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Inexorably   Listen
adverb
Inexorably  adv.  In an inexorable manner; inflexibly. "Inexorably firm."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inexorably" Quotes from Famous Books



... possible horror. It was the feeling that I did not know where I was going nor what awaited me that seemed so terrible—this and the horrible fight for mastery between my poor body and soul and some unknown force that was inexorably ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... the hope that some part of his message might get through he called Samms, and calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had just happened. He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the smallest detail, while their tiny craft was drawn inexorably toward a redly impermeable veil; continued it until their lifeboat, still intact, shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move. He was conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a voluntary muscle would obey ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... longer this war goes on the clearer it becomes that no one can draw a blue pencil down the middle of a page and call one side "the fighting front" and the other side "the home front." For the two of them are inexorably tied together. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... as to the moral responsibility for the present crime against civilization. That must be determined by the facts as they have been developed, and the nations and individuals who are responsible for this world-wide catastrophe must be held to a strict accountability. The truth of history inexorably demands this. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... American. A distinguished diplomatist. [Looks straight in front of her with a stony smile.] Him I managed to drive quite out of his mind; mad—incurably mad; inexorably mad.—It was great sport, I can tell you—while it was in the doing. I could have laughed within me all the time—if ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... Kasturabai, could not account for a disbursement of four rupees. Gandhi duly published an auditing in which he inexorably pointed out his ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Suppose we were to abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that poverty is the one thing we will not tolerate—that every adult with less than, say, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but inexorably killed, and every hungry half naked child forcibly fattened and clothed, would not that be an enormous improvement on our existing system, which has already destroyed so many civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours in the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... was writhing now, and I thought he must desist out of pure compassion. But detectives are made out of very stern stuff, and though he looked sorry he went inexorably on. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... lugubrious speculations as to the possible mischances of one's genius. "What if the watch should run down," he asked, "and you should lose the key? What if you should wake up some morning and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped? Such things have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have had to grin and bear it. The whole matter of genius is a mystery. It bloweth where it listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism. If it ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... an ill name. "This fable teaches" that a diligent attention to the growing of crops and children is the sure and appointed way to the maintenance of a people and its culture even under the most adverse conditions, and that eventual death and shameful destruction inexorably wait on any "ruling race." Hitherto the rule has not failed. The rule, indeed, is grounded in the heritable traits of human nature, from which there is ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's notice, and Norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. He went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... dualize the Union in the face of a movement for extension of boundaries was another. Hence it was now vital, as Lincoln reasoned, to give slavery a fixed boundary on all sides. Silently, while others fulminated, or rhapsodized, or wailed, he had moved inexorably to a new position which was nothing but a logical development of the old. The old position was—no extension of slave territory; the new position was—no more Slave States.(2) Because Crittenden's Compromise left it possible to have a new Slave State in Cuba, a new Slave State in ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... a ghastly mistake. I was quite unsuited to my wife.... But I made a bigger mistake when I thought to cut loose from the life I'd woven for myself. One thread pulled me back inexorably. I had half committed myself to a deal involving five millions of the public's money with Lars ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... but inexorably; and Toni felt a miserable certainty that he did not think her capable of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... fire grew more and more furious and the sky was flecked with the smoke of bursting shell, but the little visitor came slowly and inexorably onward. Then came three resounding crashes as the bombs dropped. One got the corner of a hangar and demolished it. Another burst into the open and did no damage, but the third fell plumb between two machines waiting to go up and ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... cared not for dancing. Her mother did not seek society, did not appear to require it. Nor did Hilda acutely feel the lack of it. She could not define her need. All she knew was that youth, moment by moment, was dropping down inexorably behind her. And, still a child in heart and soul, she saw herself ageing, and then aged, and then withered. Her twenty-first birthday was well above the horizon. Soon, soon, she would be 'over twenty-one'! And she was not yet born! That was it! She ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... New York Four Hundred) "comes mixed"; dip in where you will and you bring up all sorts of fish. In England if you go into educated society, you are likely to meet almost exclusively educated people—or at least people with the stamp of educated manners. Sir Gorgius Midas is not of course inexorably barred from the society of duchesses. Her Grace of Pentonville must have met him frequently. But in America the duchesses have to rub shoulders with him every day. And—which is worth noting—their husbands also ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... before that deep hunger of the eyes, for she was of the type of woman that holds a strong attraction for men. It told her that he had looked in the face of his happiness too late—too late by the many years of a misspent life that had decreed inexorably the character ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its flabby tissues a ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... this criticism. Like some subtle acid it seemed to act destructively upon the metal, once so hard and resistant, of my self-confidence, of my belief in myself. Often I felt as if an eye were upon me, seeing too much, far too much, coldly, inexorably, persistently. This critical observation became hateful to me. I suffered under it. I suffered terribly. Mr. Malling, if I am to tell you all,—and I feel that unless I do no help can come to me,—I must tell you that I have not been in my life all that a clergyman should ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... many thanks, my dear Elsworth. I'm delighted to meet so true-hearted a loyalist. We pushed our march to partake of your hospitality. Ah, Miss Elsworth! How shall I express my delight in finding that Time, who deals so inexorably with us, has been induced to favour you. It gives me infinite pleasure, Miss Elsworth, to meet you once again, for the recollection of the occasions we have met previously are ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... Thou, wandering from the right, art made Pure by the forfeit thou hast paid. Thy weight of sins is cast aside, And duty's claim is satisfied. Then grieve no more, O Prince, but clear Thy bosom from all doubt and fear, For fate, inexorably stern, Thou hast no power to move or turn. Thy princely Angad still will share My tender love, Sugriva's care; And to thy offspring shall be shown Affection that ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Dublin Mannix arranged plans for handing over his assailant to the police. That seemed to him the most dignified form of revenge open to him. He was fully determined to take it. Unfortunately his train carried him, slowly indeed, but inexorably, to the station from which another train, the one in which he was to travel westwards to Rosnacree, took its departure. The elderly gentleman and the lady with the insolent manner, whose destination ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... many kind friends who have helped me in this delightful task. The Book of Quaker Saints owes its existence to my friend Ernest E. Taylor, who first suggested the title and plan, and then, gently but inexorably, persuaded me to write it. Several of the stories and many of the descriptions are due to his intimate knowledge of the lives and homes of the Early Friends; he has, moreover, been my unfailing adviser and helper at ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... Dale's agonized face and Durend again allowed his stroke to drop back into its former steady swing, and doggedly, with sternly-set face, plugged away as before, refusing to look again at the crew drawing inexorably up behind. Twice the boats overlapped, but both times Dale managed, by skilful steering, to avoid a bump. The third time no trick of steering could avoid the issue, and the nose of the Johnson boat grated triumphantly along ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... a more regular system of rapine and oppression. An edict was promulgated, which enjoined all persons, without fraud or delay, to deliver their gold, silver, jewels, and valuable furniture or apparel, to the royal officers; and the attempt to secrete any part of their patrimony was inexorably punished with death and torture, as an act of treason against the state. The lands of the proconsular province, which formed the immediate district of Carthage, were accurately measured, and divided among the Barbarians; and the conqueror reserved for his peculiar domain the fertile territory ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... and rested, striving vainly to garner some clue to his bearings. Inexorably the blackness forbade that. He might have failed ere dawn to grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance of the submarine been discovered within ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... three-roomed flats, and bought good furniture. They demanded more from life, but everything had become dearer, and they still lived from hand to mouth. He could see that the social development had not kept pace with the mechanical; the machines wedged themselves quietly but inexorably in between the workmen and the work, and threw more and more men out of employment. The hours of labor were not greatly shortened. Society did not seem to care to protect the workers, but it interested itself more in disabled ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he was tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and possibly his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards June so queerly defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them—and then, indeed, often dropped them like a hot potato. Her mother had been like that, whence had come all those tears. Not that his incompatibility with his daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and, gazing up at the starlit heavens, wandered off into dreams of the life he would like to lead but from which he seemed inexorably shut out. The seriousness of life was striking deeper than ever into Joe's heart, and he lay silent, thinking hard. A mumble of heavy voices came to them from the Reindeer; and from the land the solemn notes of a church bell floated across the water, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... to disbelieve what a man says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it. Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way. It had even been in the miners' heads to finish the business here on the Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff's plea that something further might have turned ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... believing her, and at the same time a desire, colder still, to extract a reiteration of the pledge. Was it the asseveration of her innocence that she wished her to repeat, or only the attestation of her falsity? One way or the other it seemed to her that this would settle something, and she went on inexorably—'By our dear mother's memory—by ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... fall any sort of office work made him dizzy, and he had found himself inexorably confined to standing business. Thus, he had been in turn a broker in wines, in books, in truffles, in clocks, and in many other things beside. Unluckily, he tired of everything, never considered his position sufficiently exalted for a former business man with a tilbury, and, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... blown apart like scraps of cardboard—Aunt Elsie falling, falling with her bed from her little bird-house under the eaves, giving vent to one deaf, terrified "Hey—what's that?" as she sank like Lucifer cast from Heaven inexorably down into the laundry stove, her little tight, white curls standing up ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... as if they had taken advantage of these few words to come out of the calm in which they had been concealed. Then they glanced once more at the man on the bier—motionless, inexorably motionless. ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... the finest public buildings and most elegant residences strangely mingled with wooden hovels; magnificence and squalor side by side, inexorably jumbled together. No other city in all Europe has so many private palaces and elegant mansions as may be seen in an hour's stroll about Warsaw; but the architecture is often gaudy and in bad taste. Here for centuries there were ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... in the nature of an infatuation. Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such disclosure. The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way. He was proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight for the country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark. And so the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had never ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... combining their armed forces and sending them to Paris. Even with such demonstrations to strengthen their hands the Girondins were in too false a position, were too much orators and not men of action, to save themselves; Paris held them inexorably to their ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous adventures. He looked east and west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the full glare of the day's eye, cut off from any human intervention. His looks returned at last upon the suppliant. He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in face and figure, elegantly dressed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... much has been said. They were numerous, and drawn from very different classes. Beginning at Oxford, they increased rather than diminished throughout his life, notwithstanding the gaps which death inevitably and inexorably made. To one Fellow of Exeter who stood by him in his troubles, George Butler, afterwards Canon of Winchester, he remained always attached. Dean Stanley throughout life he loved, and another clerical friend, Cowley Powles. Of the many persons who felt Clough's early death as an irreparable calamity ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... HECTOR. [inexorably] No, Violet: I mean to have this thing out, right away. [He puts her aside; passes her by; and faces his father, whose cheeks darken as his Irish blood begins to simmer]. Dad: you've not ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... will depend upon this judgment whether he will endeavour to accelerate or retard it; whether he will yield slowly or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed measure a statesman must continually ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... bodies, authors like Macrobius and even Cicero in his Somnium Scipionis, are full of the influence of the seven planets and of the longing to escape beyond them. For by some simple psychological law the stars which have inexorably pronounced our fate, and decreed, or at least registered the decree, that in spite of all striving we must needs tread their prescribed path; still more perhaps, the Stars who know in the midst of our laughter how that laughter will end, become inevitably powers of evil rather than good, beings ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... what the Kingdom of God is—how much more to the purpose than pearly gates or jasper seas; how accordant with the Ormuzd in man; how premeditated in design; how indomitable in patience; and how needfully and inexorably guarded by the diminutive portal above ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... voice of the enemy at last:—an ominous roar, growing inexorably louder every minute. At the sound his head took a more assured lift; his mouth a firmer line; and the fire of determination deepened ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... a small wise smile that seemed to push him away from her, gently yet inexorably; to make him feel little more than a schoolboy confronted by a woman; very young in her new shyness and dignity, but ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... of our helpless race is inexorably bounded by the inner surface of his own mental periphery, a jointless armor in which there is no weak place, never a fault, never a single gap of egress for ourselves, of ingress for the nearest and dearest of our fellow-units. At only five points can we just ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... down the corridors and stairs, and let himself out noiselessly into Ambrosden Avenue. He felt he must have air and space: he was beginning almost to hate this silent, well-ordered ecclesiastical house, where wheels ran so smoothly, so inexorably, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... finely furnished on borrowed money, and now apparently unsaleable, because of certain peculiarities in it, which suited its contriver, and no one else. And meanwhile the bank from which he had borrowed most of his building money was pressing inexorably for repayment; the solicitor in Bedford Row could do nothing, and was manifestly averse to running up a longer bill on his own account; so that, instead of painting, Fenwick often spent his miserable days in rushing about London, trying to raise money ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Her spice islands were guarded with a cruel jealousy rivalling the fables of the dragon that guarded the golden apples; and her great coffee island, Java, was equally locked up from the world. To give a spice plant or a coffee plant to a stranger, was an offence inexorably punished with death. A single coffee plant, however, was allowed to come to Europe as an ornament to the conservatory of a wealthy Amsterdam burgomaster. This was still more jealously watched than its fellows in the East Indies; but at length a French ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime, trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime, inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... path being weirdly illuminated by extempore torches made of pine-wood which the shikari had prepared. A moderately level march of some three miles brought us to the ruined temples of Vernag and the beginning of our work, for here the path, turning sharply to the left, led us inexorably up the almost precipitous face of the mountain by means of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... almost paralyzing now. Their limbs felt weak as they stumbled toward the light. But they were inexorably herded forward, and soon were at the threshold of the ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... question which is put to us to-day, disguised, indeed, by the apparent equilibrium of the opposing interests and forces, by the deceitful shifts of diplomacy, and the official peace-aspirations of all the States; but by the logic of history inexorably demanding an answer, if we look with clear gaze beyond the narrow horizon of the day and the mere surface of things into ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... supremely fitted for high judicial station—a solid judgment, great reasoning powers, acute and penetrating mind; . . . attentive, patient, laborious; grave on the bench, social in the intercourse of life; simple in his tastes, and inexorably just."—Thomas Hart Benton, in ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... into the radiance of the Queen's Elm lamp, the horses' flanks and the lofty driver's apron gleaming with rain. He sprang towards the vehicle; the whole group sprang. "Full inside!" snapped the conductor inexorably. Ting, ting! It was gone, glimmering with its enigmatic load into the distance. George turned again to the wall, humiliated. It seemed wrong that the conductor should have included him with the knot of common omnibus-travellers and late ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... came the relentless inquiry, and Diana could well imagine how inexorably the greatly daring who had come on ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... home—a thrill, A shudder at its darkened sill, For the clock chimes as on that morn, That happy day when she was born. And now, inexorably slow, To life or death the hours go. Time's wings are clipped; he scarce doth creep. Tonight no drug could bring you sleep; Watch at the window for the day; 'Tis all that's left—to watch and pray. But I think the prayer of an anguished heart Must pierce that ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... pressing and tremendous the problem appears, and the more hopelessly unanswerable. To Herbert Spencer himself it must have assumed a vastness beyond the apprehension of the average mind; and it weighed upon him more and more inexorably the nearer he approached to death. He could not avoid the conviction—plainly suggested in his magnificent Psychology and in other volumes of his great work—that there exists no rational evidence for any belief in the continuance of conscious ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... mystery, of long expectancy seemed brooding everywhere; it seemed almost as though the spirit of the past were waiting to receive them—waiting now, as it had waited a thousand years, patiently, inexorably, untiringly for those to come who should some day reclaim the hidden secrets in the crypt, once more awaken human echoes in the vault, and so redeem the world. "Waiting!" breathed Stern, as if the thought ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A stranger may be very well inclined to praise many of the institutions of their country, but he begs permission to blame some of the peculiarities which he observes—a permission which is, however, inexorably refused. America is therefore a free country, in which, lest anybody should be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals, or of the State, of the citizens or of the authorities, of public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of anything at all, except ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... beside which, before which, and after which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it says obstinately and inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else is morality!" Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of this morality even in political ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... strategy more likely to attain that end than the strategy of "accumulating slowly, but inexorably, every kind of material resource"—of "laboriously teaching troops the very elements of their trade." That, and patience—and I mean a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the time these symptoms yielded quickly at the mere sight of the castor oil which was his mother's favourite remedy and the taste of which Keith hated more than anything else in the world. It was the one thing that stood inexorably between his growing indolence and the luxury of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... out like some animal for market—all in the most refined and graceful manner possible; but how can one help seeing through the disguise; how can one be blind to the real nature of the transaction, and to the fate that awaits one—awaits one as inexorably as death, unless by some force of one's own, with all the world—friends and enemies—in opposition, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... sentiment and filled the earth with mental and physical degeneracy. Now woman steps in. It is her turn. And she flings aside precedent, prejudice, and sentiment—for the good of the human race! and joining hands with Science marches forward inexorably toward ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... that last day of the visit of the grasshoppers, General Hendricks came in. His hair had whitened in the summer. The panic and the plague of the locusts had literally wrung the sap out of his nerves. Old age was pressing inexorably upon him, palsying his hands on its rack, tripping his feet in its helpless mazes. His dimmed eyes could see only ruin coming, coming slowly and steadily toward him. In the panic, it came suddenly and inspired fight in him. But ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... recommended; colonization favored; freedom to be declared next New Year's day to all slaves in rebellious States: ultimate compensation recommended for all loyal owners. The proclamation is issued, September 23, 1862, and the nation is inexorably committed to emancipation,—compensated if possible; forcible if necessary; partial at first, but moving ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... doctor's cautious words, they were hardly remembered now; or, if recalled, were recalled only to be laughed over. But the time of bitter grief, which had been appointed, though they knew it not, came inexorably, even while they were still lightly jesting at all medical authority round the painter's fireside. Lavinia caught a severe cold. The cold turned to rheumatism, to fever, then to general debility, then to nervous attacks—each one of these disorders, being really but so many false appearances, under ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... to tell!" went on Godfrey inexorably. "Any fool could guess. She came for the letters! She had resolved herself ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... seeming to enfilade on a point immediately ahead, was so vigorously directed that the German guns must have been dazed, since their counter-battery work sounded spasmodic and—so far as distance permitted Jeb to guess—never effective. Yet he was moving toward that tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... the broad path and wander across the grass like any common trespasser—and, even while he wondered, his steps took him deliberately on, feeling self-conscious in the most literal understanding of the word—and inexorably each moment took him nearer, though in the endeavour to put off the evil moment he had, perhaps unknown to himself, slowed down his previously deliberate saunter until his feet were now doing little more than marking slow time. However, the visitor gazed alternately at the tops of ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... implicitly for routine news, but are constitutionally impotent to impart color and life to any subject whatsoever. Patiently he had seen younger and newer men overtake and pass him; but he worked on inexorably, asking for nothing, wearing the air of a scholar with some distant and abstruse determination in view. Like Banneker he had ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... He spoke inexorably, but with such a world of love in his voice that the long-pent tears came with a rush. He let her weep. He felt it would do her good. And, after a while, when her sobs had ceased, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... indeed, it was a duty to respect it to a certain extent, as it originated in no slight degree from feelings fed by the subordinate position Norway had always held in years gone by. Swedish policy had thus to face two alternatives, either firmly and inexorably to insist on the Swedish demands for the amendment of the Union, conscious that they were in the interests of the Union, and like wise the real interest of Norway; or make a compromise, be contented with a partially disorganized Union, which by ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... fading from human memory; yet until within the past few decades a gentleman had a tailor as inexorably as he had a nose. But now the immemorial visit to his tailor is no longer absolutely necessary. He may, if such is his inclination,—as I am sure it would have been Adam's,—get his new suit all finished ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... professions of personal loyalty to the Throne. Mr. Bancroft well sums up the history of Massachusetts pretensions and intolerance in the sentences: "Massachusetts owned no King but the King of Heaven." "Massachusetts gave franchises to the members of the visible Church," but "inexorably disfranchised Churchmen, Royalists, and all the world's people." "In Massachusetts, the songs of Deborah and David were sung without change; hostile Algonquins like the Canaanites were exterminated or enslaved; and a peevish ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... spurt for it if we were not to exhaust his patience. We could see him beckoning eagerly, and with a rush we were at the gates, in the tail of the long procession. It was only as I knew they were slowly, inexorably closing behind us that I could bring myself to look back. There was "Wilhelmina" just coming into sight round the point, Alec MacNairne gesticulating wildly, a figurehead "come alive," ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... Strasbourg, and from other points, devoted men of ardent piety, and often of no little cultivation, entered France and cautiously sold or distributed the contents of the packs they carried. Often they penetrated far into the country. To such as were detected the penalty of the law was inexorably meted out. A pedler, after every bone of his body had been dislocated in the vain attempt to compel him to betray the names of those to whom he had sold his books, was burned at Paris in the midst of the applauding shouts of a great crowd of persons, who would ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... administration was soon visible: the stoutest hearted gave way. Inexorably just, according to the system he represented, the accused might plead, but were never pardoned. The gentlemen convicts, clad in a prison dress, were employed in lighter labor and worked together; but were transferred to more penal gangs, for the least ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... its labours in a reckless and even tumultuary fashion; public notices summoned every one, who was able, to give information regarding the extent of the domain-lands; the old land-registers were inexorably referred to, and not only was occupation new and old revoked without distinction, but in various cases real private property, as to which the holder was unable satisfactorily to prove his tenure, was included in the confiscation. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... alone, even though exhausted by two atrocious wars, is sufficient to hold in check imperial Austria; when one sees Italy remain neutral, and in reality hostile to Austria, and Russia open slowly, inexorably, her reservoir of men, resources, and infinite energy on the eastern frontier of Germany, one asks truly if the Pan-Germanists have not been the veritable plague of God for their country; the Fatherland, which men like Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo—the sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged—I used to wait and wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over the burning ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... refused to allow any considerations of party interest, on this or on any subsequent occasion, to influence his judgment. While he conceived it to be his duty to give advice and criticism to public men of all shades of political opinion, he showed himself inexorably opposed to the thought of straining his constitutional powers in the slightest degree for the benefit of one side or the other.[44] Accordingly provision for the expenses of administration was made by Governor's warrants up to September 30th, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... will take the form and the name of Man, and in all things will become like other men already living. And their hard lot will be his lot, and his hard lot will be the lot of all human beings. Inexorably impelled by time, he will, with inavertible necessity, pass through all the stages of human life, from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom. Limited in vision, he will never see the next step which his unsteady ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... And his voice had what may be described as an edge to it—the cutting quality so invaluable to any speaker who desires to make a deep impression upon his audience. He began his address in the clear, cold accents of one who sets forth facts which can neither be controverted nor ignored. Slowly, inexorably, without wasting a word or a second, he told the School what had happened. Then ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... permanence of that frank, chivalric, hardy, still half Norman race, of which Nicholas Alwyn and his Saxon class were the rival antagonistic principle, and Marmaduke Nevile the ordinary type. Dragged inexorably into the whirlpool of that mighty fate were even the very lives of the simple Scholar, of his obscure and devoted child. Here, into this gory ocean, all scattered rivulets and streams had hastened to merge ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for what it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked. What would then become of us others, us ladies and gentlemen who had never done a stroke of work and never wished to do one? Should we be forced to the hard necessity of beginning? Could we remain in the comfortable belief that we gave work, or must we be made ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... good, it will be inexorably enforced against the individual transgressor. God is not slack concerning his promises. He is free from all human weakness. His mind is not limited, like that of man, to be more affected by partial suffering than by that universal disorder and ruin which must inevitably result from the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants, and it was no better. The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... relates that James Hammond, the author of the elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had some office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose name was Dashwood, for a time disordered his understanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an instant from the problem of Tira, saying noiselessly, this invisible force that was Anne: "What are you going to do about my last wish, my last command? You are thinking about Nan, about that strange woman, about yourself. Think ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... to those performed by the eyes of a mole. I had the maddest of accesses of jealousy if she talked to a man—and such men—or danced with one. And then I was forever screwing my courage up and feeling it die away. We used to drive about in a coupe, a thing that shut us inexorably together, but which quite as inexorably destroyed all opportunities for what one calls making love. In smooth streets its motion was too glib, on the pave it rattled too abominably. I wanted to make love to her—oh, immensely, but I was never in the mood, or the opportunity was never forthcoming. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... brig drove steadily and pleasantly enough along, day after day, until the wondering voyagers seemed to have arrived in the lotus-eaters' region, "where it is always afternoon;" and still the wind hung inexorably in the north-east quarter, and the brig's bows obstinately refused to point higher than north-west, until Leslie's patience wore thin, and he grew moody and morose with long waiting for a shift of wind. For this condition of affairs lasted not only for days, but at last mounted to weeks; ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... study of the rates of mortality and increase, and in settling upon it he had cautiously left a large margin for contingencies. He was not accustomed to talk about his business, but when questioned as to his uniform success and remarkable prosperity, always attributed it to a system which he had inexorably followed, and which had never failed to return to him at least twenty per cent. per annum upon every dollar ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... Such is the woful change wrought in every household, as the successive reports of the heavily-charged pieces sound through the village, and penetrate to the farthest outlying farmhouse. The first shot may well be an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the third inexorably follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and sons, look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly a hundred scenes of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... come near us unless we allow them—have I not told you that the atmosphere must be congenial? Our own wills can create an armour through which nothing demagnetising can pass. It is weakness and drifting which are inexorably punished; they draw currents suitable for the vampires ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... to return to Ploubazlanec, for she had come to the end of her little savings, and Sylvestre was to embark the day afterward. The sailors are always inexorably kept in barracks the day before foreign cruises (a custom that seems rather barbarous at first, but which is a necessary precaution against the "flings" they ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... influence of Antho, Rhea's cousin, that the unhappy vestal was not put to death by Amulius, before her children were born, at the time when her fault was first discovered. The laws of the State in respect to vestal virgins, which were inexorably severe, would have justified him in causing her to be executed at once, but Antho interceded so earnestly for her unhappy cousin, that Amulius for a time spared her life. When, however, her sons were born, the anger of Amulius broke out ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... counter after having laid down his tools, exactly the same, though his face had a little more colour in it. He had a certain reputation there, which had allowed of his "chalking up" for several years past, and there was a regular proportion of his account, about which his inexorably correct wife had not the faintest idea—"for Holman had his ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... half of sin," while Emerson shows that "crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit which, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of pleasure which concealed it." They are linked together inexorably, as cause and effect, and no god can dispense in this law, because the law ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... thousand times, that a woman to whom this doom has come unwittingly, without her seeking—as inevitably and inexorably as fate—should pause, stand steadfast, and look it in the face, without fear. She cannot disguise it, or wrestle with it, or fly from it Let her meet it as she would meet death—solemnly, calmly, patiently. Let her draw nigh and look upon the bier of her ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... else, they give us according to what we have. To him that hath shall be given. The fine lady may see in her fine diamonds only victory over a rival; the philosopher may read embodied in them law inexorably beautiful; and the Christian poet—oh, I have read my Spenser, Mr. Warlock!—will choose the diamond for its many qualities, as the best and only substance wherein to represent the shield of the faith that overcometh the world. Like the gospel itself, diamonds ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... exclude an entire class of fiction, of which eminent examples will occur to all. Then the whole spawn of so-called unmoral romances, which imagine a world where the sins of sense are unvisited by the penalties following, swift or slow, but inexorably sure, in the real world, are deadly poison: these do kill. The, novels that merely tickle our prejudices and lull our judgment, or that coddle our sensibilities or pamper our gross appetite for the marvellous, are not so fatal, but they are innutritious, and clog ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... virtue. There is no courtesan, no matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... that. A criminal was being chased toward the gallows, and they followed his progress there with breathless interest. Step by step all that was laid down in the opening speech for the prosecution was inexorably proved, all, that is to say, except the affair of the stick. But from what a certain witness (Mr. Taynton) swore to, it was clear that this piece of circumstantial evidence, which indeed was of the greatest importance since the Crown's case was that the murder had been committed with that ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... have been thus sketching, hastily and imperfectly, one of many who passed almost unnoticed in the solemn procession to conclave, on the 2d of September, 1823, we may suppose the doors to have been inexorably closed on those who composed it. The conclave, which formerly used to take place in the Vatican, was on this occasion, and has been subsequently, held in the Quirinal palace. This noble building, known equally by the name of Monte Cavallo, consists of a large quadrangle, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... inexorably imperturbable under his alternate blinking and gazing that drew her close and shot her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... chaffer—as indeed you. hear them do right and left, at almost any moment, as you take your way among them—the pulse of life beats fast. It has been doing so on the spot just named, I suppose, for the last five hundred years, and during that time the cost of eggs and earthen pots has been gradually but inexorably increasing. The buyers nevertheless wrestle over their purchases as lustily as so many fourteenth-century burghers suddenly waking up in horror to current prices. You have but to walk aside, however, into the Palazzo Pubblico ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... shoulder to shoulder looking at the Cathedral at Chartres, which stood up nonchalantly, above the tumultuous roofs of the town, with its sober tower and its gaudy towers and the great rose windows between. Inexorably his memory carried him forward, moment by moment, over that day, until he writhed with shame and revolt. Good god! Would he have to go on all his life remembering that? "Teach him how to salute," the officer had said, and Handsome had stepped up to him and hit him. Would he have ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... hand went to her heart. Faith in her father was a rock not to be washed away by any amount of evidence. What made her wince was the amount of circumstantial testimony falling into place so inexorably against him. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... neck till nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further wall, beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... during these last months," Gordon stated, inexorably, "and you mustn't run the risk of making her unhappy. It is a mere business proposition that I am putting before you, Barry. You must be able to support a wife before you marry one, and Washington ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... slavery to opium. I was descending the mighty ladder, stretching to the clouds as it seemed, by which I had imperceptibly attained my giddy altitude—that point from which it had seemed equally impossible to go forward or backward. To wean myself from opium I had resolved inexorably, and finally I accomplished my vow. But the transition state was the worst state of all to support. All the pains of martyrdom were there; all the ravages in the economy of the great central organ, the stomach, which had ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... knees, drew himself into a heap, and shot himself out, hands, arms, legs, back, everything into one terrific spring. But the sinewy vise above only gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and heart and lungs. Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... honors, the power of the spirit and of speech, which sits smilingly enthroned over this unconscious and mute life. With all his young passion he surrendered himself to her, and she rewarded him with all she has to bestow, and took from him inexorably all that she is wont to take ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... inexorably to what he said was wisdom. Several times Madeline had gone against his advice, to her utter discomfiture and rout. She dared not risk it again, and resigned herself gracefully and with subdued merriment to her task. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... the Little Country, however, knows there is neither bitterness nor real cynicism in Solon Denney, founder, editor, and proprietor of the Little Arcady Argus; motto, "Hew to the Line, Let the Chips Fall Where they May!" Indeed, we do know Solon. Often enough has the Argus hewn inexorably to the line, when that line led straight through the heart of its guiding genius and through the hearts of us all. One who had seen him, as I did, stand uncovered in the presence of his new Washington hand-press, the day that dynamo of Light was erected in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... (cents) for extra baggage, though there is no stage-route in America on which those bags would not have passed unchallenged and been accounted a very moderate allowance. Now I was permitted to enter the sacred precincts, but my friend, who had spent the morning with me and come to see me off, was inexorably shut out, and I had no choice but to bid him a hasty adieu. Passing the entrance, I was shown into the apartment for first-class passengers, while the second-class were driven into a separate fold ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... man of science had told him that. And it was unchanged, all unchanged since wild beasts were the only tenants, since wild Indians slipped through the wilderness aisles, since the half-wild white man, hot on the chase, planted his feet in the footsteps of both and inexorably pushed them on. The boy's first Kentucky ancestor had been one of those who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had fed him and his family; his axe had put a roof over their heads, and the loom and spinning-wheel had clothed ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... forded," thought Rosa, complacently, the while her compassion for him was sincere and strong. "He can never shut his heart inexorably against me ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... a kiss as a favor," went on Mrs. Gray, inexorably, holding Marian off at arm's length, "not a punishment to be inflicted whenever we happen to feel like it. We shall never trot one foot when we are nervous, and ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... the oars like a madman. But not a word came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some black, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... directed quietly at the doubting detective. He had nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torch slowly, inexorably, traced a thin line along the edge of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... always is, What kind of men? Men of noble gifts, or men of ignoble? It is the one or the other; and a life-and-death inquiry which! For in all places and all times, little as you may heed it, Nature most silently but most inexorably demands that it be the one and not the other. And you need not try to palm an ignoble sham upon her, and call it noble; for she is a judge. And her penalties, as quiet as she looks, are terrible: amounting to world-earthquakes, to anarchy and death everlasting; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... silent with uncles Robin and Alan, who sensed he was going through one of the crises of adolescence, and knew the best thing to do was to leave him alone. He was silent with his mother, who saw nothing, cared nothing, so intent was she on revolving within herself as inexorably as the planets revolve in space. He decided to spend the last days of his leave in Dundalk. And at the railroad station in Ballymena he hazarded ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... hypothetical part," Hitty said, folding back the counterpane, inexorably. "What I do know is that a girl that's getting to be an old girl—like you—past twenty-five—ought to be bestirring herself to look for a life pardner if she don't see any hanging around that suits her, instead of opening up a hotel for a passel of perfect strangers. ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley



Words linked to "Inexorably" :   inexorable



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