"Inoperative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soda. There is a little citrate of potash, which is a feeble diuretic; a little citrate and sulphate of magnesia, a slight aperient, corrected, however, by the constipatory half grain of sulphate of lime; so that the whole practically is inoperative. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... is to give utterance to nothing very new or brilliant: it is the thought which has been present in everyone's mind for a number of years. So far back as 1902, when Great Britain negotiated with China the inoperative Mackay Commercial Treaty, provision was not only made for a complete reform of the Tariff—import duties to be made two and a half times as large in return for a complete abolition of likin or inter-provincial trade-taxation—but for the abolition of extraterritoriality ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... thought the occasion not the right one. It was useless to issue a proclamation that might be as inoperative as the Pope's bull against the comet. My duty, it has seemed to me, has been to be loyal to a principle, and not to betray it by expressing it in action at the wrong time. That is what I conceive statesmanship to be. For long now I have had two fixed resolves. To preserve ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... hereditary disuse, the Gy-ei have lost both the aggressive and defensive superiority over the Ana which they once possessed, just as in the inferior animals above the earth many peculiarities in their original formation, intended by nature for their protection, gradually fade or become inoperative when not needed under altered circumstances. I should be sorry, however, for any An who induced a Gy to make the experiment whether he ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... honor, and peace to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God." Rom. 2:8-11. If now we turn to the epistle of James, we find that the faith without works which he condemns as dead is one of mere empty notions—an inoperative belief about Christ instead of that hearty trust in him which brings the heart and life into subjection to his authority. In a word, Paul condemns, as dead, works without faith; James, faith without works. The one rejects dead works (Heb. 9:14); the other, dead faith. Between ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that a man may be bound by an acceptance he never received. It is generally thought—though there is no English decision—that, in conformity with this last rule, a revocation by telegraph of an acceptance already posted would be inoperative. Much more elaborate rules are laid down in some continental codes. It seems doubtful whether their complication achieves any gain of substantial justice worth the price. At first sight it looks easy to solve some of the difficulties by admitting an interval ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877 must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such a marvellous revolution during ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... little things, it is so about great ones. Nothing is more common than that a man shall know perfectly well that some possibly trivial habit stands in the way of something that it is his interest or his duty to pursue; but the knowledge lies inoperative in the outermost part of him. It is so in regard to graver things. The majority of the slaves of any vice whatsoever know perfectly well that they ought to give it up, and yet ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible. Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... moment of religious thought, it must be ranked among those that are past. While the immortality of the soul retains its interest as a speculative inquiry, I venture to believe that as an idea in religious history, it is nigh inoperative; that as an element in devotional life it is of not much weight; and that it will gradually become less so, as the real meaning of religion reaches ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided by the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... as these came out, he was to sail with all speed for Martinique, and there wait forty days for the Brest squadron, if the latter, whose admiral was to be commander-in-chief of the allied fleets, did not appear sooner. Villeneuve had other contingent instructions, which became inoperative through ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... that the Acts of Secession are all inoperative and void, and that therefore the States continue precisely as before, with their local constitutions, laws, and institutions in the hands of traitors, but totally unchanged, and ready to be quickened into life by returning loyalty. Such, I believe, is a candid statement of the pretension ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... March-April 2003 war domestic: the network consists of coaxial cables and microwave radio relay links international: satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean), 1 Intersputnik (Atlantic Ocean region), and 1 Arabsat (inoperative); coaxial cable and microwave radio relay to Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... but it was to a body appointed for the purpose by the inquisitors themselves.[623] Parliament, however, again interposed the prerogative it had assumed, of remonstrance and delay, and the king's declaration, as well as the papal bull, remained inoperative.[624] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... shiver in the snow-hut of the Esquimaux, or drip with perspiration in the cane-fields of the tropics. But let life depart, and it falls to that of the surrounding objects. Decay immediately begins. So, when religious vitality is maintained in the heart, the corrupting influences of the world remain inoperative. This vitality having been infused into the heart of Miss Hawley, the fervor of her spirit rose to a higher temperature than that of all surrounding objects. She could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... between the States; it confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,—they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they may leap into or embrace the Territories ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... well understood that mysticism and the accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the agencies which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became inoperative—when man began to regard himself as a Creator and therefore as the superior of woman—he had reached a point at which he was largely controlled by supernatural ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... can never live together, in the same community, but as superiors and inferiors—the inferior remaining subordinate to the superior. The encouraging hopes held out to the colored people, that this law would be inoperative upon them, has led only to disappointment. Happily, this delusion is nearly at an end; and some of them are beginning to act on their own judgments. They find themselves so scattered and peeled, that there is not another half ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... from imports increased or diminished, according to their action. Indeed, they can modify or repeal tariffs at their pleasure, for, they have only to inflate the circulation, and prices rise here to the extent of the duties, and the tariff becomes inoperative. Of all the branches of our industry, the manufacturing is injured most by a redundant currency, limiting our fabrics to a partial supply at home, and driving them from the foreign market. Give us a sound, stable, uniform currency, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... things and classifies them, and that yet gets no nearer to the solution of the huge, fantastic, patient plan! To make a law, as the Creator seems to have done; and then to make a hundred other laws that seem to make the first law inoperative; to play this gigantic game century after century; and then to put into the hearts of our inquisitive race the desire to discover what it is all about; and to leave the desire unsatisfied. What a labyrinthine mystery! Depth beyond depth, and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rarely, indeed, it has happened but that much indirect illumination has resulted—which, afterwards entering into combination with other scattered currents of light, has issued in discoveries of value; although, perhaps, any one contribution, taken separately, had been, and would have remained, inoperative. Much has been accomplished, chiefly of late years; and, confining our view to ancient history, almost exclusively amongst the Germans—by the Savignys, the Niebuhrs, the Otfried Muellers. And, if that much has left still more to do, it has also brought ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... committed by an individual mainly depends on his moral qualities, the crimes committed by the entire population of the country must depend in an equal degree on their collective moral qualities. To render this element inoperative upon the large scale, it would be necessary to suppose that the general moral average of mankind does not vary from country to country or from age to age; which is not true, and, even if it were true, could not possibly be proved by any existing statistics. I do not on this account ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... brought up into line with the rest of Europe, America, Australia, and half Asia, throughout her whole empire. That will mean again that our own repressive measures will really and truly be put into force. At present they are largely inoperative." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... savage art of the neighboring squaws can invent; in sauntering through these gay booths, pricing many things, and in hanging long and undecidedly over cases full of feldspar crosses, quartz bracelets and necklaces, and every manner of vase, inoperative pitcher, and other vessel that can be fashioned out of the geological formations at Niagara, tormented meantime by the heat of the gas-lights and the persistence of the mosquitoes. There were very few people ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... operated between the messenger's voice and my emotional nature did not connect him with yours. Assuredly, the message that reaches one man may not reach another. It may even reach a man in his youth and fall short in manhood, or vice versa. It may be good for him and inoperative on all the rest of the world. We estimate literature, it is true, by the universality of its appeal or by the character of the persons whom alone that appeal reaches. The message of literature as art may thus be to the crowd or to a select few. I could ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... apply to this District? With the feeling so intensified already by this rebellion against slavery, it cannot long exist in Maryland. By advancing legislation, and public sentiment, the fugitive slave law is becoming inoperative, and slaves in Maryland are now held by a most precarious tenure. Indeed, unforeseen events, as this terrible rebellion progresses, may sweep slavery from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is one sad part of the sad lives of godless men that they have their seasons of calm weather, when, in the clearer atmosphere, they catch glimpses of their true good, but that they yet do not behold it long and close enough to be smitten with the desire to possess it; and so the sight remains inoperative, or adds to their condemnation. Not to taste is the sadder fate, because there has been sight. To have eyes opened at last to our own folly, and to see the rich provision of God's table, when it is too late, will be a chief pang of future retribution,—as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... respect for that great lawyer, his argument on this point does not appear sustainable. For the bill in question did not sweep away securities for the Established Church, but merely substituted, for one which long disuse and indemnity had rendered wholly inoperative, a fresh security, which, as it would be steadily put in force, might fairly be expected to prove far more efficacious. And it can hardly be contended that it was not within the province of the Legislature ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... 14th of August, and, except when he was conducting some independent expedition, had been manifested on all occasions since. I therefore thought that the interest of the service would be subserved by removing one whose growing indifference might render the best-laid plans inoperative. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... which had been selected under the act, and made it at the same time impracticable to employ the requisite number of others upon the prescribed conditions. The specific regulations established by Congress for the deposit and safe-keeping of the public moneys having thus unexpectedly become inoperative, I felt it to be my duty to afford you an early opportunity for the exercise of your supervisory powers over ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... afraid of that. You can't feel an Operator Field. I'm sorry, sir, but that means you can't handle these forces and never will be able to. Certain Gunther areas of your brain are inoperative. On our scale ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... been, it was said, "like other people" till his fourteenth year, when a severe attack of illness left him bankrupt in both mind and body. He rose from his bed lame of a foot and hand, his one side shrunken and nerveless, the one lobe of his brain apparently inoperative, and with less than half his former energy and intellect; not at all an idiot, however, though somewhat more helpless—the poor mutilated fragment of a reasoning man. Among his other failings, he stuttered lamentably. He became an inmate of the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... in him and the Senate jointly; and although this respondent had arrived at and still retained the opinion above expressed, and verily believed, as he still believes, that the said first section of the last mentioned act was and is wholly inoperative and void by reason of its conflict with the Constitution of the United States, yet, inasmuch as the same had been enacted by the constitutional majority in each of the two houses of that Congress, this respondent considered it to be proper to examine and decide whether ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... feelings, and particularly their known attachment to France, were dexterously assailed; and the effort was earnestly made to kindle in their bosoms, that enthusiastic love of liberty which was felt too strongly by the authors of the letter, to permit the belief that it could be inoperative with others. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... proposals to be made to a city which had just dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too gayly; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Augsburgischen Bekenntnisse, 1891). At the same time, however, the Lutheran Church, though not so strongly as the English, retained the consciousness of being the true Catholics. But, as the history of Protestantism proves, the original impulse has not remained inoperative. Though Luther himself all his life measured his personal Christian standing by an entirely different standard than subjection to a law of faith; yet, however presumptuous the words may sound, we might say that in the complicated struggle that was forced on him, he did not always ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... only applicable to this particular instance, and became inoperative immediately after its application; and this Government cannot understand how suspicion can therefore fall upon the impartial administration of Justice in this Republic. If the Government had acquiesced in the position ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... that with which we recognise the presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He could not move ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... politeness a mere matter of arbitrary forms. It has as real and permanent a foundation in the nature and relations of men and women, as have government and the common law. The civil code is not more binding upon us than is the code of civility. Portions of the former become, from time to time, inoperative—mere dead letters on the statute-book, on account of the conditions on which they were founded ceasing to exist; and many of the enactments of the latter lose their significance and binding force from the same cause. Many of the forms now in vogue, in what is called ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... practical politics the extreme sacerdotal view of marriage as a sacred and indissoluble covenant, because though reinforced by unhappy marriages as all fanaticisms are reinforced by human sacrifices, it has been reduced to a private and socially inoperative eccentricity by the introduction of civil marriage and divorce. Theoretically, our civilly married couples are to a Catholic as unmarried couples are: that is, they are living in open sin. Practically, civilly married couples are received in society, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... because not so valuable. At the same time, although not absolute slaves, the Hottentots were practically in a state of servitude, in which the freedom accorded to them by Government had, by one subterfuge or another, been rendered inoperative. Not long before this period the colonists possessed absolute power over the Hottentots, and although recent efforts had been made to legislate in their favour, their wrongs had only been mitigated,—by ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... of an aeroplane finds that in teaching man how to control nature he is also providing the means for his struggle, whether in peace or war, in commerce or on the battle-field. We soon find that the progress of technical skill is curiously inoperative in its effect on human thought and feeling. Men remain the same whether they ride in a coach, or a train, or a motor-car; it matters little whether they use bows and arrows, or rifles, or ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... because the qualities of these groups, in politics, religion, social work, and to a lesser extent in literature, are not and cannot be fused together, but on the contrary, stand apart in water-tight compartments, so that the whole is like an elaborate system of checks to make each part inoperative, that, at a time when the whole community is strangely alive with good will, the actual social achievement is ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... operation the "propositions and principles established by the compromise measures of 1850" The "Missouri Compromise," therefore, was not repealed by that bill—its virtual repeal by the legislation of 1850 was recognized as an existing fact, and it was declared to be "inoperative and void." ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate remedy, but they assert that unless the remedy is applied without loss of time it will come too late; that the Tithe Bill, which this year would accomplish its object, will in all probability next year be wholly inoperative. To my mind this reasoning is so conclusive that I can come to no other than the harsh judgment which I have passed upon their conduct, and I think I have made good my charges against both Whigs ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... sharp command; we swooped downward at lightning speed and, barely skimming the surface, flew after this escaping enemy. Whether its larger projector had been rendered inoperative, or many of its crew killed, or whether it thought merely to escape us and make a landing in the Light Country, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low spirits refused absolutely to lift. Something must be done, he reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery, this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face. Yes, he must be cheered up. He mused a while, then he saw his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brought to the prince, who has selected one of them solely by the odor.[40] There was here a sexual selection mainly by odor. Any exclusive efficacy of the olfactory sense is rare, not so much because the impressions of this sense are inoperative, but because agreeable personal odors are not sufficiently powerful, and the olfactory organ is too obtuse, to enable smell to take precedence of sight. Nevertheless, in many people, it is probable that certain odors, especially ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... every one but myself and some ninety millions of other Americans well know. I had seen something of cotton-mills in our Lowell, and I was eager, if not willing, to contrast them with the mills of Manchester; but such of these as still remained there were, for my luckless moment, inoperative. Personal influences brought me within one or two days of their starting up; one almost started up during my brief stay; but a great mill, employing perhaps a thousand hands, cannot start up for the sake of the impression desired by ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... enactments. Let me try to estimate this most important matter. Victoria has seen fit to protect certain interests, agricultural and manufacturing, at the expense of the whole of her public. Happily for her the agricultural protection is probably almost, if not indeed altogether, inoperative, as the climate and the soil of the country, and the vigour of her people, give to her, independently, the natural lead in agricultural products. But the manufacturing protection is confessedly effective, so that the manufactures would not be forthcoming without the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... relation thereto. By the decrees of 9th of May, 1793, 7th of July, 1796, and 2d of March, 1797, the stipulations which were then and subsequently most important to the United States were rendered wholly inoperative. The highly injurious effects which these decrees are known to have produced show how vital were the provisions of treaty which they violated, and make manifest the incontrovertible right of the United States to declare, as the consequence of these acts of the other contracting ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... firm should, at any rate, be deducted," said John Ball, speaking this with a kind of proviso to himself, that the words so spoken were intended to be taken as having any meaning only on the presumption that that document which he had seen in the other room should turn out to be wholly inoperative and inefficient at the present moment. In answer to these side-questions or corollary points as to the deduction or non-deduction of the loan, Mr Slow answered not a word; but when there was silence between them, he did make answer as ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... gospel of Christ may be as accepted of God, and be made as useful to their fellow-men as the most prodigally endowed, yet the possession of great and well-directed talents must not be underrated. Different soils require different culture, and that which is inoperative on one man may be beneficial to another, and it is hardly possible for any one to form a due estimate of the elevation of which pulpit oratory is susceptible who never heard Robert Hall. This character of his preaching refers more particularly ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... appeal to force for an ultimate justification, nor do social institutions originate in an act of force. It is one of the commonplaces of historical study that when an institution is actually forced upon a people it very quickly becomes inoperative. Other things equal, one group of people may overcome another group because of physical superiority, but the conquest over, the question as to which group shall really rule, or which set of institutions shall survive, is settled on quite different grounds. The history of almost ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Wilson, B.D.,—who, (as "literalists" say,) in 1841 was one of the 'Four Tutors' who procured the condemnation of Tract No. 90, on the ground that it 'evaded rather than explained the Thirty-nine Articles;' and who, in 1861 writes that "Subscription to the Articles may be thought even inoperative upon the conscience by reason of its vagueness;" (p. 181.)—why need this author be supposed to be a man at all? Why should he not be interpreted "ideologically;" and resolved into the principle of disgraceful Inconsistency of conduct, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... altered, they will coerce the State to alter the second tier, because it becomes worthless and inoperative, and because the one tier becomes incapable of passing so great a multitude of boats, and it would otherwise greatly reduce the carrying ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... day in June when the solitary aeronaut took flight from Paris in a small hydrogen balloon only partially filled, but rigged with some contrivance of wings which were designed to render it self-propelling. Discovering, however, that this device was inoperative, M. Testu, after about an hour and a half, allowed the balloon to descend to earth in a corn field, when, without quitting hold of the car, he commenced collecting stones for ballast. But as yet he ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... light. For a gloss of Jerome on Amos 1:2 says that "prophets draw comparisons from things with which they are conversant." But if prophetic vision were effected by means of species newly impressed, the prophet's previous experience of things would be inoperative. Therefore no new species are impressed on the prophet's soul, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... it a second, it is really but a special aspect of the first; for the ideal which I form always represents some improvement in myself. An ideal which did not promise to better me in some way would be no ideal at all. It would be quite inoperative. I never rise from my chair except with the hope of being better off. Without this, I should sit forever. But I feel uneasiness in my present position, and conceive the possibility of not being constrained; or I think of some needful work which ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... Though the crime of abduction was punishable with death, as the girls who were thus carried off were in most instances immediately married, few were found willing to prosecute their husbands. The law was consequently almost inoperative, and the abominable practice up to this day had ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... that to which his finite experiences lead him of themselves. The state of mind which shudders at the idea of a lot of experiences left to themselves, and that augurs protection from the sheer name of an absolute, as if, however inoperative, that might still stand for a sort of ghostly security, is like the mood of those good people who, whenever they hear of a social tendency that is damnable, begin to redden and to puff, and say 'Parliament or Congress ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... of gaming disputes were liable to forfeit all their goods and to be committed to prison for two years. No case of the kind, however, was ever prosecuted on that clause of the Act, which was, in other respects, very nearly inoperative. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... book as the foregoing, one is led to ask why it was so inoperative on the life of the country. One reason perhaps is that Balzac wrote from his head rather than from his heart. Whatever may be, in other respects, the superiority of the Realistic over the Romantic school of fiction, it is inferior in this, viz., that its ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... popular government,—which should as carefully abstain from meddling in matters that may be safely left to be decided by natural laws as it should be prompt to interfere where those laws would to the general detriment be inoperative. It should be remembered that self-interest, though its requirements may seem plain and imperative to an unprejudiced bystander, is something which men, and even communities, are often ready to sacrifice at the bidding of their passions, and of none so readily as their pride. As for the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... seemed naturally to expect that this new ally should look at this great question as her mother had looked at it. The father had been regarded as a great outside power, which could hardly be overcome, but which might be evaded, or made inoperative by stratagem. It was not that the daughter did not love him. She loved him and venerated him highly,—the veneration perhaps being stronger than the love. The Duchess, too, had loved him dearly,—more dearly in late years than in her ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... prices of animal food. Its working is in beautiful harmony with that of the newly modeled corn-laws, as we shall presently explain. In years of abundance, when plenty of meat is produced at home, the new tariff will be inoperative, as far as regards the actual importations of foreign cattle; but in years of scarcity at home, the expectation of a good price will induce the foreigner to send us a sufficient supply; for he will then be, and then only, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... terribly. The punishment is continued until the man either supplies the evidence required or becomes insensible. Punishment by bamboo was formally abolished by imperial edict in 1905, and other judicial reforms were instituted. They remained largely inoperative, and even in Shanghai, under the eyes of foreign residents, gross cases of the infliction ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... discover the true explanation or not, inherited mutilations can hardly be accounted for as the result of a general tendency to inherit acquired modifications. How could a factor which seems to be totally inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the normal effects of use and disuse, suddenly become so powerful as to completely overthrow atavism, and its own tendency to transmit the non-mutilated type of one of the parents and of the non-mutilated ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... of science, and with such a vague and morally inoperative religion, it was no wonder that the higher minds of the contemporary world turned to the study of philosophy. Of such studies there had been many schools or sects, but at this date we have chiefly to reckon with two—the Stoics and Epicureans. There ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... laws of Christ." It would require but little, if any, extension of your doctrine, to make it wrong to remove all the graven images out of a nation. For, in that event, the law of God against bowing down to them would have nothing left to act upon. It would thenceforth be inoperative. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all was fusion; Nature suffers, groans, is ignorant, degenerates, does evil; deceives herself, annihilates herself, disappears, and begins again. If God is associated with Nature, how can we explain the inoperative indifference of the divine principle? Wherefore death? How came it that Evil, king of the earth, was born of a God supremely good in His essence and in His faculties, who can produce nothing that is not made ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... that it should be complete in its elements, eliminated of what the African, with a fine intuition of the truth, ingenuously terms 'de wite trash,'—yes, in the Southern social scheme the whites are trash,—and they only find their place as a sort of useless ornament, non-productive and inoperative, even according to their own ideas. Therefore the 'wite trash' must ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brain it was clear that the drone control had been sabotaged by the Earthman. Otherwise cutting the signal wire would have kept the board from showing green. Somehow, the signal wire had been bypassed, to keep the operators from knowing the drone control was inoperative. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... probability of the result without destroying the enemy's Army, namely, upon the expeditions which have a direct connection with political views. If there are any enterprises which are particularly likely to break up the enemy's alliances or make them inoperative, to gain new alliances for ourselves, to raise political powers in our own favour, &c. &c., then it is easy to conceive how much these may increase the probability of success, and become a shorter way towards our object than the routing of ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... States, reduce the minority to less than one-third. Congress by these means might be enabled to pass a law, the objections of the President to the contrary notwithstanding, which would render impotent the other two departments of the Government and make inoperative the wholesome and restraining power which it was intended by the framers of the Constitution should be exerted by them. This would be a practical concentration of all power in the Congress of the United States; this, in the language of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... with this portion of Nature's educational process, the object of the teacher should be to endeavour to imitate her in all these circumstances; carefully avoiding what she has shewn to be inoperative and hurtful, and copying as closely as possible all those that tend to ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the altar. A change has come over the public sentiment. Among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt against Home Rule. At a Unionist meeting held the other day at Athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. One said that the change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian vengeance. The ignorant masses have also experienced a change. They have been undergoing ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... individual could not be directly remedied; inherited maladies and those brought upon one's self, stupidity and folly, brutality and malice, undeniably existed. But the institutions of society ought to be so planned as to render these destructive forces inoperative, or at least diminish their harmfulness, not so as to give them free scope and augment their terrors by ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... field, notably those of the radical Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still further works an instant FORFEITURE of ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... concentrating the drains to holes, called "swallow-holes." He says this practice is open to the objection that those holes do not always absorb the water with sufficient rapidity, and so render the drainage for a time, inoperative. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... measures were to a great extent effectual in diminishing the influence of the Crown over Parliament, and they are memorable as marking the date when the direct bribery of members absolutely ceased. But they were utterly inoperative in rendering the House of Commons really representative of or responsible to ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... most embarrassing. Congress Act of July 1, 1902, authorized the coinage of subsidiary silver, but did not determine the unit of value or provide for the issue of either coin or paper money to take the place of the Mexican and Spanish-Philippine pesos in circulation, so that it was quite inoperative. Finally, Congress Act of March 2, 1903, provided that the new standard should be a peso equal in value to half a United States gold dollar. The maximum amount authorized to be coined was 75,000,000 silver pesos, each containing 416 grains of silver, nine-tenths fine. The peso was to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... you lubricate the valve of low-pressure cylinder if the oil feed became inoperative on ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions is ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... and Technician Melran stated that his control circuits were inoperative and that he was tracing the difficulty. He cleared the trouble, but condensation had already been established and precipitation had commenced. I ordered re-absorption, which was started as soon as repairs ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... the second article of the treaty with the Sioux Indians concluded April 29, 1868, and that consequently, being treaty reservations, the Executive was without lawful power to restore them to the public domain by said Executive order, which is therefore deemed and considered to be wholly inoperative and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... actual defects. The error lay simply in his interpretation of his carefully noted facts. As Hermann Mueller has said, "Sprengel's investigations afford an example of how even work that is rich in acute observation and happy interpretation may remain inoperative if the idea at its foundation is defective." What, then, was the flaw in Sprengel's work? Simply that he had seen but half the "secret" which he claimed to have "discovered." Starting to prove that insects fertilize the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me. What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative like the Pope's Bull against the comet. Do not misunderstand me, because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my acting in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... deep inspiration, yet we know that emphysematous distention, being produced by extrabronchial air accumulation, is, in fact, obstructive to the respiratory act. The emphysematous lung will, in the same manner as the distended pleural sac, depress the diaphragm and render the thoracic muscles inoperative. The foregoing observations have been made in reference to the effect of wounds of the thorax, the proper treatment of which will be obviously suggested by our knowledge of the state of the contained ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... a very good-natured crowd, on the whole, and withal inclined to be courteous, but the pressure of numbers, and the utter impossibility of doing anything, or prosecuting my search for the exit on the other side of the city, renders the good intentions of individuals wholly inoperative. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... it as a living reality. Why? Because experience had taught it to them. It is the only teacher that teaches us the articles of our creed in a way worth learning them. Every one of us carries professed beliefs, which lie there inoperative, bedridden, in the hospital and dormitory of our souls, until some great necessity or sudden circumstance comes that flings a beam of light upon them, and then they start and waken. We do not know the use of the sword until ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... wicked and cruel scheme, worked out to the smallest particular. But, though I understood its hideousness intellectually, it aroused in mo no corresponding emotion; my sensitiveness to right arid wrong seemed stupefied or inoperative. I could say, "This is wicked," but I could not awaken in myself a horror of committing the wickedness; and, moreover, I knew that, if the influence Paton was able to exercise over me continued, I must ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... should never be extended. Douglas incorporated in his "Kansas-Nebraska" bill, a clause declaring that the prohibition of slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, by the act of 1820, had been "superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850," and was "inoperative and void." Later he added the explanatory clause: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the lack of fixed-line infrastructure international: country code - 964; satellite earth stations - 4 (2 Intelsat - 1 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean, 1 Intersputnik - Atlantic Ocean region, and 1 Arabsat (inoperative)); local microwave radio relay connects border regions to Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey; planned international fiber-optic connections to Iran (terrestrial) with a link to the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of radiocommunication stations for intercity links; 5,000 telephones; stations—3 AM, 1 FM, limited TV service; many facilities are inoperative; 1 ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... however, before mesmerism was heard of, medical history attests examples in which patients who baffled the skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fancies on some remedy that physicians would call inoperative for good or for harm, and have recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested. And Hippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning rightly, recognizes the powers for self-cure which the condition of trance will sometimes bestow on the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that homo homini lupus, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... construction would render constitutional provisions of the highest importance completely inoperative and void. It would tend directly to establish the union of all powers in the legislature. There would be no general, permanent law for courts to administer or men to live under. The administration of justice would be an empty form, an idle ceremony. Judges would sit ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... impediments of its own creating in past times. In all other respects, commercial legislation is a nuisance; and if under some circumstances trade is found to flourish concurrently with such interference, the fact is due either to the restrictions and regulations being practically inoperative, or more frequently, to the high profits arising from unexhausted resources, in the absence of competition, enabling commerce to advance in spite of impediments; in the same way as cultivation by slave labor, notwithstanding ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... He himself had frequently cast his eyes in the direction of a political appointment abroad. It remained, however, for the Rev. Francis Cunningham, {92a} vicar of Lowestoft, in Suffolk, to see in this young man against whom the curse of Babel was inoperative, a sword that, in the hands of the British and Foreign Bible Society, might be wielded with considerable ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... for the guarantee of a third power the obviously futile guarantee of all the powers. Neither party foresaw that the impossibility of obtaining such a guarantee was destined to leave the whole clause about Malta inoperative. After much dispute over the future constitution of the order, France proposed to obviate the chief source of difficulty by the demolition of the forts. This plan commended itself to Cornwallis, but was rejected by the British government. By the end ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the gods, as Epimenides had wielded before them.... Had Epimenides himself come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phye, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athena, which had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus—a stratagem which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although a century before his time both the city ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Portsmouth, who is ready to stand resolutely against all oppression; or you may pay the Custom House officer what it will cost to transport it to England and back to Boston, and he will give you permission to ship it direct to Boston. That is the law; but it has been inoperative for several reasons—one, because it could not be enforced, and another, because Great Britain has been compelled to rely upon the Colonies to aid in driving the French from Canada. That has been accomplished, and now King George, who is not remarkably intelligent, but pig-headed, and his short-sighted ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... initiative—the question whether any particular project is likely to tend to the public benefit, and, if so, whether this is a fit and proper time to bring it forward—should be discussed elsewhere. A recommendation of the Board of Trade, which still leaves the matter open, is plainly useless and inoperative. It has been overleaped, derided, despised, and will be so again—we scarcely dare to say unjustly; for no body of five men, however intelligent, could by possibility be expected to form an accurate judgment upon such an enormous mass of materials and conflicting statements as were laid before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the ports. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge that his ship was at hand. With the camp exits inoperative, Grantline and his men were imprisoned. Miko had made an effort to kill me. He did not know my companion was Anita. But the effort was taking too long; with his ship at hand, it was Miko's best move to return to his own camp, rejoin his men, ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... men for cruel and unnecessary punishment inflicted on slaves, but there are penal statutes against the unnecessary and barbarous abuse and destruction of horses, and other species of property. She may tell us that the penal statutes, so far as slaves are concerned, are a dead letter; that they are inoperative; that they have no force or effect whatever. This also, I know to be untrue, from personal observation. I admit that slaveholders often evade the punishment due their crimes, and so do men everywhere. ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... when he had retired to the seclusion of his inner office, "that you fully understand that the divorce secured by your wife is inoperative—Tut! Tut! Don't interrupt me!"—for Hawkins had opened his mouth in protest—"for the reason —for the very good reason, I repeat—that you were never served with any summons or notified that the proceeding had been ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... his evident intentions and effects are hopelessly lost unless interpreted in this spirit: then we relegate Plautine drama to a low plane of broad farce, where verisimilitude to life becomes wholly unnecessary because undesirable; where the canons of dramatic art become inoperative; where, contrary to what Koerting says, we are not asked to believe that "everything is happening in a perfectly natural manner"; where the poet may stick at nothing provided the laugh be forthcoming; where all the apparently absurd conventions of palliatae cease to be absurd, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... her as his own daughter, but equally of course we did, and knew that she would be rescued by her impetuous boy-lover and restored to her real father; but not before great business with opium pipes, pivoting statues of goddesses, inoperative revolvers, gongs, strangulations (with gurgles), detectives, rows of Chinese servants each more rascally (and less Chinese, if possible) than the last, and over all the polished villainy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various |
