Practice

ˈpræk.tɪs

noun

repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it

The word 'practice' comes from the Middle English word 'practisen', which in turn is derived from the Old French word 'practiser', meaning 'to practice or perform'. Practice is essential for improvement and skill development in various fields.

Darell used it with the wristflip of long practice.

Asimov, Isaac

Foundation 3 - Second Foundation

It was clever of him; nobody believed he could tell the truth that way without practice, or would tell that particular sort of a truth either with or without practice.

Mark Twain

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice

He was taken prisoner, and his little vessel was used by the Huns for target practice.

Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle

I figured if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything.

Salinger, J.D.

The Catcher in the Rye

Sometimes she would find a stick and practice her needlework, but then she would remember what had happened at the Twins and smash it against a tree until it broke.

George R. R. Martin

A Storm of Swords

Having in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

They read that first sentence holding the ledger between them like children at a choir practice and Fran said “Oh!” in a small, strangled voice and stepped away, her hand pressed lightly to her mouth.

King, Stephen

The Stand

The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter.

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist

With plenty of practice, you may yet become a sandrider.” Paul frowned, thinking: Was I not first up?

Herbert, Frank

Dune

He closed the book and as he did so the firelight illuminated the thin white scars on the back of his hand — the result of his detention with Umbridge.“Wait a moment — there is something you can do for me, Dobby,” said Harry slowly.The elf looked around, beaming.“Name it, Harry Potter, sir!”“I need to find a place where twenty-eight people can practice Defense Against the Dark Arts without being discovered by any of the teachers.

J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

You are very charming, and I should like the chance to keep practicing my English.” “You should practice your lying, for I am not very charming, and your English is more elegant than mine.

Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister

The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process.

H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds

This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, an indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats—these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind—work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy.

Bram Stoker

Dracula

This arose because of his following a practice the opposite to the above; for the emperor is a secretive man—he does not communicate his designs to anyone, nor does he receive opinions on them.

Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince

He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought him, and he would stand, whoever fell.

Upton Sinclair

The Jungle

On others practice thy Ligurian arts; Thin stratagems and tricks of little hearts Are lost on me: nor shalt thou safe retire, With vaunting lies, to thy fallacious sire.” At this, so fast her flying feet she sped, That soon she strain’d beyond his horse’s head: Then turning short, at once she seiz’d the rein, And laid the boaster grov’ling on the plain.

Virgil

The Aeneid

Practice transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization extended that far.

Dick, Philip K.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“I suppose it’s just practice,” he thought.

A. A. Milne

Winnie-the-Pooh

Without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance—that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type “man,” the continued “self-surmounting of man,” to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

But I've been retired from practice since — " "We need you to come out of retirement long enough to draw up a certain paper," Roland said, and then explained what sort of paper he wanted.

Stephen King

Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6)

The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction—that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world;—that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;—that the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues;—and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter.

Thomas Paine

The Age of Reason

"I make it a practice to learn all I can of my foes."

George R.R. Martin

The Tales of Dunk & Egg

It is a rich study for you, who, as I learn, have seen as many lands as are delineated on this map.” “Yes, sir,” replied the count; “I have sought to make of the human race, taken in the mass, what you practice every day on individuals—a physiological study.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

Amy’s conscience preached her a little sermon from that text, then and there; and she did what many of us do not always do—took the sermon to heart, and straightway put it in practice.

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women

That is, I understand how it’s done, of course, but I have never done it.” “Then, you don’t know how, for it is a matter that needs practice.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Idiot

Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?” (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Lewis Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

To save the transition, to soften the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions—what detestable reasons all those are!

Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.

J. M. Barrie

Peter and Wendy

Maybe she’s out of practice, having been dead for so long.” “I hope you’re right, Hazel.

Rick Riordan

The Son of Neptune

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

In Crome he was able to put his theories into practice.

Aldous Huxley

Crome Yellow

Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

Part of it’s my weight, but part of it’s practice.

Suzanne Collins

Hunger Games 1 - The Hunger Games

I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

#There are four men in the life raft: Hiro Protagonist, self-employed stringer for the Central Intelligence Corporation, whose practice used to be limited to so-called "dry" operations, meaning that he sat around and soaked up information and then later spat it back into the Library, the CIC database, without ever actually doing anything.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide.

James Joyce

Ulysses

His father-in-law, who owned the Ilium School of Optometry, who had set Billy up in practice, was a genius in his field.

Vonnegut, Kurt

Slaughterhouse Five

Thinking convinced me that our recent practice had been better than our theory.

T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Then: “Do you doubt my sincerity, Stil?” “Of course not.” “My birthright?” “You are who you are.” “And if I do what is expected of me, that is the measure of my sincerity, eh?” “It is the Fremen practice.” “Then I cannot have inner feelings to guide my behavior?” “I don’t understand what—” “If I always behave with propriety, no matter what it costs me to suppress my own desires, then that is the measure of me.” “Such is the essence of self-control, youngster.” “Youngster!” Leto shook his head.

Frank Herbert

Children of Dune

But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“A little more practice will make you a regular whale.

Rudyard Kipling

Just So Stories

Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I always make it a practice to give him a lift—unless, of course, he looks like a bum.” “Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines,” dutifully said the victim of benevolence.

Sinclair Lewis

Babbitt

But to people like Ralph Paton, turning over a new leaf is easier in theory than in practice.

Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

In practice, a fancier is, for instance, struck by a pigeon having a slightly shorter beak; another fancier is struck by a pigeon having a rather longer beak; and on the acknowledged principle that “fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard, but like extremes,” they both go on (as has actually occurred with the sub-breeds of the tumbler-pigeon) choosing and breeding from birds with longer and longer beaks, or with shorter and shorter beaks.

Charles Darwin

The Origin of Species

These two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of man, and to the soul of every rational being, not to be hindered by another; and to hold good to consist in the disposition to justice and the practice of it, and in this to let thy desire find its termination.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre; when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and daughters made slaves and concubines?

Homer

The Iliad

Frog’s experience was limited to practice yard and tourney ground, so he did not think it was his place to dispute the verdict of such a seasoned warrior.

Martin, George, R. R.

A Dance With Dragons

Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty—” “Ah!

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary

In the course of their conversation they fell to discussing what they call Statecraft and systems of government, correcting this abuse and condemning that, reforming one practice and abolishing another, each of the three setting up for a new legislator, a modern Lycurgus, or a brand-new Solon; and so completely did they remodel the State, that they seemed to have thrust it into a furnace and taken out something quite different from what they had put in; and on all the subjects they dealt with, Don Quixote spoke with such good sense that the pair of examiners were fully convinced that he was quite recovered and in his full senses.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote

I don’t have anything any more, not even a practice.

Heller, Joseph

Catch-22

Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me.

Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet

In the reign of king William, and during a great part of that of queen Anne, before we had become so familiar as we are now with the practice of perpetual funding, the greater part of the new taxes were imposed but for a short period of time (for four, five, six, or seven years only), and a great part of the grants of every year consisted in loans upon anticipations of the produce of those taxes.

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations