"Passiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men to caress them, to hold their hands, or to stroke their bodies. It is very weakening. It causes a girl to yield to temptation because it induces passiveness to ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... Wild Man appeared to be the chief favourites for the prize, and knowing the acquisitive propensities of The Chaperon, all were surprised to note his passiveness during the competition; however, he explained his inertia by saying that his sleep had been disturbed by visions for which no microscope was needed. He offered to sketch what he had seen, but could give no more definite description ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... laws that you can trace. But invariableness, he maintains, is no proof of inaction. RIGHT ACTION is invariable; RIGHT ACTION is absolutely conformed to law. Why, therefore, should not the secret of nature's invariableness be, not passiveness, but rightness?' The unchanging uniformity of Nature's course proves her holiness—her willing, unvarying obedience to the Divine law. 'The invariableness of Nature bespeaks Holiness as ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... passiveness or by mistake, one of Palmer's fists landed square on the nose of Alfred. The red blood spurted over his shirt front. Before Jake or Gideon could interfere, Alfred had the man by the coat collar raining open handed slaps on his face, slaps that so resounded ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... circumambient atmosphere of temperature equally enthusiastic; as he watched among the rafters of the roof the snakes swallowing the rats, the rats devouring the lizards, the lizards snapping up the spiders, the spiders snaring the flies in eloquent representation of the life struggle, his studied passiveness would be broken by strange sounds from the dilapidated hut at the back of his house. A voice, imitative of that of the Third Assistant who taught the annex, hurled forth questions, which were immediately answered by another voice, curiously like ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... resistance, and while the dreadful work of death was doing, "they were as lambs led to the slaughter; & as sheep before the shearers are dumb, so opened they not their mouths." There was but a solitary exception to this passiveness, and it was well nigh terminating in the escape of its author, and in the death of some of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... or vicious collegian on the lookout for innocent girls, have perceived her nervousness, her vice? Would he not have hypnotized her, as it were, by amorous touches, by skillful caresses and reduced her to the absolute passiveness of an animal, who had been taken unawares, without any care for the morrow, or what the consequences of such ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... unknown to him, and so sweet was the comfort of her presence and the touch of her living hand after all those hours of perturbation alone, that Fenwick made no protest against her remaining beside him. But a passiveness that would have belonged to an invalid or a sluggish temperament seemed unlike the strong man Rosalind knew him for, and she guessed from it that there was more behind. Still, she said nothing, and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... retire for the night. Most of the party went below, leaving no one on deck but Cap, the Sergeant, Jasper, and two of the crew. Arrowhead and his wife also remained, the former standing aloof in proud reserve, and the latter exhibiting, by her attitude and passiveness, the meek humility that characterizes ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard's house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and therefore of course indemonstrable and incapable of further analysis, the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body, action, passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions into some ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... little body, acted on by the big thoughts, was moved from one side to another all night, so that she never slept a wink, still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, of poor Mary, her father's criminal passiveness, and that most occult remedy which so completely ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... fascination of his voice. That musical pleading of love, those burning kisses, and those passionate glances flooded her entire being with an overwhelming and mad desire for joy. She abandoned herself to him with the passiveness of a fascinated creature, without a word of protest or resistance, but also without a consciousness of what she was doing; in a word, ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... life into me. There is nothing more horrible than to suffer passively; and anything that rouses me from my apathy is acceptable. I repeat to myself, "At least to-morrow and the day after, you will have something to do to further your plans;" and that promises a transition from utter passiveness to a feverish activity. I must be doing something; it is a question of not losing control over my senses. I pledged my word to Aniela not to attempt my life, and I cannot go on living as I do. If the road I am taking be ignominious, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... her knees, and in the very act a tremor came over her; in the renunciation of her proud erectness, her mental attitude seemed changed, and she found herself in a now state of passiveness. Her ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... "Do? When I don't know whether I'm on my feet or my head?" he said. His drugged passiveness showed Oliver with desolating clarity that anything that could be done would have to be done by himself. He crept over toward the window with a wild wish that black magic were included in a Yale curriculum—the only really sensible thing he could think of doing would ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... not wonder that, overtaken in a career of misery, the consequence of my own imprudence, I should have been arrested by the voice, and smitten by the eloquence, of Mr Clayton. I do not wonder that I listened to his arguments, and observed his conduct, until I was reduced to passiveness, and my mind was willing to be moulded to his purposes. But I do wonder and lament that any obscuration of my judgment, any luxuriance of feeling, should have permitted my youthful understanding for an instant to believe that to such men as my examiners the keys of heaven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to passiveness. She turned one inquiring look to her husband, but he looked sullen, and, evidently cowed by his mother, uttered not a word. She could only submit, and Catherine herself add that there was room for Madame ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Singhalese people there is to be traced much of the genius of their religion. The same passiveness and love of ease which restrain from active exertion in the labours of life, find a counterpart in the adjustment by which virtue is limited to abstinence, and worship to contemplation; with only so much of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... vessels, ships evaded if superior, and beaten if equal—they rendered benefits a thousand-fold greater, to say nothing of the glory they acquired for the nation, and the character they imparted to it, than any that would have resulted from a state of passiveness within the harbors. Confident that this is the true policy as regards the employment of the navy proper, we doubt not that it will in the future be acted on, as it has been in the past; and that the results, as regards both honor and advantage, will ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... well that this heroism is not like the heroism which we love. For us, heroism must before all be voluntary, freed from any constraint, active, ardent, eager and spontaneous; whereas with them it has mingled with it a great deal of servility, passiveness, sadness, gloomy, ignorant, massive submission and rather base fears. It is nevertheless the fact that, in the moment of supreme peril, little remains of all these distinctions and that no force in the world can drive to its death a people which ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... each of the numerous halts which they made during their advance, they favoured us with a general, but most innocuous discharge of their carbines; and at last, gaining confidence, I suppose, from our passiveness, and from the noise and smoke they themselves had been making, three squadrons which had not yet been under fire, formed open column and advanced at a trot. Without giving them time to halt or reflect—"Forward! Charge!" shouted the officers, urging their own horses to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale. But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles .. of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Ward was acquiescing in all Henry's projects with calm desperate passiveness. She told Mary that she had resolved that she would never again contend with Henry, but would let him do what he would with herself and her sisters. Nor had his tenderness during her illness been in vain; it had inspired reliance and affection, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the human body of Christ intensifies all our thoughts and ideas regarding the immensity of the sacrifice which He made for our sinful race upon the cross. Nothing can be more striking and startling than the passiveness with which, for our sakes, God as man submitted His incarnate body to the horrors and tortures of the crucifixion. But our wonderment at the stupendous sacrifice increases when we reflect that, whilst thus enduring for our sins the most cruel ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... enlightened teacher, are in their degree inevitable. And by this process, humility and docile dispositions may exist towards the master, endued as he is with the power which personal presence confers; but at the same time they will be liable to overstep their due bounds, and to degenerate into passiveness and prostration of mind. This towards him; while, with respect to other living men, nay even to the mighty spirits of past times, there may be associated with such weakness a want of modesty and humility. Insensibly may steal in presumption and a habit of sitting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... more terrible to Shenac than positive illness would have been. Her memory was failing, and she was becoming in many things like a child. She was more easily dealt with in one sense, for she was hardly ever fretful or exacting now; but the gentle passiveness that assented to all things, the forgetfulness of the trifles of the day, and the pleased dwelling on scenes and events of long ago, were far more painful to her children than her ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... was clear they were prepared to take no chances with the outlaws. In spite of the passiveness of the Queen's men, their hands were locked behind them with force bars about their wrists. When a quick search revealed that the three were unarmed, they were herded onto the riser by two of their captors, while the other pair remained behind, ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to give her liberty excited her suspicions. She knew he would permit her to leave the Hall only that he might watch her, and, if possible, entrap her and John. Therefore, she rode out only with Madge and me, and sought no opportunity to see her lover. It may be that her passiveness was partly due to the fact that she knew her next meeting with John would mean farewell to Haddon Hall. She well knew she was void of resistance when in John's hands. And his letter had told her frankly what he would expect from her when next they should ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... similar passiveness on Mr. Bultitude's part was due to a very natural and proper desire to do everything without scandal, and in a legitimate manner; to march out, as it were, with the honours of war. Perhaps it was simple dullness. The fact remains that it was not till then that he saw a way ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... was surprised at the eagerness which animated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They were new dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and unconcern had dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed the supreme expression ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... outward signifies strength, power, audacity, domination, arrogance, abruptness, activity, abundance. The elbow drawn inward, signifies impotence, fear, subordination, humility, passiveness, poverty of spirit. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... I am content to wait. I am for Wordsworth's creed of "wise passiveness." I should as soon think of reading my destiny on the sole of my boot as in the palm of my hand. The one would be just as illuminating as the other. It would tell me what I chose to make it tell me. That and no more. And so with the stars. People who pretend to read the riddle of our affairs ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... less I deem that there are powers, "Which of themselves our minds impress, "That we can feed this mind of ours, "In a wise passiveness. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... my eyes, appeared to add a certain horror to this sense of helplessness, of failure, that dragged me under. Deep down within me, down below my love for Sally or for the child, something older than any emotion, older than any instinct except the instinct of battle, awakened and passed from passiveness into violence. "Let me but start again in the race," said this something, "let me but stand once more on my feet." The despondency, which had been at first formless and vague as mere darkness, leaped suddenly into a tangible shape, and I felt that the oppressive weight of the debt on my shoulders ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... transient energy, arising from the power of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the character—gentleness in its excess—gentleness verging on passiveness—gentleness, which not only ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... but in so grave—so sullen a mood—and now and then under the influence of Morpheus, when some critical strokes are making, that I fancy the skill of this Gentleman's Pencil will be put to it, in describing to the World what manner of man I am." This passiveness seems to have seized him at other sittings, for in 1785 he wrote to a friend who asked him to be painted, "In for a penny, in for a Pound, is an old adage. I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter's pencil that I am now altogether at their beck; and sit 'like ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... diminishes a man's power in another way less obvious, but not less certain. I had often occasion to remark how injurious it was to the impression of Coleridge's finest displays where the minds of the hearers had been long detained in a state of passiveness. To understand fully, to sympathise deeply, it was essential that they should react. Absolute inertia produced inevitable torpor. I am not supposing any indocility, or unwillingness to listen. Generally it might be said that merely to find themselves in that presence argued ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... changed from praise to censure, scrutinising and criticising every act in his long public career. It reviewed his war record, disclosed his part in the convention of 1864, and hinted at uncanny financial transactions. His service as the figurehead of Tweed's conventions, and his passiveness after possessing knowledge of the infamous circular of 1868 to which his name had been forged, also became the subject of severe censure. Though he neither shared Tweed's corrupt counsels nor sanctioned his audacious schemes, Tilden's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
