Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.”
- Source
- Joseph Andrews
- Date
- 1742
- Local voice
- Fictional narrator · Narrator
Meaning of “It is a trite but true observation, that…”
Fielding’s narrator argues that visible examples of conduct can shape imitation more powerfully than abstract instruction alone.
Where does it come from?
Joseph Andrews, Book I, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #9611. Fielding opens his narrator’s discussion of exemplary lives by observing that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts, then develops the claim through imitation and the moral purpose he assigns to writing. It is eighteenth-century literary argument, not a modern experimental finding about learning.
Why the local voice matters
Joseph Andrews, Book I, Chapter I. The novel’s authorial narrator introduces the moral use of example before presenting Joseph; this remains narration inside Fielding’s comic fiction rather than a detached empirical finding.