
“Precepts may instruct, but examples persuade.”
Heaven On Earth, 1654
London's Lamentations
“Precepts may instruct, but examples persuade.”
Heaven On Earth, 1654
Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 1.
“Example is always more efficacious than precept.”
Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 29
“Brotherhood is an ideal better understood by example than precept!”
Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 48 - "At Encinitas In California"
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Context: Many religions lay out a set of precepts... and claim that these instructions were given by a god or gods. For example, the first code of law by Hammurabi of Babylon... was handed to him by the god Marduk... this is a bamboozle... a pious hoax.... if Hammurabi had merely said, "Here's what I think everybody should do," he would have been much less successful...
TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: The Heist (2006)
“Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.”
Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XV
“It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.”
Book I, Ch. 1
Joseph Andrews (1742)
“With gay descriptions sprinkle here and there
Some grave instructive sentences with care,
That touch on life, some moral good pursue,
And give us virtue in a transient view;
Rules, which the future sire may make his own,
And point the golden precepts to his son.”
Saepe etiam memorandum inter ludicra memento,
Permiscere aliquid breviter, mortalia corda
Quod moveat, tangens humanae commoda vitae,
Qodque olim jubeant natos meminisse parentes.
Book II, line 278
De Arte Poetica (1527)
Source: Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. (1904), p. vii; Preface.