14 uses
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Definition
a basic rule or belief
The exact meaning of principle can depend upon its context. For example:
- "our guiding principles" — basic moral beliefs that guide decisions and behavior
- "electromagnetic principles" — rules describing how the world works
- "She lacks principles." — lacks moral guidelines
- "We agree in principle." — about important basic beliefs
- The excellence of his understanding and his principles can be concealed only by that shyness which too often keeps him silent.Chapter 4 (21% in)
- He and I have been at times thrown a good deal together, while you have been wholly engrossed on the most affectionate principle by my mother.Chapter 4 (25% in)
- Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae of her principles.Chapter 11 (85% in)
- I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles.Chapter 18 (43% in)
- She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival's intentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Edward and to see him as little as possible; she could not deny herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her heart was unwounded.Chapter 23 (52% in)
- Her indignation would have been still stronger than it was, had she not witnessed that embarrassment which seemed to speak a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented her from believing him so unprincipled as to have been sporting with the affections of her sister from the first, without any design that would bear investigation.Chapter 28 (89% in)
- ...then read it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.Chapter 29 (39% in)
- Elinor avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the too warm, too positive assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward's continued affection for herself which she rather wished to do away; and Marianne's courage soon failed her, in trying to converse upon a topic which always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison it necessarily produced between Elinor's conduct and her own.Chapter 38 (4% in)
- She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of Edward's principles and disposition with that praise which she knew them to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with pleasure, if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office to another.Chapter 39 (76% in)
- — 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion—' said I to myself—'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.'Chapter 44 (76% in)
- His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed;—and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy.Chapter 45 (83% in)
- His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.Chapter 47 (36% in)
- —She will be more hurt by it, and on the same principle will forgive him much sooner.Chapter 49 (44% in)
- Their resemblance in good principles and good sense, in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably have been sufficient to unite them in friendship, without any other attraction; but their being in love with two sisters, and two sisters fond of each other, made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate, which might otherwise have waited the effect of time and judgment.Chapter 49 (78% in)
There are no more uses of "principle" in Sense and Sensibility.
Typical Usage
(best examples)