"Inoperative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 all those functions and powers essential to the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... for. There is a good deal of cant too about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity without which worth is a mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... articles. If that time should come, the industry that had to grow up originally under the protection of a duty would become so fruitful that it could dispense with the duty. Taxes of this kind tend to become inoperative, provided always that the latent resources ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... 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
... totally devoid of ordinary scruples as the average well-bred Englishman is full of them. He had, no doubt, a code of his own to guide his conduct towards his co-religionists, but this code seemed wholly inoperative when he was brought into relation with those ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... emperors before us, who worshipped the blessed and immortal and life-giving Trinity, have decreed in behalf of the true and apostolic faith, these laws, we say, as always beneficial for the whole world, we will at no time to be inoperative, but rather we promulgate them as our own. We, preferring piety and zeal in the cause of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who created and has made us glorious before all diligence in human affairs, and also believing that concord among ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... reasons some daimios have endeavored to render the treaties inoperative, and to frighten foreigners out of the land, there has been springing up among the people a strong antipathy toward them, for which they have themselves alone to blame. Who that read the glowing accounts of the reception at first accorded to our people, did not admire the suavity and hospitality ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The great objection to it was its interference with liberty, and with the variety of customs which had grown up in different parts of the country. To enforce strict uniformity would be oppressive and inconvenient. The bill became law, however, though it has largely proved inoperative, Mr. Gladstone also opposed the Endowed Schools Act Amendment Bill, which practically gave to the Church of England the control of schools that were thrown open to the whole nation by the policy of the last Parliament. So great a storm was raised over this reactionary ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... 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 organs which have ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... one hundred Chicago clergymen, who urged him to issue a proclamation of freedom for the slaves. "What good would a proclamation from me do, especially as we are now situated?" asked Mr. Lincoln by way of reply. "I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... been easy 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 as an argument. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... came to demand, under the provisions of the fugitive-slave law, three field hands alleged to be in Butler's camp. Butler responded that as Virginia claimed to be a foreign country the fugitive-slave law was clearly inoperative, unless the owner would come and take an oath of allegiance to the United States. In connection with this incident, the newspaper report stated that as the breastworks and batteries which had been so rapidly erected for Confederate ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the elements of the whole problem. In the modern world political dominion is playing a more and more effaced role as a factor in commerce; the non-political factors have in practise made it all but inoperative. It is the case with every modern nation actually that the outside territories which it exploits most successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot. Even with the most characteristically colonial of all—Great Britain—the greater part of her overseas trade is done with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... vast territories 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, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... are simple, easily applicable, practical and not liable to render the fund inoperative by any change of circumstances. It aims simply to give to the colored people a training that will fit them for every day life, or to become teachers of their race. Hence it will be confined to primary, industrial ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... Britain and the Colonies, and is recognized in most foreign countries. A common device with people within the prohibited degrees is to get married abroad, but such marriage is strictly speaking inoperative, and the children of such union are illegitimate. Practically, however, it is a matter of no importance, for when people live together and say they are married, they are ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... history the National Banking Act seemed to prove a reasonable avenue through which needful additions to the circulation could from time to time be made. Changing conditions have apparently rendered it now inoperative to that end. The high margin in bond securities required, resulting from large premiums which Government bonds command in the market, or the tax on note issues, or both operating together, appear to be the influences which impair its ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... crippled and that 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, vanish into ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... didn't recognise 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 the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... is no mesmerizer, unless the patient can be supposed to mesmerize herself. Long, 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 ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the historical novel had for some time past done great harm (I think the phrase was stronger) to the imaginative literature of England. Now there are several things which might be said about this judgment—I do not say "in arrest" of it, because it is of itself inoperative: as it happens you cannot put critical opinions in the melting pot. At least, they won't melt: and they come out again like the diabolic rat that Mr. Chips tried to pitch-boil. In the first place, there is the question ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... 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
... 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, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... an 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 later, after the first outburst of debate, the following phraseology was substituted: ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... can 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 ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... president of the Commission as legitimate exposition work, had been rejected by the company. The members of the board of lady managers, therefore, were now of the unanimous opinion that they would be most seriously embarrassed and their services rendered ineffective and inoperative unless an appropriation could be secured from Congress to defray the cost of meetings and other necessary expenses. If they failed to secure funds of their own, their power and influence in connection with the exposition would continue to be limited ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... perplexities before him, he could find nothing better than the following plan of action, which had been in his mind for some time. While the edict remained inoperative, he would do nothing at all, and let Agellius go on with his country occupations, which would keep him out of the way. But if any disposition appeared of a popular commotion, or a movement on the part of the magistracy, he determined to get possession of Agellius, and ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 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 in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... from God, now, for the first time, they grasp 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 we are in battle. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 enough," replies every man to your criticisms; "but then, you know, one must ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an area. "One man is acted upon by his character, another by his reflection."[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for opportunities of action are, like ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tainted. I believe the bands are small, though perfectly organized; but the number of persons comprising these lawless bands is small compared with the great body of the people. But still evidence cannot be obtained, and the law is by reason of this inoperative. And if these small bands prevent the exercise of the law, these outrages remaining unchecked, the bulk of the population will not heed the law." And whose fault is it that those counties are tainted, and that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Ric. II, c. 5, which ordained that no one who had been a servant in husbandry until 12 years old should be bound apprentice, and further enacted that no person with less than 20s. a year in land should be able to apprentice his son. Like many other statutes of the time this seems to have been inoperative, for we find 23 Hen. VI, c. 12 (1444), enacting that if a servant in husbandry purposed leaving his master he was to give him warning, and was obliged either to engage with a new one or continue with the old. It also regulated the wages anew, those fixed showing a substantial ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... any part. He must be talked 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 Mrs. Annesley ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... cent (enforced in 397) to 5 per cent (in 407) for the year of twelve months, and at length (412) the taking of interest was altogether forbidden. The latter foolish law remained formally in force, but, of course, it was practically inoperative; the standard rate of interest afterwards usual, viz. 1 per cent per month, or 12 per cent for the civil common year—which, according to the value of money in antiquity, was probably at that time nearly the same as, according to its ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... being hotter, lengthens the pipe and closes the valve. Now with this kind of trap, and, in fact, with any variety of trap, we understand that it has been frequently the experience of the user to find his contrivance inoperative because the silt or sand that may be present in the pipes has been carried to the valve and lodged there by the water, causing it to stick, and with expansion traps not to close properly or to work abnormally some way or other. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... there was a great and visible improvement in the circumstances of the people. Although the funding system was certainly not inoperative in producing this improvement it cannot be justly ascribed to any single cause. Progressive industry had gradually repaired the losses sustained by the war, and the influence of the constitution on habits of thinking and acting, though silent, was considerable. In depriving the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... making poisons. They make the celebrated Wourali poison, the smallest quantity of which in a vein always kills. It has never disappointed its backers. But he didn't make this. He brought it from the World of Spirits, beyond the grave. It is intended for internal use only, being quite inoperative when injected into a vein. Irene unpacked my valise when I came back, and touched the bottle. And an hour afterwards she saw that her ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... stress. Instead of a single magnetic pole there is a conflict of forces. The result is either chaos or partial success. Mill may suggest hill, and then perhaps the directing idea becomes suddenly inoperative and the child gives mountain, valley, or some other irrelevant association. The lack of associations, however, is a more frequent cause of failure than ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... 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
... 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 ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... Mr. 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 in their own ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... 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
... 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 besides themselves ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... idea of personal survival is in itself, and potent as it has been as a 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 ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... 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 you are a ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... convulsed when creating than when 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 ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... 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 complicity ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... 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 Maryland without compensation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... with a view of promoting the cause of truth were deserving rather of 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 ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... of radiocommunication stations for intercity links; 5,000 telephones; stations—3 AM, 1 FM, limited TV service; many facilities are inoperative; 1 Atlantic Ocean ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... once would reveal his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the portes. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come up to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's signal 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 made an effort to kill me. He did not know my companion was Anita. The effort was taking too long: with the Grantline camp imprisoned and his ship at hand, it was Miko's best move to return ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... defiance of that notorious fact, some people go so far as to assert, that a call is not good unless where it is subscribed by a clear majority of the congregation. This is amusing. We have already explained that, except as a liberal courtesy, the very idea of a call destined to be inoperative, is and must be moonshine. Yet between two moonshines, some people, it seems, can tell which is the denser. We have all heard of Barmecide banquets, where, out of tureens filled to the brim with—nothing, the fortunate guest was helped to vast messes of—air. For a hungry guest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Ireland through England was abandoned by Edward III. in favour of the cheaper but fatal policy of concealing the weakness of the English power by combining it with the strength of the strongest of the Anglo-Norman houses. Under this faulty system, the statute of Kilkenny became inoperative almost from ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... tadpole! We are no more safe from it than from memory! Who can be sure that what he has forgotten has ceased to survive? The sweet perfume of a violet may revive a bitter memory dormant for fifty years! At a word, a look, a glance, conscience—abused, suppressed, despised, inoperative—may rise in all her majesty and fill the heart with ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the hands of the agricultural interest, as regarded more essential protection, by removing the odium of a nominal protection: 'Convinced by my right honourable friends, in 1842, that their tariff would be as inoperative as it has proved, I gave my ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... doubt in 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 ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... had worn off, was to deprive him of special chances of escape on which to exercise his vigilance, since, so far as doors were to be considered, it was as easy to escape at one time as another; and it was found that the desire often became dormant and inoperative if not called into action by the stimulus of special opportunity. It is, indeed, a thing of common experience that the mere feeling of being locked in is sufficient to awaken a desire to get out. This happens ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... And this can not but be the case: for, inasmuch as every single crime 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 ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... make the bill inoperative was recognized from the moment the committee was called to order. The manner in which this was to be done developed as rapidly. The machine's plan was ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... cause might, by law, be taken from the President and vested 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 ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... regarded the law as a thing to be rigorously invoked against the poor, the helpless and defenseless, but as not to be considered when it stood in the way of the claims, designs and pretensions of property. Superintendent McKenney reported that all laws in the Indian country were inoperative—so much dead matter. Andrew S. Hughes, reporting from St. Louis, Oct. 31, 1831, to Lewis Cass, Secretary ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... when the country's trade had been far larger and more prosperous than of late. Now, with the necessities of life standing at fully three times normal prices, a large number of trades employing many thousands of work-people were suddenly shut down upon, and rendered completely inoperative. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... legislation of this country, which has for its ostensible object the amelioration of the condition of the Uitlander, this measure, which looks like munificence at first sight, has been rendered practically inoperative by the conditions which hedge it round. Take, for example, a school of 100 children. Strike out ten as being under age, ten as having been too short a time at school, twenty as suspected of being of Dutch parentage. Out of the sixty that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... should be excluded; and now she 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 early life. But ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... hands; but colour exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... thing to-morrow and write you out a policy at once. In your case the policy should be made out for a period of fourteen years, since your present dose of poison will not lose its efficacy for seven years, and that will render insurance taken after the fact inoperative." ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... 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 the aesthetic ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... nothing; it would be only a corpse. Without the body of Christianity, the spirit would be comparatively inactive; it would be only a ghost. A body without spirit corrupts and is offensive; a spirit without body is inoperative and alarming. Through body alone the spirit can act; through spirit ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... 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. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... system be not exercised, will it not perish for lack of exercise?" The latest word of science on this subject is that it will not, either in the bird or elsewhere. In a healthy organism it can safely remain inoperative with the certainty of becoming active at a later period if then it receive ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... now may argue as follows. Several words which are applied to one thing are meant to express one sense, and as this is not possible in so far as the words connote different attributes, this part of their connotation becomes inoperative, and they denote only the unity of one substance; implication (lakshana), therefore, does not take place. When we say 'blue (is) (the) lotus' we employ two words with the intention of expressing the unity of one thing, and hence do not aim ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... percentage of 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... persons sending a challenge on account 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
... over-trading: much of it had been owing to the conduct previously pursued by the Bank. The resolution was likewise opposed by Sir John Wrottesly, Alderman Thompson, Alderman Heygate, and Mr. Wilson, who were adverse to it on various grounds: that it would be wholly inoperative to give any effectual relief; that it would be positively mischievous; and that the present state of the country required the postponement of such a measure. The scheme of increasing the number of partners in a bank by way of security was treated by opposition as visionary, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which is hereby declared inoperative." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... wholly displeasing to 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, basis ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 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 ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... and which are inconsistent with the Constitution as amended, and, therefore, are void and of no effect; but which, being still enforced by the said States and Territories, render the Constitution inoperative as regards the right ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... 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
... factor, 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 ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... too 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 declined ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... 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 to the ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... 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 ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 in ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 stepmother seemed to her to be ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... much the worse for the interests of Repeal. The effect would be fatal. No device could be found more excellent for killing the enthusiasm which has called out such assemblies, than the evidence thus forced upon the general mind—that they were inoperative, and without object, either confessed or concealed. Hitherto the toil and exhaustion of the day had been supported, doubtless, under a belief that a muster of insurrectionary forces was desired, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... maintain much of its power. In contrast, the carburetored gasoline engine is sensitive to the fuel-air ratio and thus has no surplus air available at higher altitudes. A malfunctioning carburetor could cause a gasoline engine to cease operating, but an inoperative fuel injector would cause the Packard diesel to lose one ninth of its power, since each cylinder had its own independently operating injector. In practice, however, because of the excessive vibration, the engine was generally shut off immediately after a cylinder ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... 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 ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and smaller doses. It was no good; the rabbits all died with great unanimity, until the dose was so diminished that it did not send them off to sleep at all. There was no middle course, apparently, to the rabbit kind, lethodyne was either fatal or else inoperative. So it proved to sheep. The new drug ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... character of each kind of art that the artist ought to overstep in putting his hand to the work; he must also triumph over those which are inherent in the particular subject of which he treats. In a really beautiful work of art, the substance ought to be inoperative, the form should do everything; for by the form, the whole man is acted on; the substance acts on nothing but isolated forces. Thus, however vast and sublime it may be, the substance always exercises ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... here estimated at L1,800,000 but there is no doubt that it is now considerably larger. Taking it, however, at Mr Thomson's calculation, what a fearful amount of unoccupied and inoperative capital is here! This, be it observed also, is only the first reserve, which at present is represented by the small notes of the bank. According to the later evidence of Mr Blair, the Scottish banks are in the habit of holding, besides this, a further reserve of gold and Bank of England notes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... representatives, or the assignees of the entire interest, when, by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, or by reason of the patentee claiming as his invention or discovery more than he had a right to claim as new, the original patent is inoperative or invalid, provided the error has arisen from inadvertence, accident or mistake and without ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... bilious and petulant humor, that is not usually much applauded by those who come under its influence. If, however, there are occasionally some devotees who actually display the serene countenance of satisfaction and enjoyment, it is because the dismal ideas of religion are rendered inoperative by a happy temperament; or that such persons have not fully become impregnated with their system of faith, whose legitimate effect is to plunge its devotees into terrible inquietudes and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... 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
... accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath they must strive to keep out the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... he also derived much of his crusade from the inspiration of a woman—Baroness von Kruedener, who is supposed to have owed her own conversion to the teaching of a pious cobbler. Even if we have to describe Alexander's dream as futile, we cannot afford to dismiss it as wholly inoperative. For it had as its fruit the so-called Holy Alliance, which was in a sense the direct ancestor of the peace programmes of the Hague, and, through a different chain of ideas, the Monroe Doctrine of ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... Sprengel's work were, after all, not 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 flowers, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... James's and Whitehall were exempted from the operation of this statute, so long as the sovereign was actually resident within them—which last clause probably showed that the entire Draconian enactment was but a farce. It is quite certain that it was inoperative, and that it did no more than express the conscience of the legislature—in deference to PRINCIPLE, 'which nobody ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of isolation, when Washington, with the telegraph inoperative, was kept in an appalling uncertainty, the North rose. There was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather is on fire," wrote George Ticknor, "I never before knew what a popular excitement can be." As ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... day of June, nineteen hundred and three, and such system shall so remain until the first day of January, nineteen hundred and thirteen, and thereafter until modified or changed, as may be prescribed by law provided, that, if the said system shall for any reason become inoperative, the General Assembly shall have power to adopt some ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... writer of the Letters enables her to give specific and practical advice, applicable to particular cases, and entering into lively details; whereas, a more general work would have compelled her to confine herself to vague generalities, as inoperative ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... interest was gradually reduced until the year 347 B.C., when five per cent, was fixed as a maximum. In 342 B.C. interest was forbidden altogether by the Genucian Law; but this law, though never repealed, was in practice quite inoperative owing to the facility with which it could be evaded; and consequently the oppression of borrowers was prevented by the enactment, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the general recognition, of a maximum rate of interest of twelve per cent. per annum. This maximum rate—the Centesima—remained ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... sign that the ill humors of the body politic are coming to the surface, where they are comparatively harmless. It is the tendency of all creeds, opinions, and political dogmas that have once defined themselves in institutions to become inoperative. The vital and formative principle, which was active during the process of crystallization into sects, or schools of thought, or governments, ceases to act; and what was once a living emanation of the Eternal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... 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 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Persia by any European nation, to aid the Shah either with troops from India or by the payment of an annual subsidy in support of his war expenses. It was a dangerous engagement, even with the caveat rendering the undertaking inoperative if such invasion should be provoked by Persia. During the fierce struggle of 1825-7, between Abbas Meerza and the Russian General Paskevitch, England refrained from supporting Persia either with men or with money, and ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... 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, sufficient but not redundant, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Congress to pass just such a law. To break up the vicious system of straw bidding, this bill would be very valuable, and I regret exceedingly that a mistake should have been made in the title and enacting clause which will render its provisions inoperative. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... 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
... selfish; and in their struggle for existence they live, if independent of their parents, only so long as they can take care of themselves. Among adult animals, however, selfishness seems to become inoperative in the care they take of their offspring. But though the mother badger was unselfish towards her little ones, she spared no effort to instruct them in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... in play, "make believe" that something exists, or exists in a certain way, they employ conventionalization. Special conditions are created in fact when some fact is regarded as making the usual taboo inoperative. Such is the case with all archaic usages which are perpetuated on account of their antiquity, although they are not accordant with modern standards. The language of Shakespeare and the Bible contains words which are now tabooed. In this case, as in very many others, the conventionalization ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... probably in that of all the great towns within easy access of the sea, may seem a fatal flaw in the 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 ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... In another case the edges of a leaf, after 25 hrs. 30 m., became so strongly inflected that it was converted into a cup. The power of urine does not lie in the urea, which, as we shall hereafter see, is inoperative. ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... whole range of human possibility and conduct. As a consequence, we bring up our children in a mist of vague intimations, in a confusion of warring voices, perplexed as to what they must do, uncertain as to what they may do, doomed to lives of compromise and fluctuating and inoperative opinion. Ideals and suggestions come and go before their eyes like figures in a fog. The commonest pattern, perhaps—the commonest pattern certainly in Sunday schools and edifying books, and on all those places and occasions when morality is sought as an end—is a clean and able-bodied ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... seem 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
... to live, and not die. The doctor smiled at me when I told him so, for he did not believe it. He, and two other physicians, had told me that my lungs were diseased; indeed, six months afterwards, all three sounded me, and declared that one lung was inoperative, ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... though I call 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
... strange 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 ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... claim to 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 as ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... 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 ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the Senate Douglas was chairman of the Committee on Territories, and was induced to cooeperate.[63] January 23, 1854, he introduced his famous "Kansas-Nebraska bill," establishing the two Territories and declaring the Missouri Compromise "inoperative" therein. A later amendment declared the Compromise to be "inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850," and therefore "inoperative and void; it being ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... was inoperative at that moment we know not, but Brown acted on the suggestion, and briskly amalgamated the butter with the coffee, while the crowd at the port-hole ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 those that are correlated with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to the notice of the learned. If it be not decisive of the point at issue to find such a torrent of primitive testimony at one with the bulk of the Uncials and Cursives extant, it is clear that there can be no Science of Textual Criticism. The Law of Evidence must be held to be inoperative in this subject-matter. Nothing deserving of the name of 'proof' will ever be attainable ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... unknown, because the present federal government has no judiciary power whatever; and consequently there is no proper antecedent or previous establishment to which the term heretofore could relate. It would therefore be destitute of a precise meaning, and inoperative from its uncertainty. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... 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 no means redressed. Masters were, it is true, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... which makes it an offence knowingly to infect any person with venereal disease, is practically inoperative, as will be shown later in this report, owing to the extreme difficulty, in the absence of any system of notification and compulsory treatment, of proving that the offence ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... Lodge, it follows that no subordinate lodge can make any new bye-laws, nor alter its old ones, without the approval and confirmation of the Grand Lodge. Hence, the rules and regulations of every lodge are inoperative until they are submitted to and approved by the Grand Lodge. The confirmation of that body is the enacting clause; and, therefore, strictly speaking, it may be said that the subordinates only propose the bye-laws, and the Grand Lodge ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... is inoperative. An army of inspectors would not suffice where every house represents from one to a dozen workshops under its roof, in each of which sanitary conditions are defied, and the working day made more often fourteen and sixteen hours than twelve. Even for this day a starvation wage is the rule; the ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... it to say that on more than one supposition, I can account for it satisfactorily to myself. One other remark only will I make concerning it: I have no doubt it was an old forgery. One after another those immediately concerned in it had died, and there the falsehood lurked—in latent power—inoperative until my second visit to Umberden Church. But what differences might there not have been had it not started into activity for the brief space betwixt ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... sale, or bring any suit to recover possession, under specified and heavy penalties. The wording of these passages recalls most strikingly the imprecations of the kings in their charters upon those who, in after times, should dare to render their gifts inoperative. This grand style is one of the many indications that for the Assyrian period most of the deeds we have were drawn up on ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... requisite number of 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson |
