Quotations and Authors:
GRACE. O! he is too serious for this place, and yet better sport then than the other three, I assure you, gentlemen, wherever he is, though it be on the bench.
Bartholomew Fair Jonson, Ben 1614
COKES. How dost thou call it? A caveat against cut-purses! a good jest, i’faith, I would fain see that demon, your cut-purse you talk of, that delicate-handed devil; they say he walks hereabout; I would see him walk now. Look you, sister, here, here [he shews his purse boastingly], let him come, sister, and welcome. Ballad-man, does any cut-purses haunt hereabout? pray thee raise me one or two; begin, and shew me one.
It was a chief caveat of 2871 Seneca to his friend Lucilius, that he should not alter his physician, or prescribed physic: “Nothing hinders health more; a wound can never be cured, that hath several plasters.” Crato consil. 186. taxeth all melancholy persons of this fault: 2872″‘Tis proper to them, if things fall not out to their mind, and that they have not present ease, to seek another and another;” (as they do commonly that have sore eyes) “twenty one after another, and they still promise all to cure them, try a thousand remedies; and by this means they increase their malady, make it most dangerous and difficult to be cured.”
The Anatomy of Melancholy Burton, Robert 1621
Caveat in Burton.
On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too; and make use of such terms as these, it is evident, it is certain, it is undeniable; which a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others; but I here enter a caveat against any Objections, which may be offered on that head; and declare that such expressions were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judgment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become no body, and a sceptic still less than any other.
A Treatise of Human Nature Hume, David 1740
Caveat in Hume.
I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in the breast of my fair reader; –and it is this, —-Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have dropp’d in it, —-“That I am a married man.” –I own, the tender appellation of my dear, dear Jenny, –with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a determination against me.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Sterne, Laurence 1767
Well,’ said the cobbler, ‘when I was going to take out a probate of the will, the nieces and nevys, who was desperately disappointed at not getting all the money, enters a caveat against it.’
What’s that?’ inquired Sam.
‘A legal instrument, which is as much as to say, it’s no go,’ replied the cobbler.
‘I see,’ said Sam, ‘a sort of brother-in-law o’ the have-his-carcass. Well.’‘But,’ continued the cobbler, ‘finding that they couldn’t agree among themselves, and consequently couldn’t get up a case against the will, they withdrew the caveat, and I paid all the legacies. I’d hardly done it, when one nevy brings an action to set the will aside.
The Pickwick Papers Dickens, Charles 1836
Caveat in Dickens.
The abuses, the necessary reforms of company law on earth, are no
A Modern Utopia and Scepticism of the Instrument Wells, Herbert George 1905
concern of ours here and now, suffice it that in a Modern Utopia such laws must be supposed to be as perfect as mortal laws can possibly be made. Caveat vendor will be a sound qualification of Caveat emptor in the beautifully codified Utopian law. Whether the Utopian company will be allowed to prefer this class of share to that or to issue debentures, whether indeed usury, that is to say lending money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all in Utopia, one may venture to doubt.
Caveat in Wells.