Sentence Examples:
Moreover, as the sentences which have just been quoted may suggest, the maxim that has once hit the occasion, or the new practice or expedient once necessitated by the conditions of the moment, has been readily hallowed as expressing the wisdom of the ages.
I believe that, in point of fact, when drawing inferences from our personal experience, and not from maxims handed down to us by books or tradition, we much oftener conclude from particulars to particulars directly, than through the intermediate agency of any general proposition.
These are the specious maxims by which fathers, who mistake them for prudence, strive to make their children the slaves of the prejudices in which they are educated, and the puppets of the senseless crowd, which they hope to make subservient to their passions.
It must be regarded as a misfortune for Theodoric that his maxims of statesmanship, which were assuredly full of manly sense and vigor, should have reached us only in such a shape, diluted with the platitudes and false rhetoric of a scholar of the decadence.
When I took the liberty to show her that the representative of an assembly could not, without prevarication, but deliver the thoughts of the whole body, though they might be different from his own, she replied, very angrily, "These are mere republican maxims."
In short, this whole discussion, and the unwarranted assumption involved in it and largely accepted, is an illustration of what may be regarded as a maxim, that the greatest errors in political economy have arisen from overlooking the most obvious facts or deductions from experience.
The maxim of secular law that the torture which did not produce confession entitled the accused to full acquittal was not in force under ecclesiastical indictments, and the person accused of witchcraft was always liable to be tried again for the same crime.
On the contrary, by this methodology is understood the mode in which we can give the laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and influence on its maxims, that is, by which we can make the objectively practical reason subjectively practical also.
Knowledge in the arts of government naturally begets mildness and moderation, by instructing men in the advantages of humane maxims above rigor and severity, which drive subjects into rebellion, and render the return to submission impracticable, by cutting off all hopes of pardon.
For poetry, however, young Richard had a decided inclination in his school years; and this was significant, inasmuch as it afterwards became his cardinal maxim that in an opera "the play's the thing," and the music merely a means of intensifying the emotional expression.
It is one of the most notable achievements of the American commonwealths that they have so distinctly separated between the domain of religion and of politics, adopting in the one case the maxim of coercion by majority rule, in the other allowing the full measure of individual liberty.
Lady Mary's character was certainly deficient in that cautious delicacy which is the best guardian of female reputation; and there seems to have been in her conduct something of that intrepidity which naturally gives rise to misconstruction, by setting at defiance the maxims of ordinary discretion.
It is well for us, however, to be admonished of the necessity of abiding by the maxims of the most vigilant economy, and of resorting to all honorable and useful expedients for pursuing with steady and inflexible perseverance the total discharge of the debt.
Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other, never mind what, during their watch on deck.
The old Censor lays down some maxims which, like the preceding, have served as texts for a good many modern writers, and may be found expanded, diluted, or strengthened, in the essays of Addison and Johnson, and in many of their followers of less repute.
It was a process of analogical development by extension here and restriction there, of generalization, first in the form of maxims and later by laying down broad principles, and of cautious striking out of new paths, giving them course and direction by trial and error.
The more modern style was esteemed the best: the last master seemed to discover new maxims in painting, and abolished the old: and thus artists of little celebrity gave birth to others more minute and mannered, resembling their prototype in maxims, but inferior in reputation.
It is upon this principle or maxim, that all honorable trade professes now to be conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive operation is so glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind, that those who carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats.
There is no absurdity in this doctrine, for a legislative assembly may have only a limited power, like the Congress of the United States of America; and it was by no means so startling then as now, when the omnipotence of Parliament has passed into a maxim.
It is a maxim commonly received, that a wise man is never surprised; and, perhaps, this exemption from astonishment may be imagined to proceed from such a prospect into futurity, as gave previous intimation of those evils which often fall unexpected upon others that have less foresight.
They got nearer and nearer to the innocent-looking brewery entrance and to the houses and other places where the unseen rifles were covering them; then, just at the right moment, the maxims from the armored car rattled, and the rifles kept them company.
It is manifest that the maxims of the Athenian policy were directly at variance with the general feeling of justice entertained by the Greeks, and especially to the respect for affinity of blood; and this fundamental difference was the true cause of the Peloponnesian War.
Agreeably to the theory of his favorite maxim, which made moderation the essence of wisdom, he seems to have generally favored, in politics, the middle party, and, in his own actions, to have been singular for that energy which is the equilibrium of indifference and of rashness.
This reorganization drew from his fertile brain some military maxims for camp and field service which were in harmony with the writings of the best military authors of that period, and his study of available military works was exact, unremitting, and never forgotten.
It determines the will by imposing on its maxim the condition of a universal legislative form, and thus it is able for the first time to impart practical reality to reason, which otherwise would continue to be transcendent when seeking to proceed speculatively with its ideas.
The business maxim of "service," the practices of refunding money if goods are unsatisfactory, of one price to all, of providing sanitary and even attractive factories and homes, and of paying a minimum wage far in excess of the market price, have often proved highly remunerative.
It is not unnatural that starting with false definitions of man and of wealth, economists should arrive at a false conclusion regarding the so-called beauties of our industrial system, and of such time-honored though immoral maxims as "competition is the soul of trade" and "caveat emptor."
The reason of existence of all magic, which runs up into unfathomable antiquity, lies in the maxim of the ancient sages, Egyptian, Hebrew, Platonist, that all things visible and sensible are but types of things or beings immediately above them, and have their origin in such.
There is a saying that an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief: a maxim, however, of doubtful value, since no other person could so thoroughly appreciate the tempting opportunities which must arise day after day.
His complaints, instead of vanishing, were every day more and more enraged: and at length he was confined to his bed, where he lay blaspheming from morn to night, and from night to morn, though still more determined than ever to adhere to his former maxims.
To enter thoroughly into this method of thinking, we must make allowance for the ancient maxims, that no one ought to prolong his life after it became dishonorable; but, as he had always a right to dispose of it, it then became a duty to part with it.
Though his aims and hopes differed from Harvey Raymond's as the open sea from a slime-covered morass, he too made the mistake of imagining that money could level all obstacles; which, if regarded as an infallible maxim, is misleading alike to the just and the unjust.
Now we saw that the notion of a Promise requires several qualifications not commonly noticed to make it precise: but this alone is no reason why it may not be fitly used in framing a maxim, which when enunciated and understood will properly claim universal acceptance as self-evident.
There is a saying that an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief: a maxim however, of doubtful value, since no other person could so thoroughly appreciate the tempting opportunities which must arise day after day.
Others have demonstrated in an accurately analytical manner that he lacks lyricism or poetry of style; that the construction of his phrase is logical, with its "because," its "but," its "then," that he over-abounds in maxims and altogether ignores metaphor, the picturesque and musicality.
Nay, it is even with one class of people, whose number is not inconsiderable, growing into a maxim, or kind of aphorism, that all Religion consists in doing right between man and man, in promoting the temporal welfare, the order, and best civil good of society.
And what may be esteemed still a stronger proof that this maxim was not familiarly known in those ages, no ancient author has ever remarked the imprudence of these measures, nor has even blamed that absurd treaty above-mentioned made by Philip with the Carthaginians.
Maxims are, it is true, fit instruments for the communication of knowledge already acquired, and in learned disputations may perform indispensable service in silencing opponents, or in bringing the dispute to a conclusion; but they are of little or no use in the discovery of new truth.
He was seized, interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned; but the wretch would not reveal the names of his associates, although he gloried in the crime he was about to commit, and alleged, as his excuse, that violent diseases required desperate remedies, the maxim of the Jesuits.
We will now turn to the investigation of the cube and open a new world of information to the child, and here we seem to deviate a little from the famous educational maxim, "Proceed from the known to the unknown," and almost to make a leap into the dark.
I count it a singular piece of good fortune that the choice of the scientific maxims should be undertaken by so eminent a judge of their practical value, who is also a scholar in the language and a great admirer of Goethe in his other and better known productions.
He adhered in a great measure to the maxims of this school, a circumstance which did not altogether please his first master, who on examining some of his early performances, remarked, that they required a greater covering of dirt, for they appear to him too trimly neat.
Another application of the maxim that like produces like is seen in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles.
He honored the senate; and the provinces flourished under him, not only because he kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the governors, but because he made it a maxim of his government to continue in their places all those whose probity he had sufficiently proved.
This tutor, whose name was Jennings, began with Perry, according to his constant maxim, by examining the soil; that is, studying his temper, in order to consult the bias of his disposition, which was strangely perverted by the absurd discipline he had undergone.
I have been annotated, re-tattled, examined, and condoled; but it being my standing maxim never to speak ill of the dead, I shall let these authors rest in peace, and take great pleasure in thinking that I have sometimes been the means of their getting a bellyful.
The result was that the English and other Franks who lived amongst them and dealt with them knew about as much of Turkish life, of Turkish ways of thought, of Turkish maxims of conduct, as an undesirable alien dwelling in Whitechapel knows of English life.
It was his firmest maxim, that whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed, that the commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor.
Edward Lloyd, himself; acting always up to the maxim, practically maintained by slaveholders, that it is better that a dozen slaves suffer under the lash, without fault, than that the master or the overseer should seem to have been wrong in the presence of the slave.
The Native Chiefs very soon understood the maxims which regulated his personal relations towards them; and the outburst of passionate grief that took place among them on his death proves whether the Indian Princes are, or are not, capable of appreciating such a line of conduct.
Some time ago a good professional golfer asserted that the well-known maxim "Keep your eye on the ball" was a delusion, and that it was possible to play perfectly good golf blindfolded, provided one had first taken one's stance and judged one's swing at the ball.
It is found in the Bedouin encampments of Arabia, it is found in the pastoral communities of Afghanistan, and it is found among the wandering shepherds of Asia Minor; but amid the barbaric millions of China, with their innumerable maxims of virtue, the true sentiment is very rare.
This mighty despot having determined that the new maxims which had become binding on his own conscience should henceforth be law to his subjects, proceeded to inscribe them on stone in every corner of his dominions, that the wayfarer might read them for himself.
An instinctive policy to avoid feeling with respect to this prevailing destruction, has so effectually taught us how to maintain the exemption, by all the requisite sleights of overlooking, diverting, forgetting, and admitting deceptive maxims of palliation, that the art or habit is become almost mechanical.
This was about the extent of the religious training they received; and it was strongly counteracted by the worldly atmosphere of their home, the worldly example set them by their parents, and the worldly maxims and precepts constantly instilled into their young minds.
Although many of its maxims show a primitive state of society, as a whole they are the experience of a people more advanced in culture than we are apt to fancy the Norsemen of the Viking Age, who could nevertheless philosophize at home as sturdily as they fought abroad.
This is only a maxim of the reflective, not of the determinant Judgement; consequently only subjectively valid for us, not objectively for the possibility of things themselves of this kind (in which both kinds of production may well cohere in one and the same ground).
They act upon the well-established maxim that prevention is better than cure; and their first solicitation is to gain the countenance and support of the sober, temperate, respectable, and influential classes of the community, whose combined example may operate upon the mass of the population.
And of Scott, though he strives to do justice to the pride of all Scotchmen, and admits Scott's merit in breathing life into the past, his real judgment is based upon the maxim that literature must have higher aims 'than that of harmlessly amusing indolent languid men.'
Some of their favorite sayings may eventually have been incorporated in the Book of Proverbs, but the antagonism of the great prophets shows that they were not enthusiasts for reform, and doubtless the bulk of their maxims were prudential counsels suitable to the standards of the age.
It will depend only on you to find again in the French Government the support which it has always granted to your predecessors, when they have classed with their principal duties the preaching of maxims which help to confirm peace, morality, and obedience to the civil power.
Our "self-made men," who govern the country by their wealth and influence, have found their place by adapting themselves to the particular circumstances in which they were placed, and not by studying the broad maxims of "Poor Richard," or any other moralist or economist.
One universal maxim I have constantly observed among them, that they would rather gain a shilling by cheating you, than twenty in the honest way of dealing, although they were sure to lose your custom, as well as that of others, whom you might probably recommend to them.
It has been proposed to the young, as a maxim of supreme wisdom, to manage so dexterously in conversation, as to appear to be well acquainted with subjects, of which they are totally ignorant; and this, by affecting silence in regard to those, on which they are known to excel.
The poetical wiseacre who endowed the world with the maxim, "A little learning is a dangerous thing," does not appear to have reflected upon the logical sequence of the dictum, namely: that if a little learning upon any subject is dangerous, then less must be still more dangerous.
Practicing on his own maxim to 'open the heart to sincere veneration for all excellence' in human act and thought, not even his profound admiration for the surpassing genius of Goethe could draw him into sympathy with the heartlessness and colossal egoism of his later career.
There is no great writer who is less careful to guard himself from even grave misconstructions, or whose eager, impetuous sentences, when matters which touch his sympathies and affections are in question, are more likely, if formulated into maxims and rules of action, to lead weak minds astray.
And as the primitive family grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of knowledge widened, this primitive schooling by the mother was supplemented and extended by the showing of things by companions and by the maxims and initiations of old men.
When we call to mind the avarice by which it has been actuated, the duplicity it has practiced, and the impositions of which it has been guilty, it appears to be a corporation organized to make money, regardless of every maxim of justice, and every principle of honor.
In practical affairs, the best philosophy is common sense, which is nothing else than the abstract and epitome of the experience of all mankind through all time; and this arbiter condemns all three of the above maxims as the words of folly and not of wisdom.
In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
If they punished those who left the kingdom, they violated the maxims of liberty, rendered sacred by the declaration of rights; if they did not raise obstacles to emigration, they endangered the safety of France, as the nobles merely quitted it in order to invade it.
No maxim of law, it was said, is more established, or more universally allowed, than that privilege of parliament extends not to treason, felony, or breach of peace; nor has either house, during former ages, ever pretended, in any of those cases, to interpose in behalf of its members.
Granting all that can be established as to the debt of the world to the very best dispensation, the fact still remains, that there is not a single maxim, nor idea, nor application, nor triumph, that any single religion can claim as exclusively its own.
I hold it as a fixed maxim that, when a man or a family put on a slovenly appearance in their houses, stairs, and lanterns, I always find their reflectors, burners, windows, and light in general, ill attended to; and, therefore, I must insist on cleanliness throughout.
Two plain dishes, with two or three good-natured, cheerful, ingenuous friends, would make me more pleased and vain than all that pomp and luxury can bestow; for it is my maxim that "he keeps the greatest table who has the most valuable company at it."'
The cynical newspaper editors, whose first maxim in life is that nothing can ever be changed, picked out their cleverest young wits and sent them to spy in our nursery, and eavesdrop in our pantry, and report all the absurdities they could see or hear or invent.
This maxim of egoism, which has, indeed, its advantages in procuring the means to the end in view, itself concurrently destroys the ultimate end, namely, contentment; like the bear in the fable that throws a stone at the hermit to kill the fly on his nose.
In the orations in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen and formative of their own character; they record their views of their political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish the principles of their designs and conduct.
It was a work of mere literary curiosity, and of a better description of miscellaneous writing than that of the prevalent fashion of giving thoughts and maxims, and fanciful characters, and idle stories, which had satiated the public taste: however, the book was not well received.
Indeed, after all their efforts to fix these things by positive and inflexible maxims, the best Roman lawyers, in their best ages, were obliged to confess that every case of evidence rather formed its own rule than that any rule could be adapted to every case.
To desire war without reflection, to be unreasonably elated with success, to be still more unreasonably depressed by difficulties, and to call out for peace with an impatience which makes suitable terms unattainable, are the established maxims and the regular progress of the popular mind in this country.
I was quite familiar with the work, and its absurdity and wisdom, and we discussed chivalry and its social aspect, as well as its system of land tenures, together with Sancho's judgment after he became governor of the island, and Don Quixote's profound maxims of government.
I could not conjecture whence this important intelligence came, till I met with a person, who informed me, that the maxims which have passed for truths amongst men, as soon as they are exploded, arrive in the moon, and are associated with the other dismissed fashions.
This division is made up almost entirely of comments on men and affairs, short analyses of human attitudes, desultory excursions into the sociological, brief remarks on man's emotional nature, apothegms dealing with human attributes, bits of racy philosophical gossip, religious and scientific maxims, and the like.
This maxim was not suggested by indifference to the possession of a family; on the contrary, the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children were a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep and earnest hold of the Roman mind.
In short, he may justly be regarded as one of the first philosophers of antiquity who had a slight glimpse of the grand maxim, which afterwards immortalized Bacon, and which has introduced modern philosophers to a knowledge of the most secret and most sublime operations of nature.
If you take this view of society, in which you are about to seek a place in keeping with your intellect and your faculties, you must set before you as a generating principle and mainspring, this maxim: never permit yourself to act against either your own conscience or the public conscience.
His was the ambition of one who discovers at every step that nothing can be known, yet will not give up the unprofitable pursuit, because, even while making the discovery, he still hopes vainly that he may yet, in his own person, give the maxim the lie.
As the doctrine of spontaneous generation stands opposed to the maxim that organic life can be produced only by organic life, so the doctrine of a transmutation of species stands opposed to the equally certain maxim that like produces like, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholicism, a reconciliation of the reformation with science is not only possible, but would easily take place if the protestant churches would only live up to their maxim taught by Luther and established by so many years of war.
There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their undeniable importance.
At first sight such a work seems to be a miscellany of myths, technical advice, moral precepts, and folklore maxims without any unifying principle; and critics have readily taken the view that the whole is a canto of fragments or short poems worked up by a redactor.
The real young man of the time, however, was the father who wrote his maxims, the condensed wisdom of his experience of life, with a directness, an absolute clarity, an occasional appeal to figures of speech and a variety of expression so striking as to make his work literature.
In addition to a vigorous rifle fire that poured from the improvised defenses, three Maxims were brought into play from the roofs of large houses, and these, commanding the whole road as far as its junction with Beech Lane, literally mowed down the enemy as they approached.
Philosophy, grown practical in its old age, forsook its youthful enthusiasm for the quest of truth, and turned aside to the regulation of conduct, by means of maxims now instead of inspiration, and finally, as we have seen, to apology for the ancient faith of the fathers.
All the legislators of the human race until that day had laid the foundations of all government among men in Power; and hence it was that in the maxims of theory, as well as in the practice of nations, sovereignty was held to be unlimited and illimitable.
By this means the ascendancy of the patrician families was, for a certain period, as regular as it could be made by the avowed maxims of aristocracy: but the higher offices of state being gradually shared by plebeians, the effects of former distinctions were prevented or weakened.
In the second place, there is a series of ethical documents of a most valued nature in the shape of proverbs, dicta, maxims, fables, constituting a kind of moral philosophy, often independent of each other, varied in their character, and different as to time and the place of their compositions.
I am aware of the moderns having misapplied and abused these maxims; but they were meant to have been judiciously employed, and I only wish to propose as examples the most celebrated of the school who so ably comprehended the method, and the limits of such a practice.