disjecta membra

Example Sentences

• "[…]though the whole construction be taken to pieces, are still the disjecta membra, with which the work of renovation must be begun."
• "A thoughtful spirit drifting upon this tide in a large city like Paris cannot but often think of this, and shiver with the feeling that beneath and all around are scattered thickly, if invisibly, putrescent corpses and whitening skeletons. But sometimes strange things do come to the surface—featureless, formless, unrecognizable objects, upon which men gaze wonderingly, conjecturingly, but unknowingly; and which are in reality the disjecta membra of ghastly things over whose hideousness the unquiet billows once mercifully swept. In the large boarding houses of focal points of civilization like Paris, where are gathered together representatives from every clime under the sun, and where the waves of life come beating in to a common center from many a distant sea, these disjecta membra float oftener than in more tranquil waters;"
• "One can hardly realize the confusion in a genuine, old Genizah until one has seen it. It is a battlefield of books, and the literary productions of many centuries had their share in the battle, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area. Some of the belligerents have perished outright, and are literally ground to dust in the terrible struggle for space, whilst others, as if overtaken by a general crush, are squeezed into big, unshapely lumps, which even with the aid of chemical appliances can no longer be separated without serious damage to their constituents. In their present condition these lumps sometimes afford curiously suggestive combinations; as, for instance, when you find a piece of some rational work, in which the very existence of either angels or devils is denied, clinging for its very life to an amulet in which these same beings (mostly the latter) are bound over to be on their good behavior and not interfere with Miss Jair’s love for somebody."
• "As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the disjecta membra of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood;"
• "I knew more about “disjecta membra” than a butcher or a furniture mover. That was a great phrase of mine—disjecta membra—I used to work it off on my friends, I have never since had such a chance to play with it till today. “There,” I would say to them, quietly, just like that, “there are the Elgin marbles, disjecta membra.”"
• "Notes are strewn about like disjecta membra;"