unoperative

“There lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness of the terror, which is the natural concomitant of greatness.”

On the Sublime and Beautiful

“There lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most exerted to mollify the rigour and sternness of the terror, which is the natural concomitant of greatness.”

Concerning Smallness

“These words, by having no application, ought to be unoperative; but when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we are affected by them even without the occasions.”

General Words Before Ideas

“This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to both Houses; while an idle and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating the dignity of the crown at 800,000_l. _ and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of libraries, without any sort of advantage to the people.”

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)

“But no method was settled for bringing delinquents to the question of removal: and if they should be brought to it, a door lay wide open for evasion of the law, and for a return into the service, in defiance of its plain intention, -- that is, by resigning to avoid removal; by which measure this provision of the act has proved as unoperative as all the rest.”

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)

“There are many who love virtue and who detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who notwithstanding very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars without the least remorse; because these particular occasions never came into view, when the passions on the side of virtue were so warmly affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of others; and for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain sets of words, though owned by themselves unoperative, without being in some degree affected; especially if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies them, as suppose,”

On the Sublime and Beautiful

“The wishing of a thing is not properly the willing of it; though too often mistaken by men for such: but it is that which is called by the schools an imperfect velleity, and imports no more than an idle unoperative complacency in, and desire of the end, without any consideration of, nay, for the most part, with a direct abhorrence of the means; of which nature I account that wish of Balaam, in Numbers xxiii.”

Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. I.

“For though indeed the divine knowledge (as all other knowledge) be of itself unoperative; (the proper nature of knowledge being only to apprehend and judge of what comes before it, and rather to suppose than to work upon its object;) yet if the divine knowledge did not certainly and infallibly foresee and comprehend every turn, motion, and foredetermination of man's will, with reference to every object or motive that can possibly be presented to it, how could God so steadily and effectually ward off all those evils and temptations, which the several events, accidents, and occasions of our lives (all of them variously affecting our wills) would from time to time expose us to?”

Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. IV.