"Inoperative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 taken ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... 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
... is at his 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
... system of radiocommunication stations for intercity links; 5,000 telephones; stations—3 AM, 1 FM, limited TV service; many facilities are inoperative; 1 Atlantic Ocean INTELSAT ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... something intentionally; whereas in the automatic gear of Messrs. Massey and Lewis, of which an illustration is annexed, there is nothing to cause damage or to interfere in any way with the proper handling of the engines, and it is practically out of the power of the driver to render the gear inoperative. It is here shown in its simplest form as applied to the ordinary reversing and steam handles of a winding engine, the only additions being an arm jointed to the top of the valve spindle, with its connections to the shaft of the reversing lever, and a disk receiving a suitable motion from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it inoperative—yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department, for instance—though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... a great degree inoperative when they do not spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the support of public ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Gulf war; most damaged facilities have been rebuilt 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; Kuwait line is ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... great an enterprise for the marshal to undertake without military assistance. For this the President could have been called upon. But he might have refused it. If so, the judgment of the judicial department would have proved inoperative, simply because the officer charged with the duty of rendering it operative had ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... their support. 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
... heat absorbed by the water-jacket should point out to the ingenuity of inventors the first problem to be attacked, viz., how to save this heat without wasting the lubricant or making it inoperative; and in the solution of this problem, I look for the most important improvement to be expected in the engine. The most obvious contrivance would be some sort of intercepting shield, which would save the walls of the cylinder and the rings of the piston from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... mentioned, is two hundred murders in a year.[B] Now here the action of fate does not begin until you reach the lowest ten thousand. Even here, freedom is not extinguished; the rational and moral elements that confer it are weak, but they are not necessarily dead or inoperative; for, in conjunction with lower restraints, they actually make the number of crimes not ten thousand, but two hundred. True it is, that these are partially enslaved, partially subject to fate; but they are enslaved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this switching function automatic, principally because of the liability of the user to forget to move the switch to the proper position after using the telephone, resulting not only in the rapid waste of the battery elements but also in the inoperative condition of the signal-receiving bell. The solution of this problem, a vexing one at first, was found in the so-called automatic hook switch or switch hook, by which the circuits of the instrument were made automatically to assume their proper conditions by the mere act, on the part of the user, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... agreement to adopt the movement as an Administration measure. Fortified with this important adhesion, Douglas took the fatal plunge, and on January 23 introduced his third Nebraska bill, organizing two territories instead of one, and declaring the Missouri Compromise "inoperative." But the amendment—monstrous Caliban of legislation as it was—needed to be still further licked into shape to satisfy the designs of the South and appease the alarmed conscience of the North. Two weeks ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... little domestic boat sailing in uncharted waters. The above message of the Food Administration disturbs her ordinary household routine, upsets her menus and puts her recipes out of commission. It also renders inoperative some of her usual methods of economy at a time when rising food prices make economy more imperative than ever. To be patriotic and still live on one's income is a complex problem. This little book was started in response to a request for "a war message about food." It seemed to ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... President, that I asked for a general court-martial to try and definitely determine cases specifically defined and set out, and that this preliminary court has no power beyond the mere collection of facts and giving an inoperative opinion thereon; considering that, if we now proceed, the whole labor must be gone over again at least by the parties and witnesses; considering that the court will be obliged to adjourn to the United States in order to have the least hope of obtaining ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... from an exclusive colonial yoke. It is true that England had previously formed a treaty with Portugal, permitting English vessels to trade to her South American Colonies, but such was the influence of Portuguese merchants with the local governments, that it was nearly inoperative; so that, practically, the Portuguese were in the exclusive possession of that commerce which my expulsion of the fleet and army of the mother country unreservedly threw open to British enterprise. The same, even in a higher degree, may be said with ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... destined for one of his favourite officers was extreme. He ordered the count to be treated with the greatest rigour, and declared all his estates and those of his wife forfeited, the latter part of the sentence being at present inoperative, her estates being in a part of the country far beyond the range of the Imperialist troops. The waiting maid was after some weeks' detention released, as there was no evidence whatever of her ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... Georg Cantor, it has appeared that the impossibility of infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... a sharp command; we swooped downward at lightning speed and, barely skimming the surface, flew after this escaping enemy. Whether its larger projector had been rendered inoperative, or many of its crew killed, or whether it thought merely to escape us and make a landing in the Light Country, I ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... "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
... this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... would in fact by being an act of war create a state of war, which constitutionally can only be done by a declaration of Congress. To contract by treaty to create a state of war upon certain contingencies arising would be equally tainted with unconstitutionality and would be null and inoperative. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... utterly futile in these multitudinous cases was the hypothesis propounded by his grandfather and Lamarck, Mr. Darwin was, not unnaturally, almost betrayed into the belief that the one is all-sufficient and the other inoperative. But in the mind of one so candid and ever open to more evidence, there naturally came a reaction. The inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, which, judging by the passage quoted above concerning the views ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the course of nature, or the events of history. On this theory it may be said, (1.) That it is utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures. (2.) It does not meet the religious and moral necessities of our nature. It renders prayer irrational and inoperative. It makes it vain for a man in any emergency to look to God for help. (3.) It is inconsistent with obvious facts. We see around us innumerable evidences of the constant activity of mind. This evidence of mind and of its operations, according to Lord Brougham ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... hand, reason is insufficient of itself to constitute the feeling of moral approbation or disapprobation. Reason shows the means to an end; but if we are otherwise indifferent to the end, the reasonings fall inoperative on the mind. Here then a sentiment must display itself, a delight in the happiness of men, and a repugnance to what causes them misery. Reason teaches the consequences of actions; Humanity or Benevolence is roused to make a distinction ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... 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 had ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... 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 ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Territory, as elsewhere in the United States, except the section of the Act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6th, 1820, which was superseded by the principles of the Legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is declared inoperative." ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... or parcel of land and premises to the said 'Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning,' in the manner herein before directed, should be incapable of being accomplished or carried into effect, or otherwise become, or be, or be deemed or construed to be invalid, illegal, or inoperative, then and in either or any of those cases upon trust, and that they the said John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and James Dunlop, or the survivors or survivor of them or the heirs, executors, or curators of such ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of Macon's bill suggested another stroke to the wily conqueror of Europe. On August 5, he announced to the American Minister that the decrees of Berlin and Milan were revoked and would be inoperative after November 1, "it being understood that in consequence of this declaration the English are to revoke their orders in council and renounce the new principles of blockade," and that the United States, conforming to its act ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... commendation than of censure," was "very early recognised by the Christians." Bishop Ellicott similarly observes that "history forces upon us the recognition of pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the earliest ages of Christianity." Middleton likewise reflects that the bold defiance of honesty and truth displayed by the Fathers of the fourth century "could not have been acquired, or become general at once, but must have been carried gradually to that height, by custom and the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... value and appropriating their services to themselves. All this relates to the past rather than the present, since, as we have explained, the relationship of slave and master is now so nearly at an end as to render such arrangements inoperative. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... timber, at least where the forest is a royal one, has also been generally admitted into the continental mine codes. King John granted it to the tinners of Devon and Cornwall, but such a grant is now inoperative except ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... he recalled it, to have been altogether different from 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
... to, and very seriously talked to, and if possible saved from the sin of offending his easily-offended uncle. A terrible idea had been suggested to her lately by her husband. The entail might be made altogether inoperative by the marriage of her brother. It was a fearful notion, but one which if it entered into her brother's head might possibly be carried out. No one before had ever dreamed of anything so dangerous to the Annesley interests, and ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... there are signs of the weakening of parental influence, of the loss of reverence for authority, of a decadence of manners and of growing moral laxity. The restraining forces of ancient India have lost some of their power; the restraining forces of the West are inoperative in India. There has thus been a certain moral loss without any corresponding gain. The educated European may throw off the sanctions of religion; but he has to live in a social environment which has been built up on the basis of Christian morality, and he cannot divest himself of the influences ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... 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
... were keenly alive to rumours, and to rumours of rumours. Reports of these opinions respecting Mr. Gibson reached Heavitree, and had their effect. As long as Mr. Gibson was behaving well as a suitor, they were inoperative there. What did it matter to them how the prize might have been struggled for,—might still be struggled for elsewhere, while they enjoyed the consciousness of possession? But when the consciousness of possession became marred by a cankerous doubt, such rumours were very important. Camilla heard ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... machine, 'owing to the increased load caused by centrifugal force,' had insufficient power to maintain itself in the air and therefore lost speed until a point was reached at which the controls became inoperative. In other words, this was the first experience of 'stalling on a turn,' which is a danger against which all embryo pilots have to guard in the early stages ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... a very bright and able speaker. He had argued the right of a State to dissent from, or nullify, a law passed by the House of Representatives and Senate, making such law inoperative within its borders. His claim was that the framers of the Constitution did not expect or intend that a law could be passed that was binding on a State when the people of that State did not wish it so. Mr. Hayne had the best end of the argument, and the opinion is now general among jurists that his ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... agrarian projects of the Gracchi. What reason was there for supposing that the tendencies which in the past had favoured the growth of large holdings and replaced agriculture by pasturage, should remain inoperative in the future? Tiberius Gracchus's own regulation about the inalienability of the lands which he assigned, seemed to reveal the suspicion that the tendencies towards accumulation had not yet been exhausted, and that the occupants of the newly created farms might not ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... once be opened, and the fires raked out. A cone in the ball of the waste steam pipe to send back the water carried upward by the steam, should never be inserted; as in some cases this cone has become loose, and closed up the mouth of the waste steam pipe, whereby the safety valves being rendered inoperative, the boiler was in ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... to speak to her there and then, but it seemed scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard her request so incontinently. She had used him roughly, but she had brought him up: and the fact of her being powerless to control him lent a pathetic force to a wish that would have been inoperative ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... 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 nothing comes of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... corpus, the only protection against lettres de cachet and all forms of unjust imprisonment, which the constitution declares "shall not be suspended, except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety demands it," is held inoperative in every State of the Union, in case of a married woman against her husband—the marital rights of the husband being in all cases primary, and the rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... perceiving that the very innocence of Elfride in reading her little fault as one so grave was what had fatally misled him. Had Elfride, with any degree of coolness, asserted that she had done no harm, the poisonous breath of the dead Mrs. Jethway would have been inoperative. Why did he not make his little docile girl tell more? If on that subject he had only exercised the imperativeness customary with him on others, all might have been revealed. It smote his heart like a switch when he remembered how gently she had borne his scourging ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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; Kuwait ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that in this case, as in all others, when an organisation has become effete and inoperative for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other ones—quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? "I admit that they are stupid and frivolous ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... 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 early ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Douglas carried through the Congress of the United States and through a parliamentary warfare, in which no other man than he could have triumphed, the bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, declaring inoperative and void the Missouri geographical compromise line, and affirming the true intent and meaning of the Kansas and Nebraska act to be, "to leave the people of any State or territory perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... were even now visible to the wondering dislike of my neighbors. I do not say the characteristic is so strong, or would be so hard to change as by the revealing development it must become; but it is there, alive, as an egg is alive; and by no means inoperative like a mere germ, but exercising real though occult influence on the rest of my character. Therefore, except the growing vitality be in process of killing these ova of death, it is for the good of the man that they should be so far developed as to show their existence. ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... 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 |
