"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knowing the philosophy of miracles the reason why we do not always succeed. We can not always secure the impressible condition by producing the quiescence of the large brain. But if we understand the theory of hypnotism we shall be able to put the cerebrum at rest and secure the passive impressible state of the cerebellum; that is, an introverted condition of the mind. This securing of interior perception is the basis ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... do sometimes make vines; turnips remain passive: cause unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will be vain. But diet, bathing, etc. etc., followed uniformly, will wean him from his folly—so fear ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me, while I was yet in the world, I have been taught and guided by visions. For in the painful linking together of our waking thoughts we can never be sure that we have not mingled our own error with the light we have prayed for; but in visions and dreams we are passive, and our souls are as an instrument in the Divine hand. Therefore listen, and speak not again—for the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a mere nod (if my malign Compeer but passive keep) Would mend that old mistake of mine I made with Saul, and ever consign All Lords of War whose sanctuaries ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention had such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... "Bristol Patriotic and Constitutional Association," to co-operate with them, in counteracting that unwarrantable influence, manoeuvre, and deception, which have reduced the electors of this city to mere political cyphers, to passive spectators of the general wreck, freemen with no other appendage of freedom but the empty name; we therefore pledge ourselves, individually and collectively, to assist and protect them in the recovery of our just and constitutional liberties. 7th. That a public ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... by Keith's childhood was more acute than the image of Granny seated in the centre of the kitchen, her stolid, yet pleasant old face bent over some household task, and her whole figure instinct with a passive protest against her enforced dependency or, maybe against life's arbitrariness in general. One moment she seemed to be brooding deeply, and the next she looked as if there was not a thought in her head. For one reason or another, her anomalous position and peculiar attitude ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... city—the one which the said father should select. That convent the archbishop assigns to him as a prison and place of confinement; and he is ordered not to break it under penalty of greater excommunication, latae senteniae ipso facto incurrenda, and suspension from active and passive vote for three years. And in order that the said imprisonment might be effective, and not be hindered by the religious of the said order, the royal aid shall be petitioned through this royal Audiencia, to whom it rightly belongs to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... erosive power of water and the weather quite overtaxed. It must be true, I said, what the geologists tell us, that water and air did all this; but while you look and wait, and while generations before you have looked and waited, all is as quiet and passive as if the slumber of ages wrapped hill and vale. Invisible giants have wrought and delved here of whom we never catch a glimpse, nor shall we, wait and watch we never so long. No sound of their hammers or picks or shovels or ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... But he was passive in her hands, and submitted to have a big handkerchief put over his head for a cap, to hold on his arm the baby she improvised from a sofa-cushion of costly plush, around which she arranged as a dress an expensive tablespread, tied with ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... and Wool—his dispositions to meet the 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... of the woodpeckers. One of the golden eagles made an impressive picture as he stood bolt upright on the top of a tall pine-stump, braving the storm, with his back to the wind and a tuft of snow piled on his broad shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every storm-bound bird seemed more or less uncomfortable, if not in distress. The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not to say song, came from a single bill. Their cowering, joyless endurance offered striking ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head swung round, pulled by ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Sir James said to himself that he had completely resigned her, since with the perversity of a Desdemona she had not affected a proposed match that was clearly suitable and according to nature; he could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her engagement to Mr. Casaubon. On the day when he first saw them together in the light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had not taken the affair seriously enough. Brooke ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... estimating the influence of fungi upon man, we naturally enough seek in the first instance to know what baneful effects they are capable of producing on food. Although in the case of "poisonous fungi," popularly understood, fungi may be the passive agents, yet they cannot be ignored in an inquiry of this nature. Writing of the Uses of Fungi, we have already shown that a large number are available for food, and some of these real delicacies; so, on the other hand, it becomes imperative, even with stronger emphasis, to declare ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... dealings with his contemporaries. Young people are apt to regard a youthful doctrinaire, who has an opinion on everything, with sincere abhorrence. He bores them, and to the young boredom is not a condition of passive suffering, it is an acute form of torture. Moreover, the stock of opinions which a young man holds are apt to be parrot-cries repeated without any coherence from talks overheard and books skimmed. But in a modest and ingenuous youth, filled to the brim with ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Peggy Lacey, 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 ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... that the present position of matters between them, as well as the past unhappiness, was quite as much her fault as his, and the act of separation more so—he having been the passive and consenting party, did not consider it specially incumbent on him to make things easy for his wife. In his irritation and disgust at her heartless selfishness, he half determined to make them very much the reverse. He was not surprised at his wife's communication; he knew perfectly well that ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... was leaning against the mantelpiece, contenting himself with responding from under his indolent eyelids to the glances Miss Assher was constantly directing towards him as she spoke. 'She is very much in love with him,' thought Caterina. But she was relieved that Anthony remained passive in his attentions. She thought, too, that he was looking paler and more languid than usual. 'If he didn't love her very much—if he sometimes thought of the past with regret, I think I could bear it all, and be glad to see Sir Christopher ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... will not willingly agree that pure observation is more rare than is believed? We are apt to confuse our sensations, our opinion, our judgment, with what we experience, so that we do not remain long in the passive attitude of the observer, but soon go on to make reflections; and upon these no greater weight can be placed than may be more or less justified by the nature and quality of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... He lifted her passive hand to his lips, passed into their little parlor, and closed the door. Grace turned to her nurse, and in low, almost passionate utterance, said: "Now tell ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... visit to his premises has disquieted him. But, no," he added, pushing the huge gate, which gave way, "the door stands invitingly open; and here we are within the forbidden ground, without other impediment than the passive resistance of a heavy oak door moving on ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... morning it seemed quite natural. But at night, why should there be this difference between him and the acres of land that cooled all round him until the sun returned? What lucky chance had heated him up, and sent him, warm and lovable, into a passive world? He had other instincts, but these gave him no trouble. He simply gratified each as it occurred, provided he could do so without grave injury to his fellows. But the instinct to wonder at the night was not ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... that is here, the Hour that is coming. Simple as is the arrangement of the whole, nevertheless, so skilful is the pourtrayal that each figure seems to move before our eyes. We almost see the despairing past sink into the abyss, her passive, erect sister, the dominant hour, letting go her hand, whilst, radiant and impatient for her own reign to begin, the joyous impersonation of the future springs upward as ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Heroism, active or passive, is the lesson taught by this romance, and we know that the author, in his life, illustrated both phases of the quality. His novels, which, when he was alive, the booksellers refused to publish, are now passing through their tenth and twelfth editions. Everybody reads "Cecil Dreeme" and "John ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... 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. Levy: "The ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... him, as the price of support, to give to his Italian kingdom a really national government. Failing to act for itself, the population of all Italy, except Naples, was parcelled out between Austria and the ancient dynasties; but the old days of passive submission to the foreigner were gone for ever, and time was to show whether those were the dreamers who thought of a united Italy, or those who thought that Metternich's statesmanship had for ever settled the fate of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... reformation against the papists; while the arguments of the established church against the dissenters were the same which were urged by the papists against the protestant reformation![172] When the presbyterians were our masters, and preached up the doctrine of passive obedience in spiritual matters to the civil power, it was unquestionably passing a self-condemnation on their own recent opposition and detraction of the former episcopacy. Whenever men act from a secret motive entirely contrary to their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... British blood." And whence the manners of the multitude? The colours of their manners, black or fair, Falls from above; from the complexion falls Of state Othellos, or white men in power: And from the greater height example falls, Greater the weight, and deeper its impress In ranks inferior, passive to the stroke: From the court-mint, of hearts the current coin, The pupil presses, but the pattern drives. What bonds then, bonds how manifold, and strong To duty, double duty, are the great! And are there Samsons that can burst them all? Yes; and great minds that stand in need of none, Whose ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... was unclean by God's ordination, but the other was unclean by sin. Now, then, it will be demanded, how a soul, before it was a month old, could receive sin to the making of itself unclean? I answer, There are two ways of receiving, one active, the other passive; this last is the way by which the soul at first receiveth sin, and by so receiving, becometh culpable, because polluted and defiled by it. And this passive way of receiving is often mentioned in Scripture. Thus the pans received the ashes, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to energy] in time. It does not, however, perceive intellectually at one time and at another time not, but separate intellect is alone this very thing which it is; and this alone is immortal and eternal. We do not, however, remember because this is impassive; but the passive intellect is corruptible, and without this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... far-spreading, passive sense common to all live flesh that quivers under the goad of pain. The sensitive schedule of the Cerambyx-grub, therefore, is limited to taste and touch, both exceedingly obtuse. This almost brings ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... questions, a word or two, on her fide. But without waiting to hear all, he turns abruptly upon Harry Blew, who is seen some paces off. Neither by word, nor gesture, has the sailor yet saluted him. He stands passive, a silent spectator; as Crozier supposes, the greatest criminal on earth. In quick retrospect of what has occurred, and what he has heard from Don Gregorio, how ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... felt themselves so in severing from their parents. Stanhope was in high wrath against his, and he soon rekindled the already excited mind of Somerset to a responsive demonstration of resentment. They determined to show that "they were not such boys as to submit any further in passive obedience to the stern authority dominating over them." Sir Fulke's particular charge against his son was a "womanish softness, unworthy his loftier sex!" "Show him," cried Stanhope, that "you have the hardihood of a true ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... 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 ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... were by this time over; and the poor petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing, in blind, passive, self-surrender to panic, absolutely descended both flights of stairs. Infinite terror inspired him with the same impulse as might have been inspired by headlong courage. In his shirt, and upon old decaying stairs, that at times ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... listened to her in silent surprise. Through all the years of our close intimacy this passive force in her character had been hidden from me—hidden even from herself, till love found it, and suffering called ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... they were released Maurice never knew. He lay wrapped up to the eyes, numbed and passive, of body, but mentally travelling with an extraordinary rapidity. At first he was in the valley. He saw it, as he had seen it in old days, in snow, its river ice-bound, its waterfall arrested in the midst of an army of crystal spears. White mountains rose round it to a low sky, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... exploit and experiment upon. I myself being something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of mankind. I cannot understand ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... claimed to herself a bravery equal to that of her men folk. She might well have claimed more. She possessed, in addition to that active courage which belongs to the adventurer, the passive, courageous endurance of the woman. So, with an unruffled calm, she set about the daily "chores" that were hers, and added to them all those labours which were necessary that this outland home should lack nothing in its welcome ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... although they differ much in the propensity to annoy and reduce animals and each other under their individual control; the passive submit at once, but the energetic will not; it is then that the active assailant learns an important lesson, which can only be learned in society, and which to him, is of great importance. The difficulty on the part of the teacher, is to know when to interfere, and when to let alone. I ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... 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 now the ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... cigar case and passing one to his friend. "In answer to your first, I may say that under the circumstances there was some credit for being merry. It happened at a deuced bad time, but Sir Thomas took his defeat manfully, while those animated volcanoes, Hawley and Markham were wonderfully passive—a fact we must attribute to Major McNair. The general melee and pow-wow in which I was so unceremoniously toasted, taught a lesson. Jove, the Major is entitled to an order if he can, by any means, reclaim any of the 52nd. But the most amusing of the crowd is Trevelyan, who reminds ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... supposing that men are devoid of any principle of action, and of any means of discernment in themselves; that they have no moving spring in them; that they are inert matter, passive particles, atoms without impulse; at best a vegetation indifferent to its own mode of existence, susceptible of receiving, from an exterior will and hand, an infinite number of forms, more or ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... prejudicial to Richard's 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "cease from sin" may be called passive, but to "get virtue" and "to cleanse one's own heart," or mind, are altogether active qualities. Buddha taught that we should not merely not be evil, but that we should be ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... these obstacles are viewless to others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the influences just reviewed, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... 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
... but when she did speak, in her voice of slow music, people listened. And yet one never thought of her, Brown remembered, as a silent person; the effect of her presence in any circle was that of a personality of the active, not the passive, sort. The eyes of one speaking must, involuntarily, be drawn to her because she was listening, if I may coin a phrase, vividly. As for her looks—she possessed that indescribable charm which is not wholly a matter of beautiful features, but lies rather in such details as the lift of the eyebrow, ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... about the house and garden, unable to settle anywhere, and it was an added vexation to her disturbed spirit that Basil should be giving himself heart and soul to the entertainment of that dreadful girl in the summer-house. It was well enough that he should entertain her, and keep her passive, but Aline would have liked him to be a martyr, sacrificing his own inclination for his sister's good. She did not wish to think that there was something about this young, crude creature which attracted men to her, and caused them to find pleasure in her society. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this cheerful Don Mike, who had been born and raised there, who was familiar with every foot of it, and doubtless cherished every tradition connected with it. He had imagination, and in imaginative people wounds drive deep and are hard to heal; he loved this land of his, not with the passive loyalty of the average American citizen, but with the strange, passionate intensity of the native Californian for his state. She had met many Californians, and, in this one particular, they had all been alike. No ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... passions and emotions that torment, excite or depress the human soul, and find a resting place in the human breast, obtain expression in the eyes. At one moment the instruments of receiving and imparting pleasure, at another the willing or passive instruments of pain, their influences and changes are as varied and boundless as the empire of thought itself." Through their silent expressions the mind reveals its workings to the external world in signs more rapid and as palpable as those uttered ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... wife? She had remained a passive spectator of all that occurred. When the voice of her defender first broke on her ear, she turned and looked at him for a moment, then, as if indifferent whether his defense was successful or not, she turned her head away and listlessly gazed at the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... passive recipients of this unusual adulation produced only embarrassment on the part of the regulars who simply had to sit there, smiling and taking it. Just to break the one-sided nature of the demonstrations, one of the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... walks under the immediate influence of his celestial Father; this independence, however, cannot be accomplished before he has succeeded in subduing his sensual appetites, and has bent them to follow the divine direction. Thus acting, he will not remain a passive spectator of the vicissitudes which accelerate or retard the fulfilment of that which the Divine wisdom purposed as the final aim of the creation, but, through the immortal spirit transfused in him, he will feel impelled to take some active part in the great work ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... bend or bow. Here again, to their great discredit be it spoken, the editors of Shakspeare (Second Part of Hen. IV., Act I. Sc. 1.) are at fault for an example. Mr. Halliwell gives one in his Dictionary of the passive participle, which see. In Shakspeare it occurs as a ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... further to excuse either himself or his family, and having shown himself passive and docile was again taken into favour, and spent the pleasantest evening he had had in his own house for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... said with a smile. "So don't blame me, Miss Slade. I was merely a looker-on, a passive spectator—until the right moment arrived. Do I gather that the right moment had not actually ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... advances to the girl, however, and for that we must consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,—still a pale, passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's insignificance again saved her—shall ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... impregnable. Parts of it were 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 ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... splendid army, as thoroughly as he had puzzled Comptroller Croft. And not only had that diplomatist and his wiser colleagues been hoodwinked, but Elizabeth and Burghley, and, for a moment, even Walsingham, were in the, dark, while Henry III. had been his passive victim, and the magnificent Balafre a blind instrument in his hands. Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy. Nothing could surpass his ability to command but his obedience. And it is very possible that had Philip followed his nephew's large designs, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passion of the vain for seeing a defect in themselves as a charm and calling attention to it. The lower part of his sallow face suggested weakness—the weakness so often seen in the faces of professional men, and explaining why they chose passive instead of active careers. His forehead was really fine, but the development of the rest of the cranium above the protuberant little ears was not altogether satisfying to a claim of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of the white 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
... report has been repeated as a fact by the present writer, and has not been contradicted by the Rev. Mr. Byrne. But it is right to add that a very respectable gentleman, a witness of that day's proceedings, has distinctly contradicted it. He added that the Rev. Mr. Byrne remained a passive spectator; and he defended the conduct of those who really influenced the people, on the ground that the preparations seemed of their very nature to preclude the possibility of success; and that it was the sacred duty of every man capable of appreciating the position and resources of the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... prison. It is a remarkable contrast to the rest of the fortress, which is surrounded by crenellated walls of high finish. These walls being built of the red sandstone of the neighbourhood, and seventy feet in height, give to the exterior of the buildings a solemn air of passive and silent strength, so that, even after so many years of havoc, the outward appearance of the Imperial residence continues to testify of its former grandeur. How its internal and actual grandeur perished will be seen in the following ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... oftentimes could not converse together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence. Their passive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow. All the officers of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy. These valorous muleteers of the sea defied ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Englishmen transplanted to American shores, living for a time subject to traditional English restraints, then, in a period of rapid expansion, losing their cohesiveness and their values under the impact of the American experience and their own natures. Their political expression soon passed from a passive to an active mode. The law became something they made, not something someone else applied to them. Land was similarly not something bestowed on them by generous parents, but something one took from Nature, or Nature's surrogate, ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... reactions to danger and combat have all been thus determined. That man is bearded while woman is not,—that woman has potentially functional breasts while man has not,—the aggressive pugnacity of man contrasted with the more passive timidity of woman, have all been evolved in the sex struggle, surviving because most effective in that struggle. These so-called secondary sexual characteristics are an expression of the influence of the internal secretion of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... inspection of my eye. How often have I squandered paint upon the ungrateful object without adding a cubit to its stature! It refused to look like flesh and blood, but resembled rather some half-made creature flung on the passive canvas in a liquid state, with its edges running over into the background. There are a good many of these people in literature, too,—heroes who, like home-made paper dolls, do not stand up well; or if they manage ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... independence of thought and action into the hands of some despotic confessor. She permitted herself no original opinion, no preference of companion or employment; in everything she was guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton air, she went about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she liked, or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the dictates of her own reason and conscience ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... not be such a Tyrant of a Father: Such an insolent and brutal Brother: Such an unrelenting Sister: Such a passive Mother—Every-body is not of this Opinion. It were to be wished, ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... thoughts happen if they wanted to, perhaps. She was always rather—rather passive about things, you know. They took hold of her if—well, as I say, if they wanted to." He turned to her quickly as he asked, "Are you at all ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... colored population of Canada at that time was small compared to what it now is; nevertheless, it was sufficiently large to attract the attention of the government. They were almost to a man fugitives from the States. They could not, therefore, be passive when the success of the invaders would break the only arm interposed for their security, and destroy the only asylum for African freedom in North America. The promptness with which several companies of blacks were organized and equipped, and the desperate valor they displayed in this brief conflict, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... than their rulers, learned and inquisitive men more than the military, etc. For there are innumerable things of this kind that require not only a general knowledge gained from the stars which are the agents, but also a particular one of the passive subjects. Nor are elections to be wholly rejected, though not so much to be trusted as predictions; for we find in planting, sowing, and grafting, observations of the moon are not absolutely trifling, and there are many particulars of this kind. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... 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 rolled ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... reason as a 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
... sin, and maybe for fresh indulgence in the same. Happily, their minds are now awakening from long darkness and ignorance, to view in its true light the degrading bondage in which they have so long been content to remain passive. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... are so stupid in passive goodness, that their whole life wouldn't fill three feet of a moving ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... almost resistlessly provocative to her innate lust for adventure. For upward of two hours she had been passive there in her chair, a prey to uneasy thoughts; now she was weary with much thinking, but as far as ever from the wish to sleep; never, indeed, more wide awake—possessed by a demon of restlessness, consumed with desire to rise up and go out into the scented ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... lips disclose The triumphs of the opening Rose; O fair! O graceful! bid them prove As passive to the breath of Love. 20 In tender accents, faint and low, Well-pleas'd I hear the whisper'd 'No!' The whispered 'No'—how little meant! Sweet Falsehood that endears Consent! For on those lovely lips the while 25 Dawns the soft relenting ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wholly vacant or wholly occupied with his business. Many things were made clear to him in this manner, and he had come to the conclusion that the best way to get the wisdom enjoined by the Bible and learned men, was to escape from yourself, in short, to become passive. In long summer days, slowly travelling his circuit of some forty miles, calling at every house where he was well known, and must needs be in no haste to trade, (for country people were never sure of what they wanted until they ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... love,—she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her dream had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she read the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of love's interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of assimilation ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... especially by Spanish parents. That she should object to the engagement, or refuse to carry out her father's plan never crossed the Viceroy's imagination. That she might love another, was an idea to which he never gave a thought. It was the business of a well-brought-up Spanish maiden to be a passive instrument in the carrying out of her father's views, especially in things matrimonial, in which, indeed, love found little room for entrance. But Donna Mercedes loved Captain Alvarado and she cared nothing for Don Felipe. Not that Don Felipe was disagreeable to her, or to any ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Red Sea, than by a march through a region where the means of subsistence do not exist, and where the Bedoweens, by choking or concealing the wells, might in a moment cut off even the scanty supply of water which the country affords. This mode of passive resistance was well understood and practised by them as early as the time of AElius Gallus, the first Roman general who conceived the hope of rifling the virgin treasures popularly believed to be buried in the inaccessible hoards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... wit the pupil of the soul's clear eye, And in man's world the only shining star, Looks in the mirror of the phantasy, Where all the gathering of the senses are, From thence this power the shape of things abstracts, And them within her passive part receives, Which are enlightened by that part which acts, And so the form of single things receives; But after by discoursing to and fro, Anticipating and comparing things, She doth all universal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... smile and greeting were always ready for him. Poor Clarence did not dream that she had found from certain incontestable signs and tokens, both in the young ladies and himself, that he did not require watching, and that becoming more resigned to Susy's indifference, which seemed so general and passive in quality, she was no longer tortured by the sting ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... endeavor? 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
... from all parts, from the Cape to Pietermaritzburg, but they might have conspired to assemble on the Cambuscan as a protest against high hopes and dreams of a promised land. The protest, let me add, was an entirely passive one. They stood aloof, watching the flashy gaieties of the hurricane-deck from their own sad penumbra—a dejected, wistful, whispering throng. "They simply don't occur," one of the be-diamonded ladies remarked to me, and ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It will not submit to a passive reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the French and Italian sources on which Chaucer ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... resist and suppress his struggles until he was dead? Do you think such a man would die easily? Do you think that to send him out of the world it would be enough to put your fingers to his throat—such little fingers as these?" she held up Faustina's passive hand in her own, before their eyes. "A man does not die in an instant by strangling. He struggles, he strikes desperate blows, he turns to the right and the left, twisting himself with all his might. Could this child have held him? I ask it of ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... so too, Malcolm. When Scotland is herself divided, Ireland passive, and all England hostile, success is hopeless. The Stuarts will never get such another chance again as they had on the day when we turned our backs on London at Derby, and I hope that they will not again make the attempt, especially as it is manifest now that France ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has been deemed worthy ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... couch in some respects a changed woman. It seemed to her she had lived years in that illness of two weeks. In her soul a battle had been waged, and the struggle had left her passive and unresisting; she was waiting. The outward result was a strange, new gentleness ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... 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 being made against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... into with the worst Grace imaginable; but they who know the World have seen it more than once. I have often, with secret Pity, heard the same Man who has professed his Abhorrence against all Kind of passive Behaviour, lose Minutes, Hours, Days, and Years in a fruitless Attendance on one who had no Inclination to befriend him. It is very much to be regarded, that the Great have one particular Privilege above the rest of the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... an impulse I could not resist, I stopped in our walk, and falling to my knee pressed her hand ardently to my lips. Madge did not withdraw her hand, nor did she attempt to raise me. She stood in passive silence. The sun's rays had risen as the sun had sunk, and the light was falling like a holy radiance from the gates of paradise upon the girl's head. I looked upward, and never in my eyes had woman's face appeared so fair and saintlike. She ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... that she will not be so passive as you think," said Mrs. Romaine, with some hesitation. "She has been brought up in a very different school from any that you would recommend. A girl fresh from a French convent is not an easy person to deal with. Whatever ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the greatest and surest source of happiness in sympathy with the good of mankind on a large scale, and had fitted him to work for this good of mankind in various ways. By the time he was twenty, his sympathies and passive susceptibilities had been so little cultivated, his analytic quality had been developed with so little balance in the shape of developed feelings, that he suddenly found himself unable to take pleasure in those thoughts of virtue and benevolence which had hitherto only been associated ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... bear in mind the final results of the European War and forestall the trend of events succeeding it so as to be able to decide upon a policy towards China and determine the action to be ultimately taken. If we remain passive, the Imperial Japanese Government's policy towards China will lose that subjective influence and our diplomacy will be checked forever by the combined force of the other Powers. The peace of the Far East will be thus endangered and even the existence of the Japanese Empire as a nation ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... soil. As for Hermione, her look of happiness had returned, but with an undertint of melancholy, visible perhaps only to Garnett, but to him always hauntingly present. Outwardly she sank back into her passive self, resigned to serve as the brilliant lay-figure on which Mrs. Newell hung the trophies of conquest. Preparations for the wedding were zealously pressed. Mrs. Newell knew the danger of giving people time to think things over, and her fears about her husband ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... beautiful to see the adoration many Indians heaped upon the driver, "Little Billy of the Stage Coach," and they understood from the overtures of the Indians toward "Billy" that they were safe in his coach, as long as they remained passive to his instructions, which were that they allow him to deal with whatever red ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... rid 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
... them that they intended to have been down the river this fall, but the waters were growing cold, and the winter advancing, which obliged them to go into quarters, but that they might assuredly expect them in the spring with a far greater number, and requested them to remain passive, and not inter-meddle unless they had a mind to draw all their force upon them, for that they expected to fight the English three years, in which time they should conquer; but that if they should prove equally strong, the French and the English would join to cut them all off and divide ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... still more subjective. "They are the specific activity of the sense organs, (not, therefore, passive as according to Helmholtz, but active functions of the sense organs). Perception arises when we combine our particular sensations with the pure images of the spirit or the schemata of the understanding, especially with the pure image ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... The old 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 him ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... a neutral, passive, selfish part, she will have to expiate it. A European transformation is inevitable. When it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... 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
... must ever be. The devotee of pure science never has practical developments as his primary aim; often he not only does not know, but does not in the least care whether his researches will ever lead to any beneficial result. In some minds this passive ignoring of the practical goes so far as to become active repulsion; so that some singularly biased minds will not engage in anything which seems likely to lead to practical use. I regard this as an error, and as the sign of a warped judgment, for after all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... repetition of itself but a snatch of varied melody which showed it to be no echo, although evidently an answer. There have been few moments in my life more crowded with happiness than that one. And it was not a passive feeling of enjoyment, but one that spurred me to action. The swift pace which we had all by this time reached was now too slow for me. Seized again by the same fierce passion which took possession of me at my first acquaintance with Mona's voice, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... her beauty and charm, soon vanished. There was no love between them. Allie had tried hard to care for him, but her heart seemed to be buried in that vast grave of the West. She was obedient, dutiful, passive, but she could not care for him. And there came a day when she realized that he did not believe she had come unscathed through the wilds of the gold-fields and the vileness of the construction camps. She bore ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... finest of all spectacles —that of a triumphant creator of works which are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. Does it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face with such a personality? Must not they who take any part whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings at Bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce reforms and to effect renovations in other spheres of life? Has not a haven been found for all wanderers on high and desert seas, and has not peace settled over the face ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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
... just as child is killed by an enraged snake. That man has no manliness whose energies have left him and who is overpowered with perplexity when an occasion for the exercise of vigour presents itself. Our actions are surely followed by their consequences. Whoever merely gives himself up to passive indifference (to worldly affairs) accomplishes no good. Instead of murmuring one must try to find out the way by which he can secure exemption from (spiritual) misery; and the means of salvation found, he must then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bare of clouds, and he could note the lapse of the night by the sinking of the moon. But he was by this time hardly in a condition to note anything more. He had thrown himself, face downwards, on the top of the log, his arms mechanically clasping it, while his mind sank into a state of torpid, passive suffering, growing nearer to the dreamy indifference which precedes death. His cloak had been torn away in the first rush of the inundation, and the wet coat began to stiffen in the wind, from the ice ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the theory of innate ideas had agreed in regarding all knowledge as something given, from without or from within. The knowing mind was only a passive recipient of impressions thus imparted to it. It was as wax under the stylus, tabula rasa, clean paper waiting to be written upon. Kant departed from this radically. He declared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's activity with its receptivity. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... possession of more varied reactions, were able to evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took refuge in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... asked herself what she had gained. She had renounced the passive acquiescence which she had won by years of hard struggle, and she had in exchange only a fierce unrest which was well-nigh unendurable. To be near Herman and yet to be as far removed from him as if the universe were between was a torture such as she had not dreamed ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... rather a close fellow. The same might be said of Murray, even in a greater degree. Few indeed guessed, when they saw his slight frame and delicate features, how much he would both dare and do. The power of passive endurance of all three was most fully tried during that awful night. None of them flinched. Murray alone, however, never allowed himself for a moment to lose his consciousness. The rain and sleet came ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... with merely passive or negative views, Burke was led to attempt a solution of the problem. He had never been under any illusion as to the possibility of limiting colonial constitutional pretensions. A free government was what the colonists thought free, and only they could fix the limit to their ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... the human species!—the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burden by thy extermination! Rum—poisoner! destroyer! that spits venom all around, and leaves the ground infected with slime! Accursed poison-makers and poison-dispensers!— do you imagine that I am altogether passive; a mean worm, organized to feel sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment? Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... catholic and comprehensive love toward all good men, those who sat in judgment on them. Something of this is due to the native nobleness of the men themselves, of whom the world was not worthy; something of it to their long discipline in the passive virtues under bitter persecution in their native land and in exile in Holland and in the wilderness; much of it certainly to the incomparably wise and Christ-like teaching of Robinson both at Scrooby and at Leyden, and afterward ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... he decreed that in future there should be none. But he built churches for the foreigners whom he brought into the country, and did not attempt to sustain the domination of the Muscovite clergy, who, like the English, professed passive obedience, but obeyed without approval. When the last patriarch was dying he expressed the wish that all men of other faith—Catholic, Protestant, and Mahomedan— should be burnt, and their places of worship ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... came up to Yerbury. The evening before, Irene Lawrence had gone to Sylvie's room, and found her kneeling by the open window, her face turned heavenward in a wordless prayer for strength. She knelt beside her, she took the passive hands in hers, she even touched her own cold lips to the colder forehead ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to see her? He haunted the house night after night. Those blue eyes never met his. No step responsive to his came from that door. It seemed to have been so long unopened that it had grown as fixed and hard as the stones that held its bolts in their passive clasp. He dared not watch in the daytime, and with all his watching at night, he never saw father or daughter or domestic cross the threshold. Little he thought that, from a shot-window near the door, a pair of blue eyes, like Lilith's, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... with real feeling; Frederic jumped up and slapped me on the shoulder, crying, "Gordon, you're the biggest old trump breathing;" while Albert and the captain shook hands with each other, in evident jubilation. Only Lord Ralles remained passive. ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him, kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her emotion meant, or his own, he could not have ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the western foothills of the Eagle mountains, unmoving hour by hour, his rifle shoved out before him among the dead grasses, his chin resting on the back of his folded hands, and always his attentive eyes roved from point to point over the landscape below him. A cat lies passive in this manner half a day, ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of his Conservatism that has put him wrong, even with those who regard politics as quite distinct from ethics. He defended Passive Obedience; he claimed to be the inventor of Divine Right; and the constitution of the Lutheran Churches contributed even more than the revival of the Civil Law to establish the absolute sovereignty of States. He proclaimed religious liberty, believing ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... her quiet hands, and smooth Down her patient locks of silk, Cold and passive as in truth You your fingers in spilt milk Drew along a marble floor; But her lips you cannot wring Into saying a word more, "Yes," or "No," or such a thing: Though you call and beg and wreak Half your soul out in a shriek, She will lie there in ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... suffered himself to be dragged without any resistance, any motion; the strong colour brought into his face while fighting was gone now, his countenance was livid pale; his lips were tightly held together, as if it cost him more effort to be passive, wooden, and stiff in their hands than it had done to fight and struggle with all his might. His eyes seemed the only part about him that showed cognizance of what was going on. They were watchful, vivid, fierce as those ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the nourishing substance they care for, and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. When spring and summer come, they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them about in the wind, or letting them be whisked about by it; for these tails are poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and bend in whatever direction the wind chooses to make them. The leaves make a deal of noise whispering. I have sometimes thought I could understand them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to think they ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... believers of the second and third centuries, proved of some accidental benefit to the cause of truth and religion. In modern times, a latent and even involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the variable order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... only, and sternly refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the State made implacable war upon them. Yet the spiritual and moral forces won the victory, and Christianity established itself throughout the empire. Universal ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nothing out of that old friar," said the Police Commissary to his friend, as they sat in the private cabinet of the former; "and I am very much afraid that we shall make nothing out of him. For quiet, aggravating obstinacy and passive resistance, recommend me ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... enough: he hurried away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to find in women exactly the same kind of sexual emotions, as they find in themselves, men have concluded that there are none there at all. So man has regarded himself as the sexual animal, and woman as either the passive object of his adoring love or the helpless victim of his degrading lust, in either case as a being who, unlike man, possessed an innocent "purity" by nature, without any need for the trouble of acquiring it. Of woman as a real human being, with sexual needs ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... is simply and altogether that which we make it to be. Modern philosophy has discarded the language which represented our knowledge of things as the result of impressions and the transmission of images.[2] If we still not only speak but think of ourselves as primarily passive and in contact with an alien world, this arises simply from the difficulty of conceiving a pure spontaneous activity. Driven from the crude imagination which found the primary condition of knowledge in the reception of "ideas" from without, "common sense" ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... mean. We were determined that this expedition should succeed, and we boggled at no means which promised to achieve our end. We have been beaten, but not through any fault of ours. We felt, not without good reason, that if Mr. Royson were compelled to return home you would be converted from a passive into an active enemy. So we adopted the leave-well-enough-alone policy, and, as one woman speaking to another, I really don't see what you have to grumble about. Blame us as much as you like, you still have the delightful ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... effect was so magnetic, It seemed like creative skill From the hand of the Great Master, To give passive ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... on my elbow, as on a battlefield, and look once more on the beings whom the scenes and happenings of the times have rolled up all together. I look at them all, plunged in the abyss of passive oblivion, some of them seeming still to be absorbed in their pitiful anxieties, their childish ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and give him a good flogging, instead of taking the flogging ourselves; and I 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, that he gave me a double dose; declaring ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. 'Besides,' he said, 'can't you understand that I'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... in the newspaper or is visible on every street corner. But the psychologically decisive factor here is not the fact of the mere repetition of the impression, but rather the stimulation of the attention which results from the repetition. If we remained simply passive and received the impression the second and third and fourth time with the same indifference with which we noticed it the first time, the mere summation would not be sufficient for a strong effect. ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... astonishing claim, namely, that he had no animosity against the Americans, and was not seeking a fight, meaning, doubtless, he would rather run than fight, any day, but that he felt remaining in permanent armed protest, passive though it was, sufficed to show the world his attitude toward our military occupation of the Philippines. The spectacle of a large number of well armed men who would not fight in any circumstances has the merit of novelty. It sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. But Capistrano evidently ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel |
