"Maxim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wheat (live animals can be transported without roads), while at the same time the seaports were importing foreign grain. [141] The cause of this condition of affairs in that country is to be sought less in a disordered state of finance, than in the enforcement of the Government maxim which enjoins ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... time-table that hung in the hall: the time-table, that magic carpet of today. When in doubt, move. This was the maxim. Move. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Point we came upon a motor-car which was drawn up at the side of the street—there had been an accident of no consequence, a boy tumbled over but not hurt. Well, one of the two occupants of the motor-car was a man whom I used to see about Maxim's and the Cafe de Paris and the Montmartre places, too, some time ago—a rather shady character whose name I've forgotten. The odd part of it all was that on the last occasion or two on which I saw your nephew he was with this man. I think it was in Henry's ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... and all the other inconvenient things that Jesus said are disposed of in the same way. For instance, these 'disciples' assure us that when Jesus said, 'Resist not evil', 'If a man smite thee upon he right cheek turn unto him also the left', He really meant 'Turn on to him a Maxim gun; disembowel him with a bayonet or batter in his skull with the butt end of a rifle!' When He said, 'If one take thy coat, give him thy cloak also,' the 'Christians' say that what He really meant was: 'If one take thy coat, give him six months' hard labour. A few of the followers of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... such a task was beyond the sphere of woman. Perhaps this led to a discussion upon the privileges of men, in which Johnson put down Mrs. Knowles, who had some hankering for women's rights, by the Shakspearian maxim that if two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind. Driven from her position in this world, poor Mrs. Knowles hoped that sexes might be equal in the next. Boswell reproved her by the remark already quoted, that men might ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... patience would achieve as much, perhaps, as impetuosity. He had ridden many a waiting race, and had won some of them. He was never so sure of his hand at billiards as when the score was strong against him. "Always fight while there's any fight left in you," was a maxim with him. He never surrendered a bet as lost, till the evidence as to the facts was quite conclusive, and had taught himself to regard any chance, be it ever so remote, as ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... neighbours, nor they to me. We don't speak the same language, and I can't bring myself to speak theirs. The old conditions are gone, I know. But my feeling remains pretty much, what that of my forefathers was. I recognise that it is not common nowadays—but I have the old maxim in my blood: ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Anything to escape from realities—that was his maxim. He puzzled his contemporaries. But we can now locate him with absolute certainty. He personifies the Revolt from Reason. SURTOUT, MON AMI, POINT DE ZELE. He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity—a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the country that day, and smiling keepers touched their pockets, and shook their heads pityingly at late comers; and even in the markets jolly butchers laughed, and sawed, and cut, and counted their money—and those leathery fellows that were never jolly, suddenly found out a new commercial maxim, that jollity is the best policy, and they fell to laughing too. 'Christmas is coming!' thought everybody. 'Christmas is coming!' and some of the lively small bells in the towers, not grown yet to years of ripe discretion, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in my time," returned his father. "Perfectly healthy in all reason! Ay! you may laugh, young folks, but I never heard of any receipt to hinder people from dying; and let well alone is a safe maxim." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spend an evening, and a louis, at Maxim's, or at Henry's, to see the company that came to dine there when the German army was still entrenched within sixty miles of Paris. They were not crowded, those places of old delight, and the gaiety had gone from them, like the laughter of fair women who have passed beyond the river. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... maxim that words which add nothing to the sense or to the clearness must diminish the force ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... has got the chance of his life, The chance of earning glorious scars, And I picture him scouring a land of strife, Crouching over his handle-bars, His open exhaust, with its roar and stench, Like a Maxim ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... reply; "but they could afford it, which was more than we could do. Remember the maxim, my young friend, when you shall come to be a general, that the only security for gaining battles is, to have good troops, and a good many of them.—The French recruits fought like recruits, without knowing whether the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... with one's years. The time was when she had despised false hair, having a natural wealth of her own, and now, with a few thin gray strands hidden under her golden wig, she had become morally reconciled to necessity. "It is a hard world, and one lives as one must," was her favourite maxim. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... perfection; and if I keep him, I must sustain his administration as a whole, even if there are, now and then, things that are exceptionable. All government includes some necessary hardness. General rules will bear hard on particular cases.' This last maxim my father seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of cruelty. After he had said that, he commonly drew up his feet on the sofa, like a man that has disposed of a business, and betook himself to a nap, or the newspaper, as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... reminded him, "that we live in scientific times. With a telescopic sight, and a Maxim Silencer on his rifle, a good marksman could steady it on the back of one of those seats and pick us off at twice the distance without ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... off with a reservation like that, Miss Copley. You made a naive, but very wise, remark this afternoon when you said you might just as well tell me something, especially as I was bound to find it out anyway. Stick to that maxim. It will save me ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... country stands guard with him: to-day it is the turn of the one, to-morrow of the other. When danger and devotion are common, flight is parricide. No one has the right to flee from danger; no one can serve as a scapegoat. The maxim of Caiaphas—IT IS RIGHT THAT A MAN SHOULD DIE FOR HIS NATION—is that of the populace and of tyrants; the two extremes ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... genius of poetry, I own, if Nature has not given it you, you cannot have it, for it is a true maxim that Poeta nascitur non fit. It is much otherwise with oratory, and the maxim there is Orator fit, for it is certain that by study and application every man can make himself a pretty good orator, eloquence depending ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 'status belli' is the natural relation between the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance? Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... her any spark of manliness he might have possessed. 'You think so, Sarah, you think so perhaps; but you would have acted quite different, my good fellow. You will not have forgotten that it was a maxim with Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—"Always suspect everybody." That's the maxim to go through life with! If you were not actually about to purchase your own safety when I showed myself, I suspect you'd have done it by this time. And therefore I've done it myself, and spared you the trouble ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... able to force their way up the river, and that Clive would not therefore think of attacking on that side, that the only precaution they took at first was the erection of two batteries outside the Fort. It is a well-known maxim in war that one should attack at that point at which the enemy deems himself most secure, and it will be seen that all Clive's efforts were aimed at preparing for Admiral Watson ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... illustrated the practical operation of one of the rules which guided Rhodes' business life. He once said, "Never fight with a man if you can deal with him." He lived up to this maxim even with the savage Matabeles from ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and speculation the State's guiding maxim was laissez faire. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... "casual" and regardless who read it—the gatless, as they say in Suffolk—ponder the lesson which it teaches: a lesson which no amount of bitter experience has ever impressed on the unprincipled narrator. Never do anything carelessly whether in fishing or in golf, and carry this important maxim even into the most serious affairs of life. Many a battle has been lost, no doubt, by lack of ammunition, or by plenty of ammunition which did not happen to suit the guns; and many a salmon has been lost, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... I know the gunboats carry Maxim guns, and each have two sergeants of the marine artillery, I will hand you over to them, and ask them to put you in the Maxim crew. Then you will have the satisfaction of helping to fire at ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... decked anew in foliage and robed in the most beautiful flowers. For me, this is now the time of thorns; but God help me not to be cast down! I believe your word, best of fathers. Perhaps I may see in my life the truth of your favourite maxim—'Patience produces roses.'" Thus poor Mary consoled herself ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... bring forward such a strange maxim. Jealousy is always odious and monstrous; nothing can soften its injurious attacks; the dearer the object of our love is to us, the more deeply we feel its offensive attempts. To see a passionate Prince, losing every moment ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... waste. What's poured out mun be drunk. That's my maxim." So saying, he replaced the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... than its real usefulness. Subsequent events have shown that its capacity was not great in retarding the approach of an enemy's fleet to the city. It was the error of Sir Peter Parker—obeying an old but exploded military maxim, not to leave an armed post of the enemy in his rear—to pause before a fortress, the conquest of which could in no wise contribute to his success,—and defeat before which, must necessarily endanger his final objects. It was still the impression ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... have heard of the French Cabinet's decision of 5th December, but he must have read of the ambiguous treatment of the Belgians at the bar of the Convention the day previously. It had long been a maxim at Whitehall that the Pays Bas must never go to France. To prevent such a disaster England had poured forth blood and treasure for more than a century. Pitt's resolve two years before, to maintain ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... as Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer, but the reliques of the three Marys, who fled from Judea in company with Sts. Lazare, Maxim, and Trophime, and other followers, including their servant Sara, have given it the popular name ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Mr Cypress—a maxim which you perhaps despise. Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation: it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind's alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... colonial city on the Bay of Tarentum. At first he established a school, but, favoured by local dissensions, he gradually organized from the youths who availed themselves of his instructions a secret political society. Already it had passed into a maxim among the learned Greeks that it is not advantageous to communicate knowledge too freely to the people—a bitter experience in persecutions seemed to demonstrate that the maxim was founded on truth. The step from a secret philosophical society to a political conspiracy is but short. Pythagoras ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... nothing from Tom since their parting, and had given up all expectation of meeting him again; but that bad penny maxim proved true once more, for, as he was walking through one of the streets of Augusta, he had the misfortune to meet him—and this time it was ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... we ought not to speak evil of the dead; that is very well, but as this maxim was not observed toward Lord Byron, I also will repeat what I have heard said of his wife—I mean that the blame was hers—that her temper was so bad, her manners so harsh and disagreeable, that no one could endure her society; that she was avaricious, wicked, scolding; that people hated ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... with a thousand other signs, extinguishes that hope utterly. On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... world rests upon the natural, though divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally understood; and Locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral interpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of Socrates. He seriously invoked the Scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that which it does not contain. For this reason the unconscious, after all, could never have given rise to consciousness. Observation and experiment could not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... franchise. If the Government has the good sense to make these concessions, which are both legitimate and urgent, rather than remain doggedly on the defensive, with the conviction that it has right on its ride; if, in a word, it remembers the well-known maxim, "Summum jus, summa injuria," the horrors of civil war may be averted. We are told, and I fancy correctly, that the Federal Guards are not without fear concerning the issue of the events into which they have hurried. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... must be temperate; that to gain the love of others it is necessary to do them good, that to do them evil is a sure means to incur their vengeance and hatred? "Before the law there was no sin." Nothing is more false than this maxim. It suffices that man is what he is, or that he is a sensible being, in order to distinguish what gives him pleasure or displeasure. It suffices that one man knows that another man is a sensible being like himself, to perceive what is useful or hurtful to him. It suffices ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... holly-berries. No purposeless looking at them would have stirred appreciation. Whether the end is doing, or whether it is thinking, the two are inextricably connected; in the earlier stages the way to know and feel is very often by action, and here is the basis of the maxim that handwork ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... I can give advice as well as yourself; aye and I will bestow it most plentifully, if you happen to feel any desire after more. I hate to be ungrateful; you shall have no opportunity to utter your musty maxim upon me—'That the sin of ingratitude is worse than the sin of witchcraft.' You shall have weight for weight, measure for measure, chicken; aye, my market woman, and a lumping ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... partial and temporary relief. Most of the state and crown land in European Russia is not suitable for cultivation, or it is situated in northern provinces where agriculture is unprofitable on account of extremely unfavorable climatic conditions. According to Professor Maxim Kovalefski, the crown lands of European Russia comprise about 22,000,000 acres. Of the 4,933,000 acres that are arable and well located, 4,420,000 acres are already leased to the peasants upon terms that are quite as favorable as they could hope to obtain by purchase, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Socrates, "it would appear to be unreasonable; yet still, perhaps, it has some reason on its side. The maxim, indeed, given on this subject in the mystical doctrines,[29] that we men are in a kind of prison, and that we ought not to free ourselves from it and escape, appears to me difficult to be understood, and not easy to penetrate. This, however, appears to me, Cebes, to be well ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... more powerful than man has protected us till now, and will still extend a saving arm to us, if we do not give way to complaint and despair. Let all hands set to work. Remember that excellent maxim, God helps those who help themselves. Let us all consider what is best to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... many pupils, and his teaching led to the foundation of the Medical School of the Methodists. His most important maxim was that a cure should be effected "tuto, celeriter, ac jucunde," and he believed that what the physician could do was of primary importance, and vis medicatrix naturae only secondary. He was thus directly opposed to the teaching of Hippocrates. He had little or no faith ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... system, which applies equally in ethics and politics. M'Culloch is simply generalising Adam Smith's congenial doctrine that statesmen are guilty of absurd presumption when they try to interfere with a man's management of his own property.[364] This theory, again, is expressed by the familiar maxim pas trop gouverner, which is common to the whole school, and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... way or another. The woman does not know how much she will need religion, nor what comfort it may bring to her. The man does not know all the objections to it which may disclose themselves to his understanding as the years ripen. There is always at work that most unfortunate maxim, tacitly held and acted upon in ninety-nine marriages out of a hundred, that money is of importance, and social position is of importance, and good connections are of importance, and health and manners ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... there is but one honest course; and that is, to do right and trust the consequences to Divine Providence. 'Duties are ours: events are God's.' Policy, with all her cunning, can devise no rule so safe, salutary and effective, as this simple maxim. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... The maxim that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" fits the present case very neatly. A horse whose hocks have a somewhat puffy look and whose skin on the front of the hock is loose and flabby, justly subjects himself to a suspicion of addictedness ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that in all the faiths of the world there is belief in such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as to truth—that which is as the hall mark on the silver showing that the metal is pure—that ancient maxim is here valid, that whatever has been believed everywhere, whatever has been believed at every time, and by every ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... fire, to elude the maxim, "Ecclesia non novit sanguinem;" for burning a man, say they, does not shed his blood. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of these stratagems, abounded with all the pleasures he could desire, yet he began now to reflect with himself on that grand and noble maxim of life, that we are not born for ourselves only, but indebted to all mankind, to be of as great use and service to them, as our capacities and abilities will enable us to be; he, therefore, gave a handsome gratuity to a famous rat-catcher (who assumed the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... wise," said Madame Marneffe, who had been frightened by this scene, and had no remembrance of having uttered this maxim. "I am sure you are right, my dear child. Life is not so long after all, and we must make the best of it, and make use of others to contribute to our enjoyment. Even I have learned that, young as I am. I was brought up a spoilt child, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... income," was a maxim uttered by Mr. Carnegie on his seventy-sixth birthday. This is easy; the difficulty is ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... also all the eggs which are dropped, or deposited out of place by the queen; in this way, nothing goes to waste, and even a tiny egg is turned to some account. Was there ever a better comment upon the maxim? "Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... of these schools was, that it was not lawful only, but commendable to deceive, and assert falsehoods for the sake of promoting what they considered as the cause of truth and piety, and the effects of this maxim, which was fully acted upon by both orthodox Christians, and heretics, produced a multiplicity of false, and spurious writings wherewith the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Personality versus impersonality in art:—how much or how little of one's self one may put into one's work: whether anything at all of it: whether one can put there anything else:—is clearly a far-reaching and complex question. Serviceable as [36] the basis of a precautionary maxim towards the conduct of our work, self-effacement, or impersonality, in literary or artistic creation, is, perhaps, after all, as little possible as a strict realism. "It has always been my rule to put nothing of myself into my works," says another great ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a member of Cromwell's Parliament and Lord Chief Justice of England in 1671. His "Golden Maxim" ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... he did), Napoleon himself said truly, that "if Marius had fallen on his sword amidst the marches of Minturnae, he would never have enjoyed his 7th consulate." No man ever more heartily than Napoleon approved the old maxim, that while there is life there is hope; and, far from thinking seriously at any time of putting an end to his own days, we must doubt if, between his abdication at the Elysee and the time wherein he felt the immediate approach of death, there occurred one day, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... "'A self-feeding Maxim is what I should have,' I said, with gentle sarcasm. 'Well, and suppose I make a sieve of ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... ear, and remained a fixed fact; for long experience had induced the philosophic beast to take for his motto the Yankee maxim, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead!" He knew things were not right; therefore he did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... resting upon the rights, or contemplating the happiness of mankind, and discriminated from the claims of an existing dynasty, be it democratical or monarchical, he was utterly incapable. Carpe diem was his motto, and he was faithful to it; but however proper that Epicurean maxim might have been in the mouth of a Roman poet, or however truly it might depict the philosophy of a Roman courtesan, it is the deadly antagonist of greatness, which it blights in the bud. Out of such a nature as this—a nature unequal to the slightest sacrifice for the benefit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... sort," replied James, drily, "I laughed at him, thinking it the better way.... Well, next day we did really fight. We were sent to take an unoccupied hill. Our maxim was that a hill is always unoccupied unless the enemy are actually firing from it. Of course, the place was chock full of Boers; they waited till we had come within easy range for a toy-pistol, and then fired murderously. We did all we could. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... vulgar abuse, or conservative scorn. Foote squealed out his angry opposition, in the old stupid slang (of Shakespeare perverted from "Macbeth"), about unsexing woman with the right of suffrage, and endeavored to contrast it with property-claims; as if the revolutionary maxim concerning taxation and representation going together is not a property rule. I suspect, too, that personal rights, secured by the right preservative of all rights, are more important than mere property rights. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sustaining the declining battle, or making sure the victory; all these died the death of kings and generals; but he, as it had been some common skirmisher or scout, cast away his life ingloriously, giving testimony to the wisdom of the ancient Spartan maxim, to avoid attacks on walled cities, in which the stoutest warrior may chance to fall by the hand, not only of a man utterly his inferior, but by that of a boy or woman, as Achilles, they say, was slain by Paris in the gates. As for Sylla, it were hard to reckon up how ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... nature breaking out in childhood, and his mother's fond hope was signally defeated. He was passionately fond of athletic sports, and was excelled by none of his years. The determination he evinced in every undertaking guided by his maxim of "Ask nothing but what is right—submit to nothing wrong," seemed to be the key-note of his success, for he was not addicted to books, and his education ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... in Maxim's last night. They tried to clean up the place and the police came. They were all soused to the gills and tried to make everybody there sing ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... her wrist a velvet ribbon ornamented with a steel medallion. Madame Michon was on her knees arranging the three Watteau pleats of the pink dress, and, with her mouth full of pins, delivered herself from one corner of her lips of the following maxim: ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... programme to music Schumann laid down an admirable maxim when he said that while good music was not harmed by a descriptive title it was a bad indication if a composition ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that awakens Kant's enthusiasm. "The preservation of one's own life, for instance, is a duty; but, as every one has a natural inclination to which most men usually devote to this object has no intrinsic value, nor the maxim from which they act any moral import." [Footnote: The Metaphysic of Morality, sec. I.] What shall ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... there could no longer be any doubt that she intended to overhaul them. He made out that she had a long gun for'd, with a battery of two one-pounders on top of her house and something on her port quarter that looked like a Maxim rapid-fire gun. About twenty men, dressed in white cloth, could ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... 5, The Personality of the Writer, and 6, The Style and Diction of the Letters. As regards the Literary Obligations, the Bishop lays down the following maxim: 'A primary test of age in any early Christian writing is the relation which the notices of the words and deeds of Christ and His Apostles bear to the Canonical writings;' and he adds, 'Tried by this test, the Ignatian Epistles proclaim their ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the sphere of Jewish economic activity. The medieval system of Russian society with its division into estates and guilds became an instrument of Jewish oppression. The authorities openly followed the maxim that the Jew was to be robbed of his profession, to the end that it may be turned over to his Christian rival. Under Alexander II, the Government had endeavored to promote handicrafts among the Jews as a counterbalance against their commercial pursuits, and had ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... produce injustice any more than the art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold? The final conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just return evil for evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man, Periander, Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Year, and 'twill keep up your pecker. Giving way to the Blues, you may take it from Punch, Never helped one in heart or exchequer, Under the Mistletoe Bough You cannot do better, I vow, Than make that same maxim your boyhood's first rule, As your very first tip ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... obey their guide, and are happy. Let us therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to live: throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim: that deviation from ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... is a great deal of philosophy in that maxim: a preacher couldn't say as much in a sermon an hour long, as there is in that little story with that little moral reflection at the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... not from Sabina Gallagher, because you're determined to sack her. And not from any other cook as long as you pay the perfectly miserable wages you do at present. You can't expect first-rate results when you sweat your employees. That's a well-known maxim in every business, and the sooner you get it into your head the better. You set yourself up here in Ballymoy as a sort of pioneer of every kind of progress. You're the president of as many leagues and things as would sink a large ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Mendeleef, the Russian chemist, assumed the existence of three then unknown chemical elements, now called Scandium, Gallium and Germanium. There was a gap in the orderly sequence of the chemical elements, and relying on the old maxim—"Natura nihil facit per saltum"—Nature nowhere leaves a gap to jump over—he argued that if such elements did not exist they ought to, and so he calculated what these elements ought to be like, giving their ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... 'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed,' which they contend inquisitors do never violate the true meaning or spirit of, it being evident that to burn men is not to shed their blood—thus eluding the maxim Ecclesia non novit sanguinem. And if their right to burn heretics was questioned they triumphantly cited the text (as given in the 'Beehive' of the Romish Church) 'Whosoever doth not abide in me, shall be cast out of the vineyard as a branch and there wither; and men gather those branches and cast ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... contemporary of all these phenomena. In point of fact, to G.K.C. everybody is either a contemporary or a Victorian, and "I also was born a Victorian." Little Dorrit sets him talking about Gissing, Hard Times suggests Herbert Spencer, American Notes leads to the mention of Maxim Gorky, and elsewhere Mr. George Moore and Mr. William Le Queux are brought in. If Chesterton happened to be writing about Dickens at a time when there was a certain amount of feeling about on the subject of rich Jews on the Rand, then the rich Jews on the Rand would appear in print ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... "——nson, Sir," concluded the victim. That night, at dinner, the Brigadier told the C.O. that, among many disappointments, he had found one officer who seemed to know the names of his men "almost better than the men did themselves." In accordance with J. B.'s maxim about being on the safe side, it was a company order afterwards that, when asked, all even numbers were to be "Evans" and odd numbers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... change of epithet does, however, no injustice to Aristotle's argument. His context makes it plain, that by political philosophy he means the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called "morals." The maxim, in the slightly irregular shape which Shakespeare adopted, enjoyed proverbial currency before the dramatist was born. Erasmus introduced it in this form into his far-famed Colloquies. In France and Italy the warning against instructing youth in moral philosophy ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... somewhat involved passage, that he studied "without nourishment and without garments." However that may be, the same passage shows that while still a student whose course was but half completed, he married, in conformity with the Talmudic maxim, which recommends the Jew to marry at eighteen years of age. From time to time he went to visit his family at Troyes, always returning to Worms ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... success—startling politicians and officials of the ancien regime by his bold and open tactics, and his contempt for tortuous bypaths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical performances ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... maxim with charitable persons—and no more than a recognition of a great constitutional axiom—to assume, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that every British subject is an honest man. Now, if we had gone to Lord Castlemallard ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Buckingham has begun a negotiation there, but what success in England he may have he knows not; that it were to be wished our politicians at home would consider well that there is no trust to be put in alliances with ambitious kings, especially such as make it their fundamental maxim to be base. These are bold words, but they are his own. Besides this, there is nothing but that the French King grows very thrifty, that all his buildings, except fortifications, are ceased, and that his payments are not so regular as they used to be. The people here are of another mind; they ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... the scales had fallen from my eyes. My old idealisation of the life of the tramp, somehow or other, was entirely gone—an idealisation that had, anyhow, been mainly literary, induced by the writings of Jack London, Josiah Flynt and Maxim Gorky. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of their fortune in St. Domingo, he procured his father's release; who, being acquainted with the perversity of his younger son, addressed himself to the department to be reinstated in his property. This was opposed by Louis, who defended his title to the estate by the revolutionary maxim which had passed into a law, enacting that all emigrants should be considered as politically dead. Hitherto Baron de Saurac had, from affection, declined to mention the forged will; but shocked by his son's obduracy, and being reduced to distress, his counsellor produced this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the handsome Italian, pointing his moustache and doing such execution upon me with his splendid eyes, that if they'd been Maxim guns I should have fallen ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to another inquiry than the present. The general rule of old was Distrust, which the crafty Sicilian, as Cicero (Ad Attic. i. 19) calls Epicharmus, was always whispering in his ear. Epicharmus has well expressed his maxim in ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... be accomplished by the United Provinces was the regulation of a distinct and guaranteed line of frontier between the republic and France. This object had become by degrees, ever since the peace of Munster, a fundamental maxim of their politics. The interposition of the Belgian provinces between the republic and France was of serious inconvenience to the former in this point of view. It was made the subject of a special article in "the grand alliance." In the year 1707 it was ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... culture in this country than by looking at what may be called the creative department, and examining the vocal and instrumental sheet-music of native composers continually issued in such large quantities by our publishers. Were we to follow an old maxim, that the best way of judging the inner life of a nation is to listen to its music, and accordingly judge of the sentiments and emotions of Americans by their sheet-music, we should arrive at very discouraging results. The characteristics of our sheet-music, briefly summed up, are: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... degree may be artificially done, by burning of straw in the newly opened pits, and drenching the mould with water; especially in over-dry seasons, and by meliorating barren-ground with sweet and comminuted loetations: Let therefore this be received as a maxim, never to plant a fruit or forest-tree where there has lately been an old decay'd one taken up; till the pit be well ventilated, and furnish'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... romance by Voltaire, and written in ridicule of the famous maxim of Leibnitz, "All for the best in the best of all possible worlds"; it is a sweeping satire, and "religion, political government, national manners, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Couchiching; a cloud Eclipsed the merry sunshine of our hearts. We needed no philosopher to teach That laughter is not always born of joy. "All's for the best," the fair Eliza said; And we derived new courage from her lips, That spake the maxim of her trusting heart. We even smiled, at some portentous sign That signified—well, if it turn out true, Then, I'll believe it. Heaven works in signs More parting words, more lingering farewells, Pressure ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... noble governors diminished, until, by the eighteenth century, the offices of the latter had become largely honorary though still richly remunerative. To keep the nobles amused and in money, and thereby out of mischief and politics, became, from Richelieu's time, a maxim of the royal policy ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... economy a false and sophistical hypothesis, devised to enable the few to exploit the many; and applying the maxim A fructibus cognoscetis, it ends with a demonstration of the impotence and emptiness of political economy by the list of human calamities for which ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... which you have participated. In congratulating you, my fellow citizens, upon an event so auspicious to the dearest interests of man-kind I do no more than respond to the voice of my country, without transcending in the slightest degree that salutary maxim of the illustrious Washington which enjoins an abstinence from all interference with the internal affairs of other nations. From a people exercising in the most unlimited degree the right of self-government, and enjoying, as derived ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... Between going about with a head of glass, with all one's thoughts displayed as in a show-case to every comer, 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
... author famous for his maxims or epigraphs: "Dans l'adversite de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons quelque chose qui ne nous deplait pas" In the misfortune of our best friends, we find something which is not displeasing to us. Maxim No. 99, later suppressed. By the 1840s, a ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... very eyes of the high table, or dais, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects not appearing and objects not existing are governed by the same logical construction. [Footnote: De ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... other consideration is allowed in abatement of the claims of patriotic loyalty, and that such loyalty will be allowed to cover any multitude of sins. When the ancient philosopher described Man as a "political animal," this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the ancient maxim is as good as new. The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life, but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield before those of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of things is as a voice crying in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... only occupied about ten minutes) our artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the while the area from which the sounds proceeded was spreading like a bush-fire; beginning on the right, it worked across our front, spread from the left front along that flank ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... upon by government as the very man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since he knew all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the shrewd old maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Kidd accordingly sailed from New York in the Adventure galley, gallantly armed and duly commissioned, and steered his course to the Madeiras, to Bonavista, to Madagascar, and cruised at the entrance of the Red Sea. Instead, however, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... us, in improving the condition of the African race. We trust it will be readily conceded, that whatever measures have the effect of enlightening any portion of the community, are a public good; and upon this maxim, the education of the children of what are called the lower classes, has often been recommended with a laudable zeal, by statesmen eminent for their wisdom and foresight; from hence, and the acts of some of the State Legislatures, much has been done to enlighten ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a string of harassed recruits trotted round a rough manege lustily encouraged to a rigid observance of the good old maxim, "'eels an' 'ands low; 'eads an' 'earts 'igh," by the astonishing profanity of their riding-master; and beyond them their more proficient comrades charged with wild yells upon a long line of stuffed sacks ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... now, father?" asked Bertram eagerly, forgetting in his eagerness the generally observed maxim that the sons spoke not at table till they were directly addressed. But the knight did not himself heed this breach ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... interests were pursued cooperatively. Each group produced its own language which held that group together and sundered it from others.[233] All are now agreed that, whatever may have been the origin of language, it owes its form and development to usage. "Men's usage makes language." "The maxim that 'usage is the rule of speech' is of supreme and uncontrolled validity in every part and parcel of every human tongue."[234] "Language is only the imperfect means of men to find their bearings in the world of their memories; to make use of their ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... experience, what it was to be in much distress since I came into the world—but I hope I am not the more hard-hearted for that—for I can guess, I say, pretty well, how those in distress feel when they come to speak. Do as you would be done by is my maxim till I can find a better—so I take myself away, leaving my better part behind me, if it will be of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the nation,—in its immediate effect so striking as to affect the organization of parties, in its subsequent effect so powerful as to change the fate of millions. Mr. Lincoln had opened his own canvass by a carefully prepared speech in which, after quoting the maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand, he uttered these weighty words: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the principle of Liberty, I rejoice to see so many people able to follow the free and spontaneous impulses of their inmost beings. For, while we must remember that our every hour is at the disposal of our country, we must not forget the maxim of our fathers: 'Britons never will be slaves.' Only by preserving the freedom of individual conscience, and at the same time surrendering it whole-heartedly to every which the State makes on us, can we hope defeat the machinations of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Christian David," he said, "was calling me the Beast and Mr. Rothe the False Prophet, we could see his honest heart nevertheless, and knew we could lead him right. It is not a bad maxim," he added, "when honest men are going wrong to put them into office, and they will learn from experience what they ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... have not forgotten the maxim of religiously adhering to the word of a gentleman, which, as General, has been the pivot on which my anticipations ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... de chambre of Marie Antoinette, Balzac probably heard this maxim through Madame ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own sense has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and vulgar opinion that rules are the fetters of genius. They are fetters only ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... he passed his youth in the school of adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one—take care of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which is likely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted up to as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especial care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed, till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing, and hoped to gain everything by it. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... required a desperate remedy, and peculiarly by the success which attended it. Had it resulted disastrously, as it ought to have done, it would have been a serious blow to Lee's military prestige. The "nothing venture, nothing have" principle applies to it better than any maxim ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... about Halifax from his own elaborate study of Charles II. It is a prolonged analysis by a man of clear vision, and perfect balance of judgement, and no prepossessions; who was, moreover, master of the easy pellucid style that tends to maxim and epigram. A more impartial and convincing estimate of any king need never be expected. In method and purpose, it stands by itself. It is indeed not so much a character in the accepted sense of the word as a scientific investigation of a personality. Others try to make ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... maxim falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus, were to be received without qualification, the credit of Savage's narrative, as conveyed to us, would be annihilated; for it contains some assertions which, beyond a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... first maxim hath assuredly saved my life: in a good hour was it purchased. My friend," said he to the barber, "on condition that you be ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the moon is claimed to change the weather also. And an old maxim says that the third day before the new moon is the sign of the weather for that moon month. If the new moon comes upon the 10th, then the weather of the 8th is to be the general weather of the ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... human things, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of that most singular personage, as the model of the inscrutable sage in the rooms under the clock. Pattison was understood to be the Megalopsuchos in the flesh. It would have been better for him if he could have realised the truth of the healthy maxim that nobody is ever either so happy or so unhappy as he thinks. He would have been wiser if he could have seen the force in the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... maxim to literature we may say that that is truly beautiful which agrees both with the nature of things themselves and with the inclinations of our senses and of our soul. And since in a work of literature one takes account of sound, diction, and idea, ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... 27: As it were a censure)—Ver. 43. Among the Greeks (whose manners and sentiments are supposed to be depicted in this Play) it was a maxim that he who did a kindness should forget it, while he who received it should keep it in memory. Sosia consequently feels uneasy, and considers the remark of his master in the light ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself,"[14] and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bloody but unavoidable prelude to the beneficent functions of peace. The conflict was not of our seeking. Be the consequences what they may, the Sikhs will have themselves to blame, should it so happen, for the illustration of the maxim, that "when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Necessity of determining the relative importance of truths. 58 Sec. 2. Misapplication of the aphorism: "General truths are more important than particular ones." 58 Sec. 3. Falseness of this maxim, taken without explanation. 59 Sec. 4. Generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. 59 Sec. 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. 60 Sec. 6. All truths valuable as they are characteristic. 61 Sec. 7. Otherwise ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... supported by the fire of the other vessels—with that of the flag-ship, inflicted by the batteries of the enemy's gun-boats, few in number, but worked for the time with impunity, we find an excellent illustration of Farragut's oft-repeated maxim, that "to hurt your enemy is the best way to keep him from hurting you." The total loss of the United States fleet in the battle was three hundred and thirty-five; of whom one hundred and thirteen were at the bottom of the bay, coffined in the iron ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... of King Lemuel (xxxi. 1), The same proverbs also recur In different groups, indicating that originally they were independent collections, gleaned from the same field. When the first collection was made, the title Proverb of Solomon evidently meant a popular maxim handed down from antiquity and therefore naturally attributed to the most famous wise man in Israel's early history. It is an instructive fact that later proverbs, the immediate superscriptions to which plainly state ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... orators are made: nascuntur poetae, fiunt oratores. You understand why I have engraved this maxim on the title-page of my work. It contains its raison d'etre, its justification. Men are poets at birth, but eloquence is an art to be taught and learned. All art presupposes rules, procedures, a mechanism, a method which must ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... discovered his mistake, and he may then take up the correct office at the part or hour at which he leaves off, or he may finish the Hour at which he was engaged. The former solution of the difficulty seems the better, as it more accurately agrees with the maxim, error corrigatur ubi apprehenditur. If the error in the selecting of the office has been wilful, say, through gross carelessness, and is the fault of the priest who changes a notable part of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... To understand this maxim aright, we must go back to the oppressive regime of ancient society. Quesnay's formula was, first of all, a protest against the restraints which hampered the free development of labor. But it did not tend to abrogate the office of legislator, nor to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... selfishness, stupidity, and prejudice that prevail in the world and resist the course of just and rational reform. He described Turgot to Samuel Rogers as an excellent person, very honest and well-meaning, but so unacquainted with the world and human nature that it was a maxim with him, as he had himself told David Hume, that whatever ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... reproved for his worldliness in amassing a large enough fortune to buy a good farm, answered his complaining congregation thus: "I have obtained the money to buy this farm by neglecting to follow the maxim to 'mind my own business.' My business was to study the word of God and attend to my parish duties and preach good sermons. All this I acknowledge I have not done, for I have been meddling with your business. That was ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... surprise were not encouraging; yet I had so long endured the natural indolence of negrodom, that I hardly expected either a different reply or influential support, from his majesty. Nevertheless, I was not disheartened. I remembered the old school-boy maxim, non vi sed saepe cadendo, and determined to effect by degrees what I could not achieve at a bound. For a while I tried the effect of higher wages; but an increase of rum, tobacco, and coin, could not string the nerves or cord the muscles ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... began, firing in the questions with the speed of a Maxim. "Something worth while, judging from that mysterious letter of yours. What is the scheme? Why this secret meeting in the forest instead of in town? Why"—but the man he called captain interrupted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... consistency,) "Here the conjunction than has certainly the force of a preposition, and supplies its place by governing the relative."—Russell's Abridgement of Murray's Gram., p. 104. But this is hardly an instance to which one would apply the maxim elsewhere adopted by Murray: "Exceptio probat regulam."—Octavo Gram., p. 205. To ascribe to a conjunction the governing power of a preposition, is a very wide step, and quite too much like straddling the line which separates these parts of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Wadsworth friend, writing to us since father's death, says of him: "From a boy Pardee was remarkable for his uprightness, and bold and strict honesty, and it was a maxim among the boys to say, 'As honest as Pard, Butler.' He and his father before him were specimens of puritanical honesty and courage, and had they lived in the days of Cromwell and in England, would doubtless have been ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... defiance, I'll toss every atom of her beggarly furniture out of the door;' and so he did—but by dad I thought he done it in a jokin' way, as much as to say, I can take the liberty where another can't. I knew, becoorse, he was wrong; but that makes no maxim—I'll go on wid my story. On our way home we came to the green fields that lie on this side of the haunted house; a portion of it, on a risin' ground, is covered with furz. Now listen—when we came to it he stood; 'Barney,' says he, 'there's a hare here; give me the dogs, Sambo and Snail; ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Articles of our Faith and the Ten Commandments, no man, or, at the least, very few of them, do either know them or can say them: their opinion is that such secret and holy things as they are should not rashly and imprudently be communicated with the common people. They hold for a maxim amongst them that the old Law, and the Commandments also, are all abolished by the death and blood of Christ; all studies and letters of humanity they utterly refuse; concerning the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, they are altogether ignorant ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... Paul. "I maintain that the old maxim of 'early to bed' says something on that score, as well ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... himself acquainted with the orders of the House, of which it was obvious he knew nothing. The Duke of Devonshire told Lady Lyndhurst that her husband ought to resign his judicial situation because he had displayed hostility to Government the other night, but it would be a new maxim to establish that the judges were to be amenable to the Minister for their ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... to the world, and when he breaks his habit of reticence it is to utter an aphorism, perfect in concision and cynicism. "Avoid all honorary posts that cost time"—this was one of his earliest counsels to the young. "Pay a profit to nobody" is perhaps his favourite maxim. "Nothing is too small, for small things grow," is another principle which he formulated at the outset of his career. "I have ways of making money that you know nothing of," he once told a colleague, and no one will doubt the truth of his ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... "Count Kostia was right; but unfortunately passion will not listen to reason. I left him with death in my heart, but firmly resolved to cope with him and to carry my point. You see that upon this occasion I observed but poorly the great maxim, Sequere fatum. I flattered myself I should be able to stem the current. Vain illusion!—but without it would one be in love? Pauline lived in a small town at about two leagues from our village. Whenever I had leisure, I mounted a horse and flew to her. The third day after ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... his credit by an exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... their retreat cut off, fight so fiercely that I might be overpowered. Even the most cowardly troops will fight, under those circumstances. Therefore, while threatening their line of retreat, I still leave it open to them. It is a maxim in war, you know, always to leave a bridge open ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... death by the vigilance of Kiuprili, the revolt spread throughout Anatolia and Syria, and the sultan was preparing to take the field in person, when treachery succeeded in accomplishing what force had failed to effect. It has been an uniform maxim of the Ottoman domestic policy, which singularly contrasts with their scrupulous observance of the treaties entered into with foreign powers, that no faith is to be kept with fermanlis, or traitors to the Padishah; and in the assured belief, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... urge only that as a guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all systems which imply an unnatural repression or an unnatural excitation of our faculties—are ill-suited for the mass of mankind. And on the other hand, if we are ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... frontier maxim once, which ran, "If you must fight, strike first, and strike hard." The words flashed in my memory, and I put them to the test straightway. These prowling savages were apparently unaware of my predicament; their sole thought ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... conclude that Augustus, who was not altogether so good as he was wise, had some by-respect in the enacting of this law; for to do anything for nothing was not his maxim. Horace, as he was a courtier, complied with the interest of his master; and, avoiding the lashing of greater crimes, confined himself to the ridiculing of petty vices and common follies, excepting only some reserved cases in his odes and epodes of his own particular ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... was clearly to keep Cally's mind off it, as you do with the near relatives of the deceased. And was it possible that even Mats's sweet girlishness showed a subtle trace of confirmation of the Frenchman's bitter maxim, that in the misfortunes of our friends there is something not altogether ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his degraded brothers in art still quarrelling about the merits of the old and the new school, and still exulting in their vague conceptions and expeditious methods. Lodovico, who had observed all, had summed up his principle in one grand maxim,—that of combining a close observation of nature with the imitation of the great masters, modifying both, however, by the disposition of the artist himself. Such was the simple idea and the happy project of Lodovico! Every perfection seemed to have been obtained: the Raffaeleschi excelled ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... hand. He has generally been called selfish, somewhat unfairly; at least his selfishness never took the form of indifference or unkindness to others. In one sense he was a truer philosopher than Cicero: for he seems to have acted through life on that maxim of Socrates which his friend professed to approve, but certainly never followed,—that "a wise man kept out of public business". His vocation was certainly not patriotism; but the worldly wisdom which kept well with men of all political colours, and eschewed the wretched intrigues ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... usual. Mademoiselle, ever breathlessly busy, spent it in bustling from kitchen to parlour, now scolding Sarah, now looking over Caroline's exercise or hearing her repetition-lesson. However faultlessly these tasks were achieved, she never commended: it was a maxim with her that praise is inconsistent with a teacher's dignity, and that blame, in more or less unqualified measure, is indispensable to it. She thought incessant reprimand, severe or slight, quite necessary to the maintenance of her authority; and if no possible error was to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favorite maxim, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various |
