"Inert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fill, retreat and return to the charge, he was able to endure being struck at, turn and turn about, by his own party, by the opposition, by the court, by the clergy, because to all such attacks he opposed the inert force of a substance which was equally soft and consistent; thus he reaped the benefits of what was really his misfortune. Harassed by a thousand questions of government, his mind, like that of an old lawyer who has tried every species ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... discoveries of men like Professor Sir J. J. Thomson, Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, and Professor Frederick Soddy, have shown the very dust to have a complexity and an activity heretofore unimagined. Such phrases as "dead" matter and "inert" matter have ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... magnificence, and that repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried the civilization of the Old World. Behind stretched the centuries of mediaevalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted, their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had done that which as a junior admiral he did later at Copenhagen, at a moment far more critical to Great Britain. By his own unusual powers of impulse and resolve he had enforced, as far as was possible against the passive, inert lethargy—not to say timidity—of his superior, the course of action which at the moment was essential to the interests of his country. Truly great in his strength to endure, he knew not the perturbations nor the vacillations that fret the temper, and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ugliness wherever she finds it. Then there was the satisfaction of being mistress of the poor domain; of planning, governing, deciding; of bringing order out of chaos; of implanting gayety in the place of inert resignation to the inevitable. Another element of comfort was the children's love, for they turned to her as flowers to the sun, drawing confidently on her fund of stories, serene in the conviction that there was no limit to Rebecca's power of make-believe. In this, and in yet ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... She saw him sitting alone in the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the attitude informed with life. The turn of his head, the shape of his hand, were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked pale and inert, it was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was worn ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Kneeling beside the inert body of Brian Shaynon, where it had lodged on a broad, low landing three steps from the foot of the staircase, he turned up to P. Sybarite fishy, unemotional eyes in a ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... preparations are sometimes made by wives, with the best intentions. Perhaps one of the most common and absurd of these is the local use of sweet oil, in order to facilitate the dilatation of the parts, for which purpose it is perfectly inert. There are, however, some wise and even necessary precautions which every wife should know and employ, to guard against unpleasant and dangerous complications ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... following him, raced across the room and caught the young man by the arm while he was yet some feet away from the clergyman's table. The young man struggled desperately in his grasp for some moments, then suddenly collapsed and fell inert in the other's arms. Colwyn walked over to the spot in time to see his portly companion lay the young man down on the carpet and bend over to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... and scanning attentively her bosom and every other part of her body, and finding them very fair, felt, as he bethought him what would shortly befall them, some pity of her; while, on the other hand, he was suddenly assailed by the solicitations of the flesh which caused that to stand which had been inert, and prompted him to sally forth of his ambush and take her by force, and have his pleasure of her. And, what with his compassion and passion, he was like to be worsted; but then as he bethought him who he was, and what a grievous wrong had been done him, and for what cause, and by whom, his wrath, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... inside which my head was rattling like an almond in its shell. Once immersed in water, all these objects lost a part of their weight equal to the weight of the liquid they displaced, and thanks to this law of physics discovered by Archimedes, I did just fine. I was no longer an inert mass, and I had, comparatively speaking, great freedom ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Like the earth they master and serve, those men, slow of eye and speech, do not show the inner fire; so that, at last, it becomes a question with them as with the earth, what there is in the core: heat, violence, a force mysterious and terrible—or nothing but a clod, a mass fertile and inert, cold and unfeeling, ready to bear a crop of plants that sustain life ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure. To call this Natural Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom Nature is nothing but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but eternally impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be no blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the showers and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains and hills, may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... exclaimed Capinangan, kneeling beside the inert corpse, "How shall I be able to take it away without being discovered ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... it—Reed, I knew you in what you are pleased to call your palmy days. They were palmy, too; it must have hurt like thunder to be plucked out of them. And yet," the clear eyes swept from the topmost wave of brown hair down across the intent face, so curiously alive, down across the inert body, so curiously dead; "and yet, I'll be hanged if I don't believe you are more of a man, more of an active force, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... swimming slowly on his side, one arm cleaving the water and the other supporting the nearly inert body of Joe. "Here comes 'Brownie,'" the rescuer heard him say cheerfully. "All right now, Joe. We'll get you in in a jiffy! Roll over, 'Brownie,' and get your breath," he added. "We're all right for ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... almost human perversity with which that stove and that trunk resisted him; or how amusing it looked to see a grown man outwitted at every turn by an inert mass? ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... Ovid gives us a connected narrative of creation. Before the earth and sea and the all-covering heaven, one aspect, which we call Chaos, covered all the face of Nature,— a rough heap of inert weight and discordant beginnings of things clashing together. As yet no sun gave light to the world, nor did the moon renew her slender horn month by month,— neither did the earth hang in the surrounding air, poised by its own weight,— nor did the sea stretch its long arms around the earth. Wherever ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... see men and women coming and going almost imperceptibly through our streets, crowding at certain times around certain buildings, or waiting for one knows not what, without apparent movement, in the depths of their dwellings, might conclude therefrom that they, too, were miserable and inert. It takes time to distinguish the manifold activity contained ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and veil, and asked respectfully if there was any other service required. She looked defiantly at her husband, and reiterated the order—"Send for Joseph." Intelligent resolution is sometimes shaken; the inert obstinacy of a weak creature, man or animal, is immovable. Mr. Gallilee dismissed the maid with these words: "You needn't wait, my good girl—I'll speak to Joseph ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... disaster of Brandywine, and on the 26th Lord Cornwallis marched into our city, with two batteries and the Sixteenth Dragoons and Grenadiers. They were received quietly, and that evening my Cousin Arthur appeared at our house. My father, who had been very inert of late, seemed to arouse himself, and expressed quite forcibly his joy and relief at the coming of the troops. He recounted his griefs, too: how that, refusing the militia tax, the Committee of Safety had taken away his great tankard, and later two tables, which was true ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Inert in the profounds the blind bathybus lies. Fecundity flings her seeds and spores into the glazed abysses, and they teem. There is a heaving in the broken, sunless bottoms; the continents and islands are upcast, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... "Unsurprised ones." Their vacant self-possession would put down all the Grattans and Currans and Jeffreys and Sydney Smiths in the world. I defy the most brilliant, the readiest, the most genial of talkers to vivify the mass of inert dulness he will find now at every dinner and in ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... liquids which he prepared from mineral substances. But gold resisted the attacks of these liquids; it was not changed by heat, nor was it affected by sulphur, a substance which changed limpid, running mercury into an inert, black solid. Hence, gold was more perfect in the alchemical scale than ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... while in the middle of the day and relaxes every muscle of his body. With this he may take slow breathing exercises. He should be in a dark room, quiet if possible, and alone, and should teach his brain to be for a short time mentally inert. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... you love me!" So giddy had he become with the surge of his passion that his hands trembled on the steering-wheel. Afraid of losing all muscular control, he brought the automobile to a full stop at the roadside. Her sapphirine eyes were shining, her hands lay inert in her lap, her ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... opened it, and was astonished. It was a treatise on entomology. A history of ants by an English author. And as he remained inert, believing that he was making sport of her, she said with impatience: ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... his force over your force, the greater over the lesser. You will experience an INTERNAL electric shock, which, like a sword, will separate in twain body and spirit. The spiritual part of you will be lifted up above material forces; the bodily part will remain inert and useless, till the life, which is actually YOU, returns to put its machinery in motion ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry. We may at times, knowing of honourable and inspiriting things in a poet's life, read into his imperfect word a value that it does not possess. When we do this our judgment of poetry is inert; we are not getting pleasure from his work because it is poetry, but for quite other reasons. It may be a quite wholesome pleasure, but it is not the high aesthetic pleasure which the people who experience it generally believe to be the richest ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... as quick as the animal itself, and must not swerve till it is in the air. Then you must leap aside like lightning, and, turning as you leap, be ready to drive your spear through it as it touches the ground. The inert mass, although it may pass through the air as rapidly as the wild beast, but poorly represents the force and fierceness of the lion's spring. We Libyans meet the charge standing closely together, with our spears in advance for it to spring on, and even then it is rarely we kill it ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... been a good-natured, pleasure-loving country youth, who took life as it came, with little thought for the morrow. Events had proved that he had latent and undeveloped force. In the material world we find substances that apparently are inert and powerless, but let some other substance be brought sufficiently near, and an energy is developed that seems like magic, and transformations take place that were regarded as supernatural in times when nature's laws were little understood. If ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... refused to coperate, and while Coroneos in the central districts carried on a brilliant system of harrying and raiding the Turkish detachments, the chiefs in the eastern and western sections remained inert, getting the principal portion of the supplies (as the blockade runners went mostly to the coasts of those districts) but doing the least of the work. Comoundouros dared not risk offending the many political partisans by imposing ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... slid into blackness. And it seemed, as I went down, that Alan's inert body was falling ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... felt the body of the islander relax. Then he became conscious in a vague sort of way, of movement. They were rising to the surface or sinking lower to the bottom. Why couldn't he tell which? He freed his legs from the inert form which twined itself about him, and kicked weakly. The red-bearded man slipped from him at the effort and he narrowly escaped losing his hold upon his throat. He kicked again. If he could only get ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... behind the garden[543]. It was now somewhat obstructed by branches of trees and other rubbish, which had come down the river, and settled close to it. Johnson, partly from a desire to see it play more freely, and partly from that inclination to activity which will animate, at times, the most inert and sluggish mortal, took a long pole which was lying on a bank, and pushed down several parcels of this wreck with painful assiduity, while I stood quietly by, wondering to behold the sage thus curiously employed, and smiling with an ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... wild name Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame, Who woo'd thee once, thy vassal and became The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert A god unto thyself—nor less the same To the astounded kingdoms all inert, Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... pressed the trigger of the ultrasonic stunner. The pistol dropped soundlessly on the thick-piled rug; the man in uniform slumped in an inert heap. The Guide sprang to his feet and rounded the desk, crossing to and bending over the intruder. Why, this was the dream that had plagued him through the years. But it was ending differently. The young man—his face was startlingly familiar, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... reasonable mortal," returned Dexter. He was keyed to a high pitch. He felt that, at any instant, something might snap and leave him inert. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... though it must be granted them that they are crawling about before the break of day, it can seldom be said that they are perfectly awake; they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but lie torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known to live only by an inert and sluggish locomotive faculty, and may be said, like a wounded snake, to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... still retained their pristine savor and strength. No argument of mine, however, could convince my Manbo friends to the contrary. The spirits had consumed the soul, and there remained, according to their staunch belief, nothing but the outward form and inert bulk ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... is per se forever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, then we fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand, Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritual interpretation we could offer—that, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... in and out and around until he had located the submerged sheep. He lifted its head above the dip. The sheep showed no sign of life. Down on his knees dropped Glenn, to reach the sheep with strong brown hands, and to haul it up on the ground, where it flopped inert. Glenn pummeled it and pressed it, and worked on it much as Carley had seen a life-guard work over a half-drowned man. But the sheep did not respond ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... mouths ached, when the voice of Captain Willis was heard ordering the crew to trim sails. With alacrity they flew to their posts at the joyful sound; and those who but a minute before were so silent and inert, were now all life ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... across his path and wiled him another way. Vaguely he felt that she was unlike herself—less buoyant, though often restless; and sometimes he fancied she was pale underneath her sun-burned color like that of rose-hips in October. Various causes kept him inert, while strength mounted in his veins, and life seemed made for the pure joy ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... to him. They cut their way into the very heart of the column; and before the Russians could crush them with mere weight the other regiments of the same brigade hurled themselves on the right and on the left against the huge inert mass. The Russians broke and retreated in disorder before a quarter of their number, leaving to Scarlett and his men the glory of an action which ranks with the Prussian attack at Mars-la-Tour in 1870 as the most ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... she remained thus, crying and half inert with mental anguish and pain, she could not afterwards have told. Nor did she know what it was that roused her from this torpor, and caused her suddenly to sit up in her chair, upright, wide-awake, her every ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Tarzan dropped the inert mass and scooped several large pieces of meat from the cooking pot—enough to satisfy even his great hunger—then he raised the body of the feaster and shoved it into the vessel. When the other blacks awoke they would have something to think about! Tarzan grinned. As he turned toward ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sequences, we refer them to a law of nature, just as if they were sentient beings acting under the will of a sovereign. Parts of pure matter—the chemical elements, for instance—do not act at all; being brute and inert, it is only by a strong metaphor that they are said to be subject to law. Again, we attribute force, power, &c., to the primitive particles of matter, and speak of their natural agencies. Just so, we talk of tone ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... it understood that this simple Euglena is the type of all living things, so far as the distinction between these and inert matter is concerned. That cycle of changes, which is constituted by perhaps not more than two or three steps in the Euglena, is as clearly manifested in the multitudinous stages through which the germ of an oak or of a man passes. Whatever forms the Living Being may take on, whether ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... than ever I felt that fierce temptation. There she lay, the one woman who had ever seriously come into my life, sleeping so near to me that I could bend down and rest my hand on the inert form over which the snow drifted ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... she was bidden; but there was no sleep for her nor any one else on the ship that long night. The day broke again finally, but brought them no cheer: their labor had been unavailing; the leak had gained on them so rapidly that the ship lay low in the water, listless and inert, rolling in a sick, sluggish, helpless way in the trough of the sea. The wind had abated somewhat, and a boat well handled might live in the water now. By Captain Vincent's direction the men were sent to their stations on the spar, or upper deck. The boat's crew was chosen by selecting ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Felix had felt half asleep through the earlier days of his stay, and Lance seemed to be lulled into a continual doze whenever he was unoccupied, and that was almost always. It had grieved his elder brother to see this naturally vivacious being so inert and content with inaction, only strolling about a little in early morning and late evening, and languid and weary, if not actually suffering, during the heat and glare of the day. He was now, with his ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lighting a cigarette, he meditated for a time in the same kneeling position. His horse finished drinking and moved a step nearer his master, where he stood with head lowered, water dripping from his lip, body inert. But presently he pricked his ears and turning his head toward the other bank gave a low whinny. Bryant got ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... lips! And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead. Then he was frightened—she went so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her breast sent a shiver through him. "Megan!" he sighed out, and let her go. In the utter silence a blackbird shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled away among ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... It is therefore more easily worked in sheets and small objects. Celluloid can be made perfectly transparent and colorless while bakelite is confined to the range between a clear amber and an opaque brown or black. On the other hand bakelite has the advantage in being tasteless, odorless, inert, insoluble and non-inflammable. This last quality and its high electrical resistance give bakelite its chief field of usefulness. Electricity was discovered by the Greeks, who found that amber (electron) when rubbed would pick up straws. This means simply that amber, like all ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... movement, would scatter them all around us. Would not the change in our character, in our thoughts, in our feelings be very remarkable? Would we not appear actually "possessed" by that person, who, after all, would have been but the instrument of a natural reaction of all our inert forces? ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... very nature is to lead to thought and action. Grown ardent, interest becomes enthusiasm, "without which," says Emerson, "nothing great was ever accomplished." On the other hand, the absence of interest leaves the pupil lifeless and inert mentally, his work a bore and achievement impossible. Interest is, therefore, a first consideration ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... fallen forward, chin resting on his chest, mouth ajar, inert arms dangling over the arms of the chair, heavy legs lax, the Englishman sat quite dead, dead without a sign to show how ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... rend his own soul apart. Then the thud of a heavy body as it fell. And then, heaven and earth seemed to stand still for one awful minute as, feeling no further resistance, he raised himself and looked down upon his friend, William Hapgood. Inert and still he lay, with his skull crushed in just above the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... very reverse of his predecessors, being neither tranquil and inert, like Walter the Doubter, nor restless and fidgeting, like William the Testy; but a man, or rather a governor, of such uncommon activity and decision of mind, that he never sought nor accepted the advice of others, depending bravely upon his single head, as would a hero of yore upon his single ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... inert and lifeless, lay on the floor at the foot of the prince's bed. Most of the physicians bent over her. Her women, chiefly the wives of the ministers, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the second place, you who sit and listen, better qualified though you doubtless are than Philip for using the language of justice and appreciating it at the mouths of others, are nevertheless absolutely inert, when it is a question of preventing him from executing the designs in which he is now engaged. {4} It follows as the inevitable and perhaps reasonable consequence, that you are each more successful in that to which your ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... the constant care of Doctor Belton, who was much interested in the case, Cardo, or Charles Williams as he was now called, recovered strength of body; and, to a slight extent, restoration to consciousness; for though he lay inert and motionless, his lips moved incessantly in a low muttering or whispering, in which the nurses in vain endeavoured to find a clue to the mystery of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Poor lad," he exclaimed, with a heavy sigh, for the mere touch of the inert body showed that Tom was not overcome by illness ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... notary compassionately put the inert mechanism which bore the name of Cesar into a street ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to greener pastures, a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We must ascend a step at a time. If ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... legs, to the manifest risk of the bystanders, and goes back to the place puffing and blowing like an otter, after a half-hour's burst. Is this dancing? Shades of the filial and paternal Vestris! can this be a specimen of the art which gives elasticity to the most inert confirmation, which sets the blood glowing with a warm and genial flow, and makes beauty float before our ravished senses, stealing our admiration by the gracefulness of each new motion, till at last our souls thrill to each warning movement, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... we find the politicians, or even the conspirators, of Italy, Spain, and Germany, whose whole power of action evaporates in talking, and histrionically gesticulating). Yet still the best of them seemed inert by comparison with my uncle, and to regard his standard of action and exertion as trespassing to a needless degree ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... now (or recently), China was old, inert, tired, and unwarlike; must depend on her cunning, and chiefly on their divisions, for what protection she might get against the rapacious and strong. She was dull, sleepy and unimaginative, and wanted only to be left alone; yet teemed, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... he is discovered he runs away, but is soon caught, and blows from sticks rain upon him. Seeing that he cannot escape correction he seeks at least to save his life. Letting his head fall and straightening his inert legs he receives the blows without flinching. Often he is considered dead, and abandoned. The cunning little beast, who desires nothing better, arises, shakes himself, and rather bruised, but at all events alive, takes his way back ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... career of Continental conquest. Monarchy and aristocracy would have gone unchallenged, except within the "natural limits" of France; and the other nations, never shaken to their inmost depths, would have dragged on their old inert ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the animal a greater amount of "human" psychic affinity, whilst in mediumistic action I look upon the animal as reacting to the intervention of the other mind in a much more "automatic" way: almost like a "speaking table," but a table provided with live feet rather than inert legs, and above all provided with a nervous system forming part of it, so that very little action on the part of the medium is required, but the subliminal action of the investigator is enough by itself to work it. (Of course, this does not exclude altogether action by ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... genius, Havelock Ellis found that an incapacity for such petty expertness was visible in almost all first rate men. They are bad at tying cravats. They do not understand the fashionable card games. They are puzzled by book-keeping. They know nothing of party politics. In brief, they are inert and impotent in the very fields of endeavour that see the average men's highest performances, and are easily surpassed by men who, in actual intelligence, are about as far ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... sanctum the gloom was too oppressive to permit an elevated tendency of either thought or spirit. I could do nothing but sit listless and inert. Paper and pencil were before me, but I could not write—I could not even think coherently, and was on the point of rising and rushing out into the streets for a wild walk, when there came a ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the energy of matter, then—what else had they now? Lux and Relux, the two artificial metals, made of solidified light, far stronger than anything of molecular structure in nature, absolutely infusible, totally inert chemically, one a perfect conductor of light and of all radiation in space, the other a perfect reflector of all radiations—save molecular rays. Made into the condition of reflection by the action of special frequencies in its formation ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... chair, his body on hers, his fingers clutching at her rounded throat. For a moment, they writhed. She screamed, once.... Then, suddenly, his twisted fingers relaxed.... His head fell back. His body, inert, rolled from hers, turned again as it struck the chair, and fell, a thing crushed and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... operations they are grave and serious, profound in their effect upon the individual, and a violation of public sentiment. Anaesthetics and antiseptics have, however, made them possible, and if a surgical operation could be devised, simple and safe in performance, inert in every way but one, and against which there would be no individual or public sentiment, its application as a social reform, would go far to solve the grave and serious problem of ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... present age it is difficult to disentangle the main issues; but it seems certain that side by side with political and economic divisions, there is a gulf growing wider and wider every day between the adherents of what might be called the Hellenic Renaissance and the inert, suspicious, unintelligent mob; that mob the mud of whose heavy traditions is capable of breeding, at one and the same time, the most crafty hypocrisy and the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... sky, which is visible because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... where they might gain access to the shore by a path down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay. The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... craze for the scientific stand-point is not merely overdone—it is radically vicious. Human destinies cannot be treated as if they were inert objects under the microscope. The cold-blooded logical way of treating a problem is in almost every case the wrong way. Heart and imagination to me are more vital than intellect. I have the courage to be illogical, to defy facts for the sake of an ideal, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Far the foremost man in urging and encouraging this glorious endeavour was Thomas Davis. From sources the most extraordinary, and the least known, there welled forth abundant and seductive inspiration. He struck living fire from inert wayside stones. To him the meanest rill, the rugged mountain, the barren waste, the rudest fragment of barbaric history, spoke the language of elevation, harmony and hope. The circle, of which he was the beloved centre, was composed of men equally sincere, resolute and hopeful; ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... deny, that motion is essential and necessary to matter; they cannot, at least, help acknowledging that bodies, which seem dead and inert, produce motion of themselves, when placed in a fit situation to act upon one another. For instance; phosphorus, when exposed to the air, immediately takes fire. Meal and water, when mixed, ferment. Thus dead matter begets motion of itself. Matter has then the power of self-motion; and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... more, ever so much more. Mr. Morrish had practically promised he would take anything that was as good as that. She had kept her cab because she was going to Dover; she couldn't leave the others alone. It was a vehicle infirm and inert, but Baron, after a little, appreciated its pace, for she had consented to his getting in with her and driving, this time in earnest, to Victoria. She had only come to tell him the good news— she repeated this assurance more than ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... burden of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myself a rendezvous ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... sat and vigilantly observed the striking figure before me, in appearance so full of life and passion, in reality so completely inert. ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... make this chapter very short, I would invoke the assistance of the physicians, who have observed every shade of the transition of a living to an inert body. I would quote philosophers, kings, men of letters, men, who while on the verge of eternity, had pleasant thoughts they decked in the graces; I would recall the dying answer of Fontinelle, who being asked what he felt, said, "nothing but the pain of ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... please. I can carry him," Thode directed, and as he slung the inert form gently over his shoulder he saw that the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... to childhood, in the formula, "Heads, I win; tails, you lose." Mindful of my father's parting words, I turned my attention timidly to railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of inglorious security, dealing for small amounts in the most inert stocks, and bearing (as best I could) the scorn of my hired clerk. One day I had ventured a little further by way of experiment; and, in the sure expectation they would continue to go down, sold several thousand dollars of Pan-Handle Preference (I think it was). ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... have I ever understood what could be higher than these pleasures, nor indeed how in anything formless and immaterial there could be pleasure at all. Yet the wisest people assure us that our souls are as superior to our minds as are our minds to our inert and merely material bodies. I cannot understand it ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... set the people by the ears talking, if talk they would, or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more could be got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many as the furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially with the two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back closet—the small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the clergymen's ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... from her drawer a key, handed it to Hermann, and gave him the necessary instructions. Hermann pressed her cold, inert hand, kissed her bowed head, and left ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... At first that inert oppression which always came when the memory of his father returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep for his years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly with men, yet for years now his son had accumulated impressions, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... felt as it was on the great agricultural estates, which offered employment chiefly for the unskilled; and the difficulties that might arise from the lack of strength or interest, from the possession of hands that were either feeble or inert, were probably overcome in the same uncompromising manner in the workshop of the contractor and on the domains of the landed gentry. The maxim that an aged slave should be sold could not have been peculiar to the dabbler in agriculture, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Shall bear our good king's name to after-time, And yours along with it; for ye are men Well worth the handing down; whose paged names Will not disgrace posterity to read: Men born for acts of hardihood and valour, Whose stirring spirits scorn'd to lie inert, Base atoms in the mass of population That rots in stagnant Europe. Ye are men Who a high wealth and fame will bravely win, And wear full worthily. I still shall be The foremost in all troubles, toil, and danger, Your leader and your captain, ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... But as the puny youth can by systematic exercise broaden his frame and develop his muscles into at least a semblance of the athlete, and can then through his healthier appetite and his faster rate of repair maintain himself without effort at the new standard; so can the mentally inert call forth their reserves of energy and maintain a higher standard of ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... living really in nature; the clodhopper living merely out of society; the one bent up in every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly alive to all that touches it; the other in the inert and bestial state, walking in a faint dream, and taking so dim an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is truly conscious of nothing but himself. It is only in the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impressed on objects from without, as the sculptor impresses his dream on the marble. If our life and our occupations remain too often without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have, it is because we have not known how to put anything into them. The height of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. I would have our young girls apply themselves to the development of the truly feminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph of woman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted every attempt at reanimation. After a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were discontinued. For a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and still neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by a ray of thought or sensation, a dreamless inanition, a vast space ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... salvation of a creature whose understanding is at once pitifully weak and odiously perverse, and whose heart is from the beginning wicked, corrupt, and given over to reprobation. The difference is plainly enormous. The theologian discourages men; they are to wait for the miracle of conversion, inert or desperate. The naturalist arouses them; he supplies them with the most powerful of motives for the energetic use of the most powerful of their endowments. "Men would always have Grace," says Holbach, with excellent sense, "if they were well educated ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap; she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes. She was drunken with ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... circumstances in a few words. On one occasion he said after breakfast to Barthrop and me: "Arrivals to-day, Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall—the man a retired coal-merchant, rather wealthy, interested in foreign missions; the woman inert; daughter prevented from coming, and they bring a niece, Phyllis by name, understood to be charming. I undertake the sole charge of Wetherall himself, Mrs. Wetherall requires no specific attentions—placid woman, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... combative propensities. The addition of a "gunboat" to the power of Atlamalco naturally made her more aggressive and demonstrative. President Bambos dreamed of acquiring two similar engines of war, when he would proceed to wipe his hated rival off the earth; but the loan which he tried to float remained inert and the northern barbarians, whose shipyards send forth most of the navies of the world, insisted upon cash or security as preliminary to laying the keels of the Zalapatan fleet. The project therefore hung fire. Though the craft that roamed up and down the bifurcated river was referred ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... her head in assent. Philippe gave her a last glance, hoping for some softening; but she remained inert and frigid. He slowly opened the door, and closed it, pausing again to listen if a cry or a sigh would give him—wounded as he was—a pretext for returning and offering to forgive. But all ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... invitation remained without response. The woman lay there unmoving, inert. Only was life in her hot eyes, and the trifling rise and fall of the bed covering as she breathed. Obviously she was considering. Perhaps she was wondering how much she had a right to tell this officer. She was completely ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... more was she convinced that both she and the dog were wrong in their diagnosis. The young man's face was deadly white, his cheeks gaunt. It was evidently a grave matter. For a moment or so she had a qualm of fear lest he might be dead. She bent down, took him in her capable grip and composed his inert body decently, and placed the knapsack he was wearing beneath his head. The faintly beating heart proved him to be alive, but her touch on his brow discovered fever. Kneeling by his side, she wiped his lips with her handkerchief, and gave herself up to the fraction of a minute's ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... conception emphasizes rightly the tremendous power of environment and personality in shaping character, but it is really a dangerous half truth. If the child were a block of marble, he would be no different from the dead, inert lump that lies in the studio awaiting the will of the sculptor. They would both be things. But a child has life, and the difference between life and thing lies in an inner power or activity which life possesses and uses when and as it will. This activity has to be reckoned with. Sun and rain ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... down on a sofa and seated herself by his side. A deep lassitude was upon him, and the hand she had possessed herself of lay in her hold inert. ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... in a rough bunk in the mountain cabin, and David, beside him on a wooden box, had been bending forward and feeling his pulse. He had felt weak and utterly inert, and he knew now that he had been very ill. The cabin had been a small and lonely one, with snow-peaks not far above it, and it had been very cold. During the day a woman kept up the fire. Her name was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... amid the sheets pale and inert, her beautiful black hair making an ink stain on the pillows. She stretched an exhausted hand to him, and looked at him earnestly and affectionately. To both of them their ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... boomed. One of Riggs's starting, popping eyes—the right one—went out, like a lamp. The other rolled horribly, then set in blank dead fixedness. Riggs swayed in slow motion until a lost balance felled him heavily, an inert mass. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... seizure, the young doctor said, later, but not now. He would be thrown back for some weeks, then he would begin to mend again and then whatever he said, whatever he did, Lady Harman must do nothing to contradict him. For a whole day Sir Isaac lay inert, in a cold sweat. He consented once to attempt eating, but sickness overcame him. He seemed so ill that all the young doctor's reassurances could not convince Lady Harman that he would recover. Then suddenly towards evening his arrested vitality was flowing again, the young doctor ceased ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... process of profoundest value. On it finally depends mastery. It is not of so much importance how soon the concept shall finally be gained as that it is gained. A statement by another may seem lifeless and inert and the meaning of an observation may be obscure. Digestive thought is the only assimilative process. The whole art of telephony hangs on taking thought of things. Judge R.F. Taylor of Indiana said of Professor Bell, "It has been said that ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... inert recipient of foreign influence when it came. According to credible legend, the "Great King" at Byzantium imported glass, tin, silver, bronze, cut stones, and other treasure from the Sudan. Embassies were sent and states like Nupe recognized the suzerainty ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... rise and falling back in fury, while Frank rapidly reloaded and stepped between it and the children. But the convulsions became fewer and less violent, the limbs stiffened, the beautiful black and yellow body sank inert to the ground. The tail twitched a little. A few tremors shook the panther. Then it ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Steel Trust and the Coal Trust and the Beef Trust, the Liquor Trust and the Traction Trust and the Money Trust—those masters of America who do not want citizens, free and intelligent and self-governing, but who want the slave-hordes as they come, ignorant, inert, physically, mentally and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... on a small scale; is it so on a large one? Capital surely yields a return diminishing in inverse ratio to its own growth. Inactive and inert capital yields this diminishing return, but active capital brings in a marvellously increasing return. Herein lies ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... my eyes! What, my young Roumanian did not perish in the explosion? No! As I shall soon hear from his own mouth, he was thrown on to the line when the boiler went up, remained there inert for a time, found himself uninjured—miraculously—kept away till he could slip into the van unperceived. I had just left the van after looking for him in vain, and supposing that he had been the first ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... hand seemed tremendous; she could imagine it holding down the strong neck of a bull. It moved continually while he spoke to her, closing in a tense strong grip that changed the mahogany color to a dull whiteness and opening again to a ponderous, inert width. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... is of the greatest importance in developing the principles upon which successful dry-farming rests. Further, it may be said that while in the humid East the farmer must be extremely careful not to turn up with his plow too much of the inert subsoil, no such fear need possess the western farmer. On the contrary, he should use his utmost endeavor to plow as deeply as possible in order to prepare the very best reservoir for the falling waters and a place for the ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... when a tube is slightly exhausted the discharge may be passed through it in the form of a thin luminous thread. When produced with currents of low frequency, obtained from a coil operated as usual, this thread is inert. If a magnet be approached to it, the part near the same is attracted or repelled, according to the direction of the lines of force of the magnet. It occurred to me that if such a thread would be produced with currents of ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... They lifted the inert form of our hero and walked toward the mansion with him, Mrs. Baggert, the housekeeper, standing in the doorway in dismay, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... come upon the strings and false bottoms and wigs and masks of the game. But the office boy's contemplation of her distress was real. Something must be done. The whole machine of things could not indefinitely hang thus suspended, inert, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... were added a scuffle and a sleepily fretful "Lemme be." A heavy footstep crossed the hall and the stalwart Abie Fishhandler stalked into Room 18, bearing the new boy in his arms. From his dusty unlaced shoes to his jungle of gleaming red hair, Isidore Diamantstein was inert, dirty, ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... hope of every man to whom the absence of inherited wealth supplied an impetus to labour; and the populated portions of these States became as a hive thronged with an active, money-seeking swarm, by which the idle and the inert were thrust aside before they became awake to their changed condition, or heard a murmur of the tide whose waves were encircling them about ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... he sat down to rest, and cook his rice, on what he thought was a great fallen tree. While thus occupied, he felt his seat moving from under him, and, starting up, found he had been making use of a huge sawar lying inert and distended with food. He killed it, and found a full-grown deer in its stomach. These snakes must live to a great age, and grow always, to attain ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.—Fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervor, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: but canst thou not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... I look up now they'll BOTH be looking at me!" To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr. Lavington's glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain about his heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... ever in action, for ever in contention, and from excelling in them all other mortals, what advantage derive we? I would not ask what satisfaction, what glory? The insects have more activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, even inert matter more firmness and stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the exercise of this every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor you westward have found any exhausted by ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... fashion in all manner of Histories, we shall otherwise find to be abundantly certain; and it produced conspicuous definite results. It is, as it were, the one fact still worth human remembrance in this expensive Radewitz and its fooleries; and is itself left in that vague inert state,— ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... in drink and the like cannot approach a certain order of mind. But the craving for knowledge and a fuller life—either in a spiritual or the human way—is implanted ineradicably in every soul, and while it may rest inert and seem nullified in a kind of apathy, the craving is there—to be aroused surely enough at some dangerous hour. And of all the dangerous hours in life, the hour of disappointed love is the most critical. Calm spectators of mortal folly who have been satisfactorily ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... her, the superfine quality was revealed after years of blindness.—Nor can I describe the sudden rebellion, the revulsion that I experienced. Hambleton Durrett! It was an outrage, a sacrilege! I got up, and put my hand on the mantel. Nancy remained motionless, inert, her head lying back against the chair. Could it be that she were enjoying my discomfiture? There is no need to confess that I knew next to nothing of women; had I been less excited, I might have made the discovery that I still regarded them sentimentally. Certain romantic ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... But the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, of wood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He knows by experience that it takes years to establish this understanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not discover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had studied for a long time; ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... wrest himself from the iron grasp; madly he fought for freedom; but always there was that slow, deadly tightening at the throat. Panting and choking, he had made one last desperate attempt to break the grip that pinned him down; and then lay spent and inert except for an occasional hoarse gasp, or convulsive movement of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling |
