Literary notes about Prescribe (AI summary)
The word "prescribe" has been flexibly employed across literature to convey a range of meanings—from the concrete act of issuing medical orders to the abstract imposition of moral or legal rules. In some contexts, it denotes the act of directing a remedy or treatment, as seen in medical discussions where a doctor prescribes medicine [1, 2, 3, 4]. In other instances, it takes on a broader regulatory role, outlining what should be accepted or followed, as demonstrated in philosophical and political treatises that prescribe ethical conduct or social norms [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Authors also use it metaphorically to critique or question the authority of such impositions, whether in matters of natural law, personal autonomy, or cultural prescriptions [10, 11, 12]. Thus, through its varied applications, "prescribe" emerges as a versatile term bridging the medical, ethical, and societal spheres in literature [13, 14, 15].
- A doctor may prescribe, but you must take the medicine.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein - Imagine a doctor called in to prescribe for a patient.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - “What do you prescribe, doctor?” demanded Villefort.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - The natives of Cochin China, reasoning in an opposite manner, prescribe it as emmenagogue.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - If now it is a natural gift which must prescribe its rule to art (as beautiful art), of what kind is this rule?
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant - “Now, brother, to prescribe rules of happiness to others hath always appeared to me very absurd, and to insist on doing this, very tyrannical.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding - Finally, rites are the rules of conduct which prescribe how a man should comport himself in the presence of these sacred objects.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - It is a palpable contradiction to call the will free, and yet to prescribe laws for it according to which it ought to will.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer - And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest of the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or the ruler's interest?
— from The Republic by Plato - It is too late for the highest good to prescribe flying for quadrupeds or peace for the sea waves.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - You are not placed near them for that, but only to receive your fees and to prescribe remedies.
— from The Imaginary Invalid by Molière - For these only enable us to know how we judge, but do not prescribe to us how we ought to judge.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant - Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle
