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More "Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hunter friend, Piers Dayman, showed her an American paper which mentioned Captain Trevor among the officers killed in their attack. Dayman was devoted to her, and insisted on marrying her, and bringing up her daughter as his own. I fancy she was a woman of gentle passive temper, and had been crushed and terrified by all she had gone through, so as to have little instinct left but that of clinging to the protector who had taken her up when she had lost everything else; and she married him. Nor did Hester ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passive and active participles from the same root, Nasrvictory; the former means triumphant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the live waves turning, slip my tunic, Then run in naked. Cooled and soothed by swimming, Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned To placid acquiescent health, I float, suspended in the limpid water, Passive, rhythmically governed; So tranced worlds travel the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the clipped garden, which frequently accompanies it, is not. The custom of clipping trees into fantastic forms is always to be reprehended: first, because it never can produce the true grotesque, for the material is not passive, and, therefore, a perpetual sense of restraint is induced, while the great principle of the grotesque is action; again, because we have a distinct perception of two natures, the one neutralizing the other; for the vegetable organization is too palpable to let the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... bleedings, and then by gentle applications of tonics to the part, to increase its action; but when it arises from a debility of the minute vessels, without any increase of the propelling force, it forms what is known by the name of passive inflammation; in which general bleeding is not required, but the application of stimulants and tonics to the inflamed part to enable the vessels to recover their lost tone, and restore the balance between their action and the vis a tergo. From what has been said, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... individual misfortunes, nor of his national degradation; neither of the friends whom he has lost in the war, nor of the foreign soldiers whom it has placed at his elbow; his whole soul is absorbed in the game, in the dance, or in the spectacle. But his object is not laughter, or passive enjoyment, or relaxation; it is the excitation of his spirits, the occupation, and interest, and agitation of his mind, the varied gratification of his senses, the exercise of his fancy, the display of his wit, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be proceeded against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was not possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to resort at once to the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely until the emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with the strong hand. It stood not "with his honour to execute such censures," he ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... The attitude of the male and female here depicted was not regarded as obscene; on the contrary, to the ancient Sikyatki mind the picture had a deep religious meaning. In Hopi ideas the male is a symbol of active generative power, the female of passive reproduction, and representations of these two form essential elements of the ancient pictorial and graven ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... realities of fact—that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as the phrase is, a priori. But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... be so very mischievous as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it."[1] To us this may seem very mild and commonplace doctrine, but it was not commonplace in an age when Anglican divines—men like Archbishop Markham, Dr. Nowell or Dr. Porteus—had revived the base precepts of passive obedience and non-resistance, and when such a man as Lord Mansfield encouraged them. And these were the kind of foundations which Burke had been laying, while Fox was yet a Tory, while Sheridan was writing farces, and ...
— Burke • John Morley
... temptation on some future occasion. I wake, and I am what I was before. The opportune sleep has but removed the temptation for this once. It has not made me better; for I have not been shielded from temptation by any act of my own, but I was passive under an accident, for such I may call sleep. And so in like manner, if I hear a lecture indolently and passively, I cannot indeed be elsewhere while I am here hearing it,—but it produces no positive effect on my mind,—it does ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... had ceased to flow, but they were still trembling in her eyes, and the little face wore a very sad and troubled expression as she stood patiently passive in her nurse's hands. Chloe had soon finished her labors, and then the little girl opened her Bible, and, as usual, read a few verses aloud, though her voice trembled, and once or twice a tear fell on the page; then closing the book she ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... Feudalism has had a sufficient trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics and authority in religion was the grand, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not budged, had remained, till that moment, an eager, but passive spectator. He would have liked to fling himself into the contest with all his strength and to bring down the prey which he held at his mercy. He was prevented by ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the concept of evolution, when thought through to the end, began to suggest the possibility of further growth in man's spiritual capacities. But I saw also that this growth could no longer be merely passive, and the question which now beset me was: by what action of his own can man break his way into this new phase of evolution? I saw that this action must not consist merely in giving outer effect to the natural powers of human thinking; that was happening everywhere in the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... colder or more passive than the woman with whom it was Bazarov's bad luck to fall in love. The gradual change wrought in his temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in the most subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable for only one thing; he had told this very ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... had fathomed her inborn wickedness, . . and though his senses were attracted by her, his spirit loathingly repelled her, . . he therefore remained seated stiffly upright, watching her with a sort of passive, immovable intentness. As she now appeared before him, her loveliness was absolutely and ideally perfect,— she looked the embodiment of all grace,—the model of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mental poise and struck out calmly, swimming in the direction in which the wind bore him, for there was nothing else to do. Not that his effort helped him much, but he knew the good rule that one should never be passive in a crisis, for inaction is as depressing to the spirit as frantic exertion is to the body. And he knew that by swimming he could keep his "morale"—a word which he had heard a good ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... The manner of bringing it into play, though distasteful to him, suited their ideas of propriety, and Firmstone felt that they had earned the right to an exhibition of their personalities with no interference on his part. He preserved a passive, dignified silence. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... he murmured. "What can I do?" And yet it seemed to him impossible to wait in passive inactivity until a red glare in the sky should announce that the nefarious design ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... must be traced the spirit of materialism which is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... had been shunted to the 5:30. As fellow mariners will, we discussed famous breakdowns of old and the uncertainties of the commuter's life. "Yes," said our companion, "once you leave home you never know when you'll get back." And he smiled the passive, placable ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... develop standards by which conflicting claims could be resolved. It is not desired to signify agreement by this admission with those who believe that all principles of wage settlement must be purely passive, with those who argue that wage settlement must perforce be nothing more than a recurrent use of expedients produced on the spur of the occasion out of the magical hat of the arbitrator. All that is meant is that no policy of wage settlement will succeed if its results diverge too greatly ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... weeks. She saw more of him now than she had done for years, and was able, after a fashion, to work her quiet, loving, female will with him, exacting from him an obedience to feminine sway such as had not been exercised on him since his wife's death. He himself had been humbled, passive, and happy. He had taken his gruel, grumbled with modesty, and consoled himself with constantly reflecting that he was member of Parliament for the borough ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... with serious, thoughtful eyes, for she had felt the tingling of a new strange force in Brandon's touch. A man, not a worm, but a real man, with all the irresistible infinite attractions that a man may have for a woman—the subtle drawing of the lodestone for the passive iron—had come into her life. Doubly sweet it was to her intense, young virgin soul, in that it first revealed the dawning of that two-edged bliss which makes a heaven or a hell of earth—of earth, which owes its very ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... nothing at all to Johnny, even had he heard the name distinctly, which he did not. It cost him an effort to yield the control, but he pulled hands and feet away and sat passive, breathing quickly, gazing down at the wonders spread beneath him. For this was his first amazed sight of Los Angeles, though he had twice passed through the city in a train that clung to dingy streets and left him an impression ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... was telling his tale, in come the same fellow, with a woman, none of the least agreeable, and looking upon Ascyltos, entreated him to walk in and fear nothing, for if he would not be passive he might be active: the woman on the other hand press'd me to go in with her. We follow'd therefore, and being led among those bills, we saw many of both sexes at work in the cells, so much every of them seem'd ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... magnetic, It seemed like creative skill From the hand of the Great Master, To give passive being will. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... because Terence spoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the moods of depression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would sit passive in her chair exposed to pain, and Helen's fantastical or gloomy words were like so many darts goading her to cry out against the hardness of life. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit room overlooking the harbour and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one man could be unlike another—white, fair-haired, delicate, with soft blue eyes and silken lashes, and a passive hand that accepted the pressure of Taquisara's rather than returned it—the pale survival ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... with a view to my safety and comfort; he understands how to procure that safety and that comfort better than I do. He worries himself; he spends hours and nights of vigil to look after me and carry me to my destination. Why should I worry myself, who can only assist him by passive obedience? Why'—" But here he was interrupted by a headlong plunge of the Excelsior, a feminine shriek that was half a laugh, the rapid patter of small feet and sweep of flying skirts down the slanting deck, and the sudden and violent contact of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... temptations to a prince of any spirit or energy, inducing him to advance as the Romans retired, to hang upon their rear, to cut off their supplies, and to render their retreat difficult, if not disastrous. Volagases appears to have remained wholly inert and passive. His conduct is only explicable by the consideration of the rapid decline which Parthia was now undergoing, of the general decay of patriotic spirit, and the sea of difficulties into which a monarch was plunged who had to retreat ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... were scarce worth hanging, that were fit for nothing, and neither seemed born to do themselves good, or any one else, had three clever, diligent, careful, and ingenious wives, not that the two first were ill wives as to their temper or humour; for all the five were most willing, quiet, passive, and subjected creatures, rather like slaves than wives; but my meaning is, they were not alike, capable, ingenious, or industrious, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which they both knew ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... that smoked and dined off the hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb edo, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first the underlying fundamental identity of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... subjects are animate, or inanimate; 2d. Whether their objects are animate, or inanimate; 3d. Whether they are transitive, or intransitive; 4th. Whether they are active, or passive, or reflective; 5th. Whether the expression ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... uplifted hand of the negro warned him of the necessity of silence. The negro nodded several times, again put his hand on his heart, and then disappeared. A thrill of hope stirred every vein in Vincent's body. He felt his cheeks flush and had difficulty in maintaining his passive attitude. He was not, then, utterly deserted; he had a friend who would, he was sure, do all in his power to ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed: in the one is a passive, though a voluntary, obedience; in the other an independence scornful of experience and jealous ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... night journey; and, in fact, the wine and the rest together had so far revived Madelon that she appeared quite capable of walking down to the station with the Countess. Madame Bertrand gave her great hug as she wished her good-bye, and was perhaps a little aggrieved at the passive way in which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... his host of passive enemies, Tarzan of the Apes added that day two active foes, both of whom remained awake long into the night planning means of revenge upon the white devil-god who had brought them into ridicule and disrepute, but with their most malevolent schemings ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... supposing that for Christ to be a priest and a sacrifice is all one and the same thing; and it may be it is, because they have not thought on this so well as they should—namely, that as He was a sacrifice He was passive, that is, led or had away as a lamb to His sufferings (Isaiah 53); but as a priest He was active—that is, He did willingly and freely give up His Body to be a sacrifice. "He hath given His life a ransom for many." This consideration ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bring herself to deprive her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering with this outside arrangement of destiny. For ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... remembering Lucilla's blindness, appealed to me. "You tell her!" said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground. "Are you both dumb?" she asked. "Oscar! I insist on knowing it—how have ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great strength in passive resistance—" Of all I have ever seen, I never saw one man struggle with ten like that," said one of the chiefs, angrily disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do—till they flung him out into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press: "The strong, broad, heavy, powerful ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... of bed, moved by obedience, by the passive obedience of a woman accustomed to blows and who still remembers and always will remember that voice! She said: "Here I am, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Mrs. Simcoe left the room after having told him to undress the boy carefully and bathe his face and hands. Gabriel was perfectly passive, Hiram was silent, quick, and careful, and in a few moments he closed the door softly behind him, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... seemed to her that in her thirty-one years the sum of her achievement was looking beautiful and being loved by Francis Sales: she put it in that way, but immediately corrected herself unwillingly. Her attitude towards him had not been passive; she had loved him. She had owed him love and she had paid her debt; she had paid enough, yet if to-day he asked for more, she would give it. Her pride hoped for that demand; ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... No one can make a lie serve for the truth—at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere—usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of the United States are passive; they are physically weak, and therefore succumb to the dictation of the rude masses. And what keeps up this singular action, but the constantly-recurring elections, the incessant balloting and voting, the necessity which every man feels hourly of saving his substance ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... incisors, above and below, grew so long that they overlapped and the animal could not eat anything. Too many teachers are so kind to their pupils that they crack all the educational nuts for them, with the consequence that the children become passive and die mentally for want of activity. The true teacher will allow his pupils to wrestle with their problems without interruption until they arrive at a conclusion. If some pupil "goes into the ditch" and flounders he should usually be allowed to get out by his own efforts as best he can. Here ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... all power of resistance ebbed slowly away from him; he became perfectly passive—almost apathetic—and yielding to the somewhat rough handling of his guide, allowed himself to be urged with silent rapidity onward over the thick sand, till he presently became conscious that he was leaving ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... by the distracted woman, and he had the good sense to leave the body and its surroundings untouched until a doctor and the police had been summoned by telephone. Thenceforth the day had passed in a whirl of excitement, active in respect to police inquiries and passive in its resistance to newspaper interviewers. He saw no valid reason why his employer's plans should be disturbed, so made no effort to communicate ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... the Toleration Act, which put a stop to violent persecution, retaining merely the passive sort. The Quakers were excluded from all schools, colleges and universities, and from all right of franchise and the holding of political office; like unto the fond mother who orders her child to come into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... held her close, and then held her off to look at her through quizzical, appreciative eyes. "Why, girl, I can't imagine you doing anything so passive." ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... prayed from my soul for light. It seems to me that God has spoken, but, oh, my darling, if what I am about to do is unwise, whisper me one word of warning, and I shall be passive. Sometimes I think that you visit me, beloved, and whisper words of angelic sweetness in my ear. Speak now, my Franz, speak if I am wrong—I will obey ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'—to drop into ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doctrine of nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was their distinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If we are to judge by that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they had preached about the duty of passive obedience at least as often and as zealously as about the Trinity or the Atonement. [4] Their attachment to their political creed had indeed been severely tried, and had, during a short time, wavered. But with the tyranny ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was only attained by a strenuous repression of feeling, and that underneath it all was something very different. Though her voice was firm, her cheeks were deadly pale, and there was a peculiar tightening of the lips and light in her eyes which puzzled him. Her expression seemed to speak less of passive grief, than of some active determination—some strong desire. She had all the appearance of a woman who was bracing herself up for some ordeal, nerving herself with all the stimulus of a firm will to triumph over her natural feelings, and follow out a difficult purpose. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that superiority over those of other places, that the veteran soldier obtains over the recruit. But the best troops can be appalled, and, on this memorable occasion, these celebrated firemen, from a variety of causes, became for a time, little more than passive ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... inexcitability &c. 826[obs3]; irresolution &c. 605; obstinacy &c. 606; permanence &c. 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be -inert &c. adj.; hang fire, smolder. Adj. inert, inactive, passive; torpid &c. 683; sluggish, dull, heavy, flat, slack, tame, slow, blunt; unreactive; lifeless, dead, uninfluential[obs3]. latent, dormant, smoldering, unexerted[obs3]. Adv. inactively &c. adj.; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... handle groups on the defense. You must bear in mind that there are two kinds of defense: first, where you do nothing but defend (passive defense); second, where you defend, but temporarily, with the idea of attacking the enemy as soon as a favorable opportunity arises (active defense). Let us assume that you have been ordered by superior authority to locate and prepare a definite ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... own coarse and savage nature. He abused him in presence of the class as ignorant and stupid; ridiculed him as awkward and ugly, and at times in the transports of his temper indulged in personal violence. The effect was to aggravate a passive distaste into a positive aversion. Goldsmith was loud in expressing his contempt for mathematics and his dislike of ethics and logic; and the prejudices thus imbibed continued through life. Mathematics he always pronounced a science to which the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... great power in England, turned his attention to his Spanish projects; [Footnote: Trevelyan's view.] and in 1386 he left England for Spain. Others of the great lords, however, were not content to play a passive role; the brother of John of Gaunt, Gloucester, as leader, and the Earl of Arundel and Warwick, most prominent followers, were particularly violent in their attacks on the King and his friends. To revert now to Chaucer's case: these are the ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... As time wore on, his friends induced him occasionally to withdraw from his solitude and take a feeble part in public affairs. But this interest was purely civic or municipal, never political. He persistently kept aloof from legislative councils and his loyalty to England was strictly passive. The ultra-British did not like him, always putting him down in their books as ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... invested by the Confederate forces. There was sharp firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, "apparently unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him, and General Wright peremptorily represented to him the needless risk he was running." Hay ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... their economic life, if they care to exercise it. 'Whoso has sixpence,' as Carlyle said, 'is sovereign (to the length of sixpence), over all men; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him,'—to the length of sixpence. Passive resistance and the boycott are always open to the public in the last resort against any of their servants who has abused the powers of his position. A good instance of this occurred in the events which led to the so-called Tobacco riots in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tub of fermenting beer is capable of propagating its fermentation by "infection," or "contagion," to fresh wort. In both cases it is the solid living particles which are efficient; the liquid in which they float, and at the expense of which they live, being altogether passive. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... subject is compelled by its active principle, when it is changed by it. But the will is a passive force: for it is a "mover moved" (De Anima iii, 10). Therefore, since it is sometimes moved by its active principle, it seems that sometimes ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... as English was the only common language they possessed. Ali knew it very imperfectly, and Macco still less. More than once I observed Ali's quick, piercing, fierce eyes fixed on him attentively, as he appeared to be endeavouring to impress some matter on his mind. Macco's look all the time was passive, and he either did not comprehend what was said, or ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the face; besides which, the excitement of the occasion, and an unwonted indulgence in various strong cordials to celebrate it, had swollen and dilated his features to a most unusual extent. But, Nicholas and the doctor—who had been passive at first, doubting very much whether Mr Kenwigs could be in earnest—interfering to explain the immediate cause of his condition, the indignation of the matrons was changed to pity, and they implored him, with much feeling, to go ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor Blank, when he came ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... While I thus reflected—the water rushing over my boots—a very ill-looking man came forth and began to stare curiously at me. I met his eye, but he offered no greeting. A woman joined him, and the two, quite passive, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... of the magistrates, according to which the sins of believers were to be punished by civil authority, distressing to their consciences. They drew up a plantation covenant, promising to subject themselves "in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements" as might be made for the public good in an orderly way by the majority vote of the masters of families, "incorporated together into a town fellowship," but "only in civill things." ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... by their names; for that he is strong in power, not one faileth." That was in Faith's mind along with other words—"The Lord knoweth them that are his." Her mind was in a passive state; things floated in and floated out. It was some time before Mr. Linden said anything—he let her be as silent and still as she would; but at last he bent over her ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ruin and ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... very sense of the sun-drenched garden, the man at last is conquered back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins, goes on—the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no less lustful, receptivity of his—and culminates in a chant to that "crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods," while "heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat," they lay ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pressed the passive hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old friends and companions—for such they were, though they were man and child—held each other in a long embrace, and then the little scholar turned his face towards the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the feeling toward Tom subsided until nothing was left of it except a kind of passive disregard of him. Organized resentment would not have been tolerated at Temple Camp and it is a question whether the scouts themselves would have had anything to do with such a conspiracy. But the feeling had changed toward him and was especially noticeable ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Kate—not, by the deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse—it was ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... in the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependants. The Laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... such, could at last laugh at their losses. Beyond, also, the consciousness of having fought a successful fight, they were encouraged by the certainty that they had met and encountered with success the extremity of peril to which they would be subjected; and that thenceforth Nature could only be a passive enemy to them, with no terrors now to daunt them with, albeit she struggled against them still in the bowels of the earth, that refused as yet to give up those hidden riches which they were confident were there. Refuse? ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus's den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling. He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life. Then he arose to wander about the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... as well as qualified, to second their designs. Mr. Horneman, a German, who possessed considerable knowledge, such as might be of service to him on such an enterprise, and who was besides strong, active, vigorous, undaunted, endowed with passive courage, (a most indispensable qualification,) temperate, and in perfect health, was next selected. He prepared himself by learning such of the Oriental languages as might be useful to him; and on the 10th of September, 1797, arrived at Alexandria. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... wrong and woe exhausted, what I suffered and occasioned— As a wild horse through a city, runs, with lightning in his eyes, And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall impassioned, Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and dies— So I fell struck down before her! Do you blame me, friends, for weakness? 'Twas my strength of passion slew me! fell before her like a stone; Fast the dreadful world ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Finite: for there cannot be more than one Infinite: Nor to ascribe to him (unlesse Metaphorically, meaning not the Passion, but the Effect) Passions that partake of Griefe; as Repentance, Anger, Mercy: or of Want; as Appetite, Hope, Desire; or of any Passive faculty: For Passion, is Power limited by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... forth the agency of, individual men. We are never presented with the view of society in a mass; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of the agency of individual man—or, to speak more correctly, in the development of which the agency is an unconscious, and often almost a passive, instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive species of biography, they not only did not withdraw the eye to the distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of things, but they did ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... initiative—the sin of trying to work out one's own salvation by the exercise of reason, conscience, imagination, aspiration, and other spiritual faculties—that the direst penalties are reserved. The path of salvation is the path of blind, passive, mechanical obedience. To deviate even a little from that path is to incur the penalty ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... was their family connections or borough interest, he retired into the country; and, not knowing what to do with himself—married. In his family, to regain his lost consequence, he determined to keep up the same passive obedience, as in the vessels in which he had commanded. His orders were not to be disputed; and the whole house was expected to fly, at the word of command, as if to man the shrouds, or mount aloft in an elemental strife, big with life or death. He was to be instantaneously obeyed, especially ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... this he agreed, and seating himself at my side, but without touching me, he devoured me with lustful eyes. For some minutes neither of us spoke, but at length he took my hand, and again passed his arm around my waist. I did not oppose him, but remained passive and silent. 'Dear girl,' he whispered, pressing me close to him—'why need you be so cruel as to deny me the pleasure of love? Consider, I am your minister, and cannot sin: it will therefore be no sin ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them. "Latin Christianity," says Dean Milman, "accepted the creed which its narrow and barren vocabulary could hardly express in adequate terms. Yet, throughout, the adhesion of Rome and the West was a passive acquiescence in the dogmatic system which had been wrought out by the profounder theology of the Eastern divines, rather than a vigorous and original examination on her part of those mysteries. The Latin Church ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... his passive exterior his nerves thrummed; his muscles had grown as hard as wood. Yes! Yes! But no! He had heard nothing; no more than a single step, a single foot-pressure on the planks within the door. Dear God! He ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the Church played was not equally atrocious; but it must have been exquisitely diverting to a scoffer. Never were principles so loudly professed, and so shamelessly abandoned. The Royal prerogative had been magnified to the skies in theological works. The doctrine of passive obedience had been preached from innumerable pulpits. The University of Oxford had sentenced the works of the most moderate constitutionalists to the flames. The accession of a Catholic King, the frightful cruelties committed in the west of England, never shook the steady loyalty of the clergy. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... relative status of individuals. In whatever community we may live, we need only look around to discover that its real leaders are not the merely intelligent, educated, and good, but the energetic, the self-asserting, the aggressive. Nor will mere passive strength of will prevent subjection; for how often do we see a spirit, whose only prominent characteristic is a restless and tireless pugnacity, hold in complete subserviency those who are far superior in actual strength of mind, purely through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... water, too, fish are chased until they become so exhausted and nerve-shaken that they partially bury themselves in the sand, or endeavour to elude observation by concealing themselves beneath stone or coral, or by remaining passive among seaweed, trusting, no doubt, to protective tints and assimilation with their surroundings. Few of these stratagems of the fish are of avail when once a hungry black is on its track. The science of war, we ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... relates this instance, with others, and in 'Following the Equator' and elsewhere he records other such happenings. It was one of the "mysteries" in which he never lost interest, though his concern in it in time became a passive one. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and said not a word. All that Gladys or Minette could do to attract her attention was unavailing. But when Rowland came, she roused herself sufficiently to say, 'I am ready to go home now, Rowland: I must go directly.' And then she relapsed into a state of passive inaction. Rowland went for Mr Wenlock, and was fortunate in finding him at home. He accompanied him to Netta, and said that she must be roused by a change of some kind. Rowland said that it was absolutely ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... not found on the morrow, the probability was that some shepherd, in his remote and lonely shieling just outside the forest, would be feasting on venison for a considerable time to come. Lionel cared less now; heat and food had thawed him into a passive frame of mind; he was tired, worn out, and sleepy; and very glad was he when he was allowed to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... territory, used these words: "When a man is appointed to take a mission, unless he has a just and honorable reason for not going, if he does not go he will be severed from the church. Why? Because you said you were willing to be passive, and, if you are not passive, that lump of clay must be cut off from the church and laid aside, and a lump put on that ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... system, which requires that the child should restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body which have entrusted to them the discharge of certain ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... of this class of talkers may be mentioned, viz., the man who forces his logic upon you in such a dogmatic manner as leaves you without any hope of reply. You give him all the glory of victory. For the sake of peace and safety you remain passive, and think this the best valour for the occasion. Cowper refers to him in the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and through yourself is not life at all, it is a passive condition, and man is a ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... was conscious of some one behind him, though he had heard no one approach. He swung round and was met by the passive face of the black slave in personal attendance on Harrik. The slave did not speak, but motioned towards a screen at the end of the room, and moved towards it. David followed. As they reached it, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... face now than then. She did not at all share his mirth. She was still looking at him with a strained gaze as though she saw him with difficulty, through a mist increasingly smothering. Finally, as though the fog had grown quite too thick, she dropped her eyes, and very passive, waited for ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... glance in kind; Barnes' candor and simplicity were apparent antidotes to the other's taciturnity and constraint. During the country dance the soldier had remained a passive spectator, displaying little interest in the rustic merry-making or the open glances cast upon him by bonny lasses, burned in the sunlit fields, buxom serving maids, as clean as the pans in the kitchen, and hearty matrons, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... matter must be decomposed. Instead of regarding matter as a unique existence, rude, passive, incapable of moving itself, of combining itself, we ought to look upon it as a Kind of existence, of which the various individual members comprising the Kind, in spite of their having some common properties, such as extension, divisibility, figure, etc., still ought not ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... fingers to slip or twist, resulting in smears, blurs, and false-appearing patterns. The fingers should be held lightly without too much pressure. The subject should be warned not to try to help but to remain passive. ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... to say it up to the time that Michael arrived. Can it be that she is a coquette? They are mysterious, these young girls, very mysterious, above all when they have that calm and tranquil look that Natacha always has; a face, monsieur, as you have noticed perhaps, whose beauty is rather passive whatever one says and does, excepting when the volleys in the streets kill her young comrades of the schools. Then I have seen her almost faint, which proves she has a great heart under her tranquil beauty. Poor Natacha! ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... play. Then his eyes were caught and held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... succeeded; for every mind must have been hopelessly pre-occupied against all examination of its claims. It is, indeed, incomparably better that a man should be a sincere Christian even by an utterly unreasoning and passive faith (if that be possible), than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for holding it. But it is but too obvious, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of his soul, and lift him above himself: then indeed, and then only, "the muddy vesture of decay" doth not so "grossly close him in," but that some proper spirit-notices come upon him; as if in his passive state the voice of truth and good vibrated down to his soul, and stopped there, being unable to kindle any answering tones within: so that in his waking hours they are to him but as the memory ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... may be reduced to a passion, provided we understand passion to denote any kind of receiving, in which sense the Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 4) that "to understand is, in a way, to be passive." For just as, in natural knowledge, the possible intellect is passive to the light of the active intellect, so too in prophetic knowledge the human intellect is passive to the enlightening of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... go—let me go!" he cried, raising himself for a moment, and then sinking back again in his chair in a passive state. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 1660 (inserted in the bull) forbidding Recollect religious who had been sent to the Philippines from turning aside on the way or unnecessarily delaying their journey. The penalty imposed by the decree is that such fugitives are to be deprived of all active and passive vote, and can never hold any dignity or honorary charge in the order. That same year of 1660, a mission left Spain for the islands but did not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... constitution now completed had been able to restore order to the country and security to the throne, no sacrifice of power would have been felt by Louis XVI.: never did prince find more innate in his character the conditions of his moderation: that passive resignation, which is the character of constitutional sovereigns, was his virtue. He neither desired to reconquer nor to avenge himself. All he desired was, that his sincerity should be appreciated by the people, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Does it not lead my every step? You will be with me everywhere. Ah! it will not be the sun of India, but the fire of your eyes that lights my way. Therefore be happy—as happy as a woman can be without her lover. I would the last kiss that I take from those dear lips were not a passive one; but, my Ninie, my adored one, I will not wake you. When you wake, you will find a tear upon your forehead—make it a talisman! Think, think of him who may, perhaps, die for you, far from you; think less of the husband than of the lover ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their mere passive existence.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... algophily[98]; he only applies the term to masochism; it might equally well be applied to sadism. Schrenck-Notzing, to cover both sadism and masochism, has invented the term algolagnia (algos, pain, and lagnos sexually excited), and calls the former active, the latter passive, algolagnia.[99] Eulenburg has also emphasized the close connection between these groups of perverted sexual manifestations, and has adopted the same terms, adding the further group of ideal (illusionary) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... at her, the scales fallen from his eyes. Though she was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze without blenching. But now, behind the passive defiance, grave rather than sullen, which she presented to his attack, the weakness, the helplessness, the heart pain of the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... referendum that declared Kosovo independent from Serbia. The MILOSEVIC regime carried out repressive measures against the Albanians in the early 1990s as the unofficial government of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim RUGOVA, tried to use passive resistance to gain international assistance and recognition of its demands for independence. In 1995, Albanians dissatisfied with RUGOVA's nonviolent strategy created the Kosovo Liberation Army and launched an insurgency. In 1998, MILOSEVIC authorized a counterinsurgency ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... said no more. He lay still in his chair with his head back and eyes half-closed, a passive, pathetic figure with the shoulders of a strong man and the weak, shrunken limbs of a cripple. His face was quite smooth. It might have belonged to a boy of seventeen save for the eyes, which were deeply sunken and possessed the shrewd, quizzical ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... then, as his fingers relaxed,—with a sudden passionate cry, she had broken free; but, even so, he had caught and swept her up in his arms, and held her close against his breast. And now, feeling the hopelessness of further struggle, she lay passive, while her eyes flamed up into his, and his eyes looked down into hers. Her long, thick hair had come loose, and now with a sudden, quick gesture, she drew it across her face, veiling it from him; wherefore, he stooped his ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... all its details, a parallel between the machines with which he was familiar, such as clocks and pieces of hydraulic apparatus, and the living machine. In all such machines there is a central source of power, and the parts of the machine are merely passive distributors of that power. The Cartesian school conceived of the living body as a machine of this kind; and herein they might have learned from Galen, who, whatever ill use he may have made of the doctrine of "natural faculties," nevertheless had the great merit of perceiving that local ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the twilight, I lay alone in my little den, not thinking, but with mind surrendered and passive to what might come into it. It was very hot—indeed sultry. My little skylight was open, but not a breath of air entered. What preceded I do not know, but the face of the terrified boy rose before me, or in me rather, and all ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... It will not submit to a passive reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the French and Italian sources on ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... that he would try and heal sufferers in the name of Buddha, and it is said his success quite eclipsed the holy well. Several eminent Buddhists told me that he had healed members of their families. He is a robust man, of powerful will, and in these days of hypnotism his influence over the most passive of people may appear less wonderful to us than to them. No Christian was found willing to meet him in debate. By lectures, in which Ingersollism blends with Arnold's "Light of Asia," the Colonel brought about a sort of Buddhist revival. The Singhalese saw the Theosophists as wise ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... their eyes, which they did one by one—even the kitten curling itself up in the basket, weary of its too circumscribed play—the boy remained just as before. He then seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed divinity, sitting passive and regarding his companions as if he saw their whole rounded lives rather than ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... death of Algernon Etheridge has been in more than one sense a great shock to the community. Though a man of passive rather than active qualities, his scholarly figure, long, lean and bowed, has been seen too often in our streets not to be missed, when thus suddenly withdrawn. His method of living; the rigid habits of an almost ascetic life; such an hour for this thing, such an hour ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... soft part beneath its tail. The huge monster struggled for a few seconds, endeavouring to reach the water, and then lay still, while the jaguar worried and tore at its tough hide with savage fury. Martin was much surprised at the passive conduct of the alligator. That it could not turn its stiff body, so as to catch the jaguar in its jaws, did not, indeed, surprise him; but he wondered very much to see the great reptile suffer pain so quietly. It seemed to be quite paralyzed. ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in the devil's clutches. On coming to himself, he thought of his arms,—his pistols and dagger,—which were upon the table; and, turning his eyes towards them, he made a struggle, but that was all; for, reduced to the impossibility of doing any mischief, he was passive." ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Gregory, taking out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... important crisis in England's history all depended upon the attitude of the city of London. "The key of the situation was in the hands of the city, which had it in its power to paralyse the army by simply maintaining an attitude of passive resistance."(865) But great as was the detestation in which the army was held by the majority of citizens, their distrust of the royalists, should they regain the upper hand, was greater. Under the circumstances the City resolved to maintain its ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... while Bruce in the adjoining room, who had looked forward to a night of rest in a real bed, was lying wide awake staring into the dark. His body was worn out, numb with exhaustion, but his mind was unnaturally alert. It refused to be passive, though it desperately needed sleep. It was active with plans for the future, with speculation concerning Sprudell, with the rebuilding of the air castles which had fallen with his failure to find mail. In the restless days of waiting for Toy to get well enough to leave alone for a few days ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that when Madame de Bellaise, after some months, paid a long visit to her sister in England, Mrs. Darpent had consented to send the girl to make acquaintance with her French relations, and try the effect of change of scene. She had gone, indifferent, passive, and broken- hearted, but her aunt had watched over her tenderly, and she had gradually revived, not indeed into a joyous girl, but into a calm and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... antidote to emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undisguised affectionateness were something so different from what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. Rosa seized them, and pressed them; they left her; and remained passive and limp. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to. The regulations anent food and liquors are liberal enough; you can obtain almost anything by paying about twice its cost; but the privilege of having meals sent in, is not lightly valued by those who have once done battle with the boiled leather, called ration beef, contests in which passive resistance ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... was the faith of all High Churchmen—part of the deposition they had to guard—that the doctrine of non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive doctrine, and a chief ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... me?" I asked, my voice almost indistinct with emotion. Still, she spoke not. I kneeled down, for Gunilda had reseated herself near her mother's grave, and raising her hand, I took it in mine, and pressed it. I felt the pressure returned, and allowing her small passive hand to fall gently again ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... pretty as she was, was not aggressively disposed. She was a passive, too sanguine little creature; and being limpid and tender as well, and more loyal than artful, she had failed to conceal her ardent attachment and its anxious expectancy. Had she loosed a wink of challenge from her gray eyes in another direction, the reluctance of Dickie ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... that describe their condition: such as the word debruised, where the lion is confined by the fess passing over it; demi-lion or half lion; but the examples here given will be sufficient to explain their positions, active or passive. If no mention is made of the tincture it is always supposed that they are proper, that is, to be coloured like nature: they are introduced in arms of every metal and tincture ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the conventional, passive submission to orthodox dogma is rapidly becoming a thing of the past," the explorer replied. "The people are beginning to think on these topics. All human opinion, philosophical, religious, or scientific, is in a state of liquefaction—not yet solidified. Just what will crystallize ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... further to excuse either himself or his chaplain, and having shown himself passive and docile was again taken into favour. They soon went to dinner, and he spent the pleasantest evening he had had in his own house for a long time. His daughter played and sang to him as he sipped ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Thee, on whose head a few short years will shower The gift of riches and the pride of power; E'en now a name illustrious is thine own, Renown'd in rank, nor far beneath the throne. Yet, Dorset, let not this seduce thy soul To shun fair science, or evade control, Though passive tutors, fearful to dispraise The titled child, whose future breath may raise, View ducal errors with indulgent eyes, And wink at faults ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... four hired performers execute a piece of difficult music to an audience sitting passive. He discourses upon the "pleasures of the world," as being at war with the interests of the soul; and while a severe sentence to this effect is coming from his lips, down the aisle marches the sexton, showing some stranger to a seat, who is a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the removal of Porter seemed to him untimely and vindictive. In killing Hamilton, Clinton reasoned, Burr had killed himself politically, and out of the way himself there was no occasion to punish his friends who would now rejoin and strengthen the Republican party. Clinton, however, remained passive in his opposition until the incorporation of the bank furnished a plausible excuse for an appeal to the party; then, with a determination to subjugate the Livingstons, he caused himself and his adherents to be nominated and elected to the State Senate upon ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... fair blooming virtues flourish, Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. We not require the dull society Of your necessitated temperance, Or that unnatural stupidity That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd Falsely exalted passive fortitude Above the active. This low abject brood, That fix their seats in mediocrity, Become your servile minds; but we advance Such virtues only as admit excess, Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, All-seeing prudence, magnanimity ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... where I was taking my walk, the encounter of an elderly gentleman and lady who bowed to each other on the pavement before me, and then went and came their several ways. In him I saw that his distinction was passive and resided largely in his drab spats, but hers I beheld active, positive, as she marched my way with the tall cane that helped her steps, herself tall in proportion, with a head, ashen gray, held high, and a straight well-fitted figure dressed in such keeping ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... three essays appear now for the first time. They have a more general scope, although they are vitally connected with the theme of their predecessors. The essay on Passive Resistance has special reference to the opposition offered by the No-Conscription Fellowship to the principle of compulsory military service; but its argument applies equally well to the older antagonists of the authority ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... crimson glory the sun had sunk behind the black forest across the lake. The silver waters had draped in mist their fringe of inverted trees along the shore, and lay, passive and breathing and very still, beneath the smooth-cutting canoe... One by one the stars came out in the heavens, and one by one their doubles wavered and mimicked in the lake. A duller point of light bespoke a settler's ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... thoughts that chased one another through his brain during the quiet half-hour he gave to his morning meal,—a whole fund of new suggestions and ideas were being generated in him by the various episodes in which he was taking an active yet seemingly passive part. He had voluntarily entered into his present circumstances, and so far, he had nothing to complain of. He had met with friendliness and sympathy from persons who, judged by the world's conventions, were of no social account ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... tenses for which there is no inflection in the active, and all those of the passive, are formed by the auxiliaries skal (shall), hafa (have), vera (be) with the infin. and ptc. pret., ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... mind—or, rather, whatever that passive substratum is that underlies our volition and more truly represents ourselves—were a still lake, lying quiet and indifferent. Presently the sense of some coming Presence sent a breathing ripple over its waters; and immediately afterward it felt a sweep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... basket, and went on to the cottage, which had been close in sight during their conversation in the road. She felt angry with Dorothy. In such matters a woman is always angry with the woman,—who has probably been quite passive, and rarely with the man, who is ever the real transgressor. Having a man down after her at Nuncombe Putney! It had never struck Martha as very horrible that Brooke Burgess should fall in love with Dorothy in the city;—but this meeting, in the remoteness of the country, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Upper Canada, from the time of Mr. Gourlay's banishment, in 1819, down to the actual outbreak of rebellion, is largely made up of a succession of abuses on the part of the Executive, and of more or less passive endurance on the part of the great body of the people. As has been intimated, the Gourlay prosecutions and their attendant circumstances aroused much popular indignation, and led to the formation of an organized Opposition. During the session ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish fastidiousness which narrows itself down until it can see nothing but defects and faults, and loses the power of humbly and genuinely admiring. This passive dissatisfaction which attempts nothing of its own, and only finds fault with what is done by others, grows very fast if it is allowed to take hold, and produces a mental habit of merely destructive criticism or perpetual scolding. Safe in attempting nothing itself, unassailable and self-righteous ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... "The subjective rheumatic pains which are augmented by pressure and motion, are diminished by faradization. This diminution is sometimes so considerable, that the joint, which prior to the faradization admitted of no movement, is able to execute passive and active ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... this career of conquest continued. The barbarian Gauls proved fierce and valiant soldiers, but at the end of that time they had been completely subdued and made passive subjects of Rome. Caesar even crossed the sea into Britain, and look the first step towards the conquest of that island, of which Rome had barely ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mean?" answered Basil, staring also. "Have you turned Puritan or Passive Resister, or something? For fun, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... a man act so?" he says. "There's my fellow-man. Look at him! I'm sorry for him. Most of him had hard luck to be born, and yet when he gets in my way I just walk all over him. I can't help it. He's leathery and he's passive, my fellow-man. He goes to sleep in the middle of the road. When I ketch one of him, I kicks a hole in his trousers first, and then it occurs to me, 'My sufferin' brother! This is too bad!' Why, Pete ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... about swimming. Only don't catch me by the throat again, and we'll be all right," was Dick's reassuring reply, and as his brother became more passive he struck out for the bank upon which the ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... useful information; 2nd, To correct an erroneous impression that had been industriously created, that we were identified in our feelings and purposes with some one political party; 3rd, To furnish an instructive moral to the Christian reader, not to be a passive or active tool, or the blind, thorough-going follower of any political party as such. We considered this called for at the present time on both religious and patriotic grounds. We designed this expression of our ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... encumber him in the troubles of a settler's life. For there were troubles. The pastoral provinces were no Dresden-china Arcadia. Nature is very stubborn in the wilderness, even in the happier climes, where she offers, for the most part, merely a passive resistance. An occasional storm or flood was about her only outburst of active opposition in South-eastern New Zealand. Nevertheless, an educated European who finds himself standing in an interminable plain or on a windy hillside where nothing has been done, where he is about ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... although her affection showed itself often in a vexatious manner, became at length alarmed— countermanded her orders for removing Eveline to an inferior cell— attended herself to see her laid in bed, (in which, as in every thing else, the young lady seemed entirely passive,) and, with something like reviving tenderness, kissed and blessed her on leaving the apartment. Slight as the mark of kindness was, it was unexpected, and, like the rod of Moses, opened the hidden fountains of waters. Eveline wept, a resource which ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... your projects for the good of others, beware lest your benevolence should have too much of a spirit of interference. Consider what it is you want to produce. Not an outward, passive, conformity to your wishes, but something vital which shall generate the feelings and habits you long to see manifested. You can clip a tree into any form you please, but if you wish it to bear fruit when it has been barren, you must attend to what is beneath the surface, ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... a somewhat different problem. It cannot be described as either "active" or "passive," inasmuch as it does not express either an attitude or an event. There is no definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as with the altar-pieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet a unity is demanded. An examination of the proportions of the types shows at once the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... cupboards cold meats and pastries, bread and cakes, and many kinds of delicate preserves and sweetmeats. Her large, shapely hands among the gold-and-white china fascinated him, while her calm, noiseless, unhurried movements induced a feeling of passive repose that it required an effort to dispel, when she said ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with all its privileges, I understand the ordinances of Israel as appointed by God, and the people of Israel in as far as they were necessarily passive in the hands of their priests and rulers. The husbandmen manifestly represent the leaders, who at various periods had usurped a lordship over God's heritage. Extraordinary ambassadors were sent from ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... its prime cause and suffered as only a man can who is not wholly heartless. How poorly he had rewarded the friendship which had relieved him in his need at Fort Macleod! All his passion for Mrs. Latimer had died in that fearful moment when he looked on the curiously passive husband in the doorway; remorse bit like acid into the depths of his heart. The meaning glances and the interrupted conversations that met him everywhere the morning after the judge's death drove him to solitude. He even avoided his sister, Danvers and the doctor; but most of all he shunned ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... she might have been cold and unsympathetic, for often good women, untouched by temptation themselves, have small tenderness for those who struggle. But her goodness was something more than a mere passive quantity; she loved him the better because he had need of her. I believe she would have saved him from himself, had not fate interfered and taken the matter out of her hands. Women are capable of big sacrifices; I think this woman would have been ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... a quite undoubted one, is the possession by man of a certain special and important feeling, which, viewed from its passive side, we call sympathy, and from its active side, benevolence. It exists in various degrees in different people, but to some degree or other it probably exists in all. Most people, for instance, if they hear an amusing story, at once ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... believe that I went so far as to offer to become myself the operator. This was listened to for a moment, but such is the effect of tyranny upon the human mind, that the majority were for remaining passive slaves, and accordingly we all patiently suffered him to flog us one after the other. When it came to my turn I looked him in the face, and received any punishment with a hardened indifference, which enraged him to such a degree, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... of the capacity to grasp the whole coup d'oeil, or from a natural endowment for certain kinds of stoicism, women are cooler than men in critical situations of the passive form. Probably, in Elfride's case at least, it was blindness to the greater contingencies of the future she was preparing for herself, which enabled her to ask her father in a quiet voice if he could give her a holiday soon, to ride to St. Launce's ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to follow the nurse, the surgeon glanced at her once more. He was conscious of her calm tread, her admirable self-control. The sad, passive face with its broad, white brow was the face of a woman who was just waking to terrible facts, who was struggling to comprehend a world that had caught her unawares. She had removed her hat and was carrying it loosely in her hand that had fallen to her side. Her hair swept ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... perfectly passive in their hands, but quite incapable of the smallest effort, and so painfully apathetic that Hilda grew more and more uneasy. She had never imagined that her gay, light-hearted Chris could be thus. It wrung her heart to see her. She ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... forgot that drive. He ran her out to Chowpatty, where the road lies along the shore and the carriages of Mohammedan, Hindu and Parsee gentlemen stand in serried rows while their picturesque occupants "eat the air" in passive and contented Eastern fashion; then up to Ridge Road on Malabar Hill, where he stopped that she might get out and walk to the edge of the wooded cliff and look down at the sea and the great ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... and his next plan was to remove me from a spot where I might check his measures. He persuaded me to travel for a few weeks. "On your return," said he, "consider Isora yours; meanwhile, let change of scene beguile suspense." I was passive in his hands, and I went ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tremendous spring, seized the alligator by the soft part beneath its tail. The huge monster struggled for a few seconds, endeavouring to reach the water, and then lay still, while the jaguar worried and tore at its tough hide with savage fury. Martin was much surprised at the passive conduct of the alligator. That it could not turn its stiff body, so as to catch the jaguar in its jaws, did not, indeed, surprise him; but he wondered very much to see the great reptile suffer pain so quietly. It seemed to be quite paralysed. In a few minutes ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... debt we owe him will always give him a vast importance in our eyes. The men of to-day, all of them, stand directly on his shoulders. It is doubtful whether any of us, the passive public, would be here to-day as we are, were it not for ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... complete the expiratory act. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of this combination of instruction and help the patient was able to breathe by herself and freely. She was then instructed to make the sound "e" at the end of expiration. This she was unable to do at first, but upon persistence and passive placing of her mouth in the proper position for the sound, she was able to whisper "e." From this she rapidly went on to the other vowel sounds. Then the aspirate "h" was added, later the explosives, "p," etc., until at the end of about two hours she was enabled to whisper anything desired. Her ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... teaching may make an adequate impression, it is necessary, if not to discard all these passive methods, at least to supplement them by exercises which call out the activity of the pupil. Some such exercises have already been experimented with, and others might be devised.[243] The pupil may ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... hid my head within a Convent, there Lay passive as a dormouse in mid winter. That was no life for me—I was o'erthrown ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... are passive beings, and were meant to enjoy life very quietly. As we can't enjoy, we just suffer quietly, that's all. By-the-bye, I want to talk about a difficulty in one of the Fragments of Euripides. Did you ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very carefully retained the little one, so passive and warm, in its shy grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark that he wasn't quite such a fool as usual, which interpreted meant that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... A Verb Passive expresses passion or a suffering or the receiving of an action, and implies an object acted upon, and an agent by which it is acted upon; as, Chezhahwaneding, to be loved; John oojezhahwanemah neen, John is loved ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... march into Virginia, while if they fled northward, they would certainly have to fight Washington's army long before they could reach New York. It was therefore unanimously voted that the least hazardous course was to remain passive in their present position. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... unvarying backward cleaves the air— Nor wave, nor wind, nor sail, nor oar its care— And plies its wings, and seeks the laurel's pride. 'Tis thine, proud king of rivers, eastward borne To meet the sun, as he leads on the day; And from a brighter west 'tis thine to turn: Thy horned flood these passive limbs obey— But, uncontrolled, to its sweet sojourn On Love's untiring plumes my spirit ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... her saliva; did not react to pin pricks or feinting motions before her eyes. Sometimes she retained her urine, again wet and soiled the bed. Often there was marked catalepsy, and the retention of very awkward positions. As a rule she was quite stiff, offering passive resistance towards any interference. She had to be tube-fed at first. Later she was spoon-fed, and then would swallow, in spite of the fact that during the interval between her feeding she would let saliva collect in her mouth. For a time she had a tendency ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... the Damaris who had set forth—a Damaris rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent. Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the house. For, so entering, her loss again confronted her as an actual entity. It sat throned in the lamp-lit hall. It demanded payment of tribute before permitting her ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to most of them, that sudden return of brutality. Aye, just in that I saw the devilish cunning of Captain Swope. He knew what the effect would be upon the minds of the men of slackening his hell-ship discipline, and then, when the habit of passive endurance was weakened, suddenly tightening the reins. He knew that then the bit would be well nigh unendurable. Oh, Swope had calculated shrewdly; he foresaw the effect not only of an outburst of promiscuous brutality, but of the arrest ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... remarked, that while a carpenter's hammer, on a warm summer day, caused him to "fret into more than midsummer madness," these unconnected sounds were nothing when compared with the measured malice of music. For while the ear may be passive to the strokes of a hammer, and even endure them with some degree of equanimity, to music it cannot be passive. The noted author relates having sat through an Italian opera, till, from sheer pain, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... are in the habit of remarking such matters must have noticed the passive quiet of an English landscape on Sunday. The clacking of the mill, the regularly recurring stroke of the flail, the din of the blacksmith's hammer, the whistling of the ploughman, the rattling of the cart, and all other sounds of rural labor are suspended. The very farm-dogs bark ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... corporations upon whom the temptations of individual aggrandizement would most strongly operate? The people would have to blame none but themselves for any injury that might arise from a course so reckless, since their agents would be the wrongdoers and they the passive spectators. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... and ethnological life; and even the observer whose vision is limited by his own horizon in time and space marks a dependence, and speaks of cause and effect. All this follows from the existence and nature of man. Man is not inert, nor even passive, merely; and his activity will continually organize itself into facts and forms, ever changing in character, it may be, yet subject to a law as wise and fixed ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... eccentric, normal and concentric expression must correspond to the sensitive, moral and intellectual state of man. When gesture is concerned, the law is thus modified: In the sensitive state, the gesture, which is naturally eccentric, may become concentric, as the orator is passive or active. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Louisiana was adopted against the will of a majority of the people. This is probably true, and in that fact may be found some instruction. Why did they allow the ordinance to go into effect? Why did they not assert themselves? Why stand passive and allow themselves to be trodden down by minority? Why did they not hold popular meetings and have a convention of their own to express and enforce the true sentiment of the State? If preorganization was against them then, why not do this now that the United States army is present to protect ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... French Revolution had taken place; and Paul Jones occupied the position, unusual for him, of a passive spectator of great events. Acquainted with men of all parties, with Bertrand Barere, Carnot, Robespierre, and Danton, as well as with the more conservative men with whom his own past had led him to sympathize,—Lafayette, Mirabeau, and Malesherbes,—Jones's last days ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... field looking broadly about me: and presently, I began to examine my fences—my fences—with a critical eye. I considered the quality of the soil, though in truth I was not much of a judge of such matters. I gloated over my plowed land, lying there open and passive in the sunshine. I said of this tree: "It is mine," and of its companion beyond the fence: "It is my neighbour's." Deeply and sharply within myself I drew the line between meum and tuum: for ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... not affect her in the same way as before. Her sensations were no longer sharp and poignant, but chiefly a dull shame and sense of disgrace that she had loved him. She met his attentions with a coldly passive manner, which gave him the liveliest satisfaction. The cure was succeeding past all expectation; but he had about time for one more stroke, which would make a sure thing of it. He prepared the way by dropping hints that he ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... reforms. Then, however, owing to the interference of Maria Theresa, Empress of Germany, who, as Queen of Hungary, herself claimed rights of suzerainty over Wallachia, and largely also in consequence of the passive resistance of the Porte, the Czarina agreed to the Treaty of Kainardji, by which, under conditions favourable to the Principalities, they were once more restored to the Porte. Amongst the conditions were a complete amnesty; the ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their mere passive existence.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... taking out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two other ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... little rooms in the bastion at Bastia, knew almost as soon that the chateau was burning, and only evinced his usual easy-going surprise. The colonel always seemed to be wondering that any should have the energy to do active wrong; for virtue is more often passive, and therefore ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... her husband, at the table, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with her hundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious, with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missing Sunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at the regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathen were taught American civilization, and she herself was assured sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the various ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... you—want me to," she answered with the new servile listlessness; and he wondered again whether she was trying to exact some novel abandonment of adoration or to exhaust him by passive resistance. "I believe we ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... verse begets another, with little regard for logical sequence. The "shadowes" with which sin frightens us are first compared to the imaginary creatures into which fancy shapes the clouds; then sin itself (relegated from an active to a passive part) is likened not to a pure creation of the fancy, but to an exaggerated picture of a real monster displayed by "policy," i. e. the craft which seeks to debar men from ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... collective and belligerent way. It is not, as said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast; but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so, and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically, therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and Huns, than ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... contemptuously alone. I hated men who had made the laws that bound me. I did not believe in God; for why had He permitted the dart to enter so unprepared a breast? I determined never to submit, though I disdained to struggle, since struggle was in vain. In passive, lonely wretchedness I would pass my days. I would not feign what I did not feel, nor take the hand which had poisoned for me the cup of life before I had sipped ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... spring. Mr. White was anxious that his marriage should take place quickly—-afraid, perhaps, that his prize would escape him, and be daunted by the passive disapproval of her family, though this was only manifested to him in a want of cordiality. This, being sincere people, they could not help; and that outbreak to Kalliope had made the sisters so uneasy, that they would have willingly endured the ridicule of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... namely—how this sense represents us to our own consciousness, only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves, because, to wit, we intuite ourselves only as we are inwardly affected. Now this appears to be contradictory, inasmuch as we thus stand in a passive relation to ourselves; and therefore in the systems of psychology, the internal sense is commonly held to be one with the faculty of apperception, while we, on the contrary, carefully ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Mr. Temple's name, and greeted him distantly. Not so Mr. Temple. He rose, and shook the squire's passive hand energetically. ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... had touched her mentally in a way very puzzling to those about her, and rather annoying to the Colonel, who was trying to make amends for the harshness which had driven her from his home. Sometimes her quiet, passive manner irritated him, and he felt that he would gladly welcome the old imperiousness with which she had defied him. But it was gone. Something had broken her on the wheel, killing her spirit completely, or ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... neither could He be the Creator that deals in diseases—foul and filthy diseases, common, not only to all divisions of the human species, but to quadrupeds, birds, fish, and even flora; that brings into existence cripples and idiots, the blind, the deaf and dumb; and watches with passive inertness the most acute sufferings, not only of adults, but of sinless children and all manner of helpless animals. No! It is impossible to conceive that such incompatibilities can be the work of one Creator. But, supposing, for ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... had done, although he did not admit that her fear would be anything more than a child's harsh judgment of matters it did not understand. But no rumours could have reached her ears, for he had always lived very secretly, even beyond the needs of discretion, since he knew that the passive sort of women with whom, for the most part, he had had dealings have an enormous power of self-deception, and could, as the years went on, if there were no witnesses to dispute it, pretend to themselves that what had happened with him was no reality but only a naughty dream that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... in closing this chapter that its subject is most truly illustrated by the life of our Lord himself. The mediaeval conception of Christ was that He exhibited only the passive virtues of meekness, patience, and submission to wrong. From the gospels we form a different idea. He vanquished the devil in the wilderness; He faced human opposition boldly and without fear; He denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and encountered their rage and violence. He went ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... Hindoo god of thunder and lightning. The Pagoda might be an erroneous variant of the thunderbolt Vadjra. In such case Notscha would be a personification of the thunder. The Great One (Tai I), is the condition of things before their separation into the active and passive principles. There is a whole genealogy of mythical saints and holy men who took part in the battles between King Wu of Dschou and the tyrant Dschou-Sin. These saints are, for the most part, Buddhist-Brahminic figures which have been reshaped. The Dragon-King of the Eastern Sea ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... ended not the first or second day, Yet each was perfect to the work design'd; God and king's work, when they their work survey, A passive ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... delight. The sentimental exterior of this man concealed a jester's nature, and the sober appearance of this Castilian wore all the characteristics of a polished lounger. The least smile that animated his passive countenance became at once attractive. Marianne thought him most delightful, or rather, she found him just what she had formerly believed him to be, a refined, delicate and very simple man in spite of his graciously haughty manner. When he concluded, the room echoed with the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Heated and clammy, I, Towards the live waves turning, slip my tunic, Then run in naked. Cooled and soothed by swimming, Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned To placid acquiescent health, I float, suspended in the limpid water, Passive, rhythmically governed; So tranced worlds travel ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... engagement between Harry and myself, resulting in all sorts of difficulties and complications as time went on and absence and distance produced their salutary effect on a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, Mrs. Harry remained passive, and apparently unconscious of any danger; and we walked and talked and danced and were sentimental together after the most approved cousinly fashion, and Harry went off to India with my name engraved upon his sword—a circumstance which was only made known to me years after ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the Waganda bore a log of firewood, which Mtesa had ordered them to carry until they either returned with me or brought back a box of gunpowder, in default of which they were to be all burnt in a heap with the logs they carried. Kamrasi, still acting on his passive policy, would not admit them here, but wished them to return with a message, to the effect that Mtesa had no right to hold me as his guest now I had once gone into another's hands. We were all three kings to do with our subjects as we liked, and for this reason the deserters ought to be sent ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... she even heard him, not until the paroxysm had spent itself and she lay passive and utterly exhausted, with her hands ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the morrow, the probability was that some shepherd, in his remote and lonely shieling just outside the forest, would be feasting on venison for a considerable time to come. Lionel cared less now; heat and food had thawed him into a passive frame of mind; he was tired, worn out, and sleepy; and very glad was he when he was allowed to go ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... can't make me think I should be reconciled to this. No! It is hard enough to be reconciled to the blows God has dealt me, without accepting what my husband and son see fit to give me in this." Her hand was cold and passive, and her voice was restrained ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... said, gently; and he felt her cool, passive hands tremble a little in his. Something in the tone of her voice made him raise his head, and meet her eyes looking down at him, earnestly, and with ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Washington, "could no longer remain a passive spectator of the contempt with which the laws were treated." But when he called for Cabinet opinions, the old variance at once showed itself. Randolph thought that calm consideration of the situation ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... be traced. A more puzzling examination could not well have been essayed. There was proof to give the victory to each of the pretenders, if such a term may be used with propriety as it concerns the passive Sigismund, and much to defeat the claims of the latter. In the olive-colored tint, the dark, rich, rolling eye, and in stature, the advantage was altogether with Maso, whose outline of countenance and penetrating expression had also a resemblance ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... I was equally passive, for indeed I felt that they had a grievance. We have no right to expect birds to tell one human being from another, so long as we, with all our boasted intelligence, cannot tell one crow or one magpie from another; and all the week they had suffered ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... traveler that I know is a little man, slightly bent, who walks with a stick in his garden or sits passive in his library. Other friends have boasted of travels in the Orient, of mornings spent on the Athenian Acropolis, of visiting the Theatre of Dionysius, and of hallooing to the empty seats that re-echoed. They warn me of this and that hotel, and advise me concerning the journey ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... its study ought to find a welcome home in every tolerant religion. It promotes a far-sighted philanthropy, the acceptance of parentage as a serious responsibility, and a higher conception of patriotism. The creed of eugenics is founded upon the idea of evolution; not on a passive form of it, but on one that can, to some ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... on my shoulder. I had heard no one coming, and under ordinary conditions I might have been a thought startled by the unexpected companionship; but just now I was too wretched for any other emotion, and I merely lay passive ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... delivered from the tyranny of Richelieu, imagined the golden age was returning, being daily assured by the Prime Minister that the Queen would not take one step without them. The clergy, who are always great examples of slavish servitude themselves, preached it to others under the plausible title of passive obedience. Thus both clergy and laity were, in an instant, become the devotees ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... more; and as an advance-guard, it has the workingmen of the city and the people of the suburbs. A feeling of dignity, of human personality, and a love of liberty is awakening in the masses who have joined in the struggle which the "intellectuals" are conducting against the passive forces of autocracy. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... ambition for the crown that was held before him. Annoyed at not being consulted in the negotiations on which depended his call to the throne, he maintained a passive attitude. But as he was accustomed to comply with every wish of a brother who had taken charge of his education, and thereby acquired special authority over him, he invariably obeyed his orders. The Batavian deputation, of which the most ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... In applying lightning-conductors, therefore, as a means of guarding against the destructive effects of lightning, our object should be to carry out this principle in all its generality, and bring the building or ship as nearly as possible into that state of passive electrical resistance it would have supposing the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... patient should be improved, by dieting and tonics. One of the most reliable methods of hastening union in these cases is by inducing passive hyperaemia of the limb after the method advocated by Bier, and this plan should always be tried in the first instance. An elastic bandage is applied above the seat of fracture, sufficiently tightly to congest the limb beyond, and, to concentrate the congestion in the vicinity of the fracture, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the fact that the Chancellor had previously sought to bribe England to condone in advance the invasion of Belgium by Germany, and that Germany had also coerced Luxemburg into a passive acquiescence in a similar invasion, and there is as yet no pretense that Luxemburg had failed in its ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... unconscious toss, like a horse shaking his mane at the lighting of a persistent fly. And then, paying no more attention to William Pressley and drawing his chair nearer Father Orin's, he went on with the grave talk. It was he, however, who did all the talking now; the priest had suddenly become a passive listener. He had ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... fact that a large percentage of students—probably believing that they can reach their goal by a short cut—resent the mental effort required to master these principles, the passive resistance, evident in their work, preventing them from deriving true benefit from their studies. They form that large class which learns merely by imitation, and invariably retrograde the moment they are no longer ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... the passive virtues. She could bear sharp stabs of misfortune, which fired her energy and pride, but she resented pin pricks. She could carry heavy, splendid burdens cheerfully, but she fretted under humble cares. She could serve by daring, but not by waiting. She would ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... more than that of Aspasia, in that dark richness and voluptuousness which to some have such attractions; but in grace and vivacity she was purely Grecian,—not like a "blooming Eastern bride," languid and passive and effeminate, but bright, witty, and intellectual. Shakspeare paints her as full of lively sallies, with the power of adapting herself to circumstances with tact and good nature, like a Madame Recamier or a Maintenon, rather than like a Montespan or a Pompadour, although ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... irregular in all languages, is az or ats in Chayma; and uochiri (in composition uac, uatscha) in Tamanac. It serves not only to form the Passive, but it is added also, as by agglutination, to the radical of attributive verbs, in a number of tenses.* (* The present in the Tamanac, jarer-bae-ure, appears to me nothing else then the verb bac, or uac (from ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... were then part and parcel of a sort of poetical curriculum through which the whole school must be taken by the stern masters Tradition and Propriety. There is little to be wondered at, if this matter of curriculum was treated by the more passive scholars as a matter of course, and by the sharper and less reverent disciples as a matter of fun. Indeed, if any personality is then evinced in the adaptation of these old world themes, it is generally connected with a more or less ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... shadow of the room, she turned her eyes first toward one speaker and then the other, wondering all the while how it was to end. If only she had told Robert herself before this moment! She could not understand her husband's passive attitude. She knew him to be slow to anger, yet she also knew well the strength of the passion which lay controlled beneath his calm exterior. What Covington had said and the manner in which he had said it would, under ordinary circumstances, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The passive condition to which we were all reduced by the total failure of our most strenuous exertions, while it was well calculated, and probably designed, to convince us afterwards that our deliverance ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... this, gazing at her hands, the beautifully made pointed fingers bare of rings. On their backs the veins, blue-violet, were visible; and there was a delicate tracery inside the bend of her arms. But her face, Lee reflected, was too passive, too inanimate; her lack of color was unvaried by any visible trace of emotion, life. She was, in fact, plain if not actually ugly; her mouth was too large; on the street, without the saving distinction of her dress, he ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the wind with the loss of almost all their provisions; and the ship being much infested with rats, the crew hunted these vermin with great eagerness to help their scanty allowance. By such means Glen had the address to make his companions, in some measure, satisfied, or at least passive, with regard to their miserable prospects upon this half-tide rock in the middle of the ocean. This incident is noticed, more particularly, to show the effects of such a happy turn of mind, even under the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... So passive was he, that many among merchants judged they had impressed him, and returned again and again to the charge; but when they found always the same imperturbable front, the same mild neutrality of demeanor, they melted sadly away, and were ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which his enemies have learned to estimate and dread. His eloquence is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... with an averted countenance, Venetia clinging to her hand, which she had caught when she rushed forward, and which now fell passive by Lady Annabel's side, giving no sign, by any pressure or motion, of the slightest sympathy with her daughter, or feeling for the strange and agonising situation in which they were ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... blossoming into reality. The philosophy of Leibnitz is equally remote from that of Des Cartes on the one hand, and from that of Spinoza on the other. He diverges from the former on the question of substance, which Des Cartes conceived as consisting of two kinds, one active (thinking) and one passive (extended), but which Leibnitz conceives to be all and only active. He explodes Dualism, and resolves the antithesis of matter and spirit by positing extension as a continuous act instead of a passive mode, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... thinking away from aspects to things, I attempted to inventory the aspect in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had remained absorbed. There were the colours, that delicious recently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his immediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily pleasure. But besides these my inventory contained another kind of item: what I described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... insult for any one else to speak to me thus!' said Eustacie, drawing herself up, and rising to her feet; but she was forced to hold by the back of her chair, and Diane and her father appearing at that moment, she tottered towards the former, and becoming quite passive under the influence of violent dizziness and headache, made no objection to being half led, half carried, through galleries that connected the Hotel de Bourbon ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kerem), lit. "being liberal to any one." here an idiomatic form of assent expressing condescension on the part of a superior. Such at least is the explanation of the late Prof. Dozy; but I should myself incline to read tukremu (second person sing. aorist passive of IV), i.e. "Thou art accorded ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... as its highest representation, constitute the real personality, containing in itself all that we have been, and the possibility of all that we shall be. The complete individual character is inscribed there with all its active and passive aptitudes, sympathies, and antipathies; its genius, talents, or stupidity; its virtues, vices, torpor, or activity. Of all these, what emerges and actually reaches consciousness is only a small item compared with what remains buried below, albeit still active. Conscious personality is always ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the invasion of his territory. Francis II protested with no less earnestness. The Emperor of the French withdrew his minister from Turin and blamed the proceedings of Victor Emmanuel's Government; but in other respects Napoleon remained a passive spectator of all that occurred, and maintained the principle of non-intervention—at least as regarded Umbria and the Marches, Sicily and Naples—excepting at Gaeta, where his fleet prevented for a time any attack ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... visible inaudible conversation. Occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When he looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting, and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... discerning critic was not altogether passive. Isaac D'Israeli denounced the fraud in his Curiosities of Literature; but he and others did their protesting gently. The fraud looked to the expert too shamefaced to merit a vigorous onslaught. He imagined the spurious epistle ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... institutions which dispense their incomes for public purposes. Wages and salaries of many kinds go up and down less rapidly than do other prices, and thus to some extent wage-earners are in the position of passive capitalists[10] as regards changes in the monetary standard. In a capitalistic age, therefore, almost every individual is affected in some way by a change in the value ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... be seen, this is really a form of the passive voice rendered by "se," as "se goza" instead of "es gozado." But there are more ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... even those who are the victims of preventable misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt all the maxims he has ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... threatened attack of Santa Anna—the defences created by him at Saltillo, and used during the attack at Buena Vista in dispersing Minon's forces—his just treatment of the people of Saltillo, with the prudent and effectual precautions taken to make them passive in the event of Santa Anna's approach. It concludes by stating that all apprehensions of Santa Anna's advance subsiding, Gen. Butler returned to meet Gen. Taylor at Monterey, to report the condition of affairs; and the latter, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... spirit,—not by that man, therefore, whose imaginative powers have been ossified by the continual reaction and assimilating influences of mere objects on his mind, and who is a prisoner to his own eye and its reflex, the passive fancy!—not by him in whom an unbroken familiarity with the organic world, as if it were mechanical, with the sensitive, but as if it were insensate, has engendered the coarse and hard spirit of a sorcerer. The former is unable, the latter unwilling, to master the absolute ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to dislike Familiarity and Kindness between near Relations. I was too great a Coward to contend, but not so ignorant a Child to be thus imposed upon. I resented his Contempt as I ought to do, and as most poor passive blinded Wives do, 'till it pleased Heaven to take away my Tyrant, who left me free Possession of my own Land, and a large Jointure. My Youth and Money brought me many Lovers, and several endeavoured to establish an Interest in my Heart while my ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... consumers' league. Finally he warned the men earnestly against damage to the company's property, smashing of windows and breaking of machines. Help should come in a positive and constructive manner, and the destructive tactics of passive resistance and of sabotage should be discarded as being unworthy of a German workingman. One should not forget that besides a strong body one had to transmit to one's children ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... baronet, had he made appearance, stood a strong chance of being sent about his business as rank a bachelor as he had come. And yet, because he was cunning enough to make the hot-brained and credulous old man believe that Reilly was at the bottom of the plan for his destruction, and Hastings only the passive agent in his hands; we say, because he succeeded in making this impression, which he knew to be deliberately false, upon his plastic nature, he, Folliard, worked himself up into a vindictive bitterness peculiar to little minds, as well as a fixed determination that Reilly should die; not by any means ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... The power manifest in these rapids moves one with a different sense of awe and terror from that of the Falls. Here the inhuman life and strength are spontaneous, active, almost resolute; masculine vigour compared with the passive gigantic power, female, helpless and overwhelming, of the Falls. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... time we entered the concert hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and for the first time seemed to perceive her surroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become aware of her queer, country clothes, or might experience some painful embarrassment at stepping suddenly ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... not have feared. While the young herdsman and Dick stood by passive and admiring, this toro bravo of famous fighting breed reduced his run to a canter, and trotted up to Pilar as tamely as if he had been a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... departed souls. The term was anciently applied to all kinds of learning, and in particular to the science of the Magi or Wise Men of Persia, from whom it was called magic. Natural magic is no more than the application of natural active causes to passive things or subjects, to produce ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... in a passive state, and did everything Madam Imbert told her to do, as if powerless to resist. She remained for some time with Madam Imbert, but finally said, in a pitiful tone: "Well, I believe I am sick. This excitement ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... any wild beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course appear to him, though with some danger, as that which was more honourable and savoured more of strife and self-exertion than to perish without a struggle the passive victim ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... if our object be negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for our counter-attack. To this extent our action must always tend to the offensive. For counter-attack is the soul of defence. Defence is not a passive attitude, for that is the negation of war. Rightly conceived, it is an attitude of alert expectation. We wait for the moment when the enemy shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far cripple him as to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... also consciousness can never be aware of itself and the word self-consciousness is easily misleading. In psychology, it can never mean that the consciousness which is a subject of all experience is at the same time object of any experience. Its whole meaning lies in its being the passive spectator. That of which consciousness becomes aware in self-consciousness is the idea of the personality, which is certainly a content. The personality, the actor of our actions, is thus never anything but an object in psychology, and consciousness never anything ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... at the critical moment to turn the scale in favor of a wiser decision. An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run. It is, perhaps, true that, by effacing the principle of passive obedience, democracy, ill understood, has slackened the spring of that ductility to discipline which is essential to "the unity and married calm of States." But I feel assured that experience and necessity will cure this evil, as they have shown their power to cure others. And under what ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... is not industrious, envieth him that is. Besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay, when others rise, can hardly avoid motions of envy. On the other side, nobility extinguisheth the passive envy from others, towards them; because they are in possession of honor. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility, shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their business; for people naturally bend to them, as born in ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... our enthusiasm by this realization of the common thought, we must take heart. The University's peculiar privilege and distinction lie in the fact that it is not the passive instrument of the State to voice its current ideas. Its problem is not that of expressing tendencies. Its mission is to create tendencies and to direct them. Its problem is that of leadership and of ideals. It is called, of course, to justify the support which ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... powers of satire, at this period, were of no more use to Dryden than a sword to a man who cannot draw it; only serving to render the pleasure of insulting him more poignant to his enemies, and the necessity of passive submission more bitter to himself. Of the numerous satires, libels, songs, parodies, and pasquinades, which solemnised the downfall of Popery and of James, Dryden had not only some exclusively dedicated to his case, but engaged a portion, more or less, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... by his breath that is more miserable. Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd, but bred a dog. Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth In different beds of lust; and never learn'd The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd The sugar'd game before ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... members; but what, in the name of God's justice, should His vicegerent, law, visit upon the man who wrings another life away by slow tortures, and torments heart and soul and flesh for lingering years, where the victim is passive and tenacious, and dies only after long-drawn anguish that might fill the cup of a hundred sudden deaths? Yet what escapes the vicegerent shall the King himself visit and judge. "For He cometh! He cometh to judge the earth; with righteousness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... would cry to all those who have set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and passive will—to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the wreck was passive, on his part, and he suffered himself to be carried ashore, recking little whether he reached it or no. After he had been for half an hour or so on the soil of the new country, to which he had made ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible {28} here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account. We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... difficult to climb if unopposed, but with an enemy with a rifle in his hand behind every crag and boulder, it looked simply impossible for any living thing to make the ascent. Now for the first time Harry Forsyth became an active hypocrite, for he had only been a passive one up to this. He busied himself about to select a good commanding spot in which to ensconce himself with his rifle with an energy which delighted his uncle extremely. And so much was thought of his shooting that he was sure not to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... community of strong men with sullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices, he was tolerated as possessing neither—not even rising by any dominant human weakness or ludicrous quality to the importance of a butt. In the dramatis personae of Redwood Camp he was a simple "super"—who had only passive, speechless roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolled beneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he was overlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in a hotly-contested ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... to ring the bell and order the carriage. I stopped her. My childish pride urged me to assert myself in some way, after the passive position that I had been forced to occupy during the interview with ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... find all the energetic impelling faculties behind it, and all that moderates, checks, and enlightens before it. Thus the occipital development makes a powerful, domineering, conquering character, as the frontal makes a passive, unselfish, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... Hamilton also learned that Boston was the conspicuous head and centre of resistance to the crown, that she had led the colonies in aggressiveness since the first Stamp Act of 1765 had shocked them from passive subjects into dangerous critics. He had letters which admitted him to clubs and homes, and he discussed but one subject during his visit. There were no velvet coats and lace ruffles here, except in the small group which formed the Governor's court. The men wore ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and others who surrounded him addressed him in words more violent and offensive than Mr. MacNeill's, and threatened him with corporal punishment. As it appeared to the draughtsman that it was all a pre-arranged affair, he remained passive, lest a development of the situation should lead—as it was probably intended that it should lead—to his exclusion from the Lobby. Punch himself, however, snapped his fingers at this argumentum baculinum, and Mr. Furniss, with rare good taste, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Phoebe only shook her head. She knew. It would only be to no purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Commandment. Thus faith goes out into the works and through the works comes to itself again; just as the sun goes forth unto its setting and comes again unto its rising. For this reason the Scriptures associate the day with peaceful living in works, the night with passive living in adversity, and faith lives and works, goes out and comes in, in both, as Christ ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... counted the days to the steamer, and her spirits rose with each one. Fleda's spirits were quiet to the last degree, and passive, too passive, Mrs. Carleton thought. She did not know the course of the years that had gone, and could not understand how strangely Fleda seemed to herself now to stand alone, broken off from her old ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... which way they would go. If they went on the other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground and—who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements of ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the holidays, seemed to Peter to change very little. His relations with his father were curiously passive during this time, and suggested, in their hint of future developments, something ominous and uneasy. They scarcely ever spoke to one another, and it was Peter's object to avoid the house as often as possible, but in his father's silence now (Peter himself ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Croisier's salon, a power at least equal to the salon d'Esgrignon, larger numerically, as well as younger and more energetic, made itself felt all over the countryside; the Collection of Antiquities, on the other hand, remained inert, a passive appendage, as it were, of a central authority which was often embarrassed by its own partisans; for not merely did they encourage the Government in a mistaken policy, but some of its most fatal blunders were made in consequence of the pressure brought to bear ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... and he took her in his arms without asking her indulgence, and regardless of the indignation of the mob of men about her. Ysabel, whose being was filled with tumult, lay passive as he held her closer than ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... provinces, who justified personal flattery by speculative principles of servitude. These new advocates of prerogative were heard with pleasure by the court, and with patience by the people, when they inculcated the duty of passive obedience, and descanted on the inevitable mischiefs of freedom. The lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... as oft, he lay and could not sleep. His soul was like an empty darkened room, Through which strange pictures pass from the outer world; While regnant will lay passive and looked on. But the eye-tube through which the shadows came Was turned towards the past. One after one Arose old scenes, old sorrows, old delights. Ah God! how sad are all things that grow old; Even the rose-leaves have a mournful scent, And old brown letters are more sad than graves; Old ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"—which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true of all times ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... to fall into two classes, which would in modern phrase be called exploit and industry. Industry is effort that goes to create a new thing, with a new purpose given it by the fashioning hand of its maker out of passive ("brute") material; while exploit, so far as it results in an outcome useful to the agent, is the conversion to his own ends of energies previously directed to some other end by an other agent. We still speak of "brute matter" with something of the barbarian's realisation ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... fashionable lady's toilet; but now he is in blissful ignorance of minutiae, and sees only the tout ensemble, which he pronounces perfect. He was half afraid of her, though, she seemed so cold, so passive, so silent, and when in the same breath Susie Granger asks if he ever saw anyone so lovely as Ethelyn and bids him kiss her quick, he starts and hesitates, and finally kisses Susie instead. He might, perhaps, have done the same with Ethelyn if she had not stepped backward to avoid it, her ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... unstirred by her splendid beauty. He found himself wondering why one kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who bore it was entirely passive. If this girl had been looking at him the matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often downright hypnotic; but she was looking at the work in her hands, and, so far as could be judged, she had altogether forgotten ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... their talents procured them popularity. They became enemies to the clergy, because their patron was a Bishop; and endeavoured to render their benefactor odious, because the world could not forget, nor they forgive, how much they were indebted to him.—Vice is not often passive; nor is there often a medium between gratitude for benefits, and hatred to the author of them. A little mind is hurt by the remembrance of obligation—begins by forgetting, and, not uncommonly, ends ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... alone, when his departing footsteps had ceased to echo along the corridor without, Mademoiselle Stephanie drew a long, quivering breath and moved to a chair by the window. She sank into it with the abandonment of a woman at the end of her strength, and sat passive with ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their position, and there to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... most prudential; and therefore, lest the malice and double-dealing of the Chinese might have given rise to some sinister incident which would be afterwards laid at his door, he resolved to continue passive as long as it should appear that he lost no time by thus suspending his own opinion. With this view he promised not to take any immediate step himself for getting admittance to the Viceroy, provided the ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... learned one secret, and am exposed to one danger. I have taken—to save you—it may be only a respite—one step, the remembrance of which is insupportable. But I was passive. I am fallen from light into darkness. There ends my share in your confidence and your fortunes. I will know no more secrets—no more disgrace; do what you will, you shall ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... by his side in silence. Her breath was coming a little quicker, her fingers lay passive in his. Then for a moment he felt the grip of them almost burn into his flesh. Still ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he turned in desperation to Benjamin Clymer. The bank president's state of mind at the extraordinary masquerade and sudden death of his popular and trusted cashier bordered on shocked horror, which had made him a passive witness of the rapidly shifting scene. Rochester clutched his arm in his agitation. "Get the twins out of here—do something, man! Don't you know that Turnbull was ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of this person!' said Ella rapidly, under her breath, in French. Unfortunately, George's acquaintance with that tongue was about on a par with the plumber's, and he remained passive. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... pain of major excommunication (wherefrom, unless at the point of death, absolution was not to be granted save by the Roman pontiff himself); of forfeiture besides of active and passive vote, and of all dignities, administrations, and offices whatsoever; furthermore, of disqualification to hold and exercise the same in the future—all moreover to be incurred ipso facto by all religious, no matter what privileges had been granted them by the said Clement and other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... explanations that might endanger Birch, or Harper, or both. Unused to contention, and really much attached to her kinsman, the feeble objections of Miss Peyton gave way to the firmness of her niece. Mr. Wharton was too completely a convert to the doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, to withstand any solicitation from an officer of Dunwoodie's influence in the rebel armies; and the maid returned to the apartment, accompanied by her father and aunt, at the expiration of the time that she had fixed. Dunwoodie and the clergyman were already there. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... influence also must be traced the spirit of materialism which is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man. This view was entirely set aside by Chu ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... captain had no intention of being a passive observer of what was about to transpire in the water; for he leaped into his boat, and ordered his crew to back her. In an instant they were pulling with all their might; and the boat had nearly run over Pearl before the captain gave the ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... when the writer is at a loss for what to put down. To do is to act, and therefore it never can, in any of its parts, supply the place of a neuter verb. 'How do you do?' Here do refers to the state, and is essentially passive or neuter. Yet, to employ it for this purpose is very common. Dr. Blair, in his 23d Lecture, says: 'It is somewhat unfortunate that this Number of the "Spectator" did not end, as it might have done, with the former beautiful period.' That is to say, done it. And ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... words have they written their definition of anarchism, and I am taking and using the term in this volume in the sense in which it is used most commonly by people in general. If this offends the anarchists of the non-resistant or passive-resistant type, it cannot be helped. It is the meaning that the most active of the anarchists ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... insuperably soared that cliff, Unfathomably thus its sheer descent Walled the abyss. Again he heard that Voice: "Henceforth no place remains for active toils, Penance for acts perverse. Inactive sloth Through passive suffering meets its due. On earth That sloth a nothing seemed; a nothing now That chasm whose hollow bars thee from the Blest, Poor slender film of insubstantial air. Self-help is here denied thee; for that cause A twofold term thou need'st of pain love-taught To expiate Love that ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... may make an adequate impression, it is necessary, if not to discard all these passive methods, at least to supplement them by exercises which call out the activity of the pupil. Some such exercises have already been experimented with, and others might be devised.[243] The pupil may be set to analyse engravings, narratives, and descriptions in such a way as to ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... before the provinces had yielded a prey rendered easy by distance and irresponsibility, Italian cities had been forced to complain of the violence and rapacity of Roman commanders quartered in their neighbourhood,[118] and the passive silence with which the Praenestines bore the immoderate requisitions of a consul, was a fatal guarantee of impunity which threatened to alter for ever the relations of these free allies to the protecting power.[119] But provincial commands offered greater temptations and a far more ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of herself as they approached the gates, and when her husband said, "Here we are at home!" and for the first time kissed her on the lips, she hardly knew of it: it was no more than the passive acceptance of a greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her hurrying life of the last three months a show, in which her consciousness was a wondering spectator? After the half-willful excitement of the day, a numbness had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and so general and absorbing was the spell produced by his presence and his mien, that, in all that crowd of fierce and excited spirits, there was not one so bold as to presume to brave his anger Sailors and marines stood alike, passive, humbled and obedient, as faulty children, when arraigned before an authority from which they feel, in every fibre, that escape is impossible. Perceiving that no voice answered, no limb moved, nor even an eye among them ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands: some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, with open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, were hit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who were hurt submitted to rough handling, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... participles, three active and three passive, corresponding to three tenses. They are formed in the ACTIVE by means of the endings *-ant*, *-int*, and *-ont*, and in the PASSIVE by means of the endings *-at*, *-it*, *-ot*, with the addition of the adjectival termination ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... an opposition between them which he might well have shrunk from submitting to if he had fully suspected it. So far as he did suspect it he was on the contrary, after a short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly passive as might be. He really had a sort of sense of what she knew. He had quite the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this was a concession that in general he found not easy to make to women, he made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... did not yet know the man she was dealing with—Harboro. She was entirely misled by the passive manner in which he permitted her ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... implies them all Finite: for there cannot be more than one Infinite: Nor to ascribe to him (unlesse Metaphorically, meaning not the Passion, but the Effect) Passions that partake of Griefe; as Repentance, Anger, Mercy: or of Want; as Appetite, Hope, Desire; or of any Passive faculty: For Passion, is Power limited ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... looking toward the mantel, her eyes half closed, her chin level, her head set as if she were enduring something. Her hands, very white, lay passive on her dark gown. From the window corner Fred looked at them and at her. He shook his head and flashed an angry, tormented look out into the blue twilight over the Square, through which muffled cries and calls and the clang of car bells came up from the street. He ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... not too great, or my reading too small, I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives by parallels, it would trouble him for virtue and fortune both to find for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more impression upon the several states of Europe, than it received from thence. But I confess unto your Lordship I could not stay here, but went a little ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... people gossip as much as they like. Don't say anything more about it for the present in your paper. The matter goes deeper than many inexperienced friends of Wagner's imagine. I will explain it to you more clearly by word of mouth. Meanwhile I remain passive— for which Wagner will thank ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... territorial offices, who will feel free from self-reproach at the results? Grant that the situation is bad. Can there be a doubt of the duty to make the best of it? Do you ask how? By being an active patriot, not a passive one. By exerting, and exerting now when it is needed, every form of influence, personal, social, political, moral,—the influence of the clubs, the Chambers of Commerce, the manufactories, the colleges, and the churches,—in favor of the purest, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... indeterminate happenings, and a great thought in the Mind of its Architect, a Pure Mathematician, serves merely to divert the activity of the scientific brain from its concentration on the contradictions and confusions of the all too real outward world to a state of passive and unreal contemplation." (Professor H. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Tocqueville, they fined a member of the burgher guard for absenting himself from a Te Deum. All self-government was gone. A country parish was, says Turgot, nothing but "an assemblage of cabins, and of inhabitants as passive as the cabins they dwelt in." Without an order of council, the parish could not mend the steeple after a storm, or repair the parsonage gable. If they grumbled at the intendant, he threw some of the chief persons ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... strong, is, in the main, a joyless tie Of naked instinct, wound about the heart. Happier, far happier is thy lot and ours! Even now—to solemnise thy helpless state, 40 And to enliven in the mind's regard Thy passive beauty—parallels have risen, Resemblances, or contrasts, that connect, Within the region of a father's thoughts, Thee and thy mate and sister of the sky. 45 And first;—thy sinless progress, through a world By sorrow darkened and by care disturbed, Apt likeness bears to hers, through ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... ill-treat them, pull their hair, and strike them with impunity. The officers have generally a fair supply of professional knowledge, and some are highly educated. The men have a larger amount of passive courage than of dashing bravery; yet they will usually follow where their officers lead them. The private has a possibility of rising to the rank of an officer after twelve years' probation, and even sooner by some dashing ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... life—abandon the principles of your Church, and become a perjured traitor and an apostate, to prevent another person from discharging his duty as a gentleman! This were indeed killing your friend to prevent the risk of his running himself into danger. Let the Passive Obedience, which is so often in your mouth, and no doubt in your head, put your feet for once into motion, and step aside for ten minutes. Within that space your assistance may be needed, either as body-curer ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... chronicles is actually suit-speak — the obfuscatory language of press releases, marketroids, and Silicon Valley CEOs rather than the playful jargon of hackers (most of whom wouldn't be caught dead uttering the kind of pompous, passive-voiced word salad he deplores). ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... not to be brought home for some time, the doctor said; and their mother was not able to go to them; so Christie was left to the almost unbroken quiet of her forsaken nursery. She needed rest more than she was aware, and sank into a state of passive indifference to all things which would have alarmed herself had not her kind friend, Mrs Greenly, been there to insist that she should be relieved of care till her over-tasked strength should be in some measure restored. In those very quiet hours, thoughts ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... refuse all sexual favours whatsoever, till the men have come to terms of peace. In cases where the women must yield 'par force majeure,' then it is to be with an ill grace and in such a way as to afford the minimum of gratification to their partner; they are to lie passive and take no more part in the amorous game than they are absolutely obliged to. By these means Lysistrata assures them they will very soon gain their end. "If we sit indoors prettily dressed out in our best transparent silks and prettiest gewgaws, and with our 'mottes' all nicely depilated, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... very vague; that they were not considered suitable acquaintances for her, of course meant that Reuben could have no profit from them, and would probably suffer from their contact. But in these things she had long been passive, careless. Experience had taught her how easy it was for husband and wife to live parted lives, even whilst their domestic habits seemed the same as ever; in books, that situation had formerly struck her as inconceivable, but now she suspected that it was the commonest ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... The suddenness of the blow, its indignity, and these new relations which it seemed designed to indicate, bewildered her. She stood passive while the Princess took the letter from her fingers and tore it into pieces. Then she ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extravagantly Arminian. The Calvinists illustrate their belief by a single illuminating word, Cat-hold, and the Arminians by another, Monkey-hold. Could you find better illustrations? The cat takes up the kitten and carries it in its mouth; the kitten is passive, the cat does everything. But the little monkey holds on to its mother, and clings with might and main. Those who have watched the "cat-hold" in the house, and the "monkey-hold" out in the jungle, can appreciate the accuracy ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... where the street light now poured in, blending its pale effulgence with the blue radiance from the grate. He was a man to be admired. His frame a trifle stouter than when we last saw him, but still supple and firm; the set of the shoulders, the taper of the body to the waist, the keen but passive face, the poise of the whole figure was that of one who, tasting of the goodness of life, had not gormandized thereon. He was called a success, yet in the honesty of his own soul he feared the coin did ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... slumbering ear, and disturbed and troubled, without fully awakening her. But whatever the cause of the strange foreboding, the effect soon became too strong and exciting to permit her longer to remain passive. And she arose to examine the apartment, and see what precautions could be taken to render it more safe against the intrusion of enemies, whether they should come in the shape of men or wild beasts. On approaching ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... heap for none, that has a homely one! Where fashion makes the law—your umpire which You bow to, whether it has brains or not. Where Folly taketh off his cap and bells, To clap on Wisdom, which must bear the jest! Where, to pass current you must seem the thing, The passive thing, that others think, and not Your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... on physical facts, and these of the most obvious character, the observing faculties of mankind can be to this degree the passive slaves of their preconceived impressions, we need not be surprised that this should be so lamentably true as all experience attests it to be, on things more nearly connected with their stronger feelings—on moral, social, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... active harm in the somewhat passive soul of John Eddring's assistant, William Carson, the large-handed young man who acted as clerk and stenographer and rendered more or less blundering service about the office. Perhaps there was more of curiosity than evil in his nature. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... mild, dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism had early molded to passive obedience for life. She maintained the same attitude with her husband, whose constant kindness and indulgence never had succeeded in triumphing over that humiliated, taciturn nature, indifferent to everything, and, in some sense, irresponsible. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... war in producing general distress among the poor, both in the agricultural and manufacturing districts. The agricultural population being more thinly scattered, and more passive by habit and education, bore their sufferings with exemplary patience; but the manufacturing labourers in the midland and northern districts, as well as in some parts of Scotland, exhibited a contrary spirit. Secret combinations and seditious assemblages became the order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... he made a religious visit to several of the society in Long Island. Here it was that the seed, now long fostered by the genial influences of Heaven, began to burst forth into fruit; Till this time he seems to have been a passive instrument, attending only to such circumstances as came in his way on this subject. But now he became an active one, looking out for circumstances for ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... capable of propagating its fermentation by "infection," or "contagion," to fresh wort. In both cases it is the solid living particles which are efficient; the liquid in which they float, and at the expense of which they live, being altogether passive. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... strange. She, at least, felt sure that it was as impossible for the young duke to take offense at the rudeness of the old iron man as at the raging of a dog or the tearing of a bull. But she did not drop a hint of this to the egotist, who never imagined passive insolence to be at the bottom of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the objects that had taken his brother's attention, and for a few moments the boys seemed passive spectators of the ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... corner of his eye to see if the minister would open on the trail of this hint. Telford's passive face was discouraging but Galletly was not to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is merely passive; and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or not; and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... ready for the fatal spring, when an arrow pierced his heart; and the next moment a young, athletic brave sprang from the thicket, and clasped the dark damsel to his breast. She remained an instant, passive and bewildered; the next, she sprang from the embrace of the stranger, and with Indian dignity thanked him for his kind and timely aid. She then turned her face toward her father's camp, and with the fleetness of an antelope ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... diversity of terms used to describe the pacifist position shows that none of them satisfactorily expresses the essence of the pacifist philosophy. Among those commonly used are: (1) non-resistance, (2) passive resistance, (3) non-violent resistance, (4) super-resistance, (5) non-violent non-cooperation, (6) civil disobedience, (7) non-violent coercion, (8) non-violent direct action, (9) war without violence, and ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... German, Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new character. Whereas in his migrations northward his active and political energies are called out and brought to their highest perfection, we find the other side of the human character, the passive and meditative, carried to its fullest growth in India. In some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda we can still watch an earlier phase. We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods as Indra and the Maruts, defending their ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... involved in the general ruin of the monasteries. The fate of its last abbot, Richard Whiting, is one of the tragic stories of the time. Though a "weak man and ailing," he refused to surrender the property of his abbey. But Thomas Cromwell had a "short way" with passive resisters. In his private "remonstrances," amongst other jottings was found, "Item—The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also executed there." In accordance with this pre-arranged programme Whiting was arraigned ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... gone in when the wanderers came out of the shrubbery and rejoined me. Chillington wore his usual passive look, but Miss Liston's face was happy and radiant. Chillington passed on into the drawing-room. Miss Liston lingered a moment ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... with a constitution sufficiently robust and strong to withstand the ravages of the struggle for existence, instead of remaining a sickly and atrophied organism, afraid of everything new and opposed to material struggles from fear of the wrath of Heaven and from a passive desire to live in an ideal ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... muscular action. The power manifest in these rapids moves one with a different sense of awe and terror from that of the Falls. Here the inhuman life and strength are spontaneous, active, almost resolute; masculine vigour compared with the passive gigantic power, female, helpless and overwhelming, of the Falls. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... be a real contest she did not know; she felt sure that Lady Pickering did not love Gerald Digby, that she herself loved him she had not yet told herself, and that he loved neither of them was obvious. It seemed a mere struggle for supremacy, in which Lady Pickering's role was active and her own passive. For when she saw that Lady Pickering looked upon Gerald as a prey between them, that she seized, threatened and allured, she herself, full of a proud disdain, drew away, relinquished any hold, any faintest claim she had, handed ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... his Indian experience should reasonably have known so much better, was disposed, from the mere passive habits of hearing and reading unresistingly so many assaults of this tone against our Indian policy, to go along with my mother. But he was too just, when forced into reflection upon the subject, not to bend at times to my way of stating the case ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... received in the same way for "If he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." His conclusion is that "The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working," R.V., but I prefer to regard the Greek participle in the original as in the passive voice, and then the meaning would be, as suggested by Dr. S.A. Keen in his Faith papers, "The prayer of a righteous man being energized" (by the Holy ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... the same as that of his predecessors, to establish the king's authority over the great barons. What especially distinguished him was his clear perception of the truth that he could only succeed by securing, not merely the passive goodwill, but the active co-operation of those who, whether they were of Norman or of English descent, were inferior in wealth and position ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... answered Tad, with a grin, winking at Ned and the Professor. Jim Nance appeared to take only a passive interest in the matter. He might have his say later provided his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... of Madame d'Hymbercourt, and thus came under the eyes of Princess Mary. That fair little lady also built in her heart an altar to an unknown god, if hints in Hymbercourt's letters were to be trusted. Her maidenly emotions were probably far more passive than Max's, though I have been told that a woman's heart will go to great lengths for the sake of an ideal. Many a man, doubtless, would fall short in the estimation of his lady-love were it not for those qualities with ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... committees of investigation, none of which have ever made an unfavorable report. They have been tested and demonstrated so often that further repetition appeared needless, since the unquestioned demonstrations produced no result beyond a passive assent; for men's minds are generally so firmly held in the bondage of habit, fashion, and inherited opinion, as to be incapable of entering freely upon a new realm of intellectual life without pecuniary motive; ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... of the opposing armies at this time was not altogether passive. A war of attrition was carried on continuously. This took the form of daily bombardments by the artillery of positions and areas behind the trenches; also the raking of parapets of opposing trenches, and No Man's Land, by machine gun fire at night. Sniping with the rifle had become a fine ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... than useless members; but what, in the name of God's justice, should His vicegerent, law, visit upon the man who wrings another life away by slow tortures, and torments heart and soul and flesh for lingering years, where the victim is passive and tenacious, and dies only after long-drawn anguish that might fill the cup of a hundred sudden deaths? Yet what escapes the vicegerent shall the King himself visit and judge. "For He cometh! He cometh to judge the earth; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... rather come in contact with the nobler activities—the mental and spiritual forces—through the minds and works of men. I would find such attrition more helpful than this phase of creation which thou callest 'nature,' whose unfolding is more passive, depending on its ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... equality of wretchedness. Yet it is to these same suffering peasants, the bone and sinew of the land, that reformers must look for support. It was the peasantry of Servia, headed by George the Black, that in 1800-1812, rose in rebellion, and whose success infused life and vigor into the more passive provinces. They, too, were peasants—those brave and resolute men who expelled from the provinces the robber princes, and almost gained a national existence. Many of these same peasants, men in whose breasts still lingered the valor that made ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... up. Her body was quivering. She lay, for a moment, passive in his arms. Then she sprang away. She stood with her back to him, looking out of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle. At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature. But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave and kindly man into this ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... be, very irregular in all languages, is az or ats in Chayma; and uochiri (in composition uac, uatscha) in Tamanac. It serves not only to form the Passive, but it is added also, as by agglutination, to the radical of attributive verbs, in a number of tenses.* (* The present in the Tamanac, jarer-bae-ure, appears to me nothing else then the verb bac, or uac (from uacschiri, to be ), added to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... derived from its study ought to find a welcome home in every tolerant religion. It promotes a far-sighted philanthropy, the acceptance of parentage as a serious responsibility, and a higher conception of patriotism. The creed of eugenics is founded upon the idea of evolution; not on a passive form of it, but on one that can, to some ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Harmony turned to him; but if she had expected Peter to support her, she was disappointed. Whatever decision she was to make must be her own, in Peter's troubled mind. He crossed the room and stood at one of the windows, looking out, a passive participant ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... prosperous tradesman can afford to feel independent of any particular customer. At every election the votes are more and more the voter's own. It is their minds, far more than their personal circumstances, that now require to be emancipated. They are no longer passive instruments of other men's will—mere organs for putting power into the hands of a controlling oligarchy. The electors themselves are ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... suspect that his own chief, the minister of police is present," said Thugut, turning with a smile to Count Saurau, who, being condemned to witness this scene in the capacity of an idle and passive spectator, had withdrawn into a bay-window, where he had quietly ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... interest, in the succession to the family estate, continued to maintain the coldness between them. Richard knew enough of the world, and of his brother's temper, to believe that by any ill-considered or precipitate advances on his part, he might turn passive dislike into a more active principle. It was accident, therefore, which at length occasioned a renewal of their intercourse. Richard had married a young woman of rank, by whose family interest and private fortune he hoped to advance his career. In her right he became ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... inanition than over any definite question of policy; and we were going to the country to face what is paradoxically termed "the music." It would be a General Election in every sense of the word, for there was no particular question of the hour—this was before the days of Passive Resistance and Tariff Reform—and our chief bar to success would undoubtedly be our old and inveterate enemy, "the pendulum." Of course we were distributing leaflets galore, and blazoning panegyrics ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... but moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition of what love meant in another woman's life—these messengers and forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in this mere silence, this mere ceasing from ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... uneasily, and looked away for a moment from the fascination of the gleaming eyes, and as though it was he who had broken the spell, the girl's face changed. With the exception of the eyes all her features had been passive up to that moment, but then it was as though a reservoir of passion had suddenly broken out and flooded over her face. He gave one scared look at it and stepped ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... toilette they may go to the sitting of the court, or to the soiree of the prefect; they are forbidden to make mediocre verses; to wear beards; the frill and the white cravat are laws of state. Rule, discipline, passive obedience, eyes cast down, silence in the ranks; such is the yoke under which bows at this moment the nation of initiative and of liberty, the great revolutionary France. The reformer will not stop until France shall ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependants. The Laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... think she fancies much the man: Only, to make the reconcilement perfect Betwixt the families, she's passive in it; The choice being but ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... recollections of my adventurous childhood is the ride I had on a pony's side. I was passive in the whole matter. A little girl cousin of mine was put in a bag and suspended from the horn of an Indian saddle; but her weight must be balanced or the saddle would not remain on the animal's back. Accordingly, I was put into another sack and ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... whilst I licked and caressed her, I could not help thinking then, as I have often thought since, of how much happiness we had lost by not being more indulgent to each other's faults, forgiving and loving one another. She also seemed to be of this opinion, if I might judge by the grateful look and passive manner in which she received my attentions. Perhaps the near approach of her end gave a softness to her nature which was unusual to her; it is not unlikely; but, of a certainty, I never felt before how much I was losing, as when I ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... me that I can do nothing; and, now, what in the h—l do you want me to do?" Such inconsistent teaching was always repugnant to common sense and natural reason. There are many persons yet teaching the old falsehood that man is passive in his conversion, notwithstanding the fact that men are imperatively commanded to convert—turn, that their sins may be blotted out. Men are yet found in some Protestant pulpits who spend a great deal of ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... commandant. She was also very uneasy as to what would take place at Paris during the interval, and spoke to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.—"The King," said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes of Louis ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... argued with the insinuating, doubting earnestness so characteristic of the man who knows that he is operating against his own best interests in the face of one who fully understands the weakness that impels him. Mrs. Braddock stood before him, cold, passive, unconvinced. Her greeting for the newcomer had been most unfriendly. She deliberately turned her back on him, after the first short "good afternoon." As for the stranger, he did not take part in the conversation. He stood close to her elbow, the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the first of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second absolutely opposed to reason." Second, "the idea of life, as it is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a power, an operation, a communication, since this life no longer remains, so to speak, latent or passive in God and in the Word, but through them reaches the believer. It is not a mental somnolent thing; it is not a plant without fruit; it is a germ which is to find ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... therefore help, and not harm, the German and Scandinavian congregations. Luther's teachings thoroughly understood in a living way will bind the young to their Christian convictions, as much as the knowledge of a language binds them to that language. The passive interest therefore, on the part of German and Scandinavian pastors and congregations in circulating the English Luther, as far as their young people are concerned, should give way to active interest, for ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... in their chamber. Barbara threw herself on a couch beneath the window, and gazed with unseeing eyes up into the depths of the Italian sky. She was stunned by the news the letter had brought, and, as yet, thought was completely passive. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... friendship is not advanced much by just letting them choose us. That is to become the victim, not the master of our circumstances. And while it is true that we are acted on as much as we act, and are chosen as much as we choose, it is not permitted to any one merely to be passive, except at ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... but it sometimes helps to produce the proper mental state; singing softly also tends to harmonize the 'conditions,' as the professionals say. Don't argue and don't be too eager. Lean back and rest. Take a passive attitude toward the whole problem. I find the whole process very restful. Harris, will you turn down ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced are very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order not to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they are represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of the real events. Of these imaginary characters, the most successful is Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an ideal portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and the most finished in execution, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Beneath his passive exterior his nerves thrummed; his muscles had grown as hard as wood. Yes! Yes! But no! He had heard nothing; no more than a single step, a single foot-pressure on the planks within the door. Dear God! He ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... designing, whether from oracular advice or his own pleasure, to erect an earthen chariot upon the top, he entrusted the workmanship to Tuscans of the city Veii, but soon after lost his kingdom. The work thus modeled, the Tuscans set in a furnace, but the clay showed not those passive qualities which usually attend its nature, to subside and be condensed upon the evaporation of the moisture, but rose and swelled out to that bulk, that, when solid and firm, notwithstanding the removal of the roof and opening the walls of the furnace, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Erastian doctrines of the magistrates, according to which the sins of believers were to be punished by civil authority, distressing to their consciences. They drew up a plantation covenant, promising to subject themselves "in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements" as might be made for the public good in an orderly way by the majority vote of the masters of families, "incorporated together into a town fellowship," but "only ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... be held up to the people of the United States as a presidential candidate if there is any doubt about Ohio. I do not, as many think, seek for the high honor, nor do I ask anyone to aid me in securing the nomination. I am as passive about it as any man can be whose merits or demerits are discussed in that connection. I do not desire the nomination, nor shall I encourage anyone to secure it for me until Ohio Republicans, who have conferred upon me the honors I have enjoyed, shall, with substantial unanimity, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... (inactive) 683. lie by, lie on the shelf, lie in ordinary, lie idle, lie to, lie fallow; keep quiet, slug; have nothing to do, whistle for want of thought. undo, do away with; take down, take to pieces; destroy &c 162. Adj. not doing &c v.; not done &c v.; undone; passive; unoccupied, unemployed; out of employ, out of work; fallow; desaeuvre [Fr.]. Adv. re infecta [Lat.], at a stand, les bras croisis [Fr.], with folded arms; with the hands in the pockets, with the hands behind one's back; pour passer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... admirable 'confutation' of the text. The preacher, among the four, who reached the climax of absurdity was Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester. He was one of the extreme High Churchmen of his time: no man urged the doctrine of passive obedience to a more abject degree, or did more to support with the sanction of religion the most extravagant pretensions of the Crown. It was Andrewes who at the Hampton Court Conference declared that James was inspired by God—the same man who ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... mistake of yours in this respect might by itself produce fresh difficulties and have a complicating and perplexing retro effect upon the existing ones; because both, seeing that they must be sufferers in the end, may begin to look only to their own safety, and become inclined to refuse that passive obedience which till now constitutes the vehicle of your ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which, when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,—the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,—a lift to them, as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... with his hands, and large tears fell over them. Passionless as he was, the priest was touched by this overwhelming emotion in one who had hitherto been so passive. He laid his hand on the sufferer's arm, and kindly said: "Tell me, my son, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... inaudible conversation. Occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When he looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... time to time, without an artistic novel. This is a great pity, and I should be very willing that readers might feel something like the pangs of hunger and cold, when deprived of their finer fiction; but apparently they never do. Their dumb and passive need is apt only to manifest itself negatively, or in the form of weariness of this author or that. The publisher of books can ascertain the fact through the declining sales of a writer; but the editor of a magazine, who is the best customer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their fertility of resources; their cheerfulness under hunger and privation; and, above everything else, their submission to law with every temptation to break it,—proved that the spirit of the nation was unbroken; that their passive virtues rivalled their most glorious deeds of heroism; that, if light-headed in prosperity, they knew how to meet adversity; and that they had not lost faith in the greatness of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... always felt wicked after it, for the pretty things were seldom necessaries, but then they cost so little, it wasn't worth worrying about, so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... enter on a realm where all— Use, custom, morals—are untried and strange, In Poland here reigns freedom absolute; The king himself, although in pomp supreme, Must ofttime be the serf of his noblesse; But there the father's sacred power prevails, And in the subject finds a passive slave. ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... to moderate compromise so inveterate, nor the reluctance to advance away from the past so unconquerable, as in England; and nowhere in England is there so settled an indisposition to regard any thought or sentiment except in the light of an existing social order, nor so firmly passive a hostility to generous aspirations, as in the aristocracy. Yet it was precisely an English aristocrat who became the favourite poet of all the most high-minded conspirators and socialists of continental Europe for half a century; of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting, and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and pressed it ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Aberdeen, whilst restraining the popular courts, gives to them a true popular authority; and the Non-intrusionists, whilst seeming to set up a democratic idol, do in fact, by dexterous ventriloquism, throw their own all-potential voice into its passive organs. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... said to be very numerous, would make good their promises of assembling & taking an Active part with us, in endeavouring to re-establish His Majesty's Government. Our experience has shown that their numbers are not so great as had been represented and that their friendship was only passive; For we have received little assistance from them since our arrival in the province, and altho' I gave the strongest & most pulick assurances that after refitting & depositing our Sick and Wounded, I should return to the upper Country, not above two hundred ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... confess; for another, Emmeline, one whom I expect you will, for my sake, do all in your power to please, and—and love. Do not start, my child, the task will not be very difficult." He kissed her cheek with a cheerful smile, and left her, motionless and pale, every feature expressive of passive endurance, her hands clasped tightly on her heart. Emmeline sat before her mirror, and permitted Fanny to arrange her beautiful hair as she would; to her it mattered not. The words of her father alone rung in her ears. That night sealed her fate. Fanny spoke, for ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... race at least the transient nobleness of a real patriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled the bitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon the course of political events. Southern Germany remained passive, and supplied Napoleon with a reserve of soldiers: Prussia had to look elsewhere for allies. Its prospects of receiving support were good, if the war should prove a protracted one, but not otherwise. Austria, crippled ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his senses than the others, and I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to rouse him. Thinking that a plunge in the sea-water might have a beneficial effect, I contrived to fasten the end of a rope around his body, and then, leading him to the companion-way (he remaining quite passive all the while), pushed him in, and immediately drew him out. I had good reason to congratulate myself upon having made this experiment; for he appeared much revived and invigorated, and, upon getting out, asked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate—the same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my bosom the season of 1882 came ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... saith, by the obedience of one, of one man Jesus Christ, many are made righteous; by the righteousness of one (Rom 5), So then, if they be MADE righteous by the righteousness of one: I say, if many be made righteous by the righteousness of one, then are they that are so, as to themselves, passive and not active, with reference unto the working out of this righteousness. They have no hand in that; for that is the act of ONE, the righteousness of ONE, the obedience of ONE, the workmanship of ONE, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Egotist, he would have been expected to resort at once to revengeful violence in the presence of such insults as those of the persecutors of the Son of God. The Source of all activity can hardly be conceived of as passive; but the passivity of the Christ of the cross suggests that no outrage by men can divert the almighty power from its moral purpose. This is really a gathering together and lifting on high of the doctrine of the Sermon ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... mouth popped open, but without uttering a sound he stooped and grabbed for his rifle. I placed my foot on it and seized his arm and pleaded with him to regain his senses before he took any action. During all this the warrior remained as passive as the tree-roots ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... close his eyes, was sleeping soundly, while Bruce in the adjoining room, who had looked forward to a night of rest in a real bed, was lying wide awake staring into the dark. His body was worn out, numb with exhaustion, but his mind was unnaturally alert. It refused to be passive, though it desperately needed sleep. It was active with plans for the future, with speculation concerning Sprudell, with the rebuilding of the air castles which had fallen with his failure to find mail. In the restless days of waiting for Toy to get well enough to leave alone for a few ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... years the sword was sheathed: Its mist of green o'er battle plain For nigh two decades Spring had breathed; And yet the crimson life-blood stain From passive swards had never paled, Nor fields, where all were brave ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... resorts from unbearable torment. Then as he looked it changed and grew soft; and finally, springing up, he went over to where she sat, dropped on his knees before her, and seizing her hands kissed them one after the other till tears began to mingle with the kisses. She was passive; she could not drive him off; she felt that she and he must have this one moment to bury their past in; it was only when her hands were growing wet with his tears that she ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Mrs. Elliot, beauty to Susan Warrington, a splendid vitality to Evelyn M., because Terence spoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the moods of depression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would sit passive in her chair exposed to pain, and Helen's fantastical or gloomy words were like so many darts goading her to cry out against the hardness of life. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again this stress of feeling slackened, and life went on as usual, only with a joy ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Seraphina's hand was lying passive in my palm—warm, soft, living; all the life, all the world, all the happiness, the only desire—and I dared not close my grasp, afraid of the vanity of my hopes, shrinking from the intense felicity in the audacious act. Father Antonio—I must ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... fellow-citizen will go ahead of you with the utmost gallantry, though it be to storm a Malakoff or grapple with a mad dog; but to stand aside and let you get on or off a ferry-boat before him is a strain upon his manners enough to dislocate their every limb. Well, remembering that the passive mood comes after the active in grammatical sequence, we will not despair of a development of the passive virtues even in the "go-ahead" American. And then the law of the cabin will no longer be mob-law, nor its motto, "Every man for himself, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... to a plain—there was not much to see but one had plenty of light. No, there was not much to see and, frankly, for a considerable time I didn't even attempt to perceive anything. It was only the illuminating impression that remained. It remained satisfactory but in a passive way. Then, about a week later, I came upon a book which as far as I know had never attained any prominence, the rather summary recollections of an Assistant Commissioner of Police, an obviously able man with a strong religious strain in his character who was ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... croune. So Baleus[368] in his Sacro-sancta Regum Maiestas, cap. 17; but so be Cromwell conquered our country, ergo, he was our lawful governour and had just title to our croune. If so, whow could compliance and passive obedience to such a on be treason? In this he triumphs so, that he addes, let al the Royalists answer to this wtout contradicting themselfes if they can. No definition out of the civil Law can be brought of treason which wil comprehend necessary compliance; ergo, its no treasonable. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... did you frighten me so?" He took her hands from her face, and drew her from the shadow of the curtain into the evening glow. Her hands lay passive in his; her eyes held the despair of a runner spent and fallen, with the goal just in sight. "Would have had me go again to the mountains for you, little maid?" Haward's voice trembled with the delight ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... filled them with sound principles of action. "There are two antagonistic elements of society in America," said he, in his speech at Cleveland, "freedom and slavery. Freedom is in harmony with our system of government and with the spirit of the age, and is, therefore, passive and quiescent. Slavery is in conflict with that system, with justice, and with humanity, and is, therefore, organised, defensive, active, and perpetually aggressive. Freedom insists on the emancipation and elevation ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... really no telling what damage might ensue. And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman—had time and an adoring husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity a deux as any of us may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility—why, Mrs. Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade would never have come into this ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... sleepers lay in uneasy attitudes; here two chums alongside, flat upon their backs like dead folk; there a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his arm; there another half seated with his head and shoulders on the bench. The most passive were continually and roughly shaken by the movement of the train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out their arms like children; it was surprising how many groaned and murmured in their sleep; and as ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whole. If the Slav ever came under the despotism of a strong personal government, the idea must come from some external source; it must be imposed, not grow; for it was not indigenous in the character of the people. It would be perfectly natural for them to submit to it if it came, for they were a passive people, but they were incapable of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
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