"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing to the testimony that established the fortitude, manliness and dignity of the prisoners, as beyond precedent or example. That their bearing, one and all, was truly noble, friends and foes took pride in attesting.[11] It was a solemn and a glorious sight; and men, through all time, will turn to that Clonmel dock to learn the inestimable and imperishable ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... oligarchical government of the Hanoverian period, just as that system had been a step from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this "gently broadening down from precedent to precedent," which makes the British constitution of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar series of national adjustments ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... great when she told me that you had offered her your hand, and that she, young and inexperienced as she is, had, without consulting me, ventured to accept you. Such a thing, my dear sir, is against all precedent. The whole of society would be subverted, and all parental authority destroyed, were I as a father to allow what you do me the honour of proposing to take place. I am, I repeat, deeply grateful to you for the inestimable service you have ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... to safeguard our neutral rights by diplomatic means against the unwarranted infringements they are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to maintain and for which there is abundant American precedent. ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... them, had no precedent, and no vocabulary. They had come across death raw and real, uncooked by religion, undeodorised by the sayings ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 "the Case of ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... why. Types.—[They had to deal with a carnal people and to render them the depositary of the spiritual covenant.] To give faith to the Messiah, it was necessary there should have been precedent prophecies, and that these should be conveyed by persons above suspicion, diligent, faithful, unusually zealous, and known to all ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... eagle-like intentness and a puzzled frown. His face said plainly that Kenny's mood was without precedent and therefore strategical. It behooved him to get to the bottom of it at once ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their experience. They were at a loss how ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... but humour abhors logic, and cannot pin its faith on insecure deductions. The heaviest burden which religion can have to bear is the burden of tradition, and humour is the determined foe of everything that is conventional and traditional. The Pharisaical spirit loves precedent and authority; the humorous spirit loves all that is swift and shifting and subversive and fresh. One of the reasons why the orthodox heaven is so depressing a place is that there seems to be no room in it for laughter; it is all harmony ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the recital. He described the difficulties which he had encountered and the machinations of the enemies who had been constantly thwarting him. He pleaded that he had been obliged to create a line of conduct for himself, having to deal with an entirely new combination of circumstances without any precedent to guide him. And he implored the Queen to believe that the accusations which had, of late, poured in against him, were prompted by the disappointed ambition and the jealousy of his enemies, and had not any solid ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... of that time, and affected the course in which things ran. And it is easy to blame, it is hard to do justice to, the various persons and parties who contributed to the events of that strange and confused time. All was new, and unusual, and without precedent in Oxford; a powerful and enthusiastic school reviving old doctrines in a way to make them seem novelties, and creating a wild panic from a quarter where it was the least expected; the terror of this panic acting on authorities not in the least prepared for such a trial of their ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... precedent," said Law, "let me see. Well, then, I will take one gem, only one. Here, Henri, is the diamond which I brought with me when I came to Paris years ago. It was the sole jewel owned then by my brother and myself, though we had somewhat of gold between us, thanks to this ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... 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 Exchange and my signing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... precedent of the pulpit, both in biblical days and since, is wholly against such silence. If it is not the minister's business to know the problems of social ethics, so as to speak confidently to the situation from the standpoint ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Boers and Red Indians. In South Africa the Briton has always insisted upon standing bravely up, unsheltered, before the hidden Boer, and taking the results: Jameson's men would follow the custom. Jameson would not have listened to me—he would have been intent upon repeating history, according to precedent. Americans are not acquainted with the British-Boer war of 1881; but its history is interesting, and could have been instructive to Jameson if he had been receptive. I will cull some details of it from trustworthy sources mainly from "Russell's Natal." Mr. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... IIIrd dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the Step-Pyramid where this same ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... saturnalia of crime in this community. Already several of our young men are reading dime novels and taking lessons in banditry; but the sheriff has stated that this parole will not be considered a precedent. The affair has resulted in some good, however. In addition to placing the young man under Christian influences, and others, it has unearthed a patch of the biggest, best, ripest and sweetest wild strawberries in Monterey County ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... is true, and now you have put your finger on the danger spot. Why has the Election been delayed beyond all precedent?" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... that even medical families cannot escape the more insidious forms of disease, and that, after all, Dr. Sloper had lost other patients beside the two I have mentioned; which constituted an honourable precedent. His little girl remained to him, and though she was not what he had desired, he proposed to himself to make the best of her. He had on hand a stock of unexpended authority, by which the child, in its early years, profited largely. She had been ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... Brittany, wife of Louis XII. and the personification of all that is good and virtuous. To her belongs the honor of having taken the first step toward the social emancipation of French women; she was the first to give to woman an important place at court. This precedent she established by requesting her state officials and the foreign ambassadors to bring their wives and daughters when they paid their respects to her. To the ladies themselves, she sent a "royal command," bidding them leave their gloomy ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... consultant ne passe les nuits bien calmes, il prendra chaque soir a l'heure de sommeil six grains des pilules de cynoglosse, dent il augmentera la dose d'un grain de plus toutes les fois que la dose du jour precedent, n'aura pas ete suffisante pour lui faire ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... not thought it necessary to give a separate and distinct reply to the theory of Mr. Congreve, that Roman Imperialism was the type of all good government, and a desirable precedent for ourselves. Those who feel any penchant for the notion, I should strongly recommend to read the answer of Professor G. Smith, in the Oxford Essays for 1856, which is as complete and crushing as that ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... was unique as an individual, perhaps in the very fact of an individuality unembarrassed by the limitations of convention, of education and of precedent, he becomes in a sense typical of his people ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Christ, this is that for the sake of which grace is given unto us, as it is intimated by the text; it proceeds from the throne of God, who is Christ. Christ then having obtained grace for us, must needs be precedent, as to his merit, to that grace he hath so obtained. Besides, it is clear that the Spirit and grace come from God through him; therefore, as to the communications of grace to us, it is the fruit of his merit and purchase. But, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which is founded on 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, or kalippah (in places where ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is no man that knows life well, and remembers all the incidents of his past existence, who would accept it again; we are certainly here to punish precedent sins.—Campbell. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... and towns held in demesne. The burgesses, however, did not sit with the knights of shires, but apart by themselves, and, through loyalty or obsequiousness, assessed themselves in a contribution nearly one third greater than that granted by the barons and knights. The convenient precedent was not overlooked, and it became henceforth customary to expect the like liberality from subsequent parliaments. At this period, also, the principal divisions of the city were first denominated wards; these wards were presided over by an alderman, assisted ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... to complain, declared greatly, and like a general, that he was used to enlist and not to buy his soldiers, when they heard of this, they conceived an implacable hatred against him; for he did not seem to defraud them merely himself in their present expectations, but to give an ill precedent, and instruct his successors to do the like. This heart-burning, however, was as yet at Rome a thing undeclared, and a certain respect for Galba's personal presence somewhat retarded their motions, and took off their edge, and their having no obvious occasion for beginning a revolution ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... motion, Mr. Moore, making it a fifty-dollar fine for any taxpayer, or tenant, who puts rubbish out on the curb on any other day save the two mentioned in the main ordinance," Janice whispered to the selectman; "otherwise you will set a bad precedent with your Clean-Up Day, instead of doing ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... were found dead there might be a possibility of that. But I should explain to him, and he would understand that it was a case without diplomatic precedent." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already, landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and England, that this precedent might ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... integrated and routine 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 ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... concern with 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 ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... right of Evelina's as her elaborately crinkled hair. But now she began to transfer to herself a portion of the sympathy she had so long bestowed on Evelina. She had at last recognized her right to set up some lost opportunities of her own; and once that dangerous precedent established, they began ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... upon students for quarrelling among themselves was light and limited to a small fine. Kierson's was an aggravated offence, however. The dignity of the Governor's son had suffered, and as there was no precedent the case was allowed to drag on indefinitely. Loris used his influence with the authorities to keep Joseph ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... chance of gaining attention for what appeared to me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the Irish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no English precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English politicians and the English public concerning all social phenomena not generally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste lands, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... think, that what we delayed to do, must be done at last, and done with more difficulty, as it was delayed longer; that while we were complaining, and they were eluding, or answering our complaints, fort was rising upon fort, and one invasion made a precedent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... lord, as your lordship will quickly apprehend when the new point is brought before your notice. A question of principle is here which may form a precedent for the guidance of future Judges, as did the famous case of Perryman v. Lister, which went to the House of Lords about prosecuting a man for stealing a gun. This is about a pig, my lord—a little pig, no doubt, and although there is not ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... pharmacopoeia, or Compleat English Physician, was dedicated to Mary, second Queen of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, &c., and appears to have been the first. The preface says "it was the first of that kind extant in the world, a subject for which we have no precedent." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... for so far back as I remembered, breakfast had been my heartiest meal of the entire day, with perhaps two exceptions—luncheon and dinner. Precedent inclined me toward ordering about as many pieces of sliced banana as would be required to button a fairly tall woman's princess frock all the way down her back, with plenty of sugar and cream, and likewise ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... discontented nobles, won from his brother the affections of the young king, and believing every thing ripe for an attack on his usurped authority, he designed to bring forward in the ensuing parliament a proposal for separating, according to ancient precedent, the office of guardian of the king's person from that of protector of the realm, and for conferring upon himself the former. But he discovered too late that he had greatly miscalculated his forces; his proposal was not even permitted ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... it had been in the past, and modern languages were gaining an importance which they had not had in his own youth. His own mind was divided, for a younger brother of his had been sent to Germany when he failed in some examination, thus creating a precedent but since he had there died of typhoid it was impossible to look upon the experiment as other than dangerous. The result of innumerable conversations was that Philip should go back to Tercanbury for another term, and then should leave. With this agreement ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... her fears for his safety exasperated Betty beyond measure. She scolded him vigorously. Charley accepted the scolding with humility, but his resolution was unshaken; he did not propose to vacate the public roads at any man's behest; that would be an unwise precedent to establish. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so charming a name as The Passionate Pilgrim. It is a perfect title. Jaggard also set up a good precedent, for this collection was published a year before England's Helicon, and, of course, very many years before any authorized collection of Shakespeare's 'Poems' was issued. We see in The Passionate Pilgrim a forerunner of The Golden ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... curious fact, in itself adding to their interest, that these chansons, though a very important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection, save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed. Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of the Messiah is, in other passages, attributed to God: compare Job xv. 30, where it is said of the wicked: "By the breath of His mouth he shall go away;" Hos. vi. 5: "I have slain them by the word of my mouth." In general, according to the precedent in Gen. i., doing by the mere word is, in Scripture, the characteristic designation of Divine Omnipotence. Parallel is chap. xlix. 2, where Christ says: "And He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword," equivalent ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... novel domiciliary catastrophe the author of "Margaret Mayfield" has formed a melodrama, which in every other respect is founded, like a chancellor's decree, upon precedent; it being a good old-fashioned, cut-throat piece, of the leather-breeches-and-gaiter, plough-and-pitchfork school. A country-inn parlour of course commences the story, where certain characters assemble, who reveal enough of themselves and of the characters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... my predecessor (General Hovey) had issued an order permitting the departure south of all persons subject to the conscript law of the Southern Confederacy. Many applications have been made to me to modify this order, but I regarded it as a condition precedent by which I was bound in honor, and therefore I have made no changes or modifications; nor shall I determine what action I shall adopt in relation to persons unfriendly to our cause who remain after the time limited by General ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the Union of the Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress, and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... cannot be denied that divines have from time to time been much inclined to give a traditional, logical shape to sciences which do not admit of any such treatment. Nor can it be denied, on the other hand, that men of science often show a special irritation at theologians for going by antiquity, precedent, authority, and logic, and for declining to introduce Bacon or Niebuhr into their own school, or to apply some new experimental and critical process for the improvement of that which has been given once for all from above. Hence the mutual jealousy of the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... cash to induce him to take the decisive plunge. Scott illustrates both cases. The melancholy drudgery of his later years was forced from him in spite of nature; but nobody ever wrote more spontaneously than Scott when he was composing his early poems and novels. If the precedent of Shakespeare is good for anything, it is good for this. Shakespeare, it may be, had a more moderate ambition; but there seems to be no reason why the desire of a good house at Stratford should be intrinsically ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... matters had at no time "looked favorably" on the right up to ten o'clock. The condition, therefore, which was assumed as precedent to Burnside's movement, never existed; and this was better known to McClellan than to any one else, for he received the first discouraging reports after Mansfield fell, and the subsequent alarming ones when ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... 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 of common propriety was corrected everywhere. The pictorial representations, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... who hasn't lived among the Chinese can't imagine what a strange, superstitious people they are; more than any other race on the face of the earth they are bound to the past—and I suppose when we came up there to Tung-sha and began to dig tunnels in their hills we were breaking the precedent of the past. Still we didn't really expect any trouble—and for many months all went smoothly. Some wonderful things happened up there in that out-of-the-way corner of the world. We lived—Marion and I—in ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Soviet, German, and US systems that combine "continental" or "civil" code and case-precedent; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has not ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... their sentence. Next day it was published in the Boston Gazette. He called them before him, and required them on oath to abjure the communication: three officers refused. Poor Gage is to be scapegoat, not for this, but for what was a reason against employing him, incapacity. I wonder at the precedent! Howe is talked of for his successor.—Well, I have done with you!—Now I shall go ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... Lords and Masters in our happy land, How with this woman will you make account, How answer her shrill question in that hour When whirlwinds of such women shake the polls, Heedless of every precedent and creed, Straight in hysteric haste to right all wrongs? How will it be with cant of politics, With king of trade and legislative boss, With cobwebs of hypocrisy and greed, When she shall take the ballot for her broom And sweep away the dust ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... be so far emasculated as to be incapable of defending the town workers against the peasants who will then be the ruling class. Thus they attack the present Trades Union leaders for being directly influenced by the Government in fixing the rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a precedent from which, when the change comes, it will be difficult to break away. The Communists answer them by insisting that it is to everybody's interest to pull Russia through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were for such academic reasons to insist on their complete independence instead ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... mill, a fulling mill, a printing press, a schoolhouse, dwellings for the married members, and large dormitories for the celibates. The meeting-house was built entirely without metal, following literally the precedent of Solomon, who built his temple "so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was building." Wooden pegs took the place of nails, and the laths were fastened laboriously into grooves. Averse to riches, Beissel's people refused gifts from William Penn, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... her when Barry swung into the saddle and that was a thing without precedent in Molly's history. She tried none of her usual catlike side-steps and throwing of the head. Altogether, Vic was troubled even as he would have been at the sight of Betty Neal in the arms of ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... Mrs. Garnett was duplicating the uneventful placidity of her parents' early years, content to rule her household wisely, to love and minister to her husband, and to devote her energies to the rearing of her children according to time-honored precedent. Pocahontas, the youngest of the family, was still unmarried, nay, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... are many instances of persons being freed from slavery by the laws of England, but (God be thanked) there is neither law, nor even a precedent, (at least I have not been able to find one) of a legal determination to justify a master in claiming or detaining any person whatsoever as a slave in England, who has not voluntarily bound himself as such by ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... conchology, especially if it had several brilliant colors, one would take off his coat, another his shirt, and insist that he should exchange the shell for the garment. When he declined the exchange, but on the contrary presented the coveted article, he soon found he had established a dangerous precedent. Immediately they all commenced to beg for everything in the vast collection which they happened to take a liking to. This cost Barnum many valuable specimens, and often "put him to his trumps" for an excuse to avoid giving them things which ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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 ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... surprise to me. I had heard from my wife only two days before this. At that time she was quite sick, but was thought to be improving. With a heart filled with sadness I now prepared for my journey home. The warden was absent, and the deputy warden said, "There was no precedent for permitting a prisoner to go home on a visit, as such a thing had never occurred before in the history of the State, but," continued he, "if you will give me your word that you will return to the prison I will let you go." I told him to set the time for my return ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... delivered, and a bare Concealment of what was found, as in the former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called it a Distinction without a Difference, and absolutely insisted, that when once all Pretensions of Honour and Virtue were given up in any one Instance, that there was no Precedent for resorting to them upon a second Occasion. In short, poor Conscience had certainly been defeated in the Argument, had not Fear stept in to her Assistance, and very strenuously urged, that the real Distinction between the two Actions, did not lie in the different degrees of Honour, but ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... an angry and overmastered villain bound to a tree to await death or rescue? The result is rescue every time, and one way and another a mort of trouble for the good characters. Still it may be argued that if the protagonist of The Fortunes of Garin (CONSTABLE) had not followed this risky precedent those fortunes would not have led him where they eventually did, and we should have missed one of the best costume novels of the year. Miss MARY JOHNSTON is among the very few waiters whom I can follow without weariness through the mazes of mediaevalism. This tale of the adventures of a knight ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... inferred from the speeches which he made upon both those occasions; as when he says, "I shall ever be the same, and shall never change my conduct, so long as I retain my senses; but to avoid giving a bad precedent to posterity, the senate ought to beware of binding themselves to the acts of (234) any person whatever, who might by some accident or other be induced to alter them." And again: "If ye should ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 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 it came to pass. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... only by a bill of pains and penalties. Such a bill the Whig party, then decidedly predominant in both houses, was quite prepared to support. Many hot-headed members of that party were eager to follow the precedent which had been set in the case of Sir John Fenwick, and to pass an act for cutting off the bishop's head. Cadogan, who commanded the army, a brave soldier, but a headstrong politician, is said to have exclaimed with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the one made famous by Mr. Vanderbilt, and posted it all about, had pamphlets distributed, and made a speech on courtesy in railroad management and elsewhere. Since that time, not altogether because of the precedent which had been established, but because people were beginning to realize that with this new element creeping into business the old regime had to die because it could not compete with it, there have been all sorts of courtesy campaigns ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... governess; but the evening meetings at supper were never interrupted; they took place at the house of the Comtesse de Provence. Madame Elisabeth made one of the party when she had finished her education, and sometimes Mesdames, the King's aunts, were invited. The custom, which had no precedent at Court, was the work of Marie Antoinette, and she maintained it with ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... machinery to which it had applied. Popular agitation[71] had taken a new shape. The county associations formed in the last days of the American war of independence, and the societies due to the French revolution had set a precedent. The revolutionary societies had been suppressed or had died out, as opposed to the general spirit of the nation, although they had done a good deal to arouse political speculation. In the period of distress which followed ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the refined sentiment of cruelty revealed in it is deserving of the severest censure. It is true that the introduction of German cookery into France by the Prussians, as you propose, would in a short time decimate the population, but what a fearful precedent it would be! You can best realize it by imagining Massachusetts cookery introduced into New York, and the consequent desolation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... Embden, in Germany. A mutiny had at about the same time, broken out among his troops in Harlem, and he had furnished the citizens with arms to defend themselves, giving free permission to use them against the insurgent troops. By this means the mutiny had been quelled, but a dangerous precedent established. Anxiety concerning this rebellion is supposed to have hastened the Grand Commander's death. A violent fever seized him on the 1st, and terminated his existence on the 5th of March, in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not smoke. If I crossed the line I should establish a dangerous precedent. A good stroke. Now, the idea. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... it among others in the colony of a different religious description, by a legislative act. Both of these were necessary. The former, however, he resolved to attempt first. The Society itself had already afforded him a precedent, by its resolutions in 1688 and in 1696, as before mentioned, and had thereby done something material in the progress of the work. It was only to get a minute passed upon their books to the intended effect. Accordingly, at the very first Monthly Meeting of the Society, which took place in Philadelphia ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... "another boy alonga Hinchinbrook!" Having thus completely and satisfactorily settled the point, his face assumed a slow, wise smile, and his agitated mind rested. Was it not all another palpable proof, a precedent to be cited, of the manner in which a no-good-boy wantonly brought ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Agastya, while engaged in the performance of a grand sacrifice, chased the deer, and devoted every deer in the forest unto the gods in general. Thou hast been slain, pursuant to the usage sanctioned by such precedent. Wherefore reprovest us then? For his especial sacrifices Agastya performed the homa with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... persons, and for the many others who, though not unacquainted with the principles which should guide them in their conduct, are yet often at fault upon questions of detail, and sometimes commit errors, which are the more excusable that absolute rules, deduced from precedent and established by practice alone could set them right, that this code of Modern Etiquette has been prepared. To them it is offered as supplying a need which it is their misfortune, rather than their fault, to experience, in the ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye by a word or a touch? as purely miraculous and magical? That would be to give up thinking on the subject. As magnetic? There is no precedent of magnetism having influence over a disease of this nature. Or, lastly, as psychical? But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... a similar instance of a whole body of men, thus repelling every allurement of protection and preferment, of home, country, friends, fortune, possessions, for the still calls of piety, and private dictates of conscience, precedent may be defied, and the annals ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... over on its axis with unfailing regularity, and nights followed mornings and mornings followed nights according to well-established precedent. One man turned up in Bootstrap with radiation burns, but he had not offered himself for check over at the hospital. He was found dead in his lodging. Since nobody else appeared to have suffered any burns at all, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... client, impatiently. 'Don't talk to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... together, for Jean was as much of a bibliomaniac, almost, as was her husband, and I confess I enjoyed myself amid the rich collection, made without precedent or reason, but, somehow, wonderfully attractive. They were whimsical, the pair, with books as with regard to other things, but the few who might invade their library were inclined to linger there. I always found a mingled odor there of cigar-smoke and of some perfume which ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... nominal appointment as assistant surgeon to H.M.S. "Fisguard" at Woolwich, for "particular service," but with leave of absence from the ship so that he could live and pursue his avocations in London. There was a precedent for this course in the case of Dr. Hooker, when he had to work out the scientific results of the voyage of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... established why the franchise should be given to the one and not to the other. It would remain still to present grounds of principle on which that right as such may be denied to her and not denied to him. I have heard reasons of policy, reasons of sentiment, reasons of precedent advanced to justify this exclusion; but in all frankness, and with no disrespect intended, I must say that those which have been presented during this debate seem to me trivial, illogical, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... requirements would bring the same gift to the obedient as the disciples had received; for it would make them disciples also. But, while repentance and baptism which presupposed faith were the normal, precedent conditions of the Spirit's bestowal, the case of Cornelius, where the Spirit was given before baptism, forbids the attempt to link the rite and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... dear and well-beloved countrymen, what creatures of fashion and precedent we all are, from high to low! What one does, the rest must do; and in the self-same manner. I verily believe, if the late Albert Smith had left it on record that, in ascending Mont Blanc, he planted his foot ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... did," Ned answered, considering the matter gravely. "Tell you what you do," he went on, "let the mule have his head! Let him go just where he wants to. It is the instinct of animals to follow precedent, same as men. A man will follow a cow path until it becomes a city street, and a cow, a horse, or a mule will follow a trail previously used—if only passed over once! Let the mule have his head, and he may take us to the ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... thrown upon my own resources. 'I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow. 'Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is not a convenient precedent at all. Far from ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Zerezo declares that Geronimo de Fuentes, an inhabitant of that city, bid for a magistracy at auction. The judges of the auction knocked it down to him, and made out his title for it. Some of the regidors opposed this, and appealed to the Audiencia. The latter, in order not to make a precedent, so that the alcaldes or judges of the provinces should attempt the same with their successors, had the possession [of the magistracy] given to him, and left the party his right safe and in force. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... understanding and the avoidance of prejudice. This sapped the bulldog qualities of British pluck and persistence terribly. You can see at a glance how it would shut out a budding Nelson or a Wellington. But its most notable effect was to be seen among politicians, who were able to claim Fox for a precedent. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the work of the range. This was more difficult to take at once by reason of lack of precedent. But by tactful watchfulness she felt it could be accomplished. Her first step must be to impress on Lal Hobhouse her intention, and, in this, even sooner than she had dared to hope, she managed to secure a footing. Once her mind was set to achieve a purpose her capacity was beyond all question, ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... he, "since unwisely, Miss Westfall, for eugenic reasons, we grant a certain freedom of marital choice to our princes—since wisely or not as you will, the Salic Law does not, by an ancient precedent, obtain with us, and a woman may come in the line of succession, the danger to Ronador's little son, is, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... but not an indifferent one. Once again mere momentary material interest counseled abstention; precedent was invoked to justify isolation and indifference. The timid, the ignorant, the disloyal, those to whom physical life was more precious than the dictates of conscience, counseled "peace and prosperity." Many began to wonder if America had a soul and was indeed ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... naval preparation been free from a sort of noisy violence, a certain massive dullness of conception? Have we really made anything like a sane use of our resources? I do not mean of our resources in money or stuff. It is manifest that the next naval war will be beyond all precedent a war of mechanisms, giving such scope for invention and scientifically equipped wit and courage as the world has never had before. Now, have we really developed any considerable proportion of the potential human quality available to meet the demand for wits? What are we doing to discover, encourage ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... August morning when Paw died. This was an unexpected and unsettling contingency. One doesn't look for a "chronic's" doing anything so unscheduled and foreign to routine; but Paw spoiled all precedent. They found him that morning with his heart quite still, and Luke knew they stood in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this. You see, it won't ever do for me, a brigadier in the regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial—there isn't any precedent for it, don't you see. Very well. I will go on examining authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out of this scrape by presiding herself. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... itself by its own impulses. But if, as I believe, there will not prove to be any natural tendencies common to women, and distinguishing their genius from that of men, yet every individual writer among them has her individual tendencies, which at present are still subdued by the influence of precedent and example: and it will require generations more, before their individuality is sufficiently developed to make ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... it, but look well to the political freedom that is still your own. With five hundred thousand armed puppets, moving at the will of a clique of ambitious epauletted politicians and experimentalists, you may live to witness, whether we be subdued or not, a coup d'etat for which there is a precedent not far back in ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... against Darwin will please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You must not call a voter a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... deal with them not by arms but by process of law. But the work which he now undertook was far greater and weightier than this. The pledges of Henry the First had long been forgotten when the Justiciar brought them to light, but Langton saw the vast importance of such a precedent. At the close of the month he produced Henry's charter in a fresh gathering of barons at St. Paul's, and it was at once welcomed as a base for the needed reforms. From London Langton hastened to the king, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... and they agreed to refrain from going to the Lord's Table for a year, that all the Church might by that time have knowledge and proof of their consistent Christian life, though so young in years. This discipline, I thought, would be good for them; and the Lord might use it as a precedent ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... of the United States since the adoption of the Federal Constitution has in this particular followed the precedent established by the mother country. In the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States following the Revolutionary war, the former not only relinquished the right of government, but renounced and yielded to the United States all pretensions and claims whatsoever to ...
— Cessions of Land by Indian Tribes to the United States: Illustrated by Those in the State of Indiana • C. C. Royce
... that the Columbiad must be cast on the soil of either Texas or Florida. The result, however, of this decision was to create a rivalry entirely without precedent between the different towns of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... about. I had the greatest time to get her off for the afternoon. I had to go to Walker's, you know, and see all sorts of Heads of Departments. My! they acted like Crowned Heads! They said it wouldn't do at all,—it would establish a precedent,—and all sorts of things like that. But, somehow or other, I wheedled them into it, and at last they said Jenny might come. She was just crazy about it. She said, she never has any fun in her life, except looking at ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... cried Ruth, cheerfully. "Of course we ought to be storm-bound in a deserted house. That is according to all romantic precedent." ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... great dedication of the new building, in April, 1907, the celebration of Founder's Day surpassed all previous efforts, being marked by the assembling of an illustrious group of men, and the delivery of a series of addresses, which made the festival altogether beyond precedent. On that occasion there came to Pittsburgh, as the guests of the Institute, from France, Dr. Leonce Benedite, Director Musee du Luxembourg; Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Member of the French Senate and of the Hague Court of Arbitration; Dr. Paul Doumer, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... Rapid and brilliant beyond precedent this career had been. He entered the diplomatic service of the Czar, and for several years was attached to the legations at Vienna, London, and Paris. Created a Baron before his twenty-fifth birthday for the wonderful ability displayed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... came 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
... with the usual education given to women in this country. If it succeeds, it will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken down a Chinese wall of prejudices,—religious, social, professional,—and have established a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time." She did succeed, and the results can scarcely ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Philosophy, not from objection to Mr. Anderson, in whose election he would willingly have concurred, but because he regarded the method of proceeding as irregular and possibly establishing a bad precedent." As patrons of University chairs, the professors were trustees for the community, and ought each to be bound by a tacit self-denying ordinance, at least to the extent of refraining from actively using this ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... substantially free from slavery, and which it was well understood was not adapted to slave labor. It raised no such question, as would have been raised, if it had been applied to territory where slavery then largely existed, or which was adapted to negro slave labor. It is, therefore, no precedent for Congressional action in such a case. The precedent of one case is not a rule of decision for another, unless the two are substantially alike. This noble ordinance of 1787, then rather affirmed ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... and Most Potent Prince, our dear and well-beloved Brother and Cousin! At the same Time that we have been told of your Majesty's great Goodness towards your Subjects, and the Precedent you have given of an extraordinary Clemency, in granting them your general Amnesty (some few only excepted, of those whom the Blood of their King, and that of his People, cry aloud to Heaven for Revenge against). We could not ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... very outset of his term, he had entered, against all precedent, into the fight in the Legislature over a Senatorial election. Demanding that the Legislature keep faith with the people, who in a preferential primary had designated a candidate for United States Senator who did not command the support of ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... Northerners generally reflected that they wanted quiet and had an instinct, curiously falsified, that the Democratic party was the more likely to give it them. The Whigs again proposed a hero, General Scott, a greater soldier than Taylor, but a vainer man, who mistakenly broke with all precedent and went upon the stump for himself. The President who was elected, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a friend of Hawthorne, might perhaps claim the palm among the Presidents of those days, for sheer, deleterious insignificance. The favourite observation of his contemporaries upon him was that ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... having occupied the court for an hour, during which time he had shown a most minute and accurate knowledge of the matter in dispute, gave the whole question a new aspect. During the second hour that his argument was continued, in which precedent after precedent, not before introduced, were brought forward, bearing a direct application to the case under review, the court exhibited the most marked attention. When he concluded, all present saw ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... cleansing the senses of pre-impressions, begin anew. The marvel is for each of us, individually, an exception to evolution; it is a special creation, like all the rainbows seen in one's life—a thing to be reverently absorbed by sight, by scent, by touch, absorbed and realized without precedent or limit. Only ultimately do we find it necessary to adulterate this fine perception with definitive words and phrases, and so attempt to register ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... relationship sinks into the background and is superseded by the official relationship. Under these circumstances it is evident that the etiquette of the profession intervenes, which overmastering force compels me to point out to you how improper and contrary to precedent it would be for me to listen to you without the presence ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... mistake, however, of not using the actual names of localities. Just why I shuffled the names of trails and towns and valleys so recklessly, I cannot now explain, for there was abundant literary precedent for their proper and exact use. Perhaps I resented the prosaic sound of "Sneffles" and "Montrose Junction." Anyhow, whatever my motive, I covered my tracks so well that it was impossible even for a resident to follow me. In The Eagle's Heart I was equally elusive, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... would be none the less formidable because it might in name be identified with an armed police, or, like the troops raised at the Cape or in Victoria, enjoy the ominous title of Volunteers. If the Colonial precedent were strictly carried out, British troops ought, from the time Ireland obtained an independent Parliament, to be withdrawn from the country. The acknowledged danger of foreign invasion, and the unavowed probability ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... the tale runs, the Governor looked——He certainly did establish a precedent at that dinner. Mockers say that Judge Pat McCarran ran a close second, because his Excellency is lean and lank, while Judge McCarran would make two of him one way, and almost half of him the other, and because what happened to Governor Boyle had also happened ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... began to assume a more serious form; from threats, public meetings were called, resolutions were passed, vengeance and destruction were threatned, and affairs again assumed a fearful attitude, Jackson county was a sufficient precedent, and as the authorities in that county did not interfere, they boasted that they would not in this, which on application to the authorities we found to be too true, and after much violence, privation and loss of property we were again driven ...
— The Wentworth Letter • Joseph Smith
... Author has here endeavoured to execute has not, so far as he knows, the advantage of any near precedent in any literature, he hopes that a few explanatory words may be offered without ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... eulogies on his friends and others, further, witness to the extension of the field of poetry after Elizabeth's age;—in which his enthusiastic geniality, his quick and easy transitions of subject, have also little precedent. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... sculpture, for example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set foot. She was an ethnic ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Behemoth. The editor has been unable to find any precedent for Chapman's application of this name—which in the Book of Job denotes the whale or hippopotamus—to the chief ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta, grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, Jupiter and the city being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this, dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... his grateful thanks: 'Your sacred Majesty, may I be thy sacrifice;' but he added in a subdued tone, 'A lion requires at least a lamb a day.' The Shah laughed at the meaning speech, and said, 'Let him have it.' The granting of a title does not give any emolument unless specially directed. As a precedent for this title, the Shah may have had in his mind the story of Ali Kuli Khan, one of the favourites of Shah Suliman. During the reign of Shah Abbas this chief was generally in prison, except when his services were required against the enemies ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... its way, crowding to applaud Coquelin cadet, Fragson, and other budding celebrities. It was here that the poets first had the idea of producing a piece in which rival cabarets were reviewed and laughingly criticised. The success was beyond all precedent, in spite of the difficulty of giving a play without a stage, without scenery or accessories of any kind, the interest centring in the talent with which the lines were declaimed by their authors, who ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... decide. Our situation is not without a precedent. A few months ago the Count de Lavalette was condemned to death. The King wished to pardon him, but his ministers and friends opposed it. Though the King was master, what did he do? He seemed to be deaf to all the supplications ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Courier—the steady, ever cautious old Courier, England's premier paper, created a precedent by the use of a quite conspicuously large type; vide ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... graded processes such as this that the great end will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built, and such has been the admirable history of the work done ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... which Napoleon took over from the French Revolutionary leaders. A more philosophic outlook might have suggested that the phenomenon was not really exceptional, but rather the natural outcome of popular energy inspired by a stirring political ideal. But the British precedent was forgotten, and so profound was the disturbance caused by the new French methods that its effects are with us still. We are in fact still dominated by the idea that since the Napoleonic era war has been essentially a different thing. Our teachers incline to insist that there is now ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... 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 ordinary ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... contributed to their injury was brought very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were so, she had got to a common plane of understanding with him on some difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of with any justice or generosity; for, according to precedent, Gwendolen's view of her position might easily have been no other than that her husband's marriage with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs. Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And Deronda had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... permissible, and understandingly done, facilitates comprehension, which is baffled by a multiplication of minutiae, just as the impression of a work of art, or of a story, is lost amid a multiplicity of figures or of actors. The investigation precedent to formulation of ideas must be close and minute, but that done, the unbiassed selection of the most important, expressed graphically by a few lines and a few dots, leads most certainly to the comprehension of decisive relations in a military ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... ago by voices now forever still; finding things to say that an assailed boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of his impulses to himself. I understood no more than the people who called upon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of his racial surroundings and associations. For you must understand that there was no idea ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... enforcing the most rigid etiquette. For he was one of those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of toll ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... then forever be that, though I cast out sin, both root and branch, the seed Of evil, scattered long ago, will sprout And bloom carnation thoughts that dull the soul With subtle sweetness! Oh! coward that I am! Bound down, as to a rock, to form and place, By iron chains of worldly precedent, While my desires like eagles tear my breast, And make of me a base Prometheus. O, God! I married all the family of sins, When I espoused the pleasantest; I am Become a liar through my lechery, A thief of reputation through my cowardice, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... mankind the Hope of an existence beyond the impenetrable veil of physical limitation. And this at any rate may be admitted, namely, that that dynamic condition in which materiality arises is also the condition-precedent of Tridimensionality, of Force, of Time, and of Mutation. But we cannot thus account for the elan ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... precedent of two races, distinct yet equally powerful, living together in harmony; one has always reduced to a secondary position or destroyed the other, or the two have united. So it will be a question, if the Negro succeeds in making himself the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... novel was in knightly days, that it has continued to be. There is a mysterious practical potency in precedent. All ideas and institutes seem to grow in the direction of their first steps, as if from germs. Thus, the doctrines of the Church fathers are still peculiarly authoritative in theology, and the immemorial traditions of the common law are still binding in civil life. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... for more innocent kinds of food was equally excessive. He would eat seven or eight peaches before breakfast, and declared that he had only once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he wished. His consumption of tea was prodigious, beyond all precedent. Hawkins quotes Bishop Burnet as having drunk sixteen large cups every morning, a feat which would entitle him to be reckoned as a rival. "A hardened and shameless tea-drinker," Johnson called himself, who "with ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... to endow the cigarette-case my doctor forbade me, 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
... he knows, a principle which has guided our pen from the inception of this work to this point, and which must continue to the bitter end. We shall be relentless and truthful to the last, even though in so doing we are compelled to overthrow all historical precedent. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... cheerfulness was on the faces of his old comrades. For it had been recognized that, after all, "Prossy" had a perfect right to bring his old mother there—his well-known youth and inexperience preventing this baleful performance from being established as a precedent. For these reasons hats were cheerfully doffed, and some jackets put on, as the buggy swept up the hill to the pretty new cottage, with its green blinds and white ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the ministers in execration, clearly perceiving they were obedient to a foreign impulse, and the vile agents of people, who, in making them act, kept themselves concealed; they were moreover afraid my case would have dangerous consequences, and be made a precedent for the purpose of establishing a ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... for openly championing the German cause before the people of the United States by written and spoken word, this is self-evident in a country which recognizes the principles of freedom of the Press and free speech. Apart from this, however, the American Government have themselves provided a precedent in this connection during the civil war, when President Lincoln in 1863 sent to England the famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, whose sympathies were strongly on the side of the Federals. Through his speeches, afterwards ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the doctor said. He was a little ashamed of his weakness in the matter, knew it was a bad precedent, didn't wish to hear any more about it. "Haven't you got something warmer to put on?" he asked. "You're not going out into this pouring rain in ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... event? What heart but spurns at precedent And warnings of the wise, Contemned foreclosures of surprise? The banners play, the bugles call, The air is blue and prodigal. No berrying party, pleasure-wooed, No picnic party in the May, Ever went less loth than they Into that leafy neighborhood. In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate, Moloch's ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... brought the adherents of the Red Rose back to triumph, Gerald Mor was still Lord-deputy. He was not deposed, however, on that account, although the Butlers were at once reinstated in their own property, and Sir Thomas Butler was created Earl of Ormond. According to a precedent now prevailing for several reigns, the Lord-Lieutenancy was conferred upon the Duke of Bedford, the king's uncle, Kildare continuing, however, practically to exercise all the functions of ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless |
