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inert
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show 186 more with this conextual meaning
  • She had never seen Marilla sit limply inert like that.   (source)
    inert = lethargic and without interest
  • My body sat there, inert.†   (source)
  • All else lay inert.†   (source)
  • Now they lay inert on the couches and chairs and beds, completely cut off from external contact.†   (source)
  • The weird contrast between the bright, striped, living orange of his coat and the inert white of the boat's hull was incredibly compelling.†   (source)
  • Fear stirred in Harry's chest again: He had forgotten the inert figures he had left behind.†   (source)
  • I could have saved it forever in these inert glass bottles.†   (source)
  • She felt in the top right corner of her brain a heaviness, the inert body weight of some curled and sleeping animal; but when she touched her head and pressed, the presence disappeared from the coordinates of actual space.†   (source)
  • The robot still sat there, completely inert.†   (source)
  • Clumsily I grappled around in the wreckage—upending dusty kiddie purses and day packs, snatching my hands back at hot things and shards of broken glass, more and more troubled by the way the rubble gave under my feet in spots, and by the soft, inert lumps at the edge of my vision.†   (source)
  • We took pictures, then waved the EOD guys—"explosive ordinance disposal," or bomb disposal experts—in to make sure they were inert.†   (source)
  • " Ruth was picturing LuLing as she said this: the puzzled look on her mother's face, her inert body lying in the street.†   (source)
  • The cruciform was cool, inert.†   (source)
  • Parts of it are trying to move, other parts of it look dead and inert.†   (source)
  • If she hadn't thrown the pitcher, he would have shattered it on the floor himself and tried to shove one of the broken pieces of glass into her throat while she stood there, as inert as an umbrella-stand.†   (source)
  • Or is it some inert element in the air we breathe, a rare thing like neon, with a melting point, an atomic weight?†   (source)
  • Ausencia Santander had to ask Florentino Ariza to help her drag the inert body of the beached whale to bed and undress him as he slept.†   (source)
  • I strained, fighting against Jacob's inert strength.†   (source)
  • Abel maneuvered his flashlight beam across a heap of inert, silent fish.†   (source)
  • Still, the Minister stood inert, with his face pointed toward a stack of straw mats in the corner of the stage.†   (source)
  • Instead, he kept swinging his massive horns at Luke's inert figure, then suddenly lunged forward atop Luke's body, where he began to buck again.†   (source)
  • And only in that inertness lay the chance of surviving the twenty-five years of imprisonment he'd been sentenced to.†   (source)
  • I remain inert.†   (source)
  • Seventy per cent inert materials-that must be water-and twenty per cent alcohol-that's fine-and ten per cent codeine Warning Narcotic May Be Habit Forming.†   (source)
  • A cold lassitude came over him and he passed into a dreaming, inert stupor, full of cramp and pain.†   (source)
  • Countless plants withered and crumbled and became inert as dust.†   (source)
  • At the porch edge he strove to recover himself, failed, and with a short, coughing groan, pitched down the steps and lay, an inert mass, at their foot.†   (source)
  • I considered how the sword either hummed or stayed silent, either guided my hand or lay heavy and inert.†   (source)
  • Every new guy was at the mercy of whoever happened to be around when he checked in, and endured anything from catcalls about his dress whites to getting his Trident painted blue, the same color as an inert training munition—the derision being that until he was fully trained, that's exactly how he would be regarded: inert, harmless, useless.†   (source)
  • His heart was hammering again in aching terror as he hurtled upward and downward through the blind gangs of flak charging murderously into the sky at him, then sagging inertly.†   (source)
  • Cedric, always attentive to potential threats, has spent the two weeks since the awards ceremony with his face frozen in an innocuous half-smile, trying to look utterly neutral and inert, shrugging a lot as though all his good fortune stems from some sort of clerical error.†   (source)
  • It should be reasonably inert.†   (source)
  • Cynthia had been reduced to tears; M. Renard simply stepped over Omar's inert body when he assumed the fetal position during sit-ups.†   (source)
  • Billy and the Maori dug into the inert, unpromising gravel of the moon.†   (source)
  • It was not flattery that he wanted, she had seen him listening to the obsequious compliments of liars, listening with a look of resentful inertness-almost the look of a drug addict at a dose inadequate to rouse him.†   (source)
  • Ironically, her own genetic engineering, designed to keep the vaccine viable for long periods without contacting any host or moisture, had allowed the inert vaccine to mutate in such adverse conditions.†   (source)
  • As I spoke, I began to feel rather foolish as I faced the inert artillery of their stunned, botanized gazes.†   (source)
  • I felt all was well again, or at least as well as it had been during that last month, which I see now was a period of the most agreeable passivity, an inert state that neither of us—being alike in many ways— was willing to disturb.†   (source)
  • Harriet stayed in the cabin from Christmas until March, and toward the end of this long period of inertness, she began to pray for the conversion of Edward Brodas, repeating the same prayer, over and over again, "Change his heart, Lord, convert him."†   (source)
  • The Red Sea lay beyond, inert, the whole thing doomed.†   (source)
  • No one lay inert, sleeping it off in the bushes.†   (source)
  • For the moment he is inert.†   (source)
  • Luke lay exactly as he'd lain last night, dead looking, inert body and soul from his heavy drugs.†   (source)
  • We're all of us in trouble…… " She stooped over the cot, and stroked the baby's forehead; she lay inert now, too weak apparently to cry.†   (source)
  • I felt as if I had been clawed, but when I bent toward him, the hand had fallen inert again on the bed, where it looked burnished with hundreds of country suns and today's on top of them all.†   (source)
  • In due course and with proper procedure, his inert body was transported to Kingston Hospital for Demolition.†   (source)
  • She felt him put out a hand to touch her, and at once became inert.†   (source)
  • But Betty collapses in her hands and lies inert on the bed.   (source)
    inert = unmoving
  • Edmond shuddered when he heard the painful efforts which the old man made to drag himself along; his leg was inert, and he could no longer make use of one arm.   (source)
    inert = unable to move
  • Hermione asked, looking from one inert man to the other.†   (source)
  • The point is you're standing at the edge of a smoldering ruin where others lie inert and twisted.†   (source)
  • A couple of seconds after that, the entire bike goes dead, becomes an inert chunk of metal.†   (source)
  • As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.†   (source)
  • They investigate the meaning of inert objects and dumb pets and they poke at family privacy.†   (source)
  • Ian hauled his inert brother around one side of the pillar, dragging him in jerks, a foot at a time.†   (source)
  • I am careful and accurate, but I have drawn a person-shaped bottle, inert and without life.†   (source)
  • Doc and Kyle hovered over the cot where Jodi lay inert.†   (source)
  • Yossarian's hands weakened on McWatt's neck and slid down off his shoulders to dangle inertly.†   (source)
  • My body is numb, inert, without sensation.†   (source)
  • "I don't think so, honey," roared the old man stoutly, guarding Gray's inert body with his arm.†   (source)
  • On the far side of the rubble that had fallen in from the shaft was lying the inert body of a buck.†   (source)
  • This is how he thinks of it: something he's done, to Susie, to her inert and innocent flesh.†   (source)
  • Jared laid the Seeker's inert form on the cot with exceptional gentleness.†   (source)
  • I screamed, lurching to his inert form, knowing it was far too late.†   (source)
  • Only to think of it makes me feel suffused, inert, like the flesh of a watermelon.†   (source)
  • I leaned over Jamie's inert form, to protect him from whatever was happening.†   (source)
  • To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eye contact.†   (source)
  • Usually I'm inert.†   (source)
  • Contrary to what he had imagined, even contrary to what she herself had imagined, she did not withdraw her hand or let it lie inert where he placed it, but instead she commended herself body and soul to the Blessed Virgin, clenched her teeth for fear she would laugh out loud at her own madness, and began to identify her rearing adversary by touch, discovering its size, the strength of its shaft, the extension of its wings, amazed by its determination but pitying its solitude, making it…†   (source)
  • There was a muffled pop from inside the engine and a belch of sooty smoke escaped the stack, but afterward the engine sat inert.†   (source)
  • In Reenie's descriptions the girl or woman would always be inert, but with many handholds on her, like a jungle gym.†   (source)
  • "According to the instruments, it was just an inert pile of stones, but sometimes I thought I felt… something… "He shook his head again.†   (source)
  • We always kept a dim nightlight on out in the hallway, and I kept my headlamp off as I picked my way through the inert bodies under piles of blankets.†   (source)
  • A groundcar with its camouflage polymer inert and a military EMV modified with hoverfans for Hyperion's weak magnetic field were crossing the damp hardpan.†   (source)
  • I'd sat and cried on the cellar steps, talking to Tony's inert corpse, thanking him for trying to protect us.†   (source)
  • When you first turn on a computer, it is an inert collection of circuits that can't really do anything.†   (source)
  • It sounds as though these me served as the operating system of the society, organizing an inert collection of people into a functioning system.†   (source)
  • Inert bodies on stretchers lay abandoned under emergency lighting in doorways, with tubes and bags of blood held aloft in a shifting forest of metal poles and stands.†   (source)
  • So Hiro had to kludge something together, in order that the Metaverse would not, over time, become littered with inert, dismembered avatars that raever decayed.†   (source)
  • With just the tiniest shake of her head, Isabella stood aside as the demon stepped over the inert goblin and ducked beneath the doorway.†   (source)
  • He'd seen a hypodermic syringe on the second-story landing and now there were people in the halls, busy and inert at the same time, busy inside their eyes but also body-dead, barely able to drag a hand through the air.†   (source)
  • When we reached the parking lot beside fourth battalion, I embraced Mark tenderly and held him for over a minute, the big man limp and inert in my arms.†   (source)
  • Though he didn't know it, moments like this were particularly important to him, for they were transforming him from an eager, confident naval officer with a ringing voice into an inert, though wary, zek.†   (source)
  • Gray could not help her—out of the side of her eye she could see where he lay inert and senseless in Passmore's hold.†   (source)
  • Stupefied with the shock, unable even to move, the sodden rabbits crouched inert, almost pinned to the earth by the rain.†   (source)
  • Nately was unnerved by her torpid indifference to him, by the same sleepy and inert poise that he remembered so vivdly, so sweetly, and so miserably from the first time she had seen him and ignored him at the packed penny-ante blackjack game in the living room of the enlisted men's apartment.†   (source)
  • As he sat inertly at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked almond shell.†   (source)
  • The child hung on the slowly moving belt, inert, a tiny rag of life, with her mop of tangled yellow curls, her white, little face, its blue eyes closed.†   (source)
  • Laurella lay all day and far into the night on her pallet of quilts before the big fire in the front room, spent, inert, staring at the ceiling, entertaining God knows what guests of terror and remorse.†   (source)
  • My body is inert, without will.†   (source)
  • Inert, slow, he had one qualification for his position: he could choose an assistant, or delegate authority with good judgment; and he found in Johnnie Consadine an adjutant so reliable, so apt, and of such ability, that he continually pushed more work upon her, if pay and honours did not always follow in adequate measure.†   (source)
  • When he saw her he paused, flustered, but at last nodded to her, the stocking still drawn down over his face, and then, without a glance at the inert Luke, he went on upstairs.†   (source)
  • Then Esther Clumly went down to her bed and lay there, with all her clothes on, even her shoes, nose pointing at the ceiling, arms at her sides, inert and absurd as … She furrowed her forehead, trying to think what it was that she looked like, lying there, and suddenly she knew, and the insight was almost pleasing because it was so right.†   (source)
  • But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace.†   (source)
  • The pair of dusty, heavy, manlooking shoes beside them are not more inert.†   (source)
  • The man dismounted and stood inertly there, while he explained.†   (source)
  • Throw far away this limitation of a body which is inert and filthy by nature.†   (source)
  • He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed.†   (source)
  • And now Rieux had before him only a masklike face, inert, from which the smile had gone forever.†   (source)
  • His hand's quick thrust jarred the inert David.†   (source)
  • He was still, huge, inert, sagging the cot springs.†   (source)
  • The mashed lump of food lay inertly in his mouth.†   (source)
  • He crumpled inertly against the cradling arms.†   (source)
  • No doubt our love persisted, but in practice it served nothing; it was an inert mass within us, sterile as crime or a life sentence.†   (source)
  • Pa leans above the bed in the twilight, his humped silhouette partaking of that owl-like quality of awry-feathered, disgruntled outrage within which lurks a wisdom too profound or too inert for even thought.†   (source)
  • Together Armstrong and Lombard had carried the inert body of Anthony Marston to his bedroom and had laid him there covered over with a sheet.†   (source)
  • …desperation of undefeat watching that dark interdict ocean across which a grim lightless solitary ship fled with in its hold two thousand precious pounds-space containing not bullets, not even something to eat, but that much bombastic and inert carven rock which for the next year was to be a part of the regiment, to follow it into Pennsylvania and be present at Gettysburg, moving behind the regiment in a wagon driven by the demon's body servant through swamp and plain and mountain…†   (source)
  • You know his jokes, you know the insinuative hee-hee through his nose with which he prefaces them, you know how the gray tongue licks luxuriously over his lips at the conclusion, you know how he fawns and drools over the inert mass with the face covered with steaming towels which happens to be the local banker or the local gambling-house proprietor or the local congressman, you know how he kids the hotel chippies and tries to talk them out of something, you know how he gets in debt…†   (source)
  • At bed-time, his mind seemed strangely calm, reposed without being resolved, inert after long discord.†   (source)
  • The stranger lay inert, while Conway, with difficulty in the dimness and confined space, made what examination he could by the light of matches.†   (source)
  • But Joe remains inert.†   (source)
  • …West) on the mountain had broken and now the whole passel of them from the father through the grown daughters down to one that couldn't even walk yet, sliding back down out of the mountains and skating in a kind of accelerating and sloven and inert coherence like a useless collection of flotsam on a flooded river moving by some perverse automotivation such as inanimate objects sometimes show, backward against the very current of the stream, across the Virginia plateau and into the…†   (source)
  • No longer do the forms of the world appear to move in the patterns of a living, growing, harmonious thing, but stand recalcitrant, or at best inert.†   (source)
  • The wagon is hauled clear, the wheels chocked (carefully: we all helped; it is as though upon the shabby, familiar, inert shape of the wagon there lingered somehow, latent yet still immediate, that violence which had slain the mules that drew it not an hour since) above the edge of the flood.†   (source)
  • It was as though he carried within him, somewhere within that inert and sighing mass of flesh, the secret itself: that which moved and evoked them as with a promise of something beyond the sluttishness of stuffed entrails and monotonous days.†   (source)
  • The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been.†   (source)
  • Maybe attenuation is better)—an attenuation from a kind of furious inertness and patient immobility while they sat in the cart outside the doors of doggeries and taverns and waited for the father to drink himself insensible, to a sort of dreamy and destinationless locomotion after they had got the old man out of whatever shed or outhouse or barn or ditch and loaded him into the cart again and during which they did not seem to progress at all but just to hang suspended while the earth…†   (source)
  • They look at one another, suddenly naked, watching one another: the young woman in the chair, with her neat hair and her inert hands upon her lap, and the older one beside the stove, turning, motionless too, with a savage screw of gray hair at the base of her skull and a face that might have been carved in sandstone.†   (source)
  • It was as if the pestilence, hounded away by cold, the street-lamps, and the crowd, had fled from the depths of the town and taken shelter in this warm room and was launching its last offensive at Tarrou's inert body.†   (source)
  • Though they lay there inertly, their bases solidly fastened to the dark wood, there puked from them still a suggestion of terrific power, a power that even while they lay motionless made the breast ache as though they were ever imminent, ever charging.†   (source)
  • She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against fate.†   (source)
  • Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were inert.†   (source)
  • With a sudden hardness, he raised one of the hands and let it fall back inertly.†   (source)
  • Clara's hand lay warm and inert in his own as they walked.†   (source)
  • She was taken away, heavy, inert, carried down the cottage steps.†   (source)
  • "Come in, all three of you!" cried his father, no longer inert.†   (source)
  • Then farther down he espied a huge brown object lying inert.†   (source)
  • And just then a fly settled on the inert forehead and began to move its proboscis up and down.†   (source)
  • Riggs swayed in slow motion until a lost balance felled him heavily, an inert mass.†   (source)
  • They alone moved through the vast inertness.†   (source)
  • Here drunkenness was manifest, a terrible inert drunkenness that made its victims deathlike.†   (source)
  • The spare form flexibly acquiesced, but inertly.†   (source)
  • His hands lay quite inert on the arms of his chair.†   (source)
  • Presently she let herself go and lay inert, greatly to her relief.†   (source)
  • His heart was inert, seemed not to be beating at all.†   (source)
  • Only this time it was no longer an inert body, without feeling, that the villain had to deal with.†   (source)
  • I was no longer an inert mass, and I had, comparatively speaking, great freedom of movement.†   (source)
  • At ten o'clock I fell upon my bed, a dead lump of inert matter.†   (source)
  • At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence.†   (source)
  • She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears.†   (source)
  • Marius, who was, perhaps, dead, weighed him down as inert bodies weigh.†   (source)
  • Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx.†   (source)
  • I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog.†   (source)
  • From the time we entered the concert hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and for the first time seemed to perceive her surroundings.†   (source)
  • Down on his knees dropped Glenn, to reach the sheep with strong brown hands, and to haul it up on the ground, where it flopped inert.†   (source)
  • He stretched inert, wet, hot, his body one great strife of throbbing, stinging nerves and bursting veins.†   (source)
  • Marguerite sat, straight upright, rigid and inert, trying to think, trying to face the situation, to realise what had best be done.†   (source)
  • Hare saw the inert forms of two men lying near the gate; one rested on his face, arm outstretched with a Colt gripped in the stiff hand; the other lay on his back, his spurs deep in the ground, as if driven there in his last convulsion.†   (source)
  • As it sank he became less and less frenzied, and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor.†   (source)
  • II It was a damp April day, with long diagonal clouds over the Albishorn and water inert in the low places.†   (source)
  • In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed to convey the idea of profound disgust.†   (source)
  • Hitherto she had not much minded whether she was touched or not: her senses were abnormally inert and the only contact she anticipated was that of mind.†   (source)
  • She had been an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to life under the blazing magic of the sun.†   (source)
  • London, which had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert, was awakened, in the small hours of Monday morning, to a vivid sense of danger.†   (source)
  • In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face.†   (source)
  • Presently it left off trying to awaken this strange horribly red and inert body, and stood with hanging head, dejected, resigned, a poor miserable little beast.†   (source)
  • The miniature avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself into an inert mass at the base of the incline.†   (source)
  • A smoking gun lay near his inert hand.†   (source)
  • He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein's house.†   (source)
  • One did not notice the general dreadful cold—it was approaching zero, in fact—when the dry air was still and inert, as was usually the case; it felt almost balmy.†   (source)
  • The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two things.†   (source)
  • His acclimatization was complete, he had no more visions, his body no longer lay inert on the bench while his innermost self wandered in some distant present—nothing of that sort happened.†   (source)
  • It was not that he felt sick, but rather that the profuse bloodletting soothed him and left him in a state of strangely reduced vitality; he would exhale, and for a long time feel no need to take in new air, but simply lie there, his inert body calmly letting his heart run through a series of beats, until at last he would lazily take another shallow breath.†   (source)
  • Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this.†   (source)
  • I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other.†   (source)
  • Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily from the ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward like a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould.†   (source)
  • This it is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.†   (source)
  • Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and inertness are the law of absolute monarchies.†   (source)
  • Inert and composed, it was soft, benevolent, and attractive; but it could be roused, and that without much difficulty.†   (source)
  • When I see on the one side the inert bank—for the sun acts on one side first—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about.†   (source)
  • For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words.†   (source)
  • The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and men, that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which has no power in itself.†   (source)
  • So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean.†   (source)
  • They stood indolent, lounging, and inert, as usual when no immediate demand was made on their dormant energies, clustered in front of some four or five habitations of skin, for which they were indebted to the hospitality of their Teton allies.†   (source)
  • The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.†   (source)
  • A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve.†   (source)
  • Clifford, the reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations with him.†   (source)
  • But, though both stout of heart, and strong of person, Athelstane had a disposition too inert and unambitious to make the exertions which Cedric seemed to expect from him.†   (source)
  • As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after a victory—for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.†   (source)
  • It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the exterior organs no longer penetrated.†   (source)
  • For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, as for instance an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify and hem in the life.†   (source)
  • …sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon…†   (source)
  • XI The Arched Window FROM the inertness, or what we may term the vegetative character, of his ordinary mood, Clifford would perhaps have been content to spend one day after another, interminably,—or, at least, throughout the summer-time,—in just the kind of life described in the preceding pages.†   (source)
  • While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every scrap of it.†   (source)
  • You are still yourself as now, and yet you are yourself no longer; you who, like Ariel, verge on the angelic, are but an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal; and this is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than apoplexy.†   (source)
  • Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.†   (source)
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