair, And place himself in the empyreal heaven, Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state. What better precedent than mighty Jove? Nature, that fram'd us of four elements Warring within our breasts for regiment, [124] Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... has a much wider bearing than as a method of biblical exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they are ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... for had my ambition been well directed, there is no telling to what extent I might have amassed a fortune. Opportunity was knocking at my gate, a giant young commonwealth was struggling in the throes of political revolution, while I wandered through it all like a blind man led by a child. Precedent was of little value, as present environment controlled my actions. The best people in Texas were doubtful of ever ridding themselves of the baneful incubus of Reconstruction. Men on whose judgment I relied laughed at me for acquiring more land than a mere homestead. Stock cattle ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... judgment against their representatives? What had Mr. Burke's opinion of the danger of introducing new theoretic language, unknown to the records of the kingdom, and calculated to excite vexatious questions, into a Parliamentary proceeding, to do with the French Assembly, which defies all precedent, and places its whole glory in realizing what had been thought the most visionary theories? What had this in common with the abolition of the French monarchy, or with the principles upon which the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we have account was a Theocracy—that is, "the government of God." He was the only King. He revealed the law, appointed leaders, gave rules for worship, instruction and warfare. Thus in the outset did he set up his claims among men. He established the great precedent, which men ought to have followed, which the world has ignored; but to which the thoughts and the will of the race shall ultimately return. It is true now that government, as such, is ordained of God. All government, in its elemental authority, is a ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... Prince Consort. It may not inappropriately be mentioned that when Woolner's bust of Tennyson was presented to Trinity College and the authorities excluded it from the chapel and library on the ground that there was no precedent for paying so much honour to a living person, Punch, by the hand of Shirley Brooks, published one of the finest parodies extant of the Laureate's ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... dismissed the aeroplane as an interesting toy. The characteristic feature of common sense or empirical thinking is its excess traditionalism, its wholesale acceptance of authority,[1] its reliance upon precedent. Where beliefs are not subjected to critical revision and examination, to the constant surveillance of the inquiring intelligence, there will be no criterion by which to estimate the true and the false, the important and the trivial. All beliefs that have wide social sanction, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and the weather, but I only caught fragments of it. All the signs were propitious, and as it had been a fine harvest under similar conditions before, people said it would be fine this time. But, unlike the law, the weather acknowledged no precedent, and nobody could tell, though folk now thought they knew everything. How all things had changed since the Queen ascended the throne! Not long since Hilary was talking with a labourer, an elderly man, who went to the feast in Overboro' ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the house-top to pray at "the sixth hour." Long before this David had mentioned morning and evening and noon as fitting hours of prayer, and one psalmist, in his enthusiasm, had even gone so far as to declare seven times a day to be not too often for giving God thanks. There was also the precedent of Daniel opening his windows toward Jerusalem three times a day. As the love for order and system grew year by year stronger in the Christian Church, the laws that govern ritual would be likely to become more stringent, and so very probably ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... j'allai a Thiras, habite pareillement par des Grecs, jadis bonne ville, et passage aussi fort que le precedent, parce qu'il est forme de meme par la mer. A chaque bout du pont etoit une grosse tour. La tour et la ville, tout a ete detruit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... third reading. One hundred and six peers voted for it and only twenty-two against it. On this occasion Sir Robert Peel made a remark to which his subsequent change of front gave peculiar significance: "Whenever the government comes to deal with the corn laws, the precedent formed by the present occasion will be appealed to." The reform measure, as at last adopted, swept away 142 seats in the Commons. It gave to the counties sixty-five additional representatives and conferred the right ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... a certain game played by a man higher in authority—younger than he is to-day—a game played upon a snowbound train in the North country? Do you remember what the stakes were—then? Do you recall that that man later became a president of the United States? Come. There is fine precedent ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Furthermore, no two of the canvases would meet exactly the same conditions and, as a result of the changes in light and atmospheric effects, the conditions would be subject to continual change. Finally, they were obliged to work without precedent. It was true that the early Italians had done murals for the open air, but no ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... the Redcliffe Arms. Already, within a year, the time was historically distant when a policeman had refused to allow the automobile of a Member of Parliament to enter Palace Yard, on the ground that there was no precedent for such a desecration. The new motor-buses, however, did not run at night. Human daring had limits, and it was reported that at least one motor-driver, succumbing to the awful nervous strain of guiding these fast expresses ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... darkening the vision of external aid from man or circumstance to one who felt herself mastered. Victor could make her treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though the heart protested. His first conquest of her was in her blood, to weaken a spirit of resistance. For the precedent of submission is a charm upon the faint-hearted through love: it unwinds, unwills them. Nataly resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and she had her moral sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting consciousness of material support in the thought, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... English, and loafed around the mining-camps picking up a meal where he could get it. He called himself "Captain Charley," and, like a true native American, was proud of his title. If it was self-assumed, he was still following the precedent set by a vast host of captains, majors, colonels, and generals, who never wore a uniform or hurt anybody. He made his appearance at the little parsonage on the hill-side in Sonora one day, and, thrusting his bare head ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... in the East, and concentrating our available force in the West Indies, thereby ensuring a superiority over any possible combination of Spanish vessels in the latter quarter, the Department acted rightly and in accordance with sound military precedent; but it must be remembered that the Spanish Navy was not the only possibility of the day. The writer was not in a position to know then, and does not know now, what weight the United States Government attached to the current rumors ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as example ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... be no time for discussion on questions of precedent, so we began to climb together, reaching a great branch about twenty feet from the ground, no easy task for me, encumbered as I was by ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... presumptuous of me, too. The fact that you've been a kind adviser to one of the family doesn't form a precedent for all the rest of us. But, business aside, cannot you and your daughters ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... "Yet there is a precedent in your history. Your King Henri IV of beloved memory, a Protestant, didn't hesitate to make himself a Catholic to be ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... since learned that this quarter of the mansion consists of a labyrinth of rooms, shut up because devoid of interest, and containing only some old lumber. To have conducted us through them would have been to disobey orders, and, worse still, establish a precedent, from which the child might well shrink. It would have doubled her arduous round of duty. It was policy, no less than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... know not what would be your good fortune. It would make you the talk of the Province. In re Lecour would be a great precedent." ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... with a Saratoga and a Yorktown to follow. Sir John Colborne, the commander-in-chief, was asking for reinforcements. In Lower Canada civil government was at an end. There was danger of international complications. For disorders almost without precedent the British parliament found an almost unprecedented remedy. It invested one man with extraordinary powers. He was to be captain-general and commander-in-chief over the provinces of British North America, and also 'High Commissioner for the adjustment of certain important questions depending ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland—e.g. the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... and disturbed the congregation. "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," were his opening words. And then He began a statement of His conception of His ministry and His Message. Thrusting aside all precedent and musty authority, He boldly proclaimed that He had come to establish a new conception of the Truth—a conception that would overturn the priestly policy of formalism and lack of spirituality—a conception that would ignore forms and ceremonies, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... growth of the city of London was entitled "Another Essay," intimating that some other essay had preceded it, which was not to be found. I having been much importuned for that precedent essay, have found that the same was about the growth, increase, and multiplication of mankind, which subject should in order of nature precede that of the growth of the city of London, but am not able to procure the essay itself, only I have obtained from a gentleman, who sometimes corresponded ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... victory of Pinkey, he formed partisans among the 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; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... not know whether your criticism is finished. As soon as I have it all before me—with references to the documents cited, if you please, otherwise it is difficult to follow—I will see whether it calls for a detailed reply on my part, in which case I might, according to American precedent, republish my article, inserting, with your permission, your reply. This was done by the New York Outlook, when it published in the same number, "the Case of the Boers," and ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... against all precedent to burn One who recants; they mean to pardon me. To give the poor—they give the poor who die. Well, burn me or not burn me I am fixt; It is but a communion, not a mass: A holy supper, not a sacrifice; No man can make his ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... known English people do, that you cannot travel in Germany without having your luggage weighed and receiving the Schein for it. If you lose the Schein you are undone. I cannot tell you exactly what would happen, because it would be a tragedy without precedent, but it is impossible that German officials would surrender a trunk without receiving a Schein in exchange; at least, not without months of rigmarole and delay. Even when it is the official who blunders the public suffers for it. We were travelling ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... I'm trying out a new scheme of very short shifts. Also, I'm having a certain sum of money paid over to them every month from my bank. If they don't know where it comes from it can't do them any harm. That is, I am not establishing a precedent for wages that they won't be able to earn elsewhere. I consider it immoral ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... an excellent precedent for every other city and town in the Union. A few days ago the manager of a popular theatre there was fined $100 for advertising a spectacular exhibition by setting up indecent posters. It is high time this shocking breach ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... to do so, or if we had been informed that it was customary, or had ever been done; and it therefore surprised us that they complained and charged us with neglect of duty, or found fault with us, or wished to convict us of a matter where there was no law, obligation, custom, or even precedent; that this treatment struck us as very strange, since there were several foreigners who had come over in the ship with us, from whom they had not required what they required of us. "You know well," he said, "it is the custom in Europe." ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... find no Instances in Scripture of humane Composures sung by the People of God; and 'tis not good to practise such pieces of Worship without a Precedent. ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... is without precedent, sir! These mitigating circumstances may be brought to bear on the Commander-in-Chief, and may be embodied in a recommendation to mercy! They should have no weight in the finding of the verdict," said ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... prospect of Washington's doing that. Official thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The precedent was the Associated Universities organization which ran Brookhaven; CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of universities and industries all of which had wanted to own an ULTIMAC and no one of ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish
... either captured or burnt on the coasts where the enemy has driven them ashore, Admiral de Conflans having been defeated in getting out of the harbor of Brest. In one word, we are in a state of misery and humiliation without precedent. The finances of the King are in fearful disorder; he has had to send his plate to the Mint. The Seigneurs have followed his example, and private individuals are compelled to sell their valuables in order to live ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Irish chiefs to this Parliament, contrary to the precedent set in Mary's reign and in 1541, the laws enacted, and the commotion they excited in the minds of the clergy, were circumstances which could not fail to attract the attention of John O'Neil. Even if ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... flaying alive could not be introduced into Persia by Sapor, (Brisson, de Regn. Pers. l. ii. p. 578,) nor could it be copied from the foolish tale of Marsyas, the Phrygian piper, most foolishly quoted as a precedent by Agathias, (l. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... do not afford the unbroken example of municipal control that they would if a new system were to be created at the present day. Precedent looms large in British administration and even now there are only two ways of establishing a market—by Parliamentary authority and Royal Charter. King Henry III covenanted by charter with the City of London ...
— A Terminal Market System - New York's Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, - and Comparisons of European Markets • Mrs. Elmer Black
... to endeavour to follow this ancient precedent, in a manner suited to the limitations of my knowledge and of my capacity. I shall not presume to attempt a panoramic survey of the world of science, nor even to give a sketch of what is doing in the one great province of biology, with some portions of which my ordinary ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... antiquity rather too late, object to these contractions: for, instead of prob DEUM atque hominum fidem, they say Deorum. They are not aware, I suppose, that custom has sanctified the licence. The same Poet, therefore, who, almost without a precedent, has said patris mei MEUM FACTUM pudet, instead of meorum factorum,—and textitur exitium examen rapit for exitiorum, does not choose to say liberum, as we generally do in the expressions cupidos liberum, and in liberum loco, but, as the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lack of friends, whom I instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had seen to it that the knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner. Saragossa began to stir at once. Here was a thinly masked violation of their ancient privileges. If they suffered this precedent of circumventing their rights, what was to become of their liberties in future, who would be secure against an unjust persecution? For their sympathies were all with ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... indifferent really—are lucky, and so of others in each class, that they are unlucky. Nor can a savage well distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or ill-luck, as we should say, and a deity which causes the good or the ill; the indicating precedent and the causing being are to the savage mind much the same; a steadiness of head far beyond savages is required consistently to distinguish them. And it is extremely natural that they should believe so. They are ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... the phraseology of the first line. Literally rendered, the line would read 'they remain or stay on those acts, and establish them.' Besides being unidiomatic, the sentence would be unmeaning. 'To stay or remain on any act' is to adhere to it. 'To establish it' is to regard it as a precedent and cause it to be regarded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... been no time, these four hundred years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day, the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the King's Majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do. {3} Invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, I beseech the King to grant to me but this one grace and privilege—to my more than sufficient reward—and none other, to wit: that I and my heirs, for ever, may SIT in the presence ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 with grief as ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... centuries man has mated from sentiment and filled the earth with mental and physical degeneracy. Now woman steps in. It is her turn. And she flings aside precedent, prejudice, and sentiment—for the good of the human race! and joining hands with Science marches forward inexorably ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... be a dangerous precedent if Austria should justify those who lay sacrilegious hands upon the crown of their lawful sovereign; and, for my part, my principles forbid me to uphold a band of rebels, who are engaged in an insolent conspiracy to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... explanation of it. See Zumpt, S 349. [264] Caesar means to say that the present senate, which, as he flatteringly says, consists of worthy men, will not abuse the power of putting Roman citizens to death; but that a subsequent senate, taking such an example as a precedent, might abuse its power. It must be observed that the Roman senate possessed the power over the life and death of citizens, not by virtue of legal enactments, but only by ancient custom. This power legally belonged only to ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... This precedent opened up an important question; for if a neutral vessel, or indeed any craft similarly circumstanced as the above, were to anchor off the English coast it was hardly possible to detect her in running goods, as it seldom took more than an ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... manner. Although black WAVES were restricted somewhat in specialty assignments and a certain amount of separate quartering within integrated barracks prevailed at some duty stations, the Special Programs Unit came to consider the WAVE program, which established a forceful precedent for the integration of male recruit training, its most important wartime breakthrough, crediting Captain McAfee and her unbending insistence on equal treatment for ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... their exhaustion, he found that they had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts instead of following the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for working them in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could make the Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this new process, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation rather than offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had to be dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, under whose hands the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Juliet awaited the return of her hostess. She understood, from the manner of Judith's exit with the lamp, that the free and easy familiarity with which guests invaded every portion of Anthony's little home, was not to be made a precedent for the same sort ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... all respects. Really the more we consider this abominable man's conduct (and his accomplice Cavour is quite as bad, though not so foolish), the greater indignation we feel at the unprovoked breach of the peace. The audacity of the pretence from a despot and usurper exceeds precedent. What can be said too of Russia, which keeps her hold of Poland only ten years longer than the settlement of 1815! It really would be important, now that the attempt has been made to represent [the first] Napoleon as the friend of oppressed ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... little more closely. Why should persons—even if ignorant—have the bias which some obviously present against the idea of a God? Why should they wish to think that there is no such Being, no future existence, nothing higher than Nature? Some persons maintain that precedent to a denial of God there must be a moral failure. That I am sure is quite wrong. I should be far from saying that in some materialists there is not a considerable weakening of moral fibre, or perhaps it would be better put, a distortion ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... absolute majority in the Junior class, only to have a snap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which three middle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. The roar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us that they had only followed precedent—we'd had to do the same thing the year before to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and it laughed at us. Unfortunately, we didn't stand any too well there anyway, while most of the Blanks were the pride and joy of the professors. Anyway, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... that Clement VII would like to do a favor for his great English champion, but two difficulties at once presented themselves. It would be a most dangerous precedent for the pope to reverse the decision of one of his predecessors. Worse still, the Emperor Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... with affluent and extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate Verity, the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... below their summer homes, and to make it a private beach. But even the most acquisitive of the town councilmen (and there were several of the fraternity of the Itching Palm in the council) dared not establish such a precedent. The right of the public to the shore at tide-water could not safely be ignored in a community ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... purpose of vindicating its conduct or of pointing out any irregularity or injustice in the manner of the attack; but when the Chief Executive Magistrate is, by one of the most important branches of the Government in its official capacity, in a public manner, and by its recorded sentence, but without precedent, competent authority, or just cause, declared guilty of a breach of the laws and Constitution, it is due to his station, to public opinion, and to a proper self-respect that the officer thus denounced should promptly expose the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... precedent for it, in the case of a particularly powerful Double, such as was given in this romance to Queen Neter-Tua by her spiritual father, Amen, the greatest of the Egyptian gods, it seems, therefore, legitimate to suppose that, in order to save her from the abomination of a forced marriage with her ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... and with a solid array of discontents behind him. The two former comrades of the firing line, as the heads of their respective groups, were locked in a momentous political life-and-death struggle the outcome of which may prove to be the precedent ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... that their thoughts were dwelling on Charles the Twelfth; but that if the expedition to Moscow wanted a fortunate precedent, it was because it was deficient in a man capable of making it succeed; that in war, fortune went for one-half in every thing; that if people always waited for a complete assemblage of favourable circumstances, nothing would ever be undertaken; that we must begin, in order to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... that ever painter drew; and it would be the greatest obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you could come and sketch it for me. I am sure, if there be no very precedent obstacle, you will leave any common business to do this; and I hope to see you this evening, or to-morrow morning as early, before this winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I know you love me, or I could not have written ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marriages, and burials open before him, looks through the various entries for the year just completed. As name after name recalls interesting particulars of character and incident in their history, he relates them as if to an imaginary friend at his side. The precedent of The Deserted Village is still obviously near to the writer's mind, and he is alternately attracted and repelled by Goldsmith's ideals. For instance, the poem opens with an introduction of some ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... his 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 from time to time imparted to Catholics ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... my house thither and back again, which is very strange. One of my chief errands was to speak to Sir W. Clerke about my wife's brother, who importunes me, and I doubt he do want mightily, but I can do little for him there as to employment in the army, and out of my purse I dare not for fear of a precedent, and letting him come often to me is troublesome and dangerous too, he living in the dangerous part of the town, but I will do what I can possibly for him and as soon as I can. Mightily troubled all this afternoon with masters coming to me about Bills of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sought to arouse prejudice and fear by crying that I am seeking to "pack" the Supreme Court and that a baneful precedent ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... All through his life he had a scholar's respect for learning, and for the great tradition of literature which it is the true business of scholarship to maintain. Radical and rebel as he was in politics and theology, contemptuous of law, custom and precedent, he was always the exact opposite in his art. There he never attempted the method of the tabula rasa, or clean slate, which made his political pamphlets so barren. The greatest of all proofs of the strength of his individuality is that it so entirely dominates the vast store ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... cowed. A little before his death, the chief priest of Eleusis, following the Socratic precedent, entered an indictment against him for impiety. This indictment was supported by citations of certain heretical doctrines from his published writings; on which Grote makes the significant remark, that his paean in honour of his friend Hermeias would be more offensive to the feelings of an ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... parallels for the merely material side of the contrast between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It is when we contemplate the moral aspect of that contrast that we find ourselves in the presence of a phenomenon for which history offers no precedent, however far back we may cast our eye. One might almost be excused who should exclaim, 'Here, surely, is something like a miracle!' Nevertheless, when we give over idle wonder, and begin to examine the seeming ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian's widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's affairs; and she was accordingly left to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... station is a stone building, strong enough almost for a fort. Military uniforms adorn every employee, from the supercilious station-master to the ill-paid wretch that handles our baggage. Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried. Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece and overcharge, the railway officials charge double rates for it; that is, twice as much as an ordinary package of the same weight. No baggage is carried ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... year; preaching to them not to steal and at the same time stripping them of everything; and saying to them: "It seems to me that if I were the people I should be virtuous"? It is from England that we obtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses. Those who have eyes ought to see that when the government is running smoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry has always succeeded an ephemeral ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... stick fast.' By a false analogy, many adjectives that never formed adverbs in -e were freely used as adverbs in the age of Elizabeth: 'Thou didst it excellent,' 'equal (for equally) good,' 'excellent well.' This gives precedent for such errors as ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in two hundred and thirty years,(298) when Iemitsu went up to the imperial court, the Shogun Iemochi visited Kyoto in 1863 in order to consult about the affairs of the country. In accordance with the precedent set by Iemitsu, the shogun distributed on this occasion rich presents to the emperor and the officers of his court. He also scattered among the townspeople his largesses, until "the whole populace, moistened in the bath of his mercy and ...
— Japan • David Murray
... hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress; for the usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand years—Lincoln, Winchester, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... 1848 was a momentous one to Morse in more ways than one. The first of the historic lawsuits was to be begun at Frankfort, Kentucky,— lawsuits which were not only to establish this inventor's claims, but were to be used as a precedent in all future patent litigation. In his peaceful retreat on the banks of the Hudson he carefully and systematically prepared the evidence which should confound his enemies, and calmly awaited the verdict, firm in his faith that, however lowering the clouds, the sun would yet break through. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... most uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid! those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated character of the general, and not experimentally; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... occasion; the ringleader was sentenced by a court-martial, and St. Vincent surrounded the ship with gunboats, and forced the crew to hang him themselves, and that on a Sunday morning, which, being against all precedent, deeply impressed the sailors. Convinced that the idleness attending a long blockade was bad for discipline, he kept his ships employed as much as possible, and, in July, detached a squadron under Nelson to attack Santa Cruz. The attack ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... As soon as dinner was over we scattered in all directions, like a flock of sheep. Chrysophrasia retired to her room. John Carvel went to the library, whither his wife followed him in a few minutes. Macaulay, Patoff, and I went to the smoking-room, contrary to all precedent; but as Macaulay led the way, we followed with delight. The result of this general separation was that Hermione and Professor Cutter were left alone in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... been before, the pole-star toward which this earnest and clever woman aimed. With such a mind as hers the topic under consideration becomes for the time supreme. Solemnly insisting on a renunciation of all possibility of merit as a condition precedent to faith, she proceeded to exalt belief itself into the most meritorious of acts. This sort of paradox is common to ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... from his coronation at Aachen, was about to hold the Diet of the Empire at Worms. It was his policy to maintain friendly relations with Rome; and Luther was summoned to the Diet under a safe-conduct. The precedent of Huss showed how little such a safe-conduct was worth; but the great Reformer was undaunted. Frederick of Saxony, encouraged by Erasmus, was known to be on his side. He faced the Diet, reaffirmed his heresies, and emphasised his flat repudiation of Papal Authority. He had fiery supporters ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... actual working of the financial mechanism, not as economists see it, but as Bagehot knew it. They understand the actual working of municipal machinery besides having a minute knowledge of character, decision, practice, and precedent in administration. In our real politics, big and little, they and the Washington and Albany correspondents are the only men who know both sides, are trusted with the secrets of both parties, and read closed pages of the book of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... seriously realised that all the little, comfortable details of that little, comfortable bachelor life of ours were over and done, the rooms into which we had fitted so snugly, rented, perhaps, at that moment, the table at the club no longer ours by every precedent, the vacations no more to be planned together and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... for their tickets and Archie took advantage of the interruption to ponder the ethics and the etiquette of his predicament; but there was no precedent in all history for such a synchronization of two gentlemen who had recently engaged in a midnight duel. Archie was appalled by the consciousness that he and Congdon were really ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... None of the forms of column sketched here have any existence in reality. They are purposely kept apart from imitation of accepted forms to get rid of the idea that architecture consists in the acceptance of any particular form sanctioned by precedent.] ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... Tanabata festival was first established in Japan eleven hundred and fifty years ago, as an Imperial Court festival only, in accordance with Chinese precedent. Subsequently the nobility and the military classes everywhere followed imperial example; and the custom of celebrating the Hoshi-mat-suri, or Star-Festival,—as it was popularly called,—spread gradually downwards, until at last the seventh day of the seventh month became, in the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... and a half; and when it was over, we had a long chat on deck on various subjects. The Prince of Wales's visit to India, and the Duke of Edinburgh's voyage round the world, were much discussed, I think the King would like to use them as a precedent, and see a little more of the world himself. His voyage to, and stay in ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... have got beyond everything! There is no precedent for us in the past"—she felt for her hat pins—"and no hope in the future." She put off the winged circlet that crowned her hair, and Mrs. Thorne took it from her. Almost shyly the middle-aged woman, who had never herself been even pretty, looked at the sad young beauty, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... 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 ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Sometimes, though rarely, black men had come here, and from them they had heard of the existence of men much whiter than themselves, who sailed on the sea in ships, but for the arrival of such there was no precedent. We had, however, been seen dragging the boat up the canal, and he told us frankly that he had at once given orders for our destruction, seeing that it was unlawful for any stranger to enter here, when a message had ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... BUT LESS THAN GRAVE."—Not very long ago, an act of sacrilege was committed at Canterbury by a man, who robbed an alms-box in the Cathedral. However, disregarding the precedent set some time since by the Dean and Chapter (who it will be remembered dug up and removed the bones of the honoured dead) the intruder abstained from touching the vaults of those buried ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... in his life Mr. Foote could find a family precedent. This matter had been handled thus, and that other matter had been handled so. But this thin—it had never been handled because it had never happened. He was left standing squarely on his own ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... fairely is engross'd, That it may be to day read o're in Paules. And marke how well the sequell hangs together: Eleuen houres I haue spent to write it ouer, For yester-night by Catesby was it sent me, The Precedent was full as long a doing, And yet within these fiue houres Hastings liu'd, Vntainted, vnexamin'd, free, at libertie. Here's a good World the while. Who is so grosse, that cannot see this palpable deuice? Yet who so bold, but ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he was ready to commit the most horrid crimes which appeared necessary for that purpose; and it is certain that all his courage and capacity—qualities in which he really seems not to have been deficient—would never have made compensation to the people for the danger of the precedent and for the contagious example of vice and murder exalted upon the throne. This Prince was of a small stature, hump-backed, and had a harsh, disagreeable countenance; so that his body was in every particular no ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the success of the plan but could offer nothing better. So I drew up a release as legally binding as I knew how to make it in a case without precedent. I remember thinking that if the matter ever came into court the judge would be as much at a loss as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... which came to an end a few years ago, and after September 1861 became a locked door to me through my Chamberlain's key). But possibly I may later find a fitting opportunity for composing something for Hungary. After the precedent of the "Gran Mass" I might, for instance, on some extraordinary occasion, be entrusted, say, with a "Te Deum" or something of the kind. I would gladly do my best, and only on some such terms could I regard my return to Hungary ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... was empty. If the coffin, for one reason or another, had not been opened all those present would have taken oath that they had an indubitable perception although the latter was only inferred from its precedent condition. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... aspiration unreasonable let me commend a renowned and life-giving precedent of English history. As early as the days of Queen Elizabeth, a courtier boasted that the air of England was too pure for a slave to breathe, and the Common Law was said to forbid Slavery. And yet, in the face of this vaunt, kindred to that ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Apostle from a misinformed mob is no sort of evidence to divine approval or disapproval of his behaviour. {67} We shall later find that when Knox was urging on some English nonconformists the beauty of conformity (1568), he employed the very precedent of St. Paul's conduct at Jerusalem, which he rejected when it was ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Thompson seems to violate the sanctities and the proprieties of womanhood in allowing the widow, after a faint interval of shock, to pass over this fact as unimportant. This situation has, of course, its famous precedent in the scene in which Gloster wooes and wins the Lady Anne beside her murdered husband's bier; but that is tragedy, and we moderns are, besides, more squeamish than the people of those mediaeval times. In this story ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... further, that a condition precedent to forgiveness is the recognition by us of our penniless insolvency. Though it is not distinctly stated, it is clearly and necessarily implied in the narrative, that the two debtors are to be supposed as having come and held out a couple of pairs of empty hands, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his program through. At that, his own State rebelled and, through a resolution of the Legislature, put itself behind the candidacy of Senator Hugh L. White. The bold actions of his second Administration, defiant alike of precedent and opposition, had alienated many of the President's more intelligent and conservative followers. Yet the allegiance of the masses was unshaken; and when the Democratic convention assembled at Baltimore in May, 1835,—a year and a half before the election—the nomination ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... [8] The precedent descriptions of Sorrow herself, of Misery, and of Old Age, are even finer than the above, which, however, I have preferred for three reasons. First, it has been less often quoted; secondly, its subject is a kind of commonplace, and, therefore, shows the poet's strength ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... case, dear friend, Shall be my precedent; as thou gott'st Milan, I'll come by Naples. Draw thy sword: one stroke Shall free thee from the tribute which thou pay'st; And I the King ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the steady resisting power of her peasants the great Napoleon had hurled his legions in vain. That campaign of 1812 exhibited the strength of Russia for defence. But when, in fallacious trust in that precedent, she has undertaken great wars far from her base, failure has nearly always been the result. The pathetic devotion of her peasantry has not made up for the mental and moral defects of her governing classes. This fact ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... larger than America, or China, or Russia, or all the islands of the sea in combination. It may entail some straining at the mental leash to win this concept of society, but it must be won as a condition precedent to a fair and just estimate of what the function of education really is and what it is of which the schoolhouse must be an exponent. Society must be thought of as including all nations, tribes, and tongues. In our thinking, the word "society" must suggest the hut that nestles ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of Ind." Of fifteen pictures of this subject, which he painted at different times, the finest undoubtedly is that in the Madrid Gallery. Another, also very fine, is in the collection of the Marquis of Westminster. In both these, the Virgin, contrary to all former precedent, is not seated, but standing, as she holds up her Child for worship. Afterwards we find the same position of the Virgin in pictures by Vandyck, Poussin, and other painters of the seventeenth century. It is quite an innovation on the old religious arrangement; but in the utter ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and discarded methods,—Heredity, Caste, Autocracy, Plutocracy? I respectfully submit this is a question no one has a right to put, and one I am not called upon to answer. Again, let me take a concrete case. Once more I appeal to the yellow fever precedent. The first step towards a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the nature ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... is, that the present state of things has had only a limited duration; and that, at some period in the past, a condition of the world, essentially similar to that which we now know, came into existence, without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally proceeded. The assumption that successive states of Nature have arisen, each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is a mere modification of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... hand, and had, both by message under his sign manual, and with his own lips from his throne in full Parliament, distinctly promised the two Houses that the step which had given so much offence should never be drawn into precedent. The two Houses had then, without one dissentient voice, joined in thanking him for this compliance with their wishes. No constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more clearly, or with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their common order; but when the high roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things, is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... attention of a medico whose name stood in front of a formidable array of honourable letters, too numerous for him to mention. But even really great people are not always strictly consistent, and occasionally make small lapses from the straight path of precedent—and so this man of science deigned to cast an eye of interest upon the ailment of X. That it should be worthy of notice at all was enough for the companions of the now much-appreciated invalid, but when the great man ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... for his performance. Yet you are held in a way in which nothing but the romance or the novel ever does hold you. The thing is a [Greek: mythos hamythos]—story without story-end, without story-beginning, without story-connection or middle: but a story for all that. A dangerous precedent, perhaps; but a great accomplishment: and, even as a precedent, the leader of a very remarkable company. In not a few noteworthy later books—in a very much greater number of parts of later books—as we take our hats off to the success we are ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Raven, in disgust. "A damned accurate, precedent-preaching lawyer! Well, the fat's in the fire now. What did you have to be so confounded ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... if," he continued, laughing, "if the grave old ladies of my acquaintance find fault, I can quiet them in a moment, by quoting the conduct of the tribe of Benjamin, in a similar situation, by way of precedent." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... sanity of the Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes |
