dictum

in a sentence

There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!  (source) Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953

He wanted to, but the dictum was too strong, just too strong.†  (source) Stephen King, Misery, 1987

Every afternoon, whatever the weather, he stands in a field bawling state-sown dicta: "Prosperity depends on ferocity.†  (source) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014

Try this for a dictum: ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.†  (source) Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, 2003

[1] [1] Dante translated this story from Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta mem†  (source) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy - Volume 2 (Purgatory), 1320

So, in flagrant violation of my grandmother's fashion dictums, I wore my newly relaced combat boots (in case I had to kick anybody holding a microphone who got too close), and I also wore all of my Greenpeace and antifur buttons, so at least my celebrity status will be put to good use.†  (source) Meg Cabot, The Princess Diaries, 2000

I don't even remember where I learned that childhood rhyme or the dictum that demanded you scratch your head every time you heard a siren, lest the next siren be for you.†  (source) Gayle Forman, Where She Went, 2011

Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson's shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it's nothing unusual—her mother did the same.  (source) Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

The Criminal Element gave very specific pointers on how to never, ever be fooled by a criminal, and one of the oft-repeated dictums of The Criminal Element was that the best way to get to know a person was to look him or her directly in the eye.†  (source) Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses, 2013

It was Greer's favorite dictum.†  (source) Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October, 1984

Of the frivolous Judge—of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor—of such as these standing helpless and exposed, Of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,) Of the lessening year by year of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes, pulpits, schools, Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality; Of the true New World—of the Democracies resplendent en-masse, Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them, Of the shining sun by them—of the inherent light, greater than the rest, Of the envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them.†  (source) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

"Facts are stubborn things," he told the jury, "and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."†  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

Beware, the rock changes'—an old dictum of ours......And nowadays the rock changes very fast indeed.†  (source) Christopher Paolini, Eragon, 2003