Literary notes about dormant (AI summary)
The word “dormant” in literature serves as a powerful metaphor for latent energy and potential waiting to be awakened. In some works, it describes an unnoticed or undeveloped inner life—such as Helen Keller’s reflection on an infant’s “dormant personality” ([1], [2]) and the reawakened memories and feelings in Shelley’s narrative ([3], [4], [5]). Authors also use the term to capture the natural cycles of life: Hardy’s contrast between active strutting and a state of awe-turned-dormancy ([6]), as well as botanical descriptions in various reports where buds or roots lie dormant until nature signals their renewal ([7], [8], [9], [10], [11]). Philosophical and educational texts expand on this imagery by equating dormancy with latent intellectual capacities that, when stirred, can lead to great ideas or personal transformation ([12], [13], [14], [15]). Even in more abstract or symbolic uses—where dormant energies or forgotten desires are suddenly reactivated—the term consistently evokes a state of quiet potential on the verge of energetic expression ([16], [17], [18]).
- I wonder if others observe that all infants have the same scent—pure, simple, undecipherable as their dormant personality.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller - My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller - It roused all my dormant recollections, my suspended sentiments of injury, and gave rise to the new one of revenge.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees, or lying on the ground.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more!
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - It is perfectly dormant when the other young walnuts are in practically full leaf.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - I'd like to get back to this opinion here on the question of frozen ground, dormant roots and the effect it has on the top of the tree.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - 8. Pillow, M. Y. Dormant buds are not the cause of bird's eyes in maple.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - Budding is usually done in late summer with mature buds of the season growth which remain dormant until the following spring.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - Occasionally dormant budwood taken in winter is held in cold storage until the bark of the stock slips in the spring.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - They alone are capable of giving ideas of relation, and of arousing the dormant energies of thought.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - Education, they say, is the Latin for leading out or drawing out the dormant faculties of each person.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - They alone are capable of giving ideas of relation, and of arousing the dormant energies of thought.
— from The Republic by Plato - We may mean by potentiality a merely dormant or quiescent state—a capacity to become something different under external influences.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - " A blaze of illumination came over me with possession of the amulet; many dormant memories awakened.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected.
— from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame - The fire of nature, that had so long lain dormant or concealed, began to break out, and made me feel my sex for the first time.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill by John Cleland
