"Inert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its dump was hidden under a mantle of green. Even its mouth, once a black hole in the hillside verdure, was curtained by a veil of creepers. There was game and there was water and there he stayed. At first he rested, then idle and inert lay among the ferns on the top of the dump, staring at the distance, squinting up at the sky, deadened with the weight of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... interrupted the conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... instead ease, wealth, 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... however arises another dilemma, for if the Deity has really those attributes of power and justice, there would never have been occasion for such temperaneous interpositions. A particular providence must indeed prove one of these two principles, either that God was imperfect in his design, or that inert matter is inimical to the properties of God. If that wished for interposition of the Deity is put off to a future existence, I cannot help observing, that future day has been already a long while waited ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... integration within the evolving whole. Thus the regroupings of tamas reals marks the differentiation which takes place within the mahat but through its stage as bhutadi. Bhutadi is absolutely homogeneous and inert, devoid of all physical and chemical characters except quantum or mass. The second stadium tanmatra represents subtle matter, vibratory, impingent, radiant, instinct with potential energy. These "potentials" arise from the unequal ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... in fact almost amounted to absurdity, the inhabitants of this thickly-populated province nowhere venturing to rise against the handful of robbers by whom they were so cruelly persecuted. A Baron von Puckler offered an individual exception: his endeavors to rouse the inert masses met with no success, and, rendered desperate by his failure, he blew out his brains. When too late a prince of Anhalt-Pless assembled an armed force in Upper Silesia and attempted to relieve Breslau, but Thiele ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... upon hands and knees until he had passed the first of the Indian wigwams. Here he dropped for a silent interval of caution into shadow and lay there scarcely breathing. On toward the door of Diane's shelter he crept and once more lay inert and quiet. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... running around the corral, following the line of the fence, and in the center of the bunch was the little bay pony with the inert, and probably dead, body of a man hanging head downward on the pony's flank, rolling horribly, and in constant danger of being hit by the flying heels of the other ponies, who were frantic ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be,"' &c. Neither this nor that is the body that abideth. Abideth, I say; for that which riseth again must have remained, though perhaps in an inert state.—It is not dead, but sleepeth;—that is, it is not dissolved any more than the exterior or phenomenal organism appears to us dissolved when it lieth in apparent ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... but true it is! Similar statements if not more remarkable ones could be made about many of the other herbs herein discussed. Many of these are spoken of as "formerly considered specific" for such and such troubles but "now known to be inert." ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... How could I dishonour him by bearing myself towards him as to that other . . . worthless . . . ! Oh! the happy, happy girls, who have mothers . . . !' All the muscles of her body seemed to shrink and collapse, till she was like an inert mass at the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... electricity to pass through it, and the minium is thereby reduced to metallic spongy lead on the negative pole, and oxidized to peroxide of lead on the positive pole; when the cell is discharged the reduced lead becomes oxidized, and the peroxide of lead is reduced until the cell becomes inert. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... who can murder, can massacre, the trees, and he raves. Tensely he listens and hears in the soughing wind a response to his cries of desire. Overwhelmed, he resumes his walk, weeping, until he arrives at the chateau and sinks to his bed exhausted, an inert mass. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... not, as he had first thought, dead; her breathing was slow and deep and harsh, her pulse deliberate and full; she was warm, too, but her face was suffused by an unnatural blueness and the pupils of her inert eyes were barely discernible. He shook her with an unceremonious vigor, but there was no answering energy; she fell across his arm in a sheer weight of satin-covered body. He moved back in a momentary uncontrollable ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inert, paralyzed. Then Dick, accustomed to act quickly in every emergency, slung the line around a boulder, took a half hitch to secure it and, without stopping to see whether it would hold or not, ran down stream at top speed with Bob and Bill ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... and a more bounding elasticity. So one might foretell, before the study of a single fact of experience, that, other things being equal, he who had few or no thoughts would have not only a dormant mind, but also a sluggish and inert body, less active than another, less enduring, and especially less defiant of physical ills. And one might prophesy, too, that he who had high thoughts and wealth of knowledge would have stored up in his brain a magazine of reserved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us—whether a strange, unknowable, and invisible being does not, during our moments of mental and physical torpor, animate the inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience than it ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Goddess on the colonnades of the Court of the Universe amounts to a definite creation of a new type of repeated architectural finial - a human figure conventionalized to be come architecturally static - yet not so devitalized as to be inert. Based on another style of architecture the finials of the cloister of the Court of Ages serve a correspondingly related purpose, and the crouching figures on columns in this court are excellent ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... into blackness. And it seemed, as I went down, that Alan's inert body was falling ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... crossed her threshold, had taken in the unhappy, childlike figure, and that other figure, sunken in its seat, slumbering, inert, the image of decay. He stood still for a moment before Laura, as a man stands when he ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... brain lay passive, inert, receiving into its vacancy restless siftings of past sights and sounds: Rol, weeping, laughing, playing, coiled in the arms of that dreadful Thing: Tyr—O Tyr!—white fangs in the black jowl: the women who wept on The foolish ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their carriage the inert dark bundle, crouched in the corner, started into life—a woman, with wild hair and wilder eyes, whose pale lips quivered with suppressed weeping as her piteous voice ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... was ready for action. All those formidable qualities in her nature, which a gentler and wiser training than hers had been might have held in check—by development of preservative influences that lay inert—were now driven back to their lurking-place; leaving only the faintest traces of their momentary appearance on the surface. Her breathing seemed to be oppressed; her eyelids ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... lay staring at the ceiling—waiting. Here in this dismal room, alone and facing death with a courage amazing to behold, she made a picture which so stirred me that despite earlier wounded feelings I went to her side. The little hands were cold and inert when I took them, but her fingers tightened ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... had continuously labored for the well-being of others. Yet the works of a good man follow him and in numberless homes, in public buildings, on church spires, honored monuments to the memory of Simon Willard still survive—monuments far more useful than are inert blocks of marble—monuments that pulse with life and keep hourly before those who look upon them the thought of one who performed for his fellow men a practical and ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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, shall we say, of those today who try to run ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... meant to wear the yoke so as not to be pitied. For she did think of the coming years with presentiment: she was frightened at Grandcourt. The poor thing had passed from her girlish sauciness of superiority over this inert specimen of personal distinction into an amazed perception of her former ignorance about the possible mental attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in marriage—of her present ignorance as to what their life with each ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... least a poor nail then, Where my heart may hang inert. For I want it not again, With ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... nearly two months, and finally consented to it when the enemy had been reinforced by 30,000 from Meade, and by Sherman's army from Memphis, of 20,000, just when he could not spare a large detachment! In other words, lying inert before a defeated army, when concentrated; and dispersing his forces when the enemy was reinforced and concentrated! If disaster ensues, the government will suffer the terrible consequences, for it assumed the responsibility of retaining ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... blood, crazed with liquor. With clubbed guns we cleared it again and again, battering mercilessly at every head that fronted us. Then a great giant of a fellow—dead or alive I know not—was hurled headlong through the opening, an inert, limp weight, that bore the two soldiers beside me to the floor beneath his body. With wide sweep of my gun I struck him, shattering the stock into fragments, and swung back to meet the others, the hot barrel falling ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... for a while, then lay dull and inert for hours. She had a passive longing for death. After the suffering and the hideous mortification of that day there seemed no other climax. The cavalcade rode beneath her windows once more, with their untired laughter, their splendid vitality. They scattered ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... inert form of the young woman in his arms, glanced around with a startled gaze. He stood miserably, not knowing what to do, when suddenly he saw Policeman O'Toole coming toward him down the hall. Policeman O'Toole was leading by the arm a man whose ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... success. When Blake said, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise," he expressed a profound truth which Nietzsche and others have done little more than amplify. There is nothing so hopeless as inert or inactive virtue: it is a form of life grown putrid, and it turns into poisonous, decaying matter in the soul. If Coleridge had been more callous towards what he felt to be his duties, if he had not ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers shook the sleeping, but in vain. At last Geoffrey began to stir. But in vain Louis lifted Ciccio's shoulders from the table. The head and the hands dropped inert. The long black lashes lay motionless, the rather long, fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the mouth remained shut. Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur, animal, and naked, frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... action of a dead substance, which cannot act upon a living substance that can? Assuredly not! Is it not rather the recognition by the living substance of the lifeless one? The whole theory of drug action is easily explainable on this hypothesis. Drugs—inert substances—do not act upon the living organism, but are acted upon, with a view to their expulsion from the living domain. If it were not so, if drugs really acted upon the various organs, then their action should be equally as effective after death as before. But no, nature ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Thus I continued, inert, helpless, motionless, till the Princesse d'Henin came into my apartment. Her first news was, that Bonaparte had already reached Compigne, and that to-morrow, the 20th of March, he might arrive in Paris, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... also, in violation of the Divine Law, that we shall surrender the fugitive slave who takes refuge at our fireside from his relentless pursuers. 'What, then,' you say; 'can nothing be done for freedom because the public conscience is inert?' Yes, much can be done—everything can be done. Slavery can be limited to its present bounds; it can be ameliorated; it can and must be abolished, and you and I can ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 hesitating knock at ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... shaping and shaped by events, hardened or fused by conflict, and preserving through all vicissitudes and convulsions the incomparable vitality of the nation. France, more than any other country, is to be studied as a living spirit, not as an inert mass, and in a study of this kind the mechanico-philosophical method will not carry us far. It does not appear to strike Professor Adams as singular that a nation "abandoned for the last eighty years to the domination of Siva, the fierce god of destruction," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... "Sure it does," he said. "I'd say it was a matter of resistance. Moving an inanimate object is pretty simple— comparatively, anyhow—because inert matter has ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... stumbled and its rider was rolling headlong down the hill, while the frightened animal pawed the earth in a wild attempt to regain its feet. The girls, terrified, started swiftly for the spot, but even as they ran the unfortunate rider went over a sharper turn and struck. Then—she lay in an inert heap against a jagged rock! In a moment they were ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... 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 we refuse one ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... or wood, was the first stage in the development of man's power; and tools or machines, in iron or steel, are the last and most efficient method of economising it, and enabling him to intelligently direct the active and inert ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly confined; in its lowest strata people had been breathing it all day—all the week, in fact—in and out of their lungs, so that it was no wonder it felt ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration, to such casually picturesque 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 ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the lion stood, with the tail swinging in that pendulum-like motion; the great eyes gazing heavily at him; while during those painful minutes Dyke's brain grew more and more active. He thought of mice in the power of cats, and felt something of the inert helplessness of the lesser animal, crouching, as if fascinated by the cruel, claw-armed tyrant, waiting to make its spring. And he knew that at any moment this beast might come at him as if discharged from a catapult. But all the same the brain grew more and more acute in its endeavours to find ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... state analogous to the ordinary "waking trance" of the hypnotists. It is believed that all bodies convey, or are the vehicles of certain universal property called od or odyle (od-hyle), which is not regarded as a force but as an inert and passive substance underlying the more active forces familiar to us in kinetic, calorific and electrical phenomena. In this respect it holds a position analogous to the argon of the atmosphere, and is capable of taking up the vibrations of those bodies to which it is related and which it invests. ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... with his one sound arm he caught Maurice by the elbow and helped him to struggle to his feet. The horse, dazed with terror, snorted at the smell of blood, but he did not move. Maurice, equally dazed, scrambled into the saddle—almost inert—a dead weight—a thing that impeded progress and movement; but the thing that Crystal loved above all things on earth and which Bobby knew he must wrest out of these devouring jaws of Death and lay—safe and sound—within ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... this systematic brutality, had its theorists and apologists; human faculties were denied to the blacks. They were classed as a race between the flesh and the spirit. Thus the infamous abuse of power, which was exercised over this inert and servile race, was called necessary guardianship. Tyrants have never wanted sophists: on the other hand, men of right feeling towards their fellows, who had, like Gregoire, Raynal, Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, La Fayette, embraced the cause of humanity, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... principal cities there is generally at least one dealer who adheres to fixed prices for his goods. A daily paper is now published in Chinese at Shanghai, and the English school there is well patronized. All these things convince me that at last Western civilization is making an impression. The inert mass begins to move, and China will march forward ere long. The most convincing proof of this is found, perhaps, in the fact that the government appropriated in 1872 nearly two millions of dollars to maintain a hundred and fifty students in the United States. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... assistant, "Apply that to the other wire," said he; and dropping his own wire, he put his hand over the cylinder, with his fingers dipping into the vessel from which the other wire sprang. When the wire hummed under the tuning-fork and the vibration thrilled again, instantly he felt as if an inert obstruction had been removed. The vibratory influence whirled wildly through him, there was a pause of a second or two (which seemed to him many minutes in duration), and then suddenly a kind of rigor passed upon the form and features of ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... still—and thy 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 ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... ground-floor of the house, and on the threshold of each room ejaculated "Ah!" or "Ha!" Then he and the doctor went upstairs. Priam remained inert, and excessively ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... sank down into the chair again, breathless and inert, and sobbing deep, low sobs. The sound of dancing came from the hall, with cries of "Hooch!" and the voice ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... place 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 ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... place almost before she knew it. She saw him stoop with absolute assurance and slip his arm under the boy's shoulders. Tommy's inert head fell back against him, but she saw his strong right hand come out and take the spoon that Ralston held out. His dark face was bent to his task, and it held no dismay, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... neither be bribed nor browbeaten out of the discharge of their duty, which points to death as 'the surest calculation that can be made,—as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.' A grim consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr. Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent; and you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent work of knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making jackets for pauper children. Now, although it is considered ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... limp and pallid and wide-eyed against the wall, holding before her the tape that had told her the story—and not realizing that she held it. Then the man awoke from his sleep-walker's vacancy and realized her presence. At the sight of her despairing eyes and inert figure resting for support against the mahogany panels, his expression altered. His eyes woke to life and, again moistening his lips, he forced the ghost of a smile which at first ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the inert old woman across the street and a short distance along the opposite pavement. Here, there was a pleasant, modest-looking tea-shop with the name of Walcker over the front, and embedded in the plate glass were the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and everything in it, himself included,—a disgust which varies in intensity, rising at times into a longing for death, sinking often into weary apathy, but is never dispelled for more than brief intervals. Such a state of feeling is inevitably adverse to any kind of decided action; the body is inert, the mind indifferent or worse; its response is, 'it does not matter,' 'it is not worth while,' 'it is no good.' And the action required of Hamlet is very exceptional. It is violent, dangerous, difficult to accomplish perfectly, on one side repulsive to a man of honour and sensitive feeling, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... like the French, were not disposed to remain inert under the terms of the treaty. Captain Moon sailed down from Nelson, with two strongly-manned ships, to attempt the recapture of Albany. At the moment when he had loaded a cargo of furs from the half-abandoned fort on one of his vessels, d'Iberville ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... however,—points not of detail, but of principle,—the Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The whole body of the church was to take an active share in its concerns; the various faculties of its various members were to perform their several parts: it was to be a living society, not an inert mass of mere hearers and subjects, who were to be authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by one small portion of its members. It is quite consistent with this, that, at particular times, the church should ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... almost womanish tenderness, Carew had brought his friend back to the tent, and made him over to the care of Paddy who gave up all things else, for the sake of his little Canuck. All that afternoon and night, Weldon lay passive, inert, while Paddy bathed him, fed him, poured cool, soft things over his wounds, fed him again, and then sat down beside him with his own stubby hand resting against Weldon's limp fingers. But, the next morning, Weldon rose, buttoned and belted himself with elaborate care. Then, disregarding ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... pole 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 to Glenn's ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... figure. There was not the slightest trace of feebleness in his impassioned tones. Except once or twice, as he hesitated a moment or two for a word to express his thought, there was not a reminder that the brain at seventy may be inert or the fire be dampened ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... supplied and the party moved on. About to descend into the sunken road the bearers ducked to that fatal shell whine ... too late. Three blood-soaked figures were visible through the lifting-smoke stretched inert on the ground. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... 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, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... creature lived. The earth was then a far hotter place than now; a terrible steaming swamp, full of rank and luxuriant vegetation, gigantic palms, ferns as big as trees. The diplodocus was upwards of a hundred feet long, a vast inert creature, with a tough black hide. In spite of its enormous bulk its brain was only the size of a pigeon's egg, so that its mental processes must have been of the simplest. It had a big mouth full of rudimentary teeth, of no use to masticate its food, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink. As it sank he became less and less frenzied, and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor. It is wonderful, however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him. I signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for I was anxious to see what he would do. He went straight over ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... as the dying animal fell back, spurning the bloody pool with tail and flippers; but the mighty heart sent forth its wasted life-tide, until its current was exhausted and the powerful "old hood" was like his whilom rival—a lifeless mass of inert flesh. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies,"[25] does not often exist in female operatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to the class of those who, in the words of the same author, by "pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert."[26] Hence they have stronger bodies, a reproductive apparatus more normally constructed, and a catamenial function less readily disturbed by effort, than their student sisters, who are not only younger than they, but are trained to push "brain-activity to an extreme." Give ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... nothing. She only put down the lantern and slipped her arms under the shoulders that lay in the wet grass, shuddering as her hands closed on the warm moisture of blood, and Rowlett rose with an effort and rallied his spent strength to lift the inert knees. While the old man lighted their footsteps the little procession made its painful way down what was left of the mountainside, across the road, and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... extract of Hemlock, blended with potash, is kept by the chemists, to be mixed with boiling water, for inhalation to ease a troublesome spasmodic cough, or an asthmatic attack. In Russia and the Crimea, this plant is so inert as to be edible; whereas in the South of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... It is then in the condition known as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the consciousness from the physical body. When the separation occurs in the case of the medium it is called a trance. The cause of the inert condition of the physical body is the same in both cases—the withdrawal of the consciousness of the ego. The physical body is then unoccupied, but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with it. In death that tie is severed ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... Julia's expression as she sprang round to face the newcomer. She saw it change, swift as lightning, from a look of horrified dismay to one of sudden transforming tenderness, as the girl recognized the intruder, that the hand already in the act of pushing open the door of the clock fell inert and limp to her side, and if she had been able to move she would have lost no time in retreating. She knew instinctively that she was seeing a secret laid bare which she had no right to spy upon. And yet, though her impulse was to fly from the place in embarrassment and confusion, something ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Lady Mabel stood aside, with L'Isle, and had the pleasure of witnessing a genuine impromptu Spanish ball in the open air. They were at once struck with the sudden gayety and activity of a people habitually so grave and inert. But as one dance followed another, the vivacity of the party increased. Many of the officers and some of their fair friends were from Andalusia, where music and the castinets are never heard in vain. Presently the tune was changed, and the excited dancers slid over into the fandango and volero, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... he was only ruthless and predatory after the manner of his kind. A thrill of admiration tingled his spine. The women of his race were chattels, lazy and inert, without fire, merely drudges or playthings. Here was one worth conquering, a white flame to be controlled. To bend her without breaking her, that must be his method of procedure. The skin under her chin was as white as the heart of a mangosteen, and the longing to sweep ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... 'one'. Let any man ask himself, whose understanding can both reason, and become the depository of truth, whether, if 'one mind' thus regulated, with absolute authority, 'three', or, otherwise, 'four' persons, with all their congeries of material parts, would not these parts, inert in themselves, when subjected to one predominant mind, be, in the most logical sense, 'one person'? Are ligament and exterior combination indispensable pre-requisites to the sovereign influence of mind over mind? or mind over ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... The Na-che shot by at uncontrollable speed, her crew shouting directions as she passed. Milton at last, just as the Ida entered a roaring fall, brought Forrester to the gunwale, but having achieved this, the end of the rope dropped from his fingers and he lay inert, his eyes closed. Forrester clung to the edge of the boat ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... them, I began for the first time to realise fully the exceeding awkwardness of my situation, and to realise, too, that if deliverance was to come to me I must bestir myself and do what might be possible to meet it, for to remain passively lashed to that inert piece of drifting wreckage might very well mean a slow and agonising death by starvation. Yet, after all, what could I do? The land was my nearest refuge, and that, I considered, must be at least twenty miles distant, altogether too far to dream of swimming ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... 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, than you ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... from the inert body. The torch had hissed itself out. Grantline swung on our building corner, and I leaned down with him to examine it. The torch had fused and scarred the surface of the wall, burned almost through. A pressure-rift had opened. We could see it, a curving gash ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... The ancient trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more profitable scale; and new branches of industry were explored. The active and regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the more profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country, the English cannot be said to have encroached on the French; for, in fact, they created employments and profits which had not previously existed. A few ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... so far, surrounded by such endless, desolate wastes of gloomy forest, the Shadow was cold, inhospitable; and she was afraid to face it alone. If Ben would only waken and sustain her drooping spirit with his own! She was lonely and afraid, in the shadow of the inert spruce, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... energetic, and beyond all things despised dreaming fainans (such, for instance, as 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 upon ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... under a king, foolish, inert, and lazy, at a time when all other nations are active, and work gloriously, while we sleep? Gentlemen, pardon me for saying before a prince, who will perhaps blame my temerity (for he has the prejudices of family), that for four years we ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... has been shown to be true of some of the most destructive diseases which infect animals, such diseases as the sheep pox, such diseases as that most terrible and destructive disorder of horses, glanders, that in these, also, the active power is the living solid particle, and that the inert part is the fluid. However, do not suppose that I am pushing the analogy too far. I do not mean to say that the active, solid parts in these diseased matters are of the same nature as living yeast plants; but, so far as ...
— Yeast • Thomas H. Huxley
... one side when he and Pederson had short-circuited each other, had time to get behind the protection of the office door. He couldn't close it because Lasser's and Pederson's inert forms blocked the doorway, but at least it afforded protection ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... confederate. She ran to the dressing-table and took up a small penknife. Jim was leaning over his victim, wresting the gun from his hand, when she reached him. The knife came down twice in his shoulder. The intense pain caused him to drop the gun, but he picked it up again, hurled his inert opponent across the room, and went to Edith. The knife dropped from her fingers as she saw the blood streaming ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... and more inert, and the breeze grew more and more powerful. The Mediterranean is like a capricious woman; the North Sea is like a violent and capricious man. The foredoomed smack was almost like a buoy in a tideway; the sea came over her, screaming as it ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... of despair La Mothe would have turned away, but Commines held him fast. His faith was unshaken, but the natural reaction from the day's tense emotion had sapped its buoyancy, leaving it negative and inert rather than positive and aggressive. The half-hour's slackless concentration of nerve and muscle in the defence of the stairway had drained him of strength and energy like the crisis of a fever. For him Ursula de Vesc's curt No! stood against ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... crowd, consisting of listless idlers calmly smoking their cigars, or listening to or retailing the—in general—very dull news of the capital; but on the day of which I am speaking the mass was no longer inert. There was much gesticulation and vociferation, and several people were running about shouting, "Viva la constitucion!"—a cry which, a few days previously, would have been visited on the utterer with death, the city having for some weeks past been subjected to the rigour of martial law. I occasionally ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... unwillingness to have it tampered with, that is to-day the great obstacle to our Uneasy Woman putting her program of relief into force. And it is the effort to move this mass which she derides as inert that leads to much of the overemphasis in her program and her methods. If she is to attract attention, she must be extreme. The campaigner is like the actor—he must exaggerate to get his effect over the footlights. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... 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 humorous satisfaction each time when he ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... God, that a higher thing, human life, comes into being. Naturally, as the Bible is the history of man's redemption it does not dwell upon this phase of truth, but seemingly each new and higher impartation of the Spirit of God brings forth a higher order of being. First, inert matter; then motion; then light; then vegetable life; then animal life; then man; and, as we shall see later, then the new man; and then Jesus Christ, the supreme Man, the completion of God's thought of man, the Son of Man. This is the Biblical thought ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... right to know. Look at this!" She reached forward and picked up that inert, cold, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... lay back upon the cushioned seat inert and passive. In the flash of each passing street-light her face showed waxen pale, a cameo against the dark background; so drawn and pinched were her features, that Brencherly, in panic, seized her pulse, in order to assure himself that life had not already fled. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the earth for the support of each bud, and the new leaves are capable of performing their office of exposing these juices to the influence of the air; the placental vessels cease to act, coalesce, and are transformed from sap- wood, or alburnum, into inert wood; serving only for the support of the new tree, which ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... atmosphere is free fluorine (F{2}) in a rather low concentration, about 4 or 5 percent. With it appears a mad collection of gases. There are a few inert diluents, such as N{2} (nitrogen), argon, helium, neon, etc., but the major fraction consists of CF{4} (carbon tetrafluoride), BF{3} (boron trifluoride), SiF{4} (silicon tetrafluoride), PF{5} (phosphorous pentafluoride), SF{6} (sulphur hexafluoride) and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... Olmutz business is by no means reckoned brilliant, even in the Fabius line; but, on the contrary, inert, dim-minded, inconclusive; and in reality, till almost the very last, he had been of little help to the besieged. For near three weeks (till May 23d) Daun sat at Leutomischl, immovable on his bread-basket there, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, as for instance an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify and hem ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
