Literary notes about inhuman (AI summary)
Writers have long used the term "inhuman" to evoke a striking departure from the norms of compassion and natural behavior in both character and society. It often describes acts of brutality or cruelty that seem to transcend ordinary human failings, as when vehemence and mercilessness are invoked to condemn political or social injustice ([1], [2], [3], [4]). At times, it also conveys an eerie, almost otherworldly quality in a character's gaze or voice, imbuing figures with a sense of foreboding or supernatural detachment ([5], [6], [7], [8]). Even in more ironic or reflective contexts, the word critiques moral shortcomings and the loss of genuine sentiment, highlighting the gap between the ideal of humanity and the grim reality of cruelty or indifference ([9], [10], [11]).
- They could derive no effectual service from a dying people; and the inhuman avarice of the merchant at length absorbed the vigilance of the governor.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - It is war that created these ruins, civil war, of all our civil wars the most inhuman, for it was waged with the unresisting.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli - A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern Asia.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - It is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of this inhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning.
— from Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore - "I don't know," he said, looking at his uncle with his bright inhuman eyes, like a hawk's.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - 'Now go and stand in the corner,' said the magician, in a cold inhuman voice.
— from He by Andrew Lang and Walter Herries Pollock - There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer.
— from The innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton - His jaw was like chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity of a bird's.
— from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan - [1] As he, who appears to be without compassion, is called inhuman; so "humanity" is often used as its synonyme.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer - It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman.
— from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
