Literary notes about Exert (AI summary)
The word "exert" is used to signify the active application of force, strength, or influence across various contexts in literature. It appears in descriptions of physical endeavor—as characters muster all their strength to battle nature’s elements ([1]) or engage in strenuous activity in moments of crisis ([2])—while also illustrating metaphorical exertions of power, intellect, or moral resolve ([3], [4], [5]). Writers employ it to evoke both the tangible pressure one feels when undertaking a task and the subtler, pervasive effects of influence in societal or philosophical spheres ([6], [7], [8]). This range of usage highlights the dynamic interplay between inner resolve and external forces.
- We were twelve hours at sea, and the heavy swell obliged us to exert all our strength.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - She will, in such a quarrel, exert her utmost efforts, exhaust every resource and lavish her blood to the last drop if necessary.
— from Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay by Immanuel Kant - What influence did the first newspapers exert on life and literature?
— from English Literature by William J. Long - These opinions exert their influence on those who cultivate the sciences, as well as on the rest of the community.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville - Let the heavens alone, and exert the intellect.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - We now pledge ourselves to exert our whole strength, and to act in concord to the utmost limit of our powers.
— from Psychological Warfare by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - And if we consider things truly, the soul should exert itself in every pursuit, for that is the only security for its doing its duty.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - No gods indignant blame their partial Jove?" "Go then (return'd the sire) without delay, Exert thy will: I give the Fates their way.
— from The Iliad by Homer
