"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... younger than Lee was when our war began. It is to young Napoleon we must turn to find parallels for Lee's celerity. Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville may fitly be compared to Arcola and Rivoli. It has been observed that, like Napoleon, Lee avoided passive defence, seeming the assailant even when on the defensive. Like him, he was swift and terrible in availing himself of an enemy's mistakes. It can hardly be doubted that Lee's campaigns furnished more or less inspiration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Thus, in the "Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul," by Andrew Baxter, the existence of any active property or power in matter is explicitly denied, and the only property which is ascribed to it is a certain passive power, or "vis inertiae," by which it is incapable of changing its state, whether of rest or of motion. This "vis inertiae" is not only supposed to be the sole property of matter, but is even held to be inconsistent with, and exclusive of, any ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... 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 must die of its own inanity. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... after at length obtaining leave to return to Europe for that purpose—it was hard, we repeat, when hostilities did at last break out in America, that his energies should have been so cramped by the passive attitude of his superior. Remembering, however, the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the editor has refrained from transcribing aught reflecting on the memory of that superior when he could do so consistently with truth, although he feels acutely that the death of Sir Isaac Brock—hastened ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... ethical value, and reminds us of modern piety. But in all his relations with the gods qua citizen, he resigned himself to the trained and trusted priesthoods, who knew the secrets of ritual and all that was comprised in the ius divinum; and by passive obedience to these authorities he gradually began to deaden the sense of religio that was in him. And this tendency was increased by the mere fact of life in a city, which as time went on became more and more the rule; ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... at 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 wouldn't have ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... very largely, in other words to try essentially new ones.... I only regarded it as my business to satisfy myself as to the genuineness and authenticity of the phenomena already described by Mr. Guthrie. If I had merely witnessed facts as a passive spectator I should most certainly not publicly report upon them. So long as one is bound to accept imposed conditions and merely witness what goes on, I have no confidence in my own penetration, and am perfectly sure that a conjurer could impose upon me, possibly even to the extent ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... incontestable. No country ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. No serious resistance of any kind was ever attempted. The nation was as passive as clay in the hands of the potter, and it is a circumstance of peculiar aggravation that a large part of the legislation I have recounted was a distinct violation of a solemn treaty. The commercial legislation which ruined Irish industry, the confiscation ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... itself, themselves; one another, each other, to one another, to each other; equivalent to the passive in English, or to ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... had been passive before, they began to be active now. Vivian made her life a torment to her by jealousy on the one hand, and positive cruelty on the other; yet his manners in public were so carefully veiled in courtesy that ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... legitimate work. Moreover, although he loved Rezanov personally, he had enjoyed supreme power in the wilderness too long not to chafe under even the temporary assumption of authority by his high-handed superior. With the best of intentions Davidov could make little headway against the passive resistance of the Chief-Manager, and those intentions would be weakened by the consolidations the Company ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... established it as a rule that no one was to leave the ranks without his order, I had not dared to take the usual precautions, and for the same reason the general commanding the brigade had felt obliged to do the same. This passive ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... inculcating tonality feeling, which has always been the basis of even the simplest primitive music. Tonality scales give rise to a feeling of alternate periods of contraction and relaxation—an active tone (or chord) followed by a passive one, but no such effect is possible in the whole-step scale, and it seems suitable therefore only for that class of music whose outlines are purposely intended to be vague and indefinite—the ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... 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 made ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... bright sun was looking down upon an ocean as calm and peaceful as if its passive bosom had never been disturbed by the ensanguined tumults of warring men, or the commotions ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... A curious passive fight the patient settles down to, with a fatal little thermometer keeping score and marking the game—a sort of tug-of-war between doctors and Disease. The ground is marked in degrees from 98.4 to 106, the former being normal temperature, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... have gone already, compromise no serious interests, threaten nobody. Do not, I implore you, force me into action—ME, the Man of Action—when it is the cherished object of my ambition to be passive, to restrict the vast reach of my energies and my combinations for your sake. If you have rash friends, moderate their deplorable ardour. If Mr. Hartright returns to England, hold no communication with him. I walk on a path of my own, and Percival follows at my heels. On the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Master Rattlin is very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... we have of confounding reason with judgment, and supposing that it is merely the province of the understanding to pronounce sentence, and not to give in evidence, or argue the case; in short, that it is a passive, not an active faculty. Thus there are persons who never run into any extravagance, because they are so buttressed up with the opinions of others on all sides, that they cannot lean much to one side or the other; they are so little moved ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of man. We know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in general, and how they vary from one man to another. We can therefore pass to the dynamics.[395] We have described the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... for the note, but a passive thing at best. None saw more clearly than Mrs. Heth that a quietly resolute campaign of vindication was necessary, none more clearly that a campaign meant money in considerable sums. If you desired to prove anything, you must have money; stated in another ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... too, there seemed a chance of a reconciliation between Louis XVI and his people. On 14th September he accepted the new democratic constitution, a step which filled France with rejoicing and furnished the desired excuse for Leopold to remain passive. Kaunitz, who had consistently opposed intervention in France, now asserted that Louis had voluntarily accepted the constitution. The action of Louis and Marie Antoinette was in reality forced. Amidst the Queen's expressions of contempt for the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... name had sunk almost to a by-word of reproach. But "the darkest hour is just before the dawn:" a new disaster, more humiliating, and more inexcusable than any which had preceded, at length goaded the passive indignation of the British people into irresistible action. The spirit that animated the men who spoke at Runnymede, and those who fought on Marston Moor, was not dead, but sleeping. The free institutions which wisdom had devised, time hallowed, and blood ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... and in thine Eastern chamber Rehearse the dream that brings the long release: Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... regeneration, and he had the good fortune to find sympathy and co-operation among the educated classes. For the first time in Russian history—for on previous occasions the efforts of reforming Czars had always encountered a good deal of passive resistance—the Government and the people were anxious to aid each other, and the main results may be described as eminently satisfactory. Three great reforms deserve special mention—the emancipation of the serfs, the radical reorganization of the civil and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... was passive in the affair. When she gave her approbation to Valancourt's marriage, it was in the belief, that Emily would be the heiress of Madame Montoni's fortune; and, though, upon the nuptials of the latter, when she ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... out of the 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 ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... takes a passive form by inserting the syllable at between the prefixed pronoun and the verb; and a reciprocal sense by inserting atat. Thus, kiatatas, I put in; katiatatas, I am put in; katatiatatas, I ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... adhering to the belief that the movements of aggregated masses are of an amoeboid nature. The masses change shape, just as clouds do under the moulding action of the wind. In the plant cell the moulding agent is the flowing protoplasm, but the masses themselves are passive.) ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... down his shoulder-tray of food, and bargained with the ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odors of food frying in oil stole out from the depths of the house behind him. And Dong-Yung, very quiet and passive in the pose of her body, gazed up at Foh-Kyung with those strange, secretive, ardent eyes. All around him was China, its very essence and sound and smell. Dong-Yung was a part of it all; nay, she was even the very heart of it, swaying there in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... burst through from an undergrowth of statistics into the clear field of truism. False beliefs are more practical than theoretical, more a matter of practical conduct than of passive experience, more a change of reagent than a reaction to change. The man on the street or even many a leading neurologist would perhaps accept this formula as ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... an attitude, a state, a bodily movement which we perceive in another person. This is imitation in its most rudimentary form. Between sympathy and imitation, at any rate in this primitive period, I see only one difference of aspect: sympathy everywhere marks the passive, receptive side of the phenomenon; imitation, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... belongs to all phenomena. That which is only felt to be, and does not truly or absolutely exist, must have the character of inaction. It must be felt as passive A phenomenon must be inert because it is a phenomenon. We cannot argue from inertness in that which appears to us, to inertness in that which is. Of whatsoever kind the essence of nature may be, if it be unknown, the phenomenon must be equally inert. We have no ground, therefore, in the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... gun-belt. Swift as light her hand slipped down. Her fingers touched the cold gun—grasped with thrill on thrill—slipped farther down, strong and sure to raise the hammer. Then with a leaping, strung intensity that matched his own she drew the gun. She raised it while her eyes were shut. She lay passive under his kisses—the devouring kisses of one whose manhood had been denied the sweetness, the glory, the fire, the life of woman's lips. It was a moment in which she met his primitive fury of possession with a woman's primitive ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and by Hamiltonian systems, but that it swallows up year after year of studious life. Now I have a 'doxy' (as Warburton called it), that there is no exercise of the mind so little profitable to the mind as the study of languages. It is the nearest thing to a passive recipiency—is it not?—as a mental action, though it leaves one as weary as ennui itself. Women want to be made to think actively: their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but their defect lies for the most part in the logical ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... this country, and particularly with volunteers, should never diminish the peculiar American feeling of being 'as good as any other man.' On the contrary, the soldier should be encouraged to hold a high estimation of himself. We do not believe that those soldiers who are mere passive instruments—like the Russians, for example—can be compared with others inspired with individual pride. Yet, perhaps, our discipline has gone too far in the 'machine' direction. To keep up the feeling of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... abroad in a world that's not innocent; nor can we be passive when freedom is under siege. Without resources, diplomacy cannot succeed. Our security assistance programs help friendly governments defend themselves and give them confidence to work for peace. And I ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... one very 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 ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... affected by a passive exertion of force without doing work; as a quiescent rail can guide a train to its destination, provided an active engine propels it. But the analogy of the rail must not be pressed: the rail "guides" by exerting force perpendicular to the direction ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... subjects of purely ephemeral, childish interest. Her mind, by the happy dispensation of nature which facilitates healing by all means when once healing has begun, was blank to any impressions save the luxury of rest, of passive enjoyment, indifferent to ought but the passing present. She took pleasure in flowers, in the gambols of pet animals, in long listless spells of cloud-gazing when the heavens were bright, in the presence of her husband ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... added to an active Indian verb, renders it passive. I have given an example of this before in the case of a man's name. Here is another: The verb to carry is Be-moan in the Algonquin. By the pronominal prefix Nim, we have the sense I carry. By adding to the latter the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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 was the scholar as well as the loyal partizan of Athanasius." But when the separation ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... foaming with rage and maddened to desperation, would bellow, as their very eyeballs darted fire and blood! What grand fun it was! bull-baiting sank into a mere shadow beside it. The former was measuredly passive, because the bull only roared, and pitched, and tossed; whereas here the sport was made more exhilarating by expressions of vengeance or implorings. And then, as a change of pastime, the skilful gaoler would demand a cessation of the pea hostilities, and enjoin the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 recorded in his diary ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... that chiropractic and osteopathic correction of spinal and pelvic lesions and consequent removal of irritation and pressure on the nerves, the cure of chronic constipation and malnutrition by pure food diet and hydrotherapy, the strengthening of the pelvic muscles and nerves by means of active and passive movements and exercises, were fully sufficient to correct the local symptoms in a natural manner. Thousands of cases cured by us by these methods attest the truth of our statements; while those who failed to understand ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... believe what you say,' said Julia, 'at least I can believe in the virtue ascribed to labor, and the collision with difficulty. Suffering is passive; may it not be that we may come to place too much ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... passive endurance was past; action had begun. The Cullerne Water Company threatened to cut off the water, the Cullerne Gas Company threatened to cut off the gas. Eaves, the milkman, threatened a summons unless that long, long bill of his (all built up of pitiful little pints) was paid forthwith. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: not asking questions only, as one too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer, or to consider it when he had received it; not hearing only, as one careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve his mind by being indolently admitted through the ears, with no more effort than his body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when it is laid down in running water; but both hearing and asking ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... idea is thus reaffirmed and extended, but how can man attain that ideal? By using his free will, said the Stoic. By the grace of God obtained through prayer, said the Christian. Is man then free, or is he the passive creature of a greater power, and of what nature is that power? Now, where theologians have sought to define the Deity, and to conceive his government of his creatures in terms of a personal affection and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... that, An end is twofold: proximate and ultimate. Now the proximate end of every agent is to introduce a likeness of that agent's form into something else: thus the end of fire in heating is to introduce the likeness of its heat into some passive matter, and the end of the builder is to introduce into matter the likeness of his art. Whatever good ensues from this, if it be intended, may be called the remote end of the agent. Now just as in things made, external matter is fashioned by art, so in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... country, those die who are molested by vampires. They then remembered that this Arnald Paul had often related that in the environs of Cassovia, and on the frontiers of Turkish Servia, he had often been tormented by a Turkish vampire; for they believe also that those who have been passive vampires during life become active ones after their death, that is to say, that those who have been sucked suck also in their turn; but that he had found means to cure himself by eating earth from ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... man and a woman take part in the lovers' dance. The women are not such energetic and tireless dancers as the men, and in the lovers' dance the woman, although keeping her feet moving in time to the music, performs in an indolent, passive manner, and does not move from the spot where she begins. But the man circles about her, casting amorous glances, now coming up quite close, and then backing away again, and at times clapping his hands and going through all sorts of evolutions as if to attract ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... operation July the 1st, but probably without amendments. However, I am persuaded it will be shortlived. It has already excited great commotion in Vermont, and grumblings in Connecticut. But they are so priest-ridden, that nothing is to be expected from them, but the most bigoted passive obedience. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... settlement flowed smoothly on to its destined end. Sir Joseph explained his views at the fullest length, and the lawyer's pen kept pace with him. Turlington, remaining in his place at the table, restricted himself to a purely passive part in the proceedings. He answered briefly when it was absolutely necessary to speak, and he agreed with the two elders in everything. A man has no attention to place at the disposal of other people when he stands at ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... but my whole body seemed paralysed. Some evil thing was upon me!—something hateful! I would have struggled, but could not reach a struggle. My will agonised, but in vain, to assert itself. I desisted, and lay passive. Then I became aware of a soft hand on my face, pressing my head into the pillow, and of a heavy ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... 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 through the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of 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 me, in a rational manner, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... resume the mechanical plodding. I wondered sometimes whether we were not going right out to sea and how long it would be before we should drop into open water and be swallowed up. My faculties were too benumbed to care much, and it was just a calculation in which I had no particular but only a passive interest. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... different from the way they had dreamed it! The dream still lured them; but its voice grew fainter and more remote. How were they to keep it real to themselves, how were they to hold it? Their existence was made up of endless sordidness, of dreary commonplace, that opposed them with its passive inertia where it did not actively attack them. "Ah, Thyrsis!" Corydon would cry to him, "this will kill us ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others' burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Christ?... The way to perfection is by the due combination of prevenient, assisting free grace, and of submissive, assisted free will.... 'God worketh in you to will and to do,' says St. Paul. Here he describes the passive office of faith, which submits to, and acquiesces in, every divine dispensation and operation. 'Therefore work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,' and, of consequence, with haste, diligence, ardour, and faithfulness.... Would ye then wait aright for Christian perfection? Impartially ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... 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
... exhibitions of conceit and insipidity did 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 had been writing some verses of late; and finally, ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... such devoted proselytes. From information I have since received, they may now amount to three hundred thousand; and they have wealth, energy, and unity—they have everything—in their favour; and the federal government has been so long passive, that I doubt if it has the power to disperse them. Indeed, to obtain their political support, they have received so many advantages, and, I may say, such assistance, that they are now so strong, that any attempt to wrest from them the privileges which ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... 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 had been that day denied ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I felt at the moment. I remember that, all at once, I was inspired with a new vigour both of mind and body. Hitherto I had been little more than a passive spectator of the events of our expedition. I had been acting without any stimulating heart-motive; now I had one that roused me to, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an opportunity as he has to-day. It is the age of young men and young women. Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the passive bow. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... he could speak plainly, he had learned to let others wait upon him, and would never lift his little finger to do anything for himself. His passive face and large melancholy eyes were wonderfully beautiful, and inspired even his mother with a feeling of awe and respect. She never had cause to feel anxious about him, for there was no better, nor more obedient ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... oriental breath of Chinatown was blown up to them. She breathed it in readily. It was pleasant because it was strange, outlandish, suggesting a wide web of life beyond her own knowledge. She wondered what Harry was thinking of it, as he sat with his passive profile turned from her to the heathen street ahead. She guessed, by the curl of his nostril, that it was only present to him as an unpleasant odor to be got through as quickly as possible; but she was wrong. He had another thought. This time, oddly enough, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... rose to her feet, indignant, majestic, terrible. Her attitude was that of anathema incarnated in a woman. Rey remained seated, serene, courageous, with the passive courage of a profound conviction and an immovable resolve. The whole weight of his aunt's wrath, threatening to overwhelm him, did not make him move an eyelash. This was ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... no place in her life for Reddin, no time for Hunter's Spinney. She thought, 'I wunna go. I'll stay along of Ed'ard, and no harm'll come to me.' But a peremptory voice said that she must go, and once more her soul became the passive battleground of strange emotions of which she had never even dreamed. While they fought there like creatures in the dark, Hazel, sitting in the aromatic shadow of the currants, fell fast asleep; and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and sanctioned by scientific faculties as well as by 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; and investigating committees accomplished little or nothing important, the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... that dependent family of plants, I pity you sincerely, and beg that you will not put me in any such category. Duty may be a cold shadow to you, but it is a vast volcanic agency constantly impelling me to action. What was my will given to me for, if to remain passive and suffer others to minister to its needs? Don't talk to me about woman's clinging, dependent nature. You are opening your lips to repeat that senseless simile of oaks and vines; I don't want to hear it; there are no creeping tendencies about me. You can wind, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Isabel, who was lying back passive and listless on the window-seat. "What do you think your cousin will direct to be done? He will scarcely wish you to leave home altogether, to stay with him. And yet, you understand, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... passive. Then the nearness of him, and the cruel last-timeness of it all, swept over her again, and she threw her arms around his neck convulsively, and kissed him over and over again. She wanted ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... mechanical action of the heart as a pump. There were all sorts of speculations about the matter, but nobody had formed this conception, and nobody understood that the so-called systole of the heart is a state of active contraction, and the so-called diastole is a mere passive dilatation. Even within our own age that matter had been discussed. Harvey is as clear as possible about it. He says the movement of the blood is entirely due to the contractions of the walls of the heart—that it is the propelling apparatus—and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... her lips to his cheek, but the lips were cold. He put her down gently; she stood mute and passive. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my arms and stood passive. A look over my shoulder told me that Pierre and Starling had been seized and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the strength of her control to sit quietly by when ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... companion. "Any thing is better than passive submission in such circumstances. I see but little, indeed no hope of escape; but idleness is torture. If I endeavour to raise this boat, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... decently angry with you? You torment and charm in the same breath. At times I say to myself, 'She is cold, heartless, unfeeling,' and then a word, a look—Molly," seizing her cool, slim little hand as it lies passive in her lap, "tell me, do you think you will ever—I do not mean to-morrow, or in a week, or a month, but in all the long years to come, do you think you will ever love me?" As he finishes speaking, he presses his lips with passionate tenderness ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... would be excellent, it would be extremely useful, if the writer of this biography were to aim at displaying the profound difference between Francis of Assisi and the holy men of the east, the saints of Russia. The east is pessimist; it is passive. The Russian saints do not love life; they repudiate it and execrate it. Francis is an epicure of religion; he is a Hellene; he loves God as the work of his own creation, as the fruit of his own soul. He is filled with love ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... 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
... Wright-Humason School were always planning how they might give the pupils every advantage that those who hear enjoy—how they might make much of few tendencies and passive memories in the cases of the little ones—and lead them out of the cramping circumstances in which their lives ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... or two, but, like most of his countrymen, he had a good deal of common sense and self-command, which made him remain passive after a bit; when, throwing myself on my back, I floated, dragging his head across my body, so that he might rest awhile and recover himself before trying to swim ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... one night to his savior. For she, too, is a philosopher, and is therefore just as free from prejudices as we are. Nevertheless, certain as I am that she would meet the test, I am far from intending that it should be imposed upon her. To possess a woman outwardly passive but inwardly resistant, would be far from satisfying my desires, least of all in the present case. I wish, not merely as a lover, but also as one beloved, to taste a rapture which I should be prepared to pay for with my life. Understand this clearly, Lorenzi. For the reason I have ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... blood at their finger-tips. Presently, too, an uncanny wave of cold air will pass underneath the arch of their palms. This is, according to the professional witches of Endor, the frigid flitting of the spirits, but the most superficial meteorologist will expound it you learnedly. Your hand, passive and in a fixed position, heats the air under it, which, becoming lighter, is constantly displaced by the colder circumambient air. Finally, when everybody is wrought up to an exalted expectation of the supernatural, the table begins to oscillate, to move slowly to and fro, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and nothing which I have decided since alters that in any way. If you still want me after the war—if we find that neither of us has made a mistake—I can still help you, Derek, I hope. But, my dear, it won't be quite a passive help, if you understand what I mean. I've got to be up and doing myself—actively; to be merely any man's echo—his complement—however much I loved him, would not be enough. I've come to ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to literary activity than appears in Edinburgh, where literature is rather passive than active, and what is produced worth publishing is generally sent to the London market. This is the reason why a greater number of publications appear in the course of the year in Copenhagen than in ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... blasphemer, however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth, that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in the most passive acceptance,—if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out around me at this moment the new June,—the leaves say June, though the calendar says May,—and we must needs hail our young relatives again, though with something of the gravity of adult sons and daughters receiving ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... chief merit 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
... 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 ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... bleachers—at least not until he had proved that this was the place for him. Even then I wanted him to lead the cheering. I wanted him to test himself in the literary societies, the dramatic clubs, on the athletic field. In other words, instead of remaining passive I wanted him to take an aggressive attitude towards life. In still other words instead of being a middle-classer I wanted him to get something of the emigrant spirit. And I had the satisfaction of seeing him begin his work with the germ of ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... satisfied. She was ready to admit that most men marry women who have not particularly enchanted them, and she had brought up Giselle with all those passive qualities, which, together with a large fortune, usually suit best with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... analysed, seem antithetical, and which have in reality inspired opposite ways of life, meet in the fusing flame of the Rabbi's impassioned thought: the body is the soul's beguiling sorceress, but also its helpful comrade; man is the passive clay which the great Potter moulded and modelled upon the Wheel of Time, and yet is bidden rage and strive, the adoring acquiescence of Eastern Fatalism mingling with the Western gospel of individual energy. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave the Enchantress at Red River Landing. The grandfather had already ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... 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 ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... below are used as predicate adjectives, not to form the pluperfect passive with erant. Translate, therefore, 'were covered.' not 'had ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... ingratiate himself in the confidence of Mrs. Cowperwood, who had no faith in lawyers any more than she had in her recalcitrant husband. She was now a tall, severe, and rather plain woman, but still bearing the marks of the former passive charm that had once interested Cowperwood. Notable crows'-feet had come about the corners of her nose, mouth, and eyes. She had a remote, censorious, subdued, self-righteous, and even ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... horse, and rejoined the Bohemian. This worthy seemed of a remarkably passive, if not a forgiving temper. Injury or threat never dwelt, or at least seemed not to dwell in his recollection, and he entered into the conversation which Durward presently commenced, just as if there had been no unkindly word betwixt them in ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for his lassitude, those quick decided actions of his being the outcome of a nature normally far from passive, now suddenly stimulated, and producing healthy impulses which work themselves out before they have time to subside. (b) It accounts for the evidently keen satisfaction which some of these actions give to him. He arranges the play-scene with lively interest, and exults in its success, not really ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... now her aunt's wild shrieks; she heard too the surging of the crowd, but the meaning of neither sound came to her. She waded on to where Smith stood, with only the dazed sense of a goal to be reached. She was perfectly passive in his hands as he dipped her beneath the surface and raised her up, but she listened to the blessing he pronounced with a sudden leap of the heart, feeling that now at last the misery of fear was past and the demand of God satisfied—it must be so because ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... do more than to make a passing note upon each of these ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of love; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... drew, 'To hoary hairs I bear, I carry you.' This promise still her drooping spirit cheered, And shed its starlight when the night appeared. Bold, in her weakness, close the foe pursued, And oft the bitter conflict was renewed; Conqu'ror at last, she calmly soared away, And left a smile upon the passive clay. ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... the East Indian peoples, so unfitted as a rule for making the best of this world, so passive, dreamy, subtle, unpractical, and yet with their marvellous spiritual gift, their intuition (also since the dawn of history) and conviction of another plane of being than that in which we mostly move, and ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain is the founding, through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity. . . . One day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of the world—a Little Child.' ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby |
