"Inoperative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Technician Melran stated that his control circuits were inoperative and that he was tracing the difficulty. He cleared the trouble, but condensation had already been established and precipitation had commenced. I ordered re-absorption, which was started as soon as ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... into the labyrinth of that warfare. What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God." Rom. 2:8-11. If now we turn to the epistle of James, we find that the faith without works which he condemns as dead is one of mere empty notions—an inoperative belief about Christ instead of that hearty trust in him which brings the heart and life into subjection to his authority. In a word, Paul condemns, as dead, works without faith; James, faith without works. The ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... adopted in 1696, held out undeniable advantages to the seaman. Under its provisions he drew a yearly allowance when not required at sea, and extra prize-money when on active service. Yet the bait did not tempt him, and the system was soon discarded as useless and inoperative. Bounty, defined by some sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an irresistible premium on ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... which He has set us, and that the true effect of watchfulness is to harness us to the car of duty. Many other motives actuate Christian faithfulness, but all are reinforced by this, and where it is feeble they are more or less inoperative. We cannot afford to lose its influence. A Church or a soul which has ceased to be looking for Him will have let all its tasks drop from its drowsy hands, and will feel the power of other constraining motives of Christian service but faintly, as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr. Douglas carried through the Congress of the United States and through a parliamentary warfare, in which no other man than he could have triumphed, the bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, declaring inoperative and void the Missouri geographical compromise line, and affirming the true intent and meaning of the Kansas and Nebraska act to be, "to leave the people of any State or territory perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... soda. There is a little citrate of potash, which is a feeble diuretic; a little citrate and sulphate of magnesia, a slight aperient, corrected, however, by the constipatory half grain of sulphate of lime; so that the whole practically is inoperative. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... posts, and whereas Your Majesty in the Protocol of May 27 officially declared that Your Majesty did not see your way clear to create a new Government for the country, the Constitutional Regal power in Norway has thereby become inoperative. ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... which we recognise the presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... a book as the foregoing, one is led to ask why it was so inoperative on the life of the country. One reason perhaps is that Balzac wrote from his head rather than from his heart. Whatever may be, in other respects, the superiority of the Realistic over the Romantic ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the character of God is unchangeable. What we call dispensations are but epochs in the divine government. But the qualities of God's character will never change. His love is from everlasting to everlasting; so is His power; so is His wisdom. Will these qualities of His character be inoperative in a future life, when there will be such sin and suffering to appeal to them? However great the sin may be, surely divine love, wisdom, and power ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... and the revenue from imports increased or diminished, according to their action. Indeed, they can modify or repeal tariffs at their pleasure, for, they have only to inflate the circulation, and prices rise here to the extent of the duties, and the tariff becomes inoperative. Of all the branches of our industry, the manufacturing is injured most by a redundant currency, limiting our fabrics to a partial supply at home, and driving them from the foreign market. Give us a sound, stable, uniform currency, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... purposes to treat what is utterly beyond our ken as if it were non-existent, it becomes easily possible to fall into the erroneous habit of conceiving the transcendental region to be completely inoperative. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of food. When ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... herself. Long, however, before mesmerism was heard of, medical history attests examples in which patients who baffled the skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fancies on some remedy that physicians would call inoperative for good or for harm, and have recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested. And Hippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning rightly, recognizes the powers for self-cure which the condition of trance will sometimes bestow on the sufferer, 'where' (says the father of our art) ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the calcining-furnaces or "roasters'' cannot be employed immediately for the Deacon process, as the sulphuric acid always contained in the roaster gases soon "poisons'' the contact-substance and renders it inoperative. This acid must, therefore, be condensed in the ordinary way into liquid hydrochloric acid and formerly could be worked up only by the Weldon process. R. Hasenclever has overcome this drawback by running this impure acid into moderately strong sulphuric acid (140 deg. Twaddell), blowing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non- intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... any vote of secession, or other act by which any State may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its territory, is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a practical abdication by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason which it involves still further works an instant forfeiture of all those functions and powers essential ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the operation of this statute, so long as the sovereign was actually resident within them—which last clause probably showed that the entire Draconian enactment was but a farce. It is quite certain that it was inoperative, and that it did no more than express the conscience of the legislature—in deference to PRINCIPLE, 'which ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... elements, eliminated of what the African, with a fine intuition of the truth, ingenuously terms 'de wite trash,'—yes, in the Southern social scheme the whites are trash,—and they only find their place as a sort of useless ornament, non-productive and inoperative, even according to their own ideas. Therefore the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that. You can't feel an Operator Field. I'm sorry, sir, but that means you can't handle these forces and never will be able to. Certain Gunther areas of your brain are inoperative. On our scale ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... appeal to be taken, but it was to a body appointed for the purpose by the inquisitors themselves.[623] Parliament, however, again interposed the prerogative it had assumed, of remonstrance and delay, and the king's declaration, as well as the papal bull, remained inoperative.[624] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... extent in literature, are not and cannot be fused together, but on the contrary, stand apart in water-tight compartments, so that the whole is like an elaborate system of checks to make each part inoperative, that, at a time when the whole community is strangely alive with good will, the actual social achievement ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... should, at any rate, be deducted," said John Ball, speaking this with a kind of proviso to himself, that the words so spoken were intended to be taken as having any meaning only on the presumption that that document which he had seen in the other room should turn out to be wholly inoperative and inefficient at the present moment. In answer to these side-questions or corollary points as to the deduction or non-deduction of the loan, Mr Slow answered not a word; but when there was silence between them, he did make answer as to ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... topmast, and the flag of the English cricket-club waving from her stern. But I knew well that they had discussed the question of the Fixed Period among them, and that there was still time for them to go home and send back some English mandate which ought to be inoperative, but which we should be unable to disobey. And letters might have been written before this,—treacherous letters, calling for the assistance of another country in opposition to ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... note, lastly, that in this case, as in all others, when an organisation has become effete and inoperative for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other ones—quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? "I admit that they are stupid and frivolous enough," replies every man to your criticisms; "but then, you know, one ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... against gaming, all persons sending a challenge on account of gaming disputes were liable to forfeit all their goods and to be committed to prison for two years. No case of the kind, however, was ever prosecuted on that clause of the Act, which was, in other respects, very nearly inoperative. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the blacks, Leclerc will send me to France as a traitor. If I do nothing, neither party will believe in my doing nothing: each will suspect me of secret dealings with the other. It is also true that I cannot, if I would, be inoperative. Every glance of my eye, every word of my lips, in my own piazza at Pongaudin, would be made to bear its interpretation, and go to disturb the single and distinct image which I now stand before every eye ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... There is a good deal of cant too about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity without which worth is a mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... understood that mysticism and the accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the agencies which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became inoperative—when man began to regard himself as a Creator and therefore as the superior of woman—he had reached a point at which he was largely controlled by supernatural or ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... make the celebrated Wourali poison, the smallest quantity of which in a vein always kills. It has never disappointed its backers. But he didn't make this. He brought it from the World of Spirits, beyond the grave. It is intended for internal use only, being quite inoperative when injected into a vein. Irene unpacked my valise when I came back, and touched the bottle. And an hour afterwards she saw that her white cornelian ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that homo homini lupus, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, basis of all ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... dexterously assailed; and the effort was earnestly made to kindle in their bosoms, that enthusiastic love of liberty which was felt too strongly by the authors of the letter, to permit the belief that it could be inoperative with others. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... interpreted in this spirit: then we relegate Plautine drama to a low plane of broad farce, where verisimilitude to life becomes wholly unnecessary because undesirable; where the canons of dramatic art become inoperative; where, contrary to what Koerting says, we are not asked to believe that "everything is happening in a perfectly natural manner"; where the poet may stick at nothing provided the laugh be forthcoming; where all the apparently absurd conventions of palliatae ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... for the slaves. "What good would a proclamation from me do, especially as we are now situated?" asked Mr. Lincoln by way of reply. "I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... thoughtful Indians that there are signs of the weakening of parental influence, of the loss of reverence for authority, of a decadence of manners and of growing moral laxity. The restraining forces of ancient India have lost some of their power; the restraining forces of the West are inoperative in India. There has thus been a certain moral loss without any corresponding gain. The educated European may throw off the sanctions of religion; but he has to live in a social environment which has been ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... peculiar meaning, is, "If the reproductive system be not exercised, will it not perish for lack of exercise?" The latest word of science on this subject is that it will not, either in the bird or elsewhere. In a healthy organism it can safely remain inoperative with the certainty of becoming active at a later period if then it receive the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... impressed on the prophet's mind, but only a new light. For a gloss of Jerome on Amos 1:2 says that "prophets draw comparisons from things with which they are conversant." But if prophetic vision were effected by means of species newly impressed, the prophet's previous experience of things would be inoperative. Therefore no new species are impressed on the prophet's soul, but only the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible. Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... matter. Victoria has seen fit to protect certain interests, agricultural and manufacturing, at the expense of the whole of her public. Happily for her the agricultural protection is probably almost, if not indeed altogether, inoperative, as the climate and the soil of the country, and the vigour of her people, give to her, independently, the natural lead in agricultural products. But the manufacturing protection is confessedly effective, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... be wholly inoperative, because no territory hereafter to be acquired can be governed without an act of Congress providing for its government; and such an act, on its passage, would open the whole subject, and leave the Congress called on to pass it free to exercise its own discretion, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... been made during the past year to remove the hindrances to the proclamation of the treaty of naturalization with the Sublime Porte, signed in 1874, which has remained inoperative owing to a disagreement of interpretation of the clauses relative to the effects of the return to and sojourn of a naturalized citizen in the land of origin. I trust soon to be able to announce a favorable settlement of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he were in love, and the object absent, he could scarcely find a situation fitter to nurse his tender sentiment. Doubtless there is a stage in love when scenery of the very best quality becomes inoperative. There was a couple on board seated in front of the pilot-house, who let the steamer float along the pretty, long, landlocked harbor, past the Kittery Navy-yard, and out upon the blue sea, without taking ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... new Ministers. Although, however, Lord Northington did not openly deviate from the main points of his policy, he followed it up with a luke-warmness and insincerity that rendered it to a great extent inoperative. His Lordship appears to have betrayed, not only in his measures, but in the spirit and tone in which they were brought forward, an unworthy desire to discredit the influence and reputation of his ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... modified the elements of the whole problem. In the modern world political dominion is playing a more and more effaced role as a factor in commerce; the non-political factors have in practise made it all but inoperative. It is the case with every modern nation actually that the outside territories which it exploits most successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot. Even with the most characteristically colonial of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... as totally devoid of ordinary scruples as the average well-bred Englishman is full of them. He had, no doubt, a code of his own to guide his conduct towards his co-religionists, but this code seemed wholly inoperative when he was brought into relation with those of another ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... States; it confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,—they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they may leap into or embrace the Territories is to argue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the ports. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge that his ship was at hand. With the camp exits inoperative, Grantline and his men were imprisoned. Miko had made an effort to kill me. He did not know my companion was Anita. But the effort was taking too long; with his ship at hand, it was Miko's best move ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... present federal government has no judiciary power whatever; and consequently there is no proper antecedent or previous establishment to which the term heretofore could relate. It would therefore be destitute of a precise meaning, and inoperative from its uncertainty. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... means of influencing the probability of the result without destroying the enemy's Army, namely, upon the expeditions which have a direct connection with political views. If there are any enterprises which are particularly likely to break up the enemy's alliances or make them inoperative, to gain new alliances for ourselves, to raise political powers in our own favour, &c. &c., then it is easy to conceive how much these may increase the probability of success, and become a shorter way towards our object than the routing of ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... can discover the true explanation or not, inherited mutilations can hardly be accounted for as the result of a general tendency to inherit acquired modifications. How could a factor which seems to be totally inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the normal effects of use and disuse, suddenly become so powerful as to completely overthrow atavism, and its own tendency to transmit ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... aeroplane finds that in teaching man how to control nature he is also providing the means for his struggle, whether in peace or war, in commerce or on the battle-field. We soon find that the progress of technical skill is curiously inoperative in its effect on human thought and feeling. Men remain the same whether they ride in a coach, or a train, or a motor-car; it matters little whether they use bows and arrows, or rifles, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Synonym Patronymic Parliament Dormitory Demented Presumptuous Indent Dandelion Trident Indenture Contemporary Disseminate Annoy Odium Desolate Impugn Efflorescent Arbor vitae Consider Constellation Disaster Suburb Address Dirigible Dirge Indirectly Desperate Inoperative Benevolent Voluntary Offend Enumerate Dilapidate Request Exquisite Exonerate Approximate Insinuate Resurgence Insurrection Rapture Exasperate Complacent Dimension Commensurate Preclude Cloister Turnpike Travesty Atone Incarnate Charnal ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and cruel scheme, worked out to the smallest particular. But, though I understood its hideousness intellectually, it aroused in mo no corresponding emotion; my sensitiveness to right arid wrong seemed stupefied or inoperative. I could say, "This is wicked," but I could not awaken in myself a horror of committing the wickedness; and, moreover, I knew that, if the influence Paton was able to exercise over me continued, I must in ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... make the bill inoperative was recognized from the moment the committee was called to order. The manner in which this was to be done developed as rapidly. The machine's plan was ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... of infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... remodels, dies, and is born again; she is even more convulsed when creating than when all was fusion; Nature suffers, groans, is ignorant, degenerates, does evil; deceives herself, annihilates herself, disappears, and begins again. If God is associated with Nature, how can we explain the inoperative indifference of the divine principle? Wherefore death? How came it that Evil, king of the earth, was born of a God supremely good in His essence and in His faculties, who can produce nothing that is not ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... community here; and the loud complaints which have lately been uttered are likely to produce a considerable effect on the English people, who will see at a glance that the law is oppressive, and who will not know how completely it is inoperative. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... father's conscience was greatly relieved by the knowledge that he spent his Sundays in making boots for him. Had he been an ordinary child, and given him trouble, he would possibly have hated him; as it was, he had a great though sadly inoperative affection for the boy, which was an ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... had destined for one of his favourite officers was extreme. He ordered the count to be treated with the greatest rigour, and declared all his estates and those of his wife forfeited, the latter part of the sentence being at present inoperative, her estates being in a part of the country far beyond the range of the Imperialist troops. The waiting maid was after some weeks' detention released, as there was no evidence whatever of her complicity ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an area. "One man is acted upon by his character, another by his reflection."[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for opportunities of action are, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Whenever any patent is inoperative or invalid, by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, or by reason of the patentee claiming as his own invention or discovery more than he had a right to claim as new, if the error has arisen by inadvertance, accident or mistake, and without ...
— Patent Laws of the Republic of Hawaii - and Rules of Practice in the Patent Office • Hawaii
... full of enthusiasm for Bottazzi," I resumed. "His was the kind of investigation I should like to put through myself. It appeals to me as no spiritualistic performance has ever done. In a sense the facts he has demonstrated make all material tests inoperative. Matter is all we have to cling to when it comes to physical tests. A nail driven down through the sleeve of the medium's dress seems to increase our control of her, and a metronome or a Morse telegraphic sounder does add value ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... now may argue as follows. Several words which are applied to one thing are meant to express one sense, and as this is not possible in so far as the words connote different attributes, this part of their connotation becomes inoperative, and they denote only the unity of one substance; implication (lakshan), therefore, does not take place. When we say 'blue (is) (the) lotus' we employ two words with the intention of expressing the unity of one thing, and hence do not aim at expressing a duality of attributes, viz. the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... aggressive and defensive superiority over the Ana which they once possessed, just as in the inferior animals above the earth many peculiarities in their original formation, intended by nature for their protection, gradually fade or become inoperative when not needed under altered circumstances. I should be sorry, however, for any An who induced a Gy to make the experiment whether he or ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... understand His decrees; but there is nothing unreasonable in the belief that our prayers for others may be, and frequently are, directly effective, setting energies in motion which might otherwise have remained latent and inoperative. How these energies operate may be quite beyond our power to ascertain or even to guess; but if—to say it once more—the action of matter on matter, the "how" of chemical combinations, eludes us, shall we complain because the action of mind on mind, spirit on ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... bright and able speaker. He had argued the right of a State to dissent from, or nullify, a law passed by the House of Representatives and Senate, making such law inoperative within its borders. His claim was that the framers of the Constitution did not expect or intend that a law could be passed that was binding on a State when the people of that State did not wish it so. Mr. Hayne had the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... out. A cone in the ball of the waste steam pipe to send back the water carried upward by the steam, should never be inserted; as in some cases this cone has become loose, and closed up the mouth of the waste steam pipe, whereby the safety valves being rendered inoperative, the boiler was in ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... heat absorbed by the water-jacket should point out to the ingenuity of inventors the first problem to be attacked, viz., how to save this heat without wasting the lubricant or making it inoperative; and in the solution of this problem, I look for the most important improvement to be expected in the engine. The most obvious contrivance would be some sort of intercepting shield, which would save the walls of the cylinder and the rings of the piston ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... them an interview. At the end of it, he promised to support the repeal. The next day, Douglas reported a substitute for the Nebraska bill. It provided for two Territories, Kansas and Nebraska, instead of one; and it declared the eighth section of the Missouri Compromise law to be inoperative because it was "superseded by" the principles of ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the thing had worn off, was to deprive him of special chances of escape on which to exercise his vigilance, since, so far as doors were to be considered, it was as easy to escape at one time as another; and it was found that the desire often became dormant and inoperative if not called into action by the stimulus of special opportunity. It is, indeed, a thing of common experience that the mere feeling of being locked in is sufficient to awaken a desire to get out. This happens both with the sane and the insane; but it is certain that the mental ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... there and then, but it seemed scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard her request so incontinently. She had used him roughly, but she had brought him up: and the fact of her being powerless to control him lent a pathetic force to a wish that would have been inoperative as an argument. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... a great degree inoperative when they do not spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the support of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided by the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877 must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such a marvellous revolution during ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... on easily enough by all hands; but colour exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases "dead colour," ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow. There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day $95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... whole object of the change was to strengthen the hands of the agricultural interest, as regarded more essential protection, by removing the odium of a nominal protection: 'Convinced by my right honourable friends, in 1842, that their tariff would be as inoperative as it has proved, I gave my ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... from the altar. A change has come over the public sentiment. Among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt against Home Rule. At a Unionist meeting held the other day at Athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. One said that the change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian vengeance. The ignorant masses have also experienced a change. They have been undergoing ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Congress to pass just such a law. To break up the vicious system of straw bidding, this bill would be very valuable, and I regret exceedingly that a mistake should have been made in the title and enacting clause which will render its provisions inoperative. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the gods, as Epimenides had wielded before them.... Had Epimenides himself come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phye, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athena, which had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus—a stratagem which even Herodotus treats ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... bands are small, though perfectly organized; but the number of persons comprising these lawless bands is small compared with the great body of the people. But still evidence cannot be obtained, and the law is by reason of this inoperative. And if these small bands prevent the exercise of the law, these outrages remaining unchecked, the bulk of the population will not heed the law." And whose fault is it that those counties are tainted, and that the law in Ireland has ceased ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... pious emperors before us, who worshipped the blessed and immortal and life-giving Trinity, have decreed in behalf of the true and apostolic faith, these laws, we say, as always beneficial for the whole world, we will at no time to be inoperative, but rather we promulgate them as our own. We, preferring piety and zeal in the cause of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who created and has made us glorious before all diligence in human affairs, and also believing that concord among the flocks of Christ is the preservation of ourselves ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... to find such a torrent of primitive testimony at one with the bulk of the Uncials and Cursives extant, it is clear that there can be no Science of Textual Criticism. The Law of Evidence must be held to be inoperative in this subject-matter. Nothing deserving of the name of 'proof' will ever be attainable in this ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the water until the steam comes to the trap, which, being hotter, lengthens the pipe and closes the valve. Now with this kind of trap, and, in fact, with any variety of trap, we understand that it has been frequently the experience of the user to find his contrivance inoperative because the silt or sand that may be present in the pipes has been carried to the valve and lodged there by the water, causing it to stick, and with expansion traps not to close properly or to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... abuses pervading the administration of justice in Sardinia, as lying at the root of its greatest social evil. It is the ready excuse for rude justice, for private revenge, for the assertion of the rights of persons or of things by the strong hand, that the laws are inoperative, or iniquitously administered. There is too much reason to believe that this has been the normal state of Sardinia under all its rulers for ages past. And when at the same time we find the natural instincts of the people to be turbulent ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... that the drone control had been sabotaged by the Earthman. Otherwise cutting the signal wire would have kept the board from showing green. Somehow, the signal wire had been bypassed, to keep the operators from knowing the drone control was inoperative. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... State shall, if its constitution be approved by Congress, be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and senators and representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this bill shall be inoperative in said State." ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... alive to rumours, and to rumours of rumours. Reports of these opinions respecting Mr. Gibson reached Heavitree, and had their effect. As long as Mr. Gibson was behaving well as a suitor, they were inoperative there. What did it matter to them how the prize might have been struggled for,—might still be struggled for elsewhere, while they enjoyed the consciousness of possession? But when the consciousness of possession became marred by a cankerous ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still further works an instant FORFEITURE ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... year when a cruising space vehicle communicates with another space vehicle or its orbiting station, it may use a beam of light instead of conventional radio. Not that radio will be inoperative under the airless conditions of space—rather the reverse—but there is reason to believe that communication by sunlight not only will be cheaper but will entail carrying much simpler and lighter equipment for certain specialized space applications. (The Air Force) is developing an ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... expect that this new ally should look at this great question as her mother had looked at it. The father had been regarded as a great outside power, which could hardly be overcome, but which might be evaded, or made inoperative by stratagem. It was not that the daughter did not love him. She loved him and venerated him highly,—the veneration perhaps being stronger than the love. The Duchess, too, had loved him dearly,—more dearly in late years than in her early life. But her husband to her had always been ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... practically unknown. A Catholic could sit in either Irish House of Parliament; he could inherit lands, and bequeath them to whom he would; he could educate his children how and where he liked. The terror planted in the breast of the Protestant colony by that inoperative piece of legislation found its voice in the equally violent, but unfortunately not equally inoperative, passed Acts by them in the hour of their triumph. Acts, by means of which it was fondly hoped that their enemies would be thrown into such a position of dependence ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... play, "make believe" that something exists, or exists in a certain way, they employ conventionalization. Special conditions are created in fact when some fact is regarded as making the usual taboo inoperative. Such is the case with all archaic usages which are perpetuated on account of their antiquity, although they are not accordant with modern standards. The language of Shakespeare and the Bible contains words which ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... a sharp command; we swooped downward at lightning speed and, barely skimming the surface, flew after this escaping enemy. Whether its larger projector had been rendered inoperative, or many of its crew killed, or whether it thought merely to escape us and make a landing in the Light Country, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... itself, and potent as it has been as a moment of religious thought, it must be ranked among those that are past. While the immortality of the soul retains its interest as a speculative inquiry, I venture to believe that as an idea in religious history, it is nigh inoperative; that as an element in devotional life it is of not much weight; and that it will gradually become less so, as the real meaning of religion reaches ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... measures were to a great extent effectual in diminishing the influence of the Crown over Parliament, and they are memorable as marking the date when the direct bribery of members absolutely ceased. But they were utterly inoperative in rendering the House of Commons really representative of or responsible to the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... course of France was in relation thereto. By the decrees of 9th of May, 1793, 7th of July, 1796, and 2d of March, 1797, the stipulations which were then and subsequently most important to the United States were rendered wholly inoperative. The highly injurious effects which these decrees are known to have produced show how vital were the provisions of treaty which they violated, and make manifest the incontrovertible right of the United States to declare, as the consequence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... the guarantee of a third power the obviously futile guarantee of all the powers. Neither party foresaw that the impossibility of obtaining such a guarantee was destined to leave the whole clause about Malta inoperative. After much dispute over the future constitution of the order, France proposed to obviate the chief source of difficulty by the demolition of the forts. This plan commended itself to Cornwallis, but was rejected ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick |
