"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "the men and their writings; I venerate the literature, the laws, the institutions, and the charities of the land of my fathers. But I deprecate the effects of a blind acquiescence in the opinions of men, and the passive reception of everything that comes from a foreign press. My mind revolts at the reverence for foreign authors, which stifles inquiry, restrains investigation, benumbs the vigor of the intellectual faculties, subdues and debases the mind. I regret to see ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... however, that the young lord allowed himself to be provoked into more than a passive share in these scenes. To the boisterousness of his mother he would oppose a civil and, no doubt, provoking silence,—bowing to her but the more profoundly the higher her voice rose in the scale. In ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... consent to measure its demonstrations of indignation and abhorrence by the narrow rules of a self-interested caution. But that early experience of peril and adversity which had formed the mind of this princess to penetration, wariness, and passive courage, and given her a perfect command of the whole art of simulation and dissimulation, had at the same time robbed her of some of the noblest impulses of our nature; of generosity, of ardor, of enterprise, of magnanimity. Where more exalted spirits would only have ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... these was a sentiment which has nothing in it that is generous, but it was certainly a principle in which the young prince was trained, and which may be too probably denominated peculiar to his family, educated in all the high notions of passive obedience and non-resistance. If the unhappy prince gave implicit faith to the professions of statesmen holding such notions, which is implied ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... worst, though his hearers regarded it as an admirable 'confutation' of the text. The preacher, among the four, who reached the climax of absurdity was Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester. He was one of the extreme High Churchmen of his time: no man urged the doctrine of passive obedience to a more abject degree, or did more to support with the sanction of religion the most extravagant pretensions of the Crown. It was Andrewes who at the Hampton Court Conference declared that James ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... &c (inactivity) 683; inexcitability &c 826 [Obs.]; irresolution &c 605; obstinacy &c 606; permanence &c 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be inert &c adj.; hang fire, smolder. Adj. inert, inactive, passive; torpid &c 683; sluggish, dull, heavy, flat, slack, tame, slow, blunt; unreactive; lifeless, dead, uninfluential^. latent, dormant, smoldering, unexerted^. Adv. inactively &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... something like a panic of prudence had overcome me. I did not know what it would lead to—and I remembered that I did not even know who she was. From the beginning she had struck me as sinister and now, in the obscurity, her silence and her coldness seemed to be a passive threatening of unknown entanglement. I let her ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... remained standing by the window, motionless and apparently passive, as if receiving an accepted and usual punishment. But here the elder woman gave way to sobs and some incoherent snuffling, at which the younger went away. Whether she recognized in her mother's ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... her passive hands. They trembled in his, but she offered not to withdraw them. Indeed, she hardly noticed the act in the tide of emotion which was surging in her bosom. Her heart moved with a wild yearning to tell him that he had found the treasure he sought,—that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Avatea was standing as possible without creating suspicion, and whispered to her a few words in the native language. Avatea, who, during the whole of the foregoing scene, had stood leaning against the tree perfectly passive, and seemingly quite uninterested in all that was going on, replied by a single rapid glance of her dark eye, which was instantly cast down again on the ground ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Nicholson, giving him that free forgiveness which would at least ease his conscience, and make his burden somewhat lighter to bear. Then, feeling that it was not in my power to do more, I rose to depart. Taking her hand, which lay cold and passive in mine,—so much like a dead hand that it required a strong effort in me to repress a nervous shudder,—I said, "Farewell, Rachel Emmons, and remember that they who seek peace in the right spirit will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... pains which are augmented by pressure and motion, are diminished by faradization. This diminution is sometimes so considerable, that the joint, which prior to the faradization admitted of no movement, is able to execute passive and active ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... if Virgil had any, I think I rightly understood, and rightly applied. As I was therefore to be entirely passive in my motion, I resolved to abandon myself to the conduct of those who were to carry me into a cart when it returned ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... with themselves. Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry; and he that is not industrious, envieth him that is. Besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay, when others rise, can hardly avoid motions of envy. On the other side, nobility extinguisheth the passive envy from others, towards them; because they are in possession of honor. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility, shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their business; for people naturally bend to them, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... us that nearly everything we did, and quite all we wanted to do, was opposed to the spirit of Christ's teaching. Auberon Herbert disapproved of law, and John Davidson disapproved of life. Herbert Spencer objected to government, Passive Resisters to State education, and various educational reformers to education of any description. There are people who would abolish our spelling, our clothing, our food and, most emphatically, our drink. Mr. H. G. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... felt alone, bitterly, contemptuously alone. I hated men who had made the laws that bound me. I did not believe in God; for why had He permitted the dart to enter so unprepared a breast? I determined never to submit, though I disdained to struggle, since struggle was in vain. In passive, lonely wretchedness I would pass my days. I would not feign what I did not feel, nor take the hand which had poisoned for me the cup of life before I had sipped the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 'A passive quarrel, my love,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'may be changed into an active one, remember. It would be sad to blight even a disinherited young man in his already blighted prospects; but how easy to do it. Ah, how easy! HAVE ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... trouble, the mongrel bristled the yellow hair of his neck, and, retreating to the mouth of his kennel, stood guard; but otherwise the scene was to a detail as it had been in the morning. The woman lay passive within the bunk. The child by her side, holding her hand, did not turn. The very atmosphere of the place tingled with an ominous quiet,—a silence such as one who has lived through a cyclone connects instinctively with a whirling oncoming ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... pliable nature to suit his changing environment that at last he found that he could be content in almost any circumstances. He had no pleasures, no cares, no ambitions, no regrets, no hopes. It was mere passive existence, an inert, plantlike vegetation, the moment's pause before the final decay, the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... extensive and wealthy tobacco planter in the Vuelta de Abajo district of that island. He was also intensely patriotic, and was very strongly suspected by the Spanish rulers of Cuba of regarding with something more than mere passive sympathy the efforts that had been made by the Cubans from time to time, ever since '68, to throw off the Spanish yoke. He was a great admirer of England, English institutions, and the English form of government, which, despite ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... when the wanderers came out of the shrubbery and rejoined me. Chillington wore his usual passive look, but Miss Liston's face was happy and radiant. Chillington passed on into the drawing-room. Miss Liston lingered a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... concerning the fraternal communion of Christians and the unscripturalness of tithes and rents, as they uttered them in general terms, could not but exert an indirect influence upon them. But in these discourses they always added exhortations to a resistance merely passive. By this means they attracted a crowd of followers, persons of excitable feelings and women especially, just in proportion as the doctrine of martyrdom stood high in the Catholic church. Indeed it often seemed ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... with them the racial prejudices and institutions that caused them to be enemies in their native lands; they constitute a dangerous element in the population of this country. So long as they are able to get food they remain passive, except for the feuds they carry on amongst themselves. These immigrants are not inspired to come to this land by reason of an appreciation of the liberty that our Constitution vouchsafes to all mankind. They have been brought here by the agents of the Trusts, ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... carefully non-committal; so that Dixie, having no suggestion of his master's wish, ventured to indulge his own. He turned tail squarely to the storm and went straight ahead. Vaughan put his hands deep into his pockets, snuggled farther down into the sheepskin collar of his coat, and rode passive, enduring. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... themselves on the side of what is called legitimacy. In respect to parties, I think the republicans the boldest, in possession of the most talents compared to numbers, and the least numerous; the friends of the King (active and passive) the least decided, and the least connected by principle, though strongly connected by a desire to prosecute their temporal interests, and more numerous than the republicans; the Carlists or Henriquinquists the most numerous, and the most generally, but secretly, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... claim for himself, but there is nothing that I should like better than to be able to think when I boasted that my friends, like the friends of Hermogenes, were many and cared for me, that I had helped to make them so because in a world so full of passive friends I had at any rate tried ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... friend," said the clergyman, recovering himself and grasping the passive hand of the young soldier with enthusiasm, though he could not help smiling at his obvious embarrassment, "you seem to have been raised up ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the wonderful energies prisoned within the compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... you act rightly. Piety—warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace—is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much: her vitality faints under rigorous and wearisome observances. A forced match between a man and his religion sours his temper, and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination, I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house; What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion, Had the aeons thought of making thee a man, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this war tries our power of passive will, but I feel that everything is coming out as I was able to foresee. I think that these long spells of inactivity will give repose to the intellectual machine. If I ever have the happiness of once more making use of mine, it is sure to take a little time to get ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... 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
... through the election was to contend with his humour. The many triumphs it won for him, both in speech and in action, turned at least the dialectics of the argument against us, and amusing, flattering, or bewildering, contributed to silence and hold us passive. Political convictions of his own, I think I may say with truth, he had none. He would have been just as powerful, after his fashion, on the Tory side, pleading for Mr. Normanton Hipperdon; more, perhaps: he would have been more in earnest. His store of political axioms was Tory; but he did ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was so magnetic, It seemed like creative skill From the hand of the Great Master, To give passive being will. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... mother might have been startled at her passive obedience. Still more would she have been startled had she seen her daughter's face now, behind the closed door—with her little mouth set over her clenched teeth. And yet it was her own child, and Lanty was her mother's real daughter; the same pioneer ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... with Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning, and especially Whitman. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodgings. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... prejudices, and the strongest one is a part of us. And for the matter of that, the average American is no more anxious to marry a woman with negro blood in her than the Southerner is, and looks down upon the Black from almost as lofty a height. Only our prejudice is passive, for he is not the constant source of annoyance and anxiety with us that he is ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... was no wonder Gypsy was proud of him, as indeed she certainly was, nor did she hesitate to tell him so twenty times a day. This was a treatment of which Tom decidedly approved. Exactly how beneficial it was to the growth within him of modesty, self-forgetfulness, and the passive virtues ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... effort to administer hope and consolation, but the terrible nature of the struggle she witnessed, induced her to send for the chaplain of the Poughkeepsie. This divine prayed with the dying man; but even he, in the last moments of the sufferer, was little more than a passive but shocked witness of remorse, suspended over the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Kate—not, by the deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse—it ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... become evident to me that the passive system of defence which the Spaniards adopted in Callao, would render it a difficult matter to get at them without more effective means than the guns of the ships, which were greatly inferior in number to those of the enemy's fortress and shipping combined, whilst their ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... an envy that was no longer ignoble but moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition of what love meant in another woman's life—these messengers and forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in this mere silence, this mere ceasing ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sorrow; but come, sir, take a seat, I beseech you; my alarm ceases now I know the cause of her absence. She is accustomed to wander in the woods by night when any thing disturbs her mind. She'll return to me anon calm and passive as before: I have known it with her often thus. You look fatigued, sir; let me recommend this flask of Rhenish: pray drink, sir; it will do you good; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... perhaps my job might only be to help you to fulfil your own destiny, 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 that, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... manfully fronted, ceases to be evil; there is generous battle-hope in place of dead, passive misery; the evil itself has ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... have affirmed is a fact of which every honest man is as fully assured as of his seeing, hearing, or smelling. But though the former assurance does not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in the kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses impressions, those of ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... naturally grow out of and unite with these, the multitudes, who have risen, stand; and, if they desert them, must fall.—Riddance, mere riddance—safety, mere safety—are objects far too defined, too inert and passive in their own nature, to have ability either to rouze or to sustain. They win not the mind by any attraction of grandeur or sublime delight, either in effort or in endurance: for the mind gains consciousness of its strength to undergo only by exercise among materials ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Minister of Foreign Affairs. New difficulties had aggravated the bitterness of the relations between France and Rome. Pius VII., however, had perceived that the requirements of the emperor, so absolute in their harshness, would not yield to his moderate and passive resistance. He had authorized his French representative, the Cardinal de Bayanne, to make an important concession. "The last demands of his Imperial Majesty," wrote Cardinal Casoni, Minister of State, on the 14th of October, "are limited as regards the English ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Within any peaceful order there is room for many good things to flourish. But the full fruit of social progress is only to be reaped by a society in which the generality of men and women are not only passive recipients but practical contributors. To make the rights and responsibilities of citizens real and living, and to extend them as widely as the conditions of society allow, is thus an integral part of the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... question was: Should the East remain passive while the annexation of "another Louisiana" was being consummated and thus allow herself ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... may have refused from superstitious motives. Muslims are peculiarly sensitive on this subject. In Egypt, Mohammed Ali encountered considerable passive resistance in his ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester's dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason's arrival? Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the not altogether passive spectator of a curious scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout "tackety" boots, I had waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen burn: in summer the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... silence fell upon the men who were left in the room. The bandit, unconcerned, puffed his cigarette. Hardy and Pell felt like rats in a trap. Only Uncle Henry was passive. In the tense stillness, the clock could be heard ticking on and on. Pell was beginning to crack beneath the strain. Suddenly he began to pace the floor, his hands behind his back. No tiger in a cage was ever ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... 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, why I had so ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... those next few days, events of the Earth, Venus and Mars swirled and raged around Georg as though he were engulfed in the Iguazu or Niagara. Passive himself at first—a spectator merely; yet he was the keystone of the Earth Council's strength. The Brende secret was desired by the publics of all three worlds. Even greater than its real value as a medical discovery, it swayed the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... a wriggle 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 ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a matter that arouses much feeling the British way is for some one to disobey and take the consequences. Passive resistance—with such active measures as may make the life of the enforcers of the law a burden to them—is a recognized method of political and ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... moment before Burdon's name was mentioned she was sitting relaxed and rather dispirited, as you sometimes see a yacht becalmed, riding the water without life or interest. But as soon as it appeared that Burdon was about to enter, a breeze suddenly seemed to fill Helen's sails. Her beauty, passive before, became active. Her bunting fluttered. Her ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... your affidavits and your sufferances, ... your letters of office and your instructions and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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
... Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild, Made passive both, had servd necessitie, 110 Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate; As if Predestination over-rul'd Thir will, dispos'd by ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... gradually subsided into a resignation as profound, in its way, as had been her longing for home. She loved, she suffered, with a quiet intensity of which her outward demeanor gave no adequate expression. From some ancestral source she had derived a strain of the passive fatalism by which alone one can submit uncomplainingly to the inevitable. By the same token, when once a thing had been decided, it became with her a finality, which only some extraordinary stress of emotion could disturb. She had acquiesced ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... burden lying so passive in his strong arms filled him with a rapture such as he had never known. The thought of sex was still far from his mind, and only was the manhood in him yielding to the contact, and teaching him through the senses that which his ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... for Victor Hugo after many vain assaults to enter by the breach. The academy is professedly non-political. It accepted and even welcomed in succession the empire, the restoration and the reign of Louis Phillppe, and it tolerated the republic of 1848; but to the second empire it offered a passive resistance, and no politician of the second empire, whatever his gifts as an orator or a writer, obtained an armchair. The one seeming exception, Emile Ollivier, confirms the rule. He was elected on the eve of the Franco-German war, but ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be despised and obscure and ignorant, when, so close to her, there were girls of her own age to whom Fate had been utterly kind; it was not her fault, and it was not right—it was not right to despise her for what she could not help! But usually her attitude was of passive ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... routine of daily tasks and amusements, all tended to make the enforced quiet and inaction of his convalescence a lazy recreation. He was really improving; more than that, he was conscious of a certain satisfaction in this passive observation of novelty that was healthier and perhaps TRUER than his previous passion for adventure and that febrile desire for change and excitement which he now felt was a part of his disease. Nor were incident and variety entirely absent from this tranquil ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... plan of civilizing the Indians and teaching them to speak French; for it was the reproach of the Jesuit missions that they left the savage a savage still, and asked little of him but the practice of certain rites and the passive acceptance of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... passenger, passer. pasar to pass, happen, allow; vr. to go over to another party. pasear to walk, take for a walk; to move up and down, transport; vr. to go walking. paseo walk, public place. pasion f. passion. pasivo passive. pasmo spasm, amazement. paso pace, step, passage. pastor shepherd. patata potato. patetico pathetic. patiabierto with outspread paws. patilla whiskers. patinillo (dim.). See patio. patio courtyard. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... satisfied with her surroundings, happy in her environment, and therefore without "a noble discontent," her children will probably be quite willing to have a good time on the "unearned increment" that is their material portion. Her virtue and passive excellence die with her, and she leaves ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... of the LICENSERS OF THE PRESS, and CENSORS OF BOOKS, was a bold invention, designed to counteract that of the Press itself; and even to convert this newly-discovered instrument of human freedom into one which might serve to perpetuate that system of passive obedience which had so long enabled modern Rome to dictate her laws to the universe. It was thought possible in the subtlety of Italian astuzia and Spanish monachism, to place a sentinel on the very thoughts as well as on the persons of authors; and in extreme ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter of fact, the natural man's attitude to these things does not differ much from the attitude of the great artists. It is only that a certain lust for creation, and a certain demonic curiosity, scourge these latter on to something beyond passive resignation. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... immediately ordered her out. Half laughing, half serious, Nancy tried to keep her ground. But Miss Fortune was in no mood to hear parleying. She laid violent hands on the passive Nancy, and between pulling and pushing at last got her out and shut the door. Her next sudden move was to haul off her mother to bed. Ellen looked her sorrow at this, and Mr. Van Brunt whistled his thoughts; but that either made nothing, or made Miss Fortune ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... The Directory had no share in renewing the project of this memorable expedition, the result of which did not correspond with the grand views in which it had been conceived. Neither had the Directory any positive control over Bonaparte's departure or return. It was merely the passive instrument of the General's wishes, which it converted into decrees, as the law required. He was no more ordered to undertake the conquest of Egypt than he was instructed as to the plan of its execution. Bonaparte organised the army of the East, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... I was going to get up? It was quite encouragement enough to remain passive. As a matter of fact," she went on, "I couldn't have moved. I couldn't have uttered a sound. I suppose I must have been like one of those poor birds you read about, when some devouring animal crouches for ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nothing on earth in the least degree comparable to this avenue, which passive multitudes took nearly three thousand years to construct, expending, century after century, their innumerable energies in carrying these stones, which our machines now could not move. And the objective was ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... stopped before a restaurant a knot gathered around it. Their faces were like all the other faces I saw in Belgium—unless German—with that restrained, drawn look of passive resistance, persistent even when they smiled. When? When were the Allies coming? Their eyes asked the question which their tongues dared not. Inside the restaurant a score of German officers served by Belgian waiters were dining. Who were our little party? ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... think the Vessel, that with fugitive Articulation answer'd, once did live, And drink; and Ah! the passive Lip I kiss'd, How many Kisses ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... intimately, most of the celebrated people of the last century, and had store of curious and interesting anecdotes, which she produced with so much taste and judgment, and told so well, as never to fatigue attention. Caroline found that her mind was never passive or dormant in Mrs. Hungerford's company; she was always excited to follow some train of thought, to discuss some interesting question, or to reflect upon some new idea. There was, besides, in the whole tenor of her conversation and remarks such an indulgence for human nature, with all its ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... name. Plump and of medium height, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... applicant for admission enter. It was repeated; but, if heard, it met no response. Then the latch was lifted, the door swung open, and the tailor stepped into the room. The sound of his feet aroused the passive sisters. The white face of Mary was to him, at first, a startling image of death; but her large bright eyes opened and turned upon him with an assurance that life still ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... first person appealed to by the distracted woman, and he had the good sense to leave the body and its surroundings untouched until a doctor and the police had been summoned by telephone. Thenceforth the day had passed in a whirl of excitement, active in respect to police inquiries and passive in its resistance to newspaper interviewers. He saw no valid reason why his employer's plans should be disturbed, so made no effort to communicate with ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... no such hope as Martha had expressed. Her more passive, meditative disposition had bowed itself, and let the grief overwhelm her. So in her we see a specimen of the excess of sorrow which indulges in the monotonous repetition of what would have happened if something else that did not happen had happened, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that fire of enthusiasm on the one side and righteous indignation on the other never achieve anything except in domestic life. If Hester lives, she will outgrow her passionate nature, or at least she will grow up to it and become passive, contemplative. Then, instead of unbalanced anger and excitement, the same nature which is now continually upset by them will have learned to receive impressions calmly and, by reason of that receptiveness and insight, she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... offensive movement; whereas if our object be negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for our counter-attack. To this extent our action must always tend to the offensive. For counter-attack is the soul of defence. Defence is not a passive attitude, for that is the negation of war. Rightly conceived, it is an attitude of alert expectation. We wait for the moment when the enemy shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far cripple him ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... is easy to perceive that they may arise from two distinct causes; the one, to avoid or get rid of some great calamity; the other, to obtain some great and positive good; and the two may be distinguished by the names of active and passive revolutions. In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter, the heart, rather animated than agitated, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... touch, the 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 us to Condillac's statue. The ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... again, gathering force for his great effort. His mind was now wonderfully active, and the serpent had grown to fully a hundred feet long. Feeling that it was sheer cowardice to be passive, he was about to make a desperate effort to throw off his incubus, when there was a shout on deck, answered by Mr Rimmer's voice, evidently in a great state of excitement, but what was said could not be made out in the cabin. In fact, Oliver had his own business ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... thus she could not have told, when a strange thing happened to her. From some sub-conscious layer of her brain, which started into activity because the rest of it was so passive, a small, still thought glided in, and took possession of her mind. At first, it was so faint that she hardly grasped it; but, once established there, it became so vivid that, with one sweep, it blotted ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... attracted the attention of your reader and carried him along through a logical argument to the conviction that he wants your goods, one thing more remains. He must be induced to act upon his conviction. Up to this point his part has been passive; he has been asked merely to sit in his easy chair and read what you have to say. Now he must be aroused to activity; he must be brought to the point of putting on his hat and coat and going out to buy your goods. The strongest language form at our command is ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... it. Only one must admit exterior actions and influences which affect the evolution of the monad. Its independence must be a mobile and increasing quantity between zero and the infinite, without ever reaching either completeness or nullity, for the monad can be neither absolutely passive nor ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... while the Indians would shoot some especially bad water in the light canoe. As a spectacle nothing could be finer. The flash of the yellow bark, the movement of the broken waters, the gleam of the paddle, the tense alertness of the men's figures, their carven, passive faces, with the contrast of the flashing eyes and the distended nostrils, then the leap into space over some half-cataract, the smash of spray, the exultant yells of the canoemen! For your Indian enjoys the game thoroughly. And it requires very bad water indeed to make ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the town drummer in the distance, and let the sound invade his passive ears, till it crossed the opening of the street, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... assembled at Issy, in 1695, declared, (Art. 22,) "that, without any extraordinary degrees of prayer, a person may become a very great saint," they had previously declared, (Art. 21,) "that even those which are passive, and approved of by St. Francis of Sales and other spiritualists, cannot be rejected." The authors on these subjects, whom our author particularly recommended, were Balthazar, Alvarez de Paz, and St. Jure. The latter was one of the Jesuits ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... it. Who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's character or personality? Who can overlook the fact that one's bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? There is no physical organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... When they join, the officers may ill-treat them, pull their hair, and strike them with impunity. The officers have generally a fair supply of professional knowledge, and some are highly educated. The men have a larger amount of passive courage than of dashing bravery; yet they will usually follow where their officers lead them. The private has a possibility of rising to the rank of an officer after twelve years' probation, and even sooner by some dashing ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... acquisition or form of curiosity. Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress of the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of transmission—transmission from her father's line, he quite made up his mind—had only received, accepted and been quiet. When she hadn't been quiet she had been moved at the most to some occult charity for some fallen fortune. There had been ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... known in former trips to the desert, and whom we could trust; that is, we did not distrust them as much as others. We were numerous enough to protect ourselves from chance marauding bands, and we took with us large impedimenta. We had secured the consent and passive co-operation of the officials still friendly to Britain; in the acquiring of which consent I need hardly say that Mr. Trelawny's riches were of chief importance. We found our way in dhahabiyehs to Aswan; whence, having got some Arabs from the Sheik and having given our usual backsheesh, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... and when Braddock's unavenged defeat had reanimated the French with the hope of driving the English from America. Yet even if the deportation of the Acadians was required by the supreme law of self-preservation, and justifiable on the ground of their more than merely passive disloyalty, the manner of that deportation could not be justified. The separation of families, many of them never reunited, was a crime against humanity; the conversion of an honest, industrious and thrifty peasantry into a host of penniless vagrants, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... The walls of this room were very dirty, and it took our ladies several days to cover all the unsightly places with wreaths and hangings of evergreen. In this performance Baby took an active, or rather a passive part. Her duties consisted in sitting in a great nest of evergreen, pulling and fingering the fragrant leaves, and occasionally giving a little cry of glee when she had accomplished some piece of ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... activity are part of the emotional manifestation. It is inconceivable that they have no biological meaning; and it is difficult to conceive that they have any other biological end than to evoke in the generally more passive female the pairing impulse. They are based on instinctive foundations ingrained in the nervous constitution through natural (or may we not say sexual?) selection in virtue of their profound utility. They are called into play by a specialised presentation ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... and lay there weak and passive, feeling the strangeness of the remembered room, of the open casement window, of the sycamore outside, and the mountain forms beyond it; of this pearly or golden light in which everything ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wiser heads who foresaw a coming crisis," he concluded. "Maybe they anticipated a time when they might need a few nonconformists. People like ourselves who haven't been passive or persuaded. Maybe we're the government's insurance policy. If an emergency ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... maid something more than her mistress's passive accomplice?" he said. "Was she the Hand that her mistress used? Was she on her way to give the first dose of poison when she passed me in this corridor? Did Mrs. Beauly spend the night in Edinburgh—so as to have her defense ready, if suspicion ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... a third power, to which I have adverted, shall be adopted only as a last expedient. Had it been the desire of the United States to interfere in the affairs of Cuba, repeated opportunities for so doing have been presented within the last few years; but we have remained passive, and have performed our whole duty and all international obligations to Spain with friendship, fairness, and fidelity, and with a spirit of patience and forbearance which negatives every possible suggestion of desire to interfere or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... be more than one Infinite: Nor to ascribe to him (unlesse Metaphorically, meaning not the Passion, but the Effect) Passions that partake of Griefe; as Repentance, Anger, Mercy: or of Want; as Appetite, Hope, Desire; or of any Passive faculty: For Passion, is ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine forces centring on her, she went to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... waking, watchful sympathy, with the bulls in their conflict. Not a tree, nor a hill, nor a cloud in the sky but looks on as a spectator. All is in keeping. There is no violence in the colour, nothing to distract the attention from the noble animals—all is quiet, passive and observant. A less poetical mind would have given a bright blue, clear sky, and sparkling sunny grass; one more daring than judicious, might have placed the creatures in a turbulent scene of storm and uprooted ground; Mr Ward has given all the action to the combatants—you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... whoever reads his narrative wishes that to travel and to tell his travels had been more of his employment. He seems to have proceeded on his way, with the view of finding something at every turn, on which to exercise his powers of argument or of raillery. His mind is scarcely ever passive to the objects it encounters, but shapes them to his own moods. After we lay down his book, little impression is left of the places through which he has passed, and a strong one of his own character. With his fellow-traveller, though kindness sometimes made him over-officious, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... from our white settlements, added the calculation and power of combining of the whites to the instinctive cunning and ferocity of the savages. They possessed their thirst for blood without their active or passive courage—blending the bad points of character in the whites and Indians, without the good of either. The cruelty of the Indians had some show of palliating circumstances, in the steady encroachments of the whites upon ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... bring the man on board. It proved to be none other than Silas Huntly, who, after being carried overboard with the mast, had thus, almost by a miracle, escaped a watery grave. Without a word of thanks to his deliverer, the ex-captain, passive, like an automaton, passed on and took his seat in the most secluded corner of the poop. The broken mizzen may, perhaps, be of service to us at some future time, and with that idea it has been rescued from the waves and lashed securely ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light and ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... rules which detach them from the rest of the world—I humbly think that we may be excused from entrusting to them those places in the State where the influence of such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... habits, that Meg, herself the most restless and bustling of human creatures, began to be vexed, for want of the trouble which she expected to have had with him, experiencing, perhaps, the same sort of feeling from his extreme and passive indifference on all points, that a good horseman has for the over-patient steed, which he can scarce feel under him. His walks were devoted to the most solitary recesses among the neighbouring woods and hills—his fishing-rod was often left behind ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... our men-at-arms shall go and win on this day as they have already won." The gate was forced; and men-at-arms and burgesses rushed out from all quarters to attack the bastille of Tournelles, the strongest of the English works. It was ten o'clock in the morning; the passive and active powers of both parties were concentrated on this point; and for a moment the French appeared weary and downcast. Joan took a scaling-ladder, set it against the rampart, and was the first to mount. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son." Nor are we to wait for death to transform us; the work should begin at once. We have a responsibility, too, in this work. The sculptor takes the blackened marble block and hews it into a form of beauty. The marble is passive in his hands, and does nothing but submit to be cut and hewn and polished as he will. But we are not insensate marble; we have a part in the fashioning of our lives into spiritual holiness. We will never become like Christ without our ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... Tao, and the task of the individual consists in the most complete adherence to the Tao that is conceivable, as far as possible performing no act that runs counter to the Tao. This is the main element of Lao Tzu's doctrine, the doctrine of wu-wei, "passive achievement". ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... he could harmonize with the religious view. Plato declared that the material world had been created out of the Non-Ens ([Greek: me on]) i.e., that which has no real existence. He conceived space and matter as the mere passive receptacle of form, which is nothing till the form has given it quality. Though Philo's language is vague, this seems to be his view when he is speaking philosophically. It is, perhaps, a slight deviation from the earlier religious standpoint of the Jews, which looks ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... thus to leap into a perfectly Corsican fury of bitterness, sank back at once to its ordinary level of passive mutual repudiation. Rose and Millicent were not bereft of the finer feelings which distinguish humanity from the beasts of the jungle; sometimes they could be almost affectionate. There were, however, moments when to all appearance they hated each other with a tigerish and crouching hatred such ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... filters of the body. "In their absence there could be no building of structure, no solidification of tissue, nor organic mechanism. Passive themselves, they, nevertheless, separate all structures into their respective ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and then, as his fingers relaxed,—with a sudden passionate cry, she had broken free; but, even so, he had caught and swept her up in his arms, and held her close against his breast. And now, feeling the hopelessness of further struggle, she lay passive, while her eyes flamed up into his, and his eyes looked down into hers. Her long, thick hair had come loose, and now with a sudden, quick gesture, she drew it across her face, veiling it from him; wherefore, he stooped his ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... been a shorthand-writer present to take down what fell from his lips. And just as it fell it would have been literature. He was urged to write these things. But Leamy had not readily the will or the power to compel his spirit when the favoured moment had passed. He was mostly passive, like an AEolian harp, under the visitation. Ill-health, too, extreme and distressing, burdened him. He bore his trials cheerfully, and strove manfully to write, especially in his later days when the power and the will seemed to come to him just as illness tightened its hold. But he was sustained ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... determination is as strong and unshrinking as that of Sachar, there are many who will fear to join him, lest he fall and they fall with him. But it will not be well that the Queen shall be personally involved in the struggle which I foresee. She must remain personally aloof, passive and detached from it. The issues will be of too grim and strenuous a character for her to be brought into personal contact with them. She is too young, too inexperienced, too tender-hearted to grapple successfully ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... 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 desired that they might be quite passive, and not intermeddle unless they had a mind to draw all their force upon them: for that they expected to fight the English three years (as they supposed there would be some attempts made to stop ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... represented the entrance to the nest. Not dreaming of any danger in that direction, the robber only thought of guarding his "daylights" against the hornbill upon the wing. But the hen bird inside the nest— who could see well enough what was passing outside—had no idea of remaining a passive spectator; and perceiving her opportunity—for she was within striking distance—she quietly drew back her long ivory beak, and, throwing all the strength of her neck into the effort—assisted by the weight of her heavy helmeted head—as if with the blow of a ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight of a man's foot in a large worn boot covered ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... nominal, and he has to be very careful of offending their susceptibilities or wounding their sense of their own importance, while their treatment of the commons beneath them is sufficiently disdainful. Though the commons are summoned sometimes to the Council, their function there is merely a passive one; they are called to hear what has been determined, and to approve of it, if they so desire, but in no case have they any alternative to accepting it, even should they disapprove. Altogether the superiority ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... much more in his mental dialect than the English do. They are independent and wide awake, curious and full of personal interest. The wayside mind in Inverness or Perth runs more to muscle and less to fat, has more active vanity and less passive pride, is more inquisitive and excitable and sympathetic—in short, to use a symbolist's description, it is more apt to be red-headed—than in Surrey or Somerset. Scotchmen ask more questions about America, but fewer foolish ones. You will never hear them inquiring whether there ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... be found? How shall it be attained and safeguarded? Evidently the militarists have assaulted it with their doctrine that might makes right. Evidently the pacifists have betrayed it with their doctrine of passive acceptance of wrong. Somewhere between these two errors there must be a ground of truth on which Christians can stand to defend their faith and maintain their hope of a better future ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... the perfection of liberty, and look well enough when delineated on paper; but in practice will be ever productive of tumult, contention, and anarchy. And, on the other hand, divine indefeasible hereditary right, when coupled with the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience, is surely of all constitutions the most thoroughly slavish and dreadful. But when such an hereditary right, as our laws have created and vested in the royal stock, is closely interwoven with those liberties, which, we have seen in a former chapter, are equally the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... without method and with boundless delight; the Genie du Christianisme replaced the Imitation; Rousseau and Byron followed Chateaubriand, and romance in her heart put on the form of melancholy. At eighteen the passive Aurore was married to M. Dudevant, whose worst fault was the absence of those qualities of heart and brain which make wedded union a happiness. Two children were born; and having obtained her freedom and a scanty allowance, Madame Dudevant in 1831, in possession of her son and daughter, resolved ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance. The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts—the active and the passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny; anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to say which of these modes ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... because these three are generals, through and from which each and all things have their form [existunt] in infinite variety. The atmospheres are the active forces, the waters are the mediate forces, and the lands are the passive forces, from which all effects have existence. These three forces are such in their series solely by virtue of life that proceeds from the Lord as a sun, ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... not merely a passive, but equally *an active virtue*. Inevitable events impose imperative duties. In the direction which they indicate there is work for us, of self-culture, of kindness, of charity. Our characters can be developed, not by yielding, however cheerfully, to what seem misfortunes, but by availing ourselves ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... of court fool had died out. In its place the individual geniuses of folly appeared in the Rococo age, such as Gundeling, the passive clown, who was made a fool of by others, and Kyau, the Eulenspiegel of the eighteenth century, who himself hoaxed other people. In the learned Athanasius Kircher the charlatan of genius struggles continually with the pedant; that is the great struggle which continued throughout the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... which inaction leaves passive and melancholy so that she presently dies of weariness; of the Chalicodoma, so eager a worker that she will "let herself be crushed under the feet of the passer-by rather than abandon ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... of Tom's leveled automatic Wyckoff, for it was he, remained passive while Jack searched his pockets, producing therefrom the missing flashlight made to imitate an automatic pistol, a watch, a purse with some coins inside, a vile smelling pipe with a pouch of tobacco, a stubby lead pencil and a note book partly filled with figures ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to any opera that had previously been written—in the concerted music (the choruses as well as the trios and quartets), and in the instrumentation. The chorus is promoted from the part which it usually plays in Gluck, that of a passive spectator. It joins in the drama, and takes an active part in the development of the plot, and the music which it is called upon to sing is often finer and more truly dramatic than that allotted to the solo singers. But the chorus had already been used effectively by Gluck and other ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... (3) Structures (passive instruments) will, in general, be classified on the basis of structure, either of special or general application, the essential functions and effects of static structures being resistive or the maintaining of forces ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... was the sharp and useful-steering goad Laid on the strong-neck'd ox; no gentle bud The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes, Winding meanders and self-knitting traces, Be follow'd where he stuck, his glittering slime Not yet wip'd off. ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... eminence in the realm of industry or art or invention is this: that the worker has wrought in his luminous mental moods. In its passive, inert states, the mind is receptive. Then reason is like a sheathed sword. Thought must be struck forth as fire is struck from flint. But under inspirational moods the mind begins to glow and kindle. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and the formative power or virtue prepares the organs for the celestial virtue or power, which produces, from the power of the seed, the Soul in life; which, as soon as produced, receives from the power of the Mover of the Heaven the passive intellect or mind, which potentially brings together in itself all the universal forms according as they are in its producer, and so much the less in proportion as it is farther removed ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand. Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch of the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Tom subsided until nothing was left of it except a kind of passive disregard of him. Organized resentment would not have been tolerated at Temple Camp and it is a question whether the scouts themselves would have had anything to do with such a conspiracy. But the feeling had changed toward him and was especially ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... expels or blends with the former; when (for example) either his words, or the mode of their arrangement, are such as we spontaneously use only when in a state of excitement, proving that the mind is at least as much occupied by a passive state of its own feelings, as by the desire of attaining the premeditated end which the discourse ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... lens-maker was penniless, and probably always would be—his passion was passive—he lacked the show and dash that made other women jealous. And so Oldenburg, a rival with love and jewels, won the heart that could not be won by love alone. That the lady soon knew she had erred did not help her case—Spinoza loved his ideal, and he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Recent events have not weakened the conviction I expressed in a much-abused speech at the London School Board, that Ultramontanism is demonstrably the enemy of society; and must be met with resistance, merely passive if possible, but active if necessary, by "the whole power of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... And in this country through milleniums, there always have been some who, beyond the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, sought for the realisation of the highest ideal of life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, having acquired nothing has nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won, can enrich the world by giving away the fruits of his victorious experience. In India such ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... and other officials rarely waited on the Archduke without beating hearts. He was capable of flying out at people and terrifying them to such a degree that they lost their heads completely. He often took their fright to be obstinacy and passive resistance, and it ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... shed on us One ray of cheering hope! We are from Crete, Adrastus' sons, and I, the youngest born, Named Cephalus; my eldest brother, he, Laodamas. Between us stood a youth Savage and wild, who severed e'en in sport The joy and concord of our early youth. Long as our father led his powers at Troy, Passive our mother's mandate we obey'd; But when, enrich'd with booty, he return'd, And shortly after died, a contest fierce Both for the kingdom and their father's wealth, His children parted. I the eldest joined; He slew our brother; and the Furies hence For kindred ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... as to make a complete circuit. I don't think it really necessary, but it sometimes helps to produce the proper mental state; singing softly also tends to harmonize the 'conditions,' as the professionals say. Don't argue and don't be too eager. Lean back and rest. Take a passive attitude toward the whole problem. I find the whole process very restful. Harris, will you turn ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... country until 1774 A.D., and introduced many useful reforms. Then, however, owing to the interference of Maria Theresa, Empress of Germany, who, as Queen of Hungary, herself claimed rights of suzerainty over Wallachia, and largely also in consequence of the passive resistance of the Porte, the Czarina agreed to the Treaty of Kainardji, by which, under conditions favourable to the Principalities, they were once more restored to the Porte. Amongst the conditions were a complete amnesty; the restitution of lands and goods ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson |
