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Dictum   Listen
noun
Dictum  n.  (pl. L. dicta, E. dictums)  
1.
An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; an apothegm. "A class of critical dicta everywhere current."
2.
(Law)
(a)
A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
(b)
(French Law) The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.
(c)
An arbitrament or award.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dictum" Quotes from Famous Books



... Cannot almost all the problems of human training be run down to this: How to teach a child to work? If he can work, he can be happy; but if he does not want to work, he shall never be happy. No work, no joy, is the universal dictum. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... politics; clever, fluent, forensic, with a passion for hearing himself talk, and addressing one always as if one were a public meeting. He approached his face close to mine, gradually backing me into the wall. And I realised the full meaning of Carlyle's dictum "to be a mere passive bucket to be pumped into can be agreeable to no ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... the more technical if we judge each party by the standard of its own profession. By way of illustration: the Sadducees held to the literal and full exaction of the Mosaic penalty—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth[176]—while the Pharisees contended on the authority of rabbinical dictum, that the wording was figurative, and that therefore the penalty could be met by a ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... schoolmasters are bitter and bilious. On all sides we see vanity puffed up out of all proportion; brutal, monstrous appetites.... Do you know how many we shall catch by little, ready-made ideas? When I left Russia, Littre's dictum that crime is insanity was all the rage; I come back and I find that crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a duty; anyway, a gallant protest. 'How can we expect a cultured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money.' But these are only the first fruits. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the Gracchi! how we all respect you, tronante in the comfortable cathedra of virtue inexpugnable, perhaps unassailed. Your dictum must stand for the present. The court is with you. But I believe other balances will weigh the strength of temptation, the weakness of human endurance, the sincerity of repentance, and the extent of suffered retribution, when the Father of all that have lived ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... must live a beautiful youth, for we ourselves are posterity, and every man is his own ancestor. I am to-day what I am because I was yesterday what I was. The Disagreeable Girl is always pretty, at least we have been told she is pretty, and she fully accepts the dictum. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... enough of an etymologist to give you the root of the word "noise." But my faith in "Mr. HICKSON" in this capacity is not strong enough to lead me to believe, on his dictum, that "news" and "noise" are the same word; and when, pursuing his fancy about "neues," he goes on to say that "noise" is "from a dialect from which the modern German pronunciation of the dipthong is derived," I fear his pronunciation of German is faulty, if ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various

... other limit. But I must first mention the sentiment which used to call forth Scipio's severest criticism. He often said that no one ever gave utterance to anything more diametrically opposed to the spirit of friendship than the author of the dictum, "You should love your friend with the consciousness that you may one day hate him." He could not be induced to believe that it was rightfully attributed to Bias, who was counted as one of the Seven Sages. It was the sentiment of some person ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... of camaraderie, of personal attachment, for Mark Twain during all the years before I came into personal contact with him. It was the dictum of a distinguished English critic, to the effect that Huckleberry Finn was a literary masterpiece, which first awoke in me, then a mere boy, a genuine respect for literary criticism; for here was expressed an opinion which I had long secretly ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... other discovery, more disconcerting, that he was not the man he had been in pre-war days and thought himself still to be, but quite another, then he was ready for one of two alternatives, to surrender to the inevitable dictum that after all life was really not worth a fight, more particularly if it could be sustained without one, or, to fling his hat into the Bolshevist ring, ready for the old thing, war—war against the enemies of civilisation and his own enemies, against those who ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... and his mercies are over all his works," (Ps. 145, 9), and, "Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together" (Deut. 22, 10). Maimonides, he says, was led to his opinion by his idea that death and suffering always involve sin; and not being able to apply this dictum to the suffering of animals that are slaughtered, he removed Providence from their individuals entirely. When the Bible orders us to consider the feelings of the animal, he says the object is to train ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... experience of conversion is passing out of Christian life and preaching under humanistic influence. We are accepting the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue. Hence we blur the distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian. Education supplants salvation. We bring the boys and girls into the church because they are safer there than outside it; and on the whole it is a good thing to do and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... penetrating than mine. All I can do is to state them in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum—profoundly true it is—of Mr. Ruskin: "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... most unreadable specimens of the sex on which he pronounced this highly original dictum, entered the room just then; and he found himself at once out of his chair ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... generally was with any new acquaintance, for she found in them (and so must we all) something of the nature of a cross; as for Mrs Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to find much regeneration in the sample now before her; I believe her private opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master who declared that all parents were fools, but more especially mothers; she was, however, all smiles and sweetness, and Christina devoured these graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Eugenist we are told that willy-nilly every sound, healthy person of either sex must get married or at least betake him or herself to the business of propagating the race. That at least is the essence of his singularly offensive dictum that since the celibacy of the Catholic clergy and of members of Religious Orders deprives the State of a number of presumably excellent parents, "if monastic orders and institutions are to continue, they should be open only to the eugenically unfit."[32] If the religious call is not ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... certainly contribute in a great measure to maintain and fortify peaceful relations. But strength must depend on readiness for war. The dictum still holds good that the weak becomes the prey of the strong. If a nation can not or will not spend enough on her defensive forces for her to be able to make her way in the world, then she falls back ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... you wouldn't! Not when it came to the point. You would have elevated your aristocratic nose and walked off." She uttered this dictum with a certain air of personal pride although her ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... Lilian's embrace, and Lilian's congratulations were alike perfect. Cicely wondered how people could ever have said the critical things of her which some of her acquaintances were unkind enough to say at times. As to Bisset's dictum regarding the lady in the castle, that was manifestly absurd on the face of it. Miss Cromarty was clearly overjoyed to hear of her ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum." ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a matter of ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... 7th arguments following are, the former weak and incorrect, the latter 'dictum et vulgatum, sed non probatum, ne dicam improbatum'. Who doubts that all that is indispensable to the salvation of each and every one is ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... was coolly taking aim. I was reminded of that old military dictum: "Don't shoot till you see the whites ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... progress of thought 'must force men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First {80} Cause, as they have long since dropped the lower'"; but since our guide, a few pages later, quotes with approval the dictum that "unless we cease to think altogether, we must think anthropomorphically," we may be pardoned for declining to believe that "the further progress of thought must force men hereafter" to "cease to think ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... offices, through which to enforce the laws that the Church leaders were defying. But here we failed. Outside of Salt Lake the rule of the Prophets was still absolute and unquestioned. The people bowed reverently to Joseph F. Smith's dictum: "When a man says 'You may direct me spiritually but not temporally,' he lies in the presence of God—that is, if he has got intelligence enough to know what he is talking about." The state politicians ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... prospective wife and permitted with other nupa women, and a host of other questions. We do not even learn when access is permitted to a piraungaru spouse. We have, it is clear, far too few data to be able to estimate the value of the dictum of Messrs Spencer and Gillen that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe." If their views are based only on the facts they have given us, they have clearly overlooked a ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... our extended experience. Every wise man will admit that the possibilities of nature are infinite, and include centaurs; but he will not the less feel it his duty to hold fast, for the present, by the dictum of Lucretius, "Nam certe ex vivo Centauri non fit imago," and to cast the entire burthen of proof, that centaurs exist, on the shoulders of those who ask him to believe ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... already cited, that "as the great mathematicians and metaphysicians represent the aristocracy of human intellect so the great religious geniuses represent the aristocracy of human emotion." There is nothing new in this claim, neither is there any evidence of its truth. Coleridge's dictum that the proper antithesis to religion is poetry is open to serious objection, but there is more to be said for it than may be said for the antithesis set up by Prof. Thomson. As a matter of fact, religious geniuses have often pursued ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... be expected James considers the surrender a disgraceful one, because the guns were thrown overboard. As I have said, this was a measure which had proved successful in several cases of a like nature; the criticism is a piece of petty meanness. Fortunately we have Admiral Codrington's dictum on the surrender ("Memoirs," vol. 1, p. 310), which he ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... and happily. I was half amused with the change in my cousin's demeanour. I had evidently risen immensely in his eyes; and I could not help applying, in my heart, to him, Mr. Carlyle's dictum about the valet species—how they never honour the unaccredited hero, having no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god, Public Opinion. I saw through the motive ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... then, to be wholehearted in defence of his master principle. Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum puto—so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and expands his dictum. He substitutes mundani for humani, and includes in his mundus, as did the Latins, and as did the Greeks in their cosmos, not only the things of earth but the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... of the United Kingdom should be consolidated into one single fund, which was henceforward to be known as the Consolidated Fund. It was not long before we had cumulative examples of the truth of Dr Johnson's dictum that England would unite with us only that she may rob us. Successive English chancellors imposed additional burdens upon our poor and impoverished country, until it was in truth almost taxed out of existence. The weakest points in the Gladstonian Home ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... that a new one will be the first thing subscribed for?" said the deacon, bringing a certain grave look on the faces of both the elder clergy, and a horror-stricken one upon Anne's; while Cecil pronounced her inevitable dictum, that at Dunstone Mr. Venn always preached in a gown, and "we" should never let him think of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ejusdem predicatione orta de heresi suspectus reputatur, habetur et divulgatur. Consilio igitur desuper recepto ipsum citandum et de premissis experiendum decrevimus: Quare vobis et vestrum cuilibet nos precipimus et mandamus, quatenus citetis legitime dictum Magistrum P. H. primo, secundo, tertio et peremptorie etc. quod compareat personaliter coram [nobis] nostrisque consulibus D[n]is Episcopis, Abbatibus, Prioribus, sacrarum literarum Professoribus, et ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... of fiction art has never reproduced anything, but has always dealt with the facts and laws of life as so much crude material which must be transmuted into comeliness. When Shakespeare pronounced his celebrated dictum about art's holding the mirror up to nature, he was no doubt alluding to the circumstance that a mirror reverses everything ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... this behavior, and Eugene did not know whether to be pleased at finding his views agreed with, or angry at hearing his mistress's whims treated with fraternal disrespect. Ultimately, he found himself, under the influence of lunch, coinciding with Rickmansworth's dictum that girls rather liked making fools of themselves, and that Claudia was no better than the rest. It was one of Eugene's misfortunes that he could not cherish illusions about his friends, unless his feeling toward Stafford must be ranked as an illusion. About the latter he had heard nothing, except ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... with the Sophists, a series of schools of philosophy also arose in Athens. These in a way were the outgrowth of the work of Socrates. Accepting the Sophists' dictum that "man is the measure of all things," he tried to turn youths from the baser individualism of the Sophists of his day to the larger general truths which measure the life of a true man. In particular he tried to show that the greatest of all arts— the art of living a ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... one brought in who had certainly been hit by one of their own bullets, and in the back too." Other soldiers say the same, and add that if it weren't for dread of their officers the Germans would surrender wholesale. "Take the officers away, and their regiments fall to pieces," is the dictum of one of the Somerset Light Infantry, "and that's why we always pick off the German ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... more or less a magazine, wherein the merchant may scan while he holds out his hand for an invoice, "Stanzas by Mrs. Hemans," or a garbled extract from Moore's Life of Byron; the lawyer may study his brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some American critic, that "Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott's;" nay, even the auctioneer may find time, as he bustles to his tub, or his tribune, to support his pretensions ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... with the other proofs; but I contend that they do not go far enough. I am still strongly of opinion that when the divine Manco returns to us he will come in the guise of one of ourselves, an Indian of the blood-royal; and therefore I must refuse to accept the dictum of my Lord Tiahuana that the young white man is the re-incarnation of the first Manco, the founder of our nation." And ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... far and away Balzac's greatest and most passionate love, the present writer cannot agree with the late Professor Harry Thurston Peck in the following dictum: "It was his first real love, and it was her last; and, therefore, their association realized the very characteristic aphorism which Balzac wrote in a letter to her after he had known her but a few short weeks: 'It is only the last love ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... regarded by logicians as the only perfect type of syllogism, because the validity of moods in this figure may be tested directly by their complying, or failing to comply, with a certain axiom, the truth of which is self-evident. This axiom is known as the Dictum de Omni et Nullo. It may be ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... After this dictum, which passed muster as a joke from the play on the word "whist," several card-players were of the opinion that the reader's voice needed a rest, and on this pretext one or two couples slipped away into the card-room. But Louise, and the Bishop, and pretty Laure de Rastignac besought Lucien ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... praedictos quod clameum praedicti Comitis de Lyndsey ad officium praedictum eidem Comiti de Lyndsey allocetur, exercendum praedicto die Coronationis; et quod clameum praedicti Comitis Derbiae non allocetur; sed quoad feoda et vadia per dictum Comitem de Lyndsey clamata, clameum ejus quoad poculum de Assay non allocatur, eo quod non constabat praedictis commissionariis Magnum Angliae Camerarium dictum poculum aliqua precedenti coronatione habuisse. Sed quod ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... administrative independence of China itself," and that a loan thus obtained was "obnoxious" to the principles upon which the American government rests. It is to be hoped that President Wilson's dictum will be universally accepted after the war and that meddling in Chinese affairs will cease.] although the rupture which had come in the previous June as a forerunner to the Crisp loan had caused the general ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... content blindly to accept the dictum of those who had gone before. Every principle was carefully scrutinized, and whatever he believed to be false he did not hesitate to attack, and so his name came to be associated with surgical progress. As illustrative of this point, some ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... the significance which this position in which he placed himself assumed in his own mind. Friendly critics excuse him: an interpretation of the Dred Scott decision which explained it away as an irresponsible utterance on a subject outside the scope of the case, a mere obiter dictum, is the justification which is called in to save him from the charge of insincerity. His friends, today, admit that this interpretation was bad law, but maintain that it may have been good morals, and that ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... genius the historical relations of the two nations. It explains and justifies the principle adopted as the basis of this discussion, namely, that no examination of the Irish Problem is possible without a prior examination of the English mind. It used to be said that England dearly loved a Lord, a dictum which may have to be modified in the light of recent events. Far more than a Lord does the typical Englishman love a Judge, and the thought of acting as a Judge. Confronted with Ireland he says to himself: "Here are these ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... Lord Amherst, in one of those "fits of absence" which the dictum of Sir John Seeley has rendered famous, took possession of some of the maritime provinces of Burma, and in doing so lost three thousand one hundred and fifteen men, of whom only a hundred and fifty were killed in action. Then the customary fit of doubt and despondency supervened. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... the City had failed to return its Recorder to parliament.(424) Charles was therefore obliged to look elsewhere. His choice fell upon William Lenthall, who was the first to realise the position of a Speaker in times of political controversy, and who throughout his career acted up to his famous dictum, that "he had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, save as the House ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... political situations that have not yet hatched out; while one that is more pregnant than any you have ever conceived is already born under your very noses and is being sniffed at by you. But no matter what happens outside, Peking is safe, that is your dictum, and the dictum of the day. So, yawning and somewhat tired of the evening's convivialities, we go our several ways home, in our Peking carts and our official chairs, and are soon lost in sleep—dreaming, perhaps, that we have been too long in this dry Northern climate, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... their mouths. Mothers should be specially cautioned not to give nuts or nut candy of any kind to a child whose powers of mastication are imperfect, because the molar teeth are not erupted. It might be made a dictum that: "No child under 3 years of age should be allowed to eat nuts, unless ground finely as in peanut butter." Digital efforts at removal of foreign bodies frequently force the object downward, or may hook it forward into the larynx, whereas if not meddled with digitally the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight; If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or woman, there is truth—if there be physical or moral, there is truth; If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be things at all upon the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... et voce paterna Fingeris ad rectum, et per te sapis; hoc tibi dictum Tolle memor: certis medium et tolerabile rebus The Poet thus, from faults scarce ever free, Becomes a very Chaerilus to me; Who twice or thrice, by some adventure rare, Stumbling on beauties, makes me smile and stare; Me, who am griev'd and vex'd ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... hilt, but that in any single instance they have closed with the offers or been forced by the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline into compliance, appears to me not proven, as is also the imputation that the people have in any degree departed from the lines of O'Connell's dictum—that we take our theology from Rome, but our politics we prefer of home manufacture. If the action of Cardinal Cullen with regard to the Tenant League in 1855 be adduced as an argument in favour of the proposition, it must be remembered that though as Primate his voice was preponderant ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... when the suffragist is congratulating herself on her own progress, meditate also upon that dictum of Nietzsche, "Progress is writ large on all woman's banners and bannerets; but one can actually see ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... purposely left to the last the subject of Bindings, as this, being more immediately cognate to Mr. Davenport's book, may fairly be treated at rather greater length. If the French dictum 'la reliure est un art tout francais' is not without its historical justification, it is at least possible to show that England has done much admirable work, and that now and again, as in the other bookish ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... full many a time; frequently &c. 136. Phr. ecce iterum Crispinus[Lat]; toujours perdrix[Fr]; "cut and come again" [Crabbe]; "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" [Macbeth]; cantilenam eandem canis [Lat][Terence]; nullum est jam dictum quod ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... and his assistant some time to examine the furs and put a price on them. The Indians had no resource but to accept their dictum on the point, for there were no rival markets there. Moreover, the value being fixed according to a regular and well-understood tariff, and the trader being the servant of a Company with a fixed salary, there was no temptation to unfair action on his part. When the valuation ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... two men belonged almost to different centuries, and the disposition which the younger artist had for "splendid experiments" must have seemed to the mature musician little better than madness and licentious irregularity. "He will never do anything in decent style," was Albrechtsberger's dictum after giving Beethoven ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... one in ten can visualise an object in three dimensions. I should have thought the faculty would be common among geometricians, but many of the highest seem able somehow to get on without much of it. There is a curious dictum of Napoleon I. quoted in Hume's Precis of Modern Tactics, p. 15, of which I can neither find the original authority nor do I fully understand the meaning. He is reported to have said that "there are some who, from some physical or moral peculiarity of character, form a picture ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... "Latuit aliquid Petrum aedificandae ecclesiae petram dictum?" Tertullian here speaks of the doctrine as already current. Even after he became a Montanist, he still adhered to the same interpretation—"Petrum solum invenio maritum, per socrum; monogamum praesumo per ecclesiam, quae super illum, aedificata omnem gradum ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... prevail to-day; but I am far from agreeing with the dictum of Pope that "whatever is, is right." Had the world ever proceeded on that principle we would still be honoring robbers and liars, thieves and polygamists. The wider license accorded man harmonizes neither ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... of such a dictum made Bonaparte's eyes flash with the flame which, in him, preceded his great decisions, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... Saint Eucher calls it wisdom, and there are other meanings. But meanwhile I forget how far we had gone. Oh! lasciviousness; we here have ample choice. Besides certain trees there is cyclamen, or sow-bread, which, according to an ancient dictum of Theophrastus, is symbolical of this sin because it was used in the preparation of love-philtres; the nettle, which Peter of Capua says is emblematic of the unruly instincts of the flesh; and the tuberose, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... was convinced that his signals were propagated, not by electro-magnetic induction, but by aerial electric waves spreading out from an electric spark. Early in 1880 he showed his apparatus to Professor Stokes, who observed its operation carefully. His dictum was that he saw nothing which could not be explained by known electro-magnetic effects. This erroneous judgment so discouraged Professor Hughes that he desisted from following up his experiments, and thus, in all probability, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... as though Joan's dictum that presentiments, like dreams, go by contraries, had been founded upon the rock of experience, for, in truth, Diana's premonition that something delightful was about to happen to her had been fulfilled in ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing illustration of Fichte's dictum, that any great system of philosophy is the outcome, not of the intellect, but of a man's character. Nietzsche is not a metaphysician like Hegel, whom he abhorred. He is not a "logic-grinder," like ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... remark, or any other made by a college prof, quite as unintelligible as it was unimportant, laughed with careless impudence in the old man's face; and Mrs. Draper, for all her keenness, could make nothing of it. It sounded, however, so quite like a dictum which she herself would have liked to make, that she cross-questioned Sylvia afterwards as to its meaning; but Sylvia lied fluently, asserting that it was just some of Professor Kennedy's mathematical ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... depths of vain, egocentric brooding has that dictum led! But we are discarding, now, such a mischievously narrow view of the Cosmos, though our upbringing is still too rhetorical and mediaeval to appraise its authors at their true worth. Youth is prone to judge with the heart rather than the head; youth thrives on vaporous ideas, and there was ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... its practical application, it were fruitless to speculate. It applies itself, even as truth, both in action and reaction, verifying itself: and our minds submit, as if it had said, There is nothing wanting; so, in the converse, its dictum is absolute when ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... carpets, and on our richest apparel for holiday occasions and our simplest garments for daily wear. Even human Beauty, the Queen of all loveliness on earth, engages Flora as her handmaid at the toilet, in spite of the dictum of the poet of 'The Seasons,' that "Beauty when unadorned is ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... a mistake," said Mr. Harland, throwing on his overcoat carelessly—"I agree with Byron's dictum 'Who loves, raves!' Of course it should be an ideal passion—but it never is. Come, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... obligation to work in terms of the community. Even the prejudices, the shortsightedness of the community were things to be considered, to be dealt with tenderly. Hence his unwillingness to force reforms upon a community not ripe to receive them. In one of his greatest speeches occurs the dictum: "A universal feeling whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded."(17) Anticipating such ideas, he made in his Clay oration, a startling denunciation of both ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... must accept conditions from his successful rival. The Dred Scott case afforded the occasion for a decision. Of the nine judges on the Supreme Bench seven were Democrats, and of these five were appointed from slave-States. A better opportunity for the South to obtain a favorable dictum could never be expected to arise. A declaration by the Supreme Court of the United States that under the Constitution Congress possessed no power to prohibit slavery in the Federal Territories would by a single breath ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... science was gathering the momentum which since has enabled it to overcome, with a bewildering rapidity, many evils previously held by superstition to be ineradicable. As a corollary to our democratic creed, we accepted the dictum that to human intelligence all things are possible. The virtue of this dictum lies not in dogma, but in an indomitable attitude of mind to which the world owes its every advance in civilization; quixotic, perhaps, but necessary to great accomplishment. In searching for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had one virtue—orders received from MacTurk she obeyed to the letter. The ten commandments were less binding in her eyes than her surgeon's dictum. In other respects she was no woman, but a dragon. Hortense Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew—crushed; yet both these women were personages of some dignity in their own estimation, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... single credible established religion in existence." To Smollett Catholicism conjures up nothing so vividly as the mask of comedy, while his native Calvinism stands for the corresponding mask of tragedy. [Walpole's dictum that Life was a comedy to those who think, a tragedy for those who feel, was of later date than this excellent mot of Smollett's.] Religion in the sunny spaces of the South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he tells a story that reminds ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... this very paradoxical dictum, Mr. Grubb trudged on, leading himself by the nose; Spriggs exerting all his eloquence to make him think lightly of what Grubb considered such a heavy affliction; for after all, although he had received a terrible contusion, there were no bones broken: ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... Epistle of Peter is quite a late writing. The second is only known from an unreliable Latin translation (see Zahn on the passage: "verba 'his scripturis' suspecta sunt, cum interpres in c. II. 3 ex suis inseruerit quod dictum est"), and even if the latter were faithful here, the quotation from the Psalms prefixed to the quotation from the Epistle to the Ephesians prevents us from treating the passage as certain evidence. As to the third passage ([Greek: mepote, hos gegraptai, polloi kletoi, oligoi de eklektoi heurethomen]), ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... Dream!" so famous through Lassen's melody; but Hawley has said it in his own way in an air thrilled with longing and an accompaniment as full of shifting colors as one of the native sunsets. I can't forbear one obiter dictum on this poem. It has never been so translated as to reproduce its neatest bit of fancy. In the original the poet speaks of meeting in dreams a fair-eyed maiden who greeted him "auf Deutsch" and kissed ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... finale, we would offer a few remarks. In no branch of the science, perhaps, is it more hazardous to commit oneself to a positive dictum than in the chemistry of colours, so liable are theory and practice to clash, and so often does the experience of one person or one time differ from that of another. He who has turned his attention ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... "Nonne alias dictum fuit quod Francia per mulierem desolaretur, et postea per Virginem restaurari debebat?" Evidence given by Durand Lassois in Trial, vol. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... consists in the general agreement of mankind, and above all that of Pliny (Paneg. Trajani, lxii.), to the effect that one man cannot deceive all men or be deceived by all—nemo omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt. Would that it were so! And so he concludes with the dictum of Cicero (De natura deorum, lib. iii., cap. ii., 5 and 6), that we must believe the tradition of our ancestors even though they fail to render us a reason—maioribus autem nostris, etiam ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... a dictum of a Pontifex Maximus that there was one religion of the poet, another of the philosopher, and another of the statesman. This is true, but it is hardly adequate. We must at least add that of the common people. A well-known statement of more modern ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... create." It is a fashion nowadays to make little of Macaulay as a thinker, to damn him with faint praise as a brilliant rhetorician. It is not to join unreservedly in that censure, if we remark that Macaulay pronounced his dictum on poetry when he was very young. But, young or not, he utterly misses a sound view of the nature and scope of poetry. He asserts that "men will judge and compare, but they will not create"; and particularly, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... the benefits of action. Thus the formula of justice becomes: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man "—a law which finds its authority in the facts, that it is an a priori dictum of "consciousness after it has been subject to the discipline of prolonged social life," and that it is also deducible from the conditions of the maintenance of life at large and of social life. From this law follow various particular corollaries or rights, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... dictum we rather demurred, and resolved to send for a cow-doctor, and see if she could be cured; if not, to take care she was not converted after her death into "country sausages," for the benefit of London consumers of those dainties. Our friendly counsellor was very indignant at our perversity in not ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton

... can make five shillings out of a working man," was his dictum, "make it. We cannot afford to despise the smallest amount," and in consequence Poltavo was paying as much attention to the ill-written and illiterate scrawls which came from the East End of London, as he was to the equally illiterate efforts of the under-butler, describing ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... (with walls 4-1/4 feet thick) was added, and in 1253 John de Climping, the vicar, rebuilt the remainder. The church is thus six and a half centuries old, and parts of it are older. "Bosham, for antiquity; Boxgrove, for beauty; and Climping, for perfection" is the dictum of an antiquary quoted by the present vicar in a little pamphlet-history of his parish. As regards the Norman doorway, at any rate, he is right: there is nothing in Sussex to excel that; while in general architectural attraction the building is of the richest. It is also a curiously ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... to the full bearing of seemingly petty details, appreciate his skill.* (* "The manner," says Lord Wolseley, "in which he thus mystified his enemy regarding this most important movement is a masterpiece." North American Review volume 149 pages 166 and 167.) According to the dictum of Napoleon, "there are no such things as trifles ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... petunias, and the like? Having in mind the Duke of Argyll's assertion that "no bird can ever fly backwards,"[2] I have more than once watched these humming-birds at their work on purpose to see whether they would respect the noble Scotchman's dictum. I am compelled to report that they appeared never to have heard of his theory. At any rate they very plainly did fly tail foremost; and that not only in dropping from a blossom,—in which case the seeming ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... be recalled that Kant had denied pure beauty to the human form, on the ground that the human form expresses the moral dignity of human nature, which is an idea of the reason. Schiller was piqued by this dictum to test his theory of beauty on the human form. He begins, in a manner fitted to make old Homer smile, with a rationalizing account of the girdle of Venus,—the girdle which Venus lends to Juno when the latter wishes to excite the amorous desire of Jove. Venus, we ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... to the reserves, experience has verified the dictum of the Serbian and Bulgarian Generals in the war of 1913, namely, that "two months in the field are necessary in order to get at the full value of reserves." Our infantry is now accustomed to the rapid and thorough "organization" of the defensive. In August it neither liked nor had the habit of using ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... and the settled purpose to deceive by the direct verbal falsification, there is a long series of intermediate positions. The commercial maxim that one is not bound to teach the man with whom one is dealing how to conduct his business, and the lawyer's dictum that the advocate is under no obligation to put himself in the position of the judge, obviously, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... sermon-box" is responsible for much of the dulness we deplore. Whitefield, it is said, used to contend that a man could preach the same discourse forty-nine times with ever-increasing effect. There may be some who have not this power, but who faithfully toil to prove the truth of the dictum. It was such a good sermon and went so well when we preached it the first few times, the while our hearts were fired by the truth it taught. So we whispered to ourselves as we turned over the contents of that precious box. Other ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... of vaudeville that "Mice Will Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckerings of her smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead pencil she gave out her dictum. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... for mere personal gratification, but in ways which would benefit those who were deprived, or outcast, or bereft. But Theodore was too young and too energetic to be contented with the life of a philanthropist, no matter how noble and necessary its objects might be. He had already accepted Emerson's dictum: ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... sure, we occasionally get some striking statements of contrary tendency, as in Justice Bradley's opinion in 1880 for a divided Court in the Siebold Case,[16] where is reflected recognition of certain results of the War between the States; or later in a frequently quoted dictum by Justice McKenna, in Hoke v. United States, in which the Mann White Slave ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... unity, truth, and necessity—these must be the constant standards by which you test the efficiency of your expositions, and, indeed, that of every explanatory statement. This dictum should be written on your brain in letters most plain. And let this apply not alone to the purposes of exposition but in equal measure to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein



Words linked to "Dictum" :   obiter dictum, declaration, legal opinion, jurisprudence, say-so, pronouncement



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