"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was that to his host of passive enemies, Tarzan of the Apes added that day two active foes, both of whom remained awake long into the night planning means of revenge upon the white devil-god who had brought them into ridicule and disrepute, but with their most malevolent schemings ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... what you are saying. If I have wronged you, I swear I did it unintentionally. I loved Stella from the first—who could help it? But I thought she was virtually bound to you, and I did not try to win her away. You don't know what it cost me to remain passive. I know that you have always distrusted me, but hitherto you have had no reason to. But today I found that she was free—that she did not care for you! And I found—or thought I found—that there was a chance for me. I took it. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and Bedford of the present day, who appear to have lost their senses, and to be ready to peril all their great possessions to gratify the passions of the moment. He says:—'But riches do not in all cases secure even an inert and passive resistance; there are always in that description men whose fortunes, when their minds are once vitiated by passion or evil principle, are by no means a security from their actually taking their part against the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... that many other causes, beside the supposed preference on the part of one sex for certain material adornments possessed by the other, influence the pairing of animals. In a very large number of cases the female is quite passive in the matter. The question is decided by a battle between the males, and the female seems, as a matter of course, to become the mate of the conqueror. In many other cases pairing seems to be the result of accident; the two ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... England. Nixt the Royalists say conquaest is a just title to a croune. So Baleus[368] in his Sacro-sancta Regum Maiestas, cap. 17; but so be Cromwell conquered our country, ergo, he was our lawful governour and had just title to our croune. If so, whow could compliance and passive obedience to such a on be treason? In this he triumphs so, that he addes, let al the Royalists answer to this wtout contradicting themselfes if they can. No definition out of the civil Law can be brought of treason which wil comprehend necessary compliance; ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... Individualism. Catholicism, instead, is communistic by its origin and traditions.... The Catholic Church, with her powerful organization, dating back over many centuries, has accustomed Catholic peoples to passive obedience, to a passive renunciation of the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... vain. "For," it is said, "a man who has lost all shame, who can talk without sense, and who tries to cheat his opponent, will never get tired, and will never be put down." He declared that a non-ad was far more probable than a monad (the active principle), or the duad (the passive principle or matter.) He compared their faith with a bubble in the water, of which we can never predicate that it does exist or it does not. It is, he said, unreal, as when the thirsty mistakes the meadow mist for a pool of water. He proved the eternity ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... worse, for she has the habit of passive submission. If it were the mother it would be all right, and I should be thankful to see her in good keeping, but the mother and sister go for nothing, and down comes this girl to battle every suggestion with principles picked up from every catchpenny ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excused their fanaticism, by appealing to the words of St. Paul: {85} "The spirit prays in us by sighs and groans that are unutterable." Now, if the spirit, say they, prays in us, we must resign ourselves to its motions, and be swayed and guided by its impulse, by remaining in mere inaction. Hence, passive contemplation they considered the highest state of perfection. The number of the mystics increased in the fourth century under the influence of the Grecian fanatic, who gave himself out as Dionysius, the Areopagite, a disciple of St. Paul, and probably lived about this period; and ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... of an hour he had the delight of perceiving that Amine was in a profuse perspiration; gradually her breathing became less heavy, and instead of the passive state in which she had remained, she moved, and became restless. Philip watched, and replaced the clothes as she threw them off, until she at last appeared to have fallen into a profound and sweet sleep. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to determine which was the more oppressed with horror and amazement: Neville Landless, or John Jasper. But that Jasper's position forced him to be active, while Neville's forced him to be passive, there would have been nothing to choose between them. Each was bowed ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... counties was thoroughly Jacobite. A corrupt and venal administration was filled with secret adherents of the king over the water. One great university was in sympathy with the fallen dynasty. A large part of the Church was imbued with doctrines of divine right and passive obedience, of which the only logical conclusion was the return ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... amiable, passive, good-humoured state, rather amused than otherwise at his mother's impression that it was somehow all his uncle's fault, and ready to be disposed of exactly as they pleased provided that he had not the trouble of thinking about it or of ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against Turk and Tartar. Thus we find a Polish officer, Kamienski, who had already crowned himself with glory at Szczekociny, choosing to celebrate his name-day by inviting his friends to come with him and stir up the Russians, hitherto entirely passive in the operations of the siege. This, so to speak, birthday party was swelled by a band of eager Polish youths and by General Madalinski, who hastened to offer himself as a volunteer. They attacked a Russian battery, spiked the cannon and cut the gunners to pieces. Again ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... passive, grim and cold and unyielding. "How long is it since you married her?" he ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... police before lodgings can be obtained. We found the principal hotel much less crowded than the Haute Mere-Dieu at Chalons, though many of the officers of the garrison mess there. The whole atmosphere of the place was different: silent, concentrated, passive. To the chance observer, Verdun appears to live only in its hospitals; and of these there are fourteen within the walls alone. As darkness fell, the streets became completely deserted, and the cannonade seemed to grow nearer and more incessant. That first night the hush was so intense that ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... prayer:— That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compassion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce. Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... yield himself up to her unwise influence—not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; while great Stafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's service, and entered on that policy of "Thorough" whose aim was to make ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... verb which tell whether the subject is acting or is acted upon are called voices. When the subject is acting the verb is said to be in the active voice. When the subject is acted upon the verb is said to be in the passive voice. Verbs in the passive voice have no objects because the subject, being acted upon, is itself in the place ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... her, and listened to her in silent surprise. Through all the years of our close intimacy this passive force in her character had been hidden from me—hidden even from herself, till love found it, and suffering ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... duty. These sayings have been preserved in the memoirs of the family, and are supposed to indicate happily the firm, persistent spirit and legislative capacity of the one sister, in contrast with the passive rather than active strength, and milder yet no less enduring ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... to it. Yet, submit I must, for I had learned, even then, that my newly appointed guardians were not to be trifled with. Henceforth, OBEDIENCE must be my motto. To every command, however cruel and unjust, I must yield a blind, passive, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... must be shorn of temporary accretions, and must cast aside the ideas of any one particular age which have now been superseded. No longer can it retain the primitive view of nature and the world which formerly obtained, no longer must it take up a somewhat negative and passive attitude, but, realising that religion is a matter of the whole life, must energetically work itself out through all departments of life. It must remedy wrong, not merely endure it. It must proceed ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... 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, ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... 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, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to flesh his maiden sword at Ivry or Ostend, brought back to English soil, the daring temper, the sense of inexhaustable resources, which had bourn him on through storm and battle field." Such forces were not likely to settle into a passive existence at home. Action had become a necessity. Thoughts had been stirred and awakened once for all. Consciously for the few, unconsciously for the many, "for a hundred years past, men had been living in the midst of a spiritual revolution. Not only the world ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... day of 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 ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... promptly contracting a new marriage as a means of dispersing the horrors of the old. Her answer implied that she would have no objection to do it, and to do it at once, provided she could remain externally passive in the matter, that she would tacitly yield, in fact, to pressure, but would not meet solicitation half-way. Now, Bishop Helmsdale, you see what has prompted me. On the one hand is a dignitary of high position and integrity, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... and always in the evening. 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
... sun-drenched garden, the man at last is conquered back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins, goes on—the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no less lustful, receptivity of his—and culminates in a chant to that "crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods," while "heaven's ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... with indignation as well as with suffering, and let him act his part. And the confident lover did not dream that those eyes, red with grief and surrounded by dark circles, saw through all his hypocritical professions, or that the cold, passive little hand, abandoned through the apathy of despair to his caresses, would have been thrust into the fire, before ever he would have been allowed to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... they did made no objection. Though many a tear that day and the following paid its faithful tribute to the memory of what she had lost, no one knew it; she was never seen to weep; and the very grave composure of her face and her passive unconcern as to what was done or doing around her alone gave her friends reason to suspect that the mind was not as quiet as the body. Mr. Carleton was the only one who saw deeper; the only one that guessed why the little ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... these, thy inert creatures, With their sphinx-like stature, are of man the teachers; Silent, secret, passive, endless as the ages, 'Gainst their ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... 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 merit ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, "apparently unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him, and General Wright peremptorily represented to him ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems to have been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism the idea of the ultimate substance—God. To make theology a system capable of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind the active deity, a passive abstraction, or absolute substance without attributes; and then the attributes—justice, mercy, and the rest— fell into rank as secondary substances. "Formam dei divinitatem appellant." Bernard answered him by insisting with his usual fiery conviction that the Church should lay down the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... auburn curls, but asked no questions; he remembered confusedly in his poor little dizzy head similar awakenings for hasty flights, in the midst of pallid faces and breathless exclamations. It was thus that he had acquired the habit of passive obedience; that he allowed himself to be led anywhere, provided the Queen called him in her grave and resolute voice, and held ready for his childish weakness the shelter of her tender arms and the support of her strong shoulder. She had said: "Come!" and he had come ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... another precious occasion of sparing to France the crimes and cruelties through which she has since passed, and to Europe, and finally America, the evils which flowed on them also from this mortal source. The King was now become a passive machine in the hands of the National Assembly, and had he been left to himself, he would have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should devise as best for the nation. A wise constitution would have been formed, hereditary in his ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... twice told—no more; But, as insuperably soared that cliff, Unfathomably thus its sheer descent Walled the abyss. Again he heard that Voice: "Henceforth no place remains for active toils, Penance for acts perverse. Inactive sloth Through passive suffering meets its due. On earth That sloth a nothing seemed; a nothing now That chasm whose hollow bars thee from the Blest, Poor slender film of insubstantial air. Self-help is here denied thee; for that cause A twofold term thou need'st ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... he sought, high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit room overlooking the harbour and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one man could be unlike another—white, fair-haired, delicate, with soft blue eyes and silken lashes, and a passive hand that accepted the pressure of Taquisara's rather than returned it—the pale survival of ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... from, and nowhere to move to; and without which external Form would be impossible because there would be nothing to limit the diffusion of substance and bring it into shape. Polarity, or the interaction of Active and Passive, is therefore ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... every man carries his string of jet or amber beads, which he mechanically tells, though without a thought of prayer. They walk with half-closed eyes, and whilst they seem to be thinking, they are but taking a passive pleasure in existence. They sit down together at their cafes which debouch upon the streets, and sip the sweetest of coffee, and light their cigarettes, and regard the world which passes slowly by. There are all manner of ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... nobly refused to consent to any such compromise. They "answered and said unto them—Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." [55:2] The apostles here disclaimed the doctrine of passive obedience, and asserted principles which lie at the foundation of the true theory of religious freedom. They maintained that "God alone is Lord of the conscience"—that His command overrides all human regulations—and that, no matter ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Letting thoughts happen if they wanted to, perhaps. She was always rather—rather passive about things, you know. They took hold of her if—well, as I say, if they wanted to." He turned to her quickly as he asked, "Are you at all ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... away, 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 ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... took no interest in theology, and felt no sympathy for the Inquisition.[34] But he prudently left that institution alone to pursue its function of policing the ecclesiastical realm. The Jesuits rendered him important assistance by propagating their doctrine of passive obedience to Rome. Spain supported him with the massive strength of a nation Catholic to the core; and when the Spanish prelates gave him trouble, he could rely for aid upon the Spanish crown. His own independence, as a prudent man of business, uninfluenced by bigoted prejudices or partialities ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... he loved, liberty, equality, and fraternity, he combined the good and the evil of our old society in an eclectic philosophy which he embodied in a constitution. Excellent Pinheiro! Liberty even to passive submission, fraternity even to identity of language, equality even in the jury-box and at the guillotine,—such was his ideal republic. Unappreciated genius, of whom the present century was unworthy, but whom the future ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... always a pure predicant, for it sometimes contains within itself an adverbial element when it is conjugated for mode and tense, and a connective element when it is conjugated for agreement. With adjectives and nouns this verb is used as a predicant. In the passive voice also it is thus used, and the participles are nouns or adjectives. In what is sometimes called the progressive form of the active voice nouns and adjectives are differentiated in the participles, ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... ground for action—since to remain passive at such a time was torture—I called at once at Coverly's chambers. He was out. But I left an urgent written message for him, and in the hope of finding him with Isobel, hurried to her flat. He had ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Alongside of this passive heroism there were cases of demonstrative martyrdom. One such incident has survived in the popular memory. The story goes that during a military parade [1] in the city of Kazan the battalion chief drew up all the Jewish cantonists on ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... move rapidly. See what an immense advantage such guerillas possess over an enemy which clings to beaten tracks, moves in large bodies, slowly, and does not 'know the country'. See how they can not only inflict disasters on a foe who vastly overmatches them in strength, but can prolong a semi-passive resistance long after all decisive battles have been fought. See, too, how the strong invader can only conquer his elusive antagonists by learning their methods, studying the country, and matching them in mobility and cunning. The parallel must not be pressed too far; but that this sort of warfare ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to me in that letter that he did not ask me to declare for the King in the struggle already beginning; he merely requested, if I could not conscientiously so declare, at least that I remain passive, and attend quietly to my studies at Cambridge until the war blew over, as it quickly must, and these insolent people were taught ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Louisa, passive and resigned, accepted the misfortune as she accepted everything. She added a prayer to her daily prayers; she went regularly to the cemetery, and cared for the grass as if it were ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... or two others, what he calls "a little brush," in the preceding October. He observes that, if they are active, they may do our trade some mischief: "but," adds he, "to say the truth, I believe that they are more inclined to be passive; at least, they had much of that ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... declared Kosovo independent from Serbia. The MILOSEVIC regime carried out repressive measures against the Albanians in the early 1990s as the unofficial government of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim RUGOVA, tried to use passive resistance to gain international assistance and recognition of its demands for independence. In 1995, Albanians dissatisfied with RUGOVA's nonviolent strategy created the Kosovo Liberation Army and launched an insurgency. In 1998, MILOSEVIC ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the bungling answer and the confused question; he leaves one student to answer the difficulties of another.... The advantage of the discussion over the lecture is, thus, that it fosters in the student the active attitude of the thinker in place of the passive attitude of the listener.... Obviously it is simplest to teach large classes by lecturing to them. Yet a spirited and relevant discussion may be conducted in a class of a hundred or so. Of course no more than eight or twelve, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... 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 pick-axe, she struck the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... risen to political prominence in the city are for the most part saloon keepers. As many as 100 saloons flourished in the town before the riot. The city government has always been bad. The attitude of the citizenry appeared to be that of passive acceptance of conditions which must not be interfered with. As an example of the state of mind, much surprise was manifested when an investigation of the rioting was begun. Criminals have been known to buy immunity. The mayor was ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... gravely down. He, and Francis' queen—a passive spectator at the feast—and a bishop, whose interest lay in a truffled capon, alone followed not the direction of the duke's eyes. The fair favorite of the king clapped her hands, but the monarch frowned, not having forgotten that night in Fools' hall when ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the pleasure played upon her, using her as a passive instrument by which it attained to audible expression. For how should a child know a word like Arcane? It came to her as things do which we have known and forgotten—the whole song did in fact; but she held it as a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Sitting now in the shadow of the room, she turned her eyes first toward one speaker and then the other, wondering all the while how it was to end. If only she had told Robert herself before this moment! She could not understand her husband's passive attitude. She knew him to be slow to anger, yet she also knew well the strength of the passion which lay controlled beneath his calm exterior. What Covington had said and the manner in which he had said it would, under ordinary circumstances, have aroused Gorham to stern ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... nowhere blossoming into reality. The philosophy of Leibnitz is equally remote from that of Des Cartes on the one hand, and from that of Spinoza on the other. He diverges from the former on the question of substance, which Des Cartes conceived as consisting of two kinds, one active (thinking) and one passive (extended), but which Leibnitz conceives to be all and only active. He explodes Dualism, and resolves the antithesis of matter and spirit by positing extension as a continuous act instead of a passive mode, substance as an active force instead of an inert mass,—matter as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Commandment. Thus faith goes out into the works and through the works comes to itself again; just as the sun goes forth unto its setting and comes again unto its rising. For this reason the Scriptures associate the day with peaceful living in works, the night with passive living in adversity, and faith lives and works, goes out and comes in, in both, as Christ says, ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... sufferings 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 not one of her friends guessed how much she really suffered. As much time as she could ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the cast was driving before it a host of melancholy snow-laden clouds. Threateningly they swept over white ground and sullen wood, and the earth seemed awaiting another fold of its winding-sheet; cypress, spruce and fir, close side by side and motionless, were passive in their attitude of uncomplaining endurance. The stumps above the snow were like floating wreckage on a dreary sea. In all the landscape there was naught that spoke of a spring to come—of warmth and growth; rather did it seem a shard ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... in Tory principles, and taught by her maternal uncle, the Earl of Rochester, to consider every opposition to the Sovereign's will as rebellion, was scarcely regarded in the light of an enemy to the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance, notwithstanding her unfilial conduct;[2] and it is remarkable that, during her life, great favour was shown at Court to the Highland partisans of James the Second; distinctions were as much avoided as it was possible; ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... lady had ambitions—the 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 thought it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... no retort but stands passive. The great orange brute whose nerves has been torn to rags creeps to the squatter an' with mournful howls explains what we've ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... are five: the Affirmative or Indicative, the Negative or Interrogative, the Subjunctive, the Imperative, and the Infinitive. Many, but not all, Transitive Verbs have a Passive Participle. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... which Emerson talks about is the nearest approximation to the universal form of life, but this is constantly marred by a stray thought of permanence and the confusing hint of the passive mind that we suppose the balance to be the law, and are glad to accept night with day, and cold with heat, because there is a blindness in the spiritual eye which will not let us see the riper spirits who are not sated but satisfied with permanency. For ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that the combination of brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meeting, and it was soon found that it would not be possible to secure a general resolution to meet the legislation of the Government by passive resistance and by ceasing to brew. As all would not stand together, every man was left to take his own course, and the result was that what we should now call a strike came ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to overcome to be great either in courage or magnanimity; he needs the sense of injustice, of wrong, of unmerited contempt; he needs the wrath against these things without which man becomes passive like non-carnivorous animals. And had not he obstacles?—unrequited love, escutcheon to make ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... anything in reason would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports from Thurloe's foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and Charles II.,[1] no one could challenge Fairfax's honour or doubt his passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage at Nunappleton was discussed at the Council in London. On the 9th of October, his Highness and eight more being present, it was ordered that ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... requires the allotment of time and money to do things which you most enjoy, and these will differ for every couple. We may easily overemphasize the kind of recreation for which we pay money. It is true that theatre tickets, phonograph records, and the like are expensive and offer a passive form of entertainment, more appropriate for older people. When you are young and trying to be happy on little money, it is foolish to believe that you have to buy your fun. Whether or not you have a good time depends not on how much ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed him that he reeled as ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... as a man of pleasure, celebrated for his debts and his intrigues; in politics he had no force behind [Sidenote: Opposition to the Optimates.] him save that of the discredited party of the populares, reduced to lending a passive support to Pompey and Crassus. But as soon as the proved incompetence of the senatorial government had brought about the mission of Pompey to the East with the almost unlimited powers conferred on him by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... devout ardour; she read widely, poets, historians, philosophers, 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 ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall young man, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows. MacRae could only see this out of one corner of his eye, for he was being turned gently over on his face. Weak and passive as he was, the firm pressure of Betty's soft hands on his skin gave him ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for anything except to ornament his environment, the crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... called out beautiful talents in her. But in the first she was utterly disappointed. The second was not roused within her thought. She did not expand into various life, and remained unequal; sometimes too passive, sometimes too ardent, and not sufficiently occupied with what occupied those around her to come on the same level with them and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... underground was working! Hart could not tell whether the old woman was an active member or just a passive responder, but it did not matter. She was now spreading the seeds for future doubt ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... heed to the brotherly protestations of his admirer, and exchanged only such words with him as their occupations required. Old Angus, however, was not so passive an observer of his new and unlooked-for housemate. "He's a good for nought sort of a fellow, slenken frae place to place wi' nowt but a sark to his back," Angus would say to his wife. Mr. Wilson's physical imperfections ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... confined to the Lower House, the Peers, from the nature of their composition, being complacent and passive enough. The vast majority of them were in fact mere shadows gathered round the solid persons of Joseph, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome Bonaparte, and Sieyes, Carnot, and the military men of the Revolution. As a political ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... I realized that this notion was not of the moment, but that I had been as if under the influence of some powerful nerve stimulant since my brain began to recover from the shock of that thunderbolt. Only, where nerve stimulants often make the mind passive and disinclined to take part in the drama so vividly enacting before it, this opening of my reservoirs of reserve nervous energy had multiplied my power to act as well as my power to observe. "I wonder how long it will last," thought I. And it made me uneasy, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... grow downwards, is twofold: to affect, and to be affected. In its active and positive condition it affects the whole of the vital and muscular processes in the body, finding expression in vital action. In its passive and negative state it is affected by impressions coming to it in different ways through the sense organs, resulting in nervous and mental action. These two functions are interdependent. It is the latter ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... it is with the most painful reluctance that its summons is obeyed. 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 act of bravery; and several even thus have become generals. There ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... submitting his exhibits for her gracious approval, shifting them as soon as she looked as if she were about to be bored; and the change had come before she had lived long enough to exhaust and weary of the few things he has for the well-paying passive spectator, but not before she had formed the habit of making only the passive ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Mere passive touch gives a certain amount of information, but comparatively little. It is necessary to explore; that is what is done in active ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... the ruler to the minimum, the only power assigned to him being to maintain the morals of the state by making his life a model of virtuous living. The reformer claimed, too, that when the ruler exceeds his power he becomes a tyrant, and that people are justified in rejecting the doctrine of passive obedience and slaying him. See Buchanan, "De Jure Apud Scotos" (Aberdeen, 1762); Dunning, "History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu"; and P. Hume ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... Advices! And when he thinks she ought rather to have assum'd the Protection of her Servants, he seems unaware of the probable Consequence; where there was a Puppy, of Quality, in the Case, who had, even without Provocation, drawn his Sword on the poor passive PAMELA. Far from bearing a Thought of exciting an abler Resentment, to the Danger of a Quarrel with so worthless a Coxcomb, how charmingly natural, apprehensive, and generous, is her Silence (during the Recital she makes of her Sufferings) with ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive intellect, because he saw No organ ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... so that their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... felt this irritation about her partly because there was something base in him, half innate and half the abrasion his present circumstances had rubbed on his soul, which was willing to go on this stupid sexual journey suggested by such vain, passive women, and the saner part of him was vexed at this compliance; he thought he had a real case against her. She was one of those beautiful women who are not only conscious of their beauty but have accepted it as their vocation. She was ensphered from the world of creative effort in the establishment ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... less an active expression of policy or strategy than the passive result of conflicting influences and opinions. As early as November 1914 Mr. Churchill had suggested an attack there or elsewhere on the Turkish coast as a means of protecting Egypt, but the idea was not seriously considered ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... thought of envy for the birds hopping among the branches. Indeed, even to Reed himself, that was the most tragic phase of the whole tragic situation: that his hours of restless longing seemed to have come to a final end. Always too sane to waste regrets upon futilities, he had come now to a point of passive acceptance of the immutable bad in his surroundings, an active effort only to snatch at whatever good remained. It did not affect his attitude in the very least that, nine days out of every ten, he had to take a spiritual microscope to hunt the good. One of the longest lessons is the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head swung round, pulled ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... strained relations with many of the leading physicians of his time, notably his own brother John, who himself was probably not entirely free from blame in the matter. Hunter is said to have excused his own irritability on the grounds that being an anatomist, and accustomed to "the passive submission of dead bodies," contradictions became the more unbearable. Many of the physiological researches begun by him were carried on and perfected by his more famous brother, particularly his investigations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... treachery to him, he had passively acquiesced in the results of that forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness had enabled him to extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading interpretation of ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... almost inarticulate cry, he sought to draw there and then, but those about flung themselves upon us, and held us apart—I, passive and unresisting; the Marquis, bellowing, struggling, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... those on the missouri but these are not as ferocious as those perhaps from the circumstance of their being compelled from the scarcity of game in this quarter to live more on roots and of course not so much in the habit of seizing and devouring living animals. the bear here are far from being as passive as the common black bear they have attacked and faught our hunters already but not so fiercely as those of the Missouri. there are also some of the common black bear in this neighbourhood. Frazier, J. Fields and Wiser ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... value in the good government of a benevolent despot or of a fatherly aristocracy. 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 organic conception of society, and the justification of the democratic ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... to the meaning of these many changes. But he did not mind that. Not absence of vulgar curiosity alone, but an unwilling sub-conscious shrinking from any too close acquaintance with the details of her life contributed to render him passive. He had a conviction, though he had never formulated it even in thought, that ignorance in relation to her made for security and content. And there was a refined charm in this—namely, that each to the other, even while friendship deepened, should remain something of an undiscovered ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... of humiliating the Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of alarm, the girl fell on her knees and caught frantically at her mother's hand. It lay in hers absolutely passive and cold, so cold. The priest raised the lamp till the light shone full upon the face of the sleeper. Sleeping she was indeed, the last long sleep from which not they, not Philippe, not anyone could ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... only guessed at, there seems to have been always a passive but most influential opposition to the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland. Its opponents never met the question in the field of logical argument, yet, somehow, they had power enough to prevent its being ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was. "I don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds. That door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece. You do ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... thunderstruck the next instant by my mother's catching my arm and stopping my hand with the vehement exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... defects and all the advantages of political elevation generally. For example, the State as State annuls private property, the individual declares in a political manner that private property is abolished as soon as he abolishes the census for active and passive eligibility, which has been done in many North American States. Hamilton interprets this fact quite correctly from the political standpoint: "The great multitude has won the victory over the property owners and the monied men." Is not private property ideally abolished when the have-nots ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... 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, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... began, and he took her in his arms without asking her indulgence, and regardless of the indignation of the mob of men about her. Ysabel, whose being was filled with tumult, lay passive as he held her closer than man had ever ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Gregory, taking out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... pawnbroker, and he is mightily indifferent to the orphan-child crying beside its parent's coffin. The little charity-girls are not so well taught or looked after, but that they can take to dram-drinking already. The church indeed is very prominent and handsome; but as, quite passive in the picture, it coldly surveys these things in progress under shadow of its tower, I cannot but bethink me that it was not until this year of grace 1848 that a Bishop of London first came out respecting something wrong in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Colonies, being dissenters, were untrammeled and free to speak their mind in defence of their country's right, and history shows that they did not fail their opportunity: the doctrine of passive obedience never finding favor with them. In the Colonies the Presbyterian ministers claimed equal rights, religious freedom, and civil liberty. Their teaching had great influence, particularly in the ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... person. If he gives promise of being more, he utterly disappoints that promise afterwards. In the scene in which the Duchess tells her love, he is far smaller, rather than greater, than the Antonio of the opening scene: though (as there) altogether passive. He hears his mistress's declaration just as any other respectable youth might; is exceedingly astonished, and a good deal frightened; has to be talked out of his fears till one naturally expects a revulsion on the Duchess's part into something like scorn or shame (which might ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... maintained a passive indifference to external phenomena, lifted elbows and toes, blew bubbles from his tiny mouth, and stared at the finger with the most ravishing, roguish smile, as though saying: "I know that great sticking-out limb, and there is a joke about it which no one but me can see, and which ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of her house. It is in the fictions concerning her family that she is given such unenviable importance, and presented as a Maenad, a poisoner, and worse. In reality she appears to us, during her life in Rome, as a rather childish, naive, and entirely passive figure, important only in so far as she found employment at her father's or brother's hands for the advancement of their high ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... neither time nor scope for the exercise and development of initiative. The teacher, at times, seems to think of the school as a mammoth syringe with which she is called upon to pump information into her bored but passive pupils. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... people. If foreign agents, on a subject of disagreement between their government and this, wish to prefer an appeal to the American people, they will hereafter, it is hoped, better appreciate their own rights and the respect due to others than to attempt to use the Executive as the passive ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... she had remained 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 out trees and sunset; so real that it seemed always ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... appeared nearer to the beholder, addressed himself to the cause of such a phenomenon, which led to the invention of the telescope and proved the beginning of the modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as these could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a mere passive listener. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... one and then another sail meant bringing the lugger to its senses, the lieutenant was right, for first one ruddy brown spread of canvas sank with its spar into the lugger, and then another and another, the long low vessel lying passive upon the water, and in due time the cutter was steered close up, her sails flapped, and her boat which had been held ready was lowered, and Leigh ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her, heard from within the cottage his father's voice upraised in an anathema, and the shriller tones ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and snap!—the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... After three hours' passive endurance of this terrible fire, Braddock, seeing that all was lost, commanded a retreat, and he and such officers as were left strove to draw off the soldiers in some semblance of order; but at this ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... up. Her body was quivering. She lay, for a moment, passive in his arms. Then she sprang away. She stood with her back to him, looking out of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the effect of their passive obedience to the intentions of the monarch, than the result of the lessons taught by experience. They had seen, that the most rash, the most incomprehensible, I had almost said the most senseless, enterprises of Napoleon were invariably crowned with success; and they were convinced, that reason could ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... ceases to be evil; there is generous battle-hope in place of dead, passive misery; the evil itself has become a kind ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... little girls, and yet her bearing was august, grand, noble as that of a queen. It is impossible to describe the effect of these manoeuvres, so clever that they acted like the purest truth on a soul as fresh and honest as that of d'Arthez. The great author remained dumb with admiration, passive beside her in the recess of that window awaiting a word, while the princess awaited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to him for that. Feeling cold, the princess returned to her easy-chair; ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... averted countenance, Venetia clinging to her hand, which she had caught when she rushed forward, and which now fell passive by Lady Annabel's side, giving no sign, by any pressure or motion, of the slightest sympathy with her daughter, or feeling for the strange and agonising situation in which they ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... was in an outraged frame of mind, and properly so. Politically speaking, George was what might be called, for lack of a better term, a passive reformer. That is, he read religiously the New York Nation, was totally opposed to the spoils system of party rewards, and was ostensibly as right-minded a citizen as one would expect to find in a Sabbath day's journey. He subscribed one dollar ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... your portion from your mother; Well know we what it was which brought the head Of Anne Boleyn to the fatal block. I've supported What human nature can support; farewell, Lamb-hearted resignation, passive patience, Fly to thy native heaven; burst at length Thy bonds, come forward from thy dreary cave, In all thy fury, long-suppressed rancour! And thou, who to the anger'd basilisk Impart'st the murd'rous glance, O, arm my tongue With poison'd darts! (raising her voice). A ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... song McDermot sang to himself as he walked up the great court-yard of the Palace, past the lattice windows, behind which the silent women of the late Dakoon's household still sat, passive and grief- stricken. How knew they what the new Dakoon would do—send them off into the hills, or kill them? McDermot was in a famous humour, for he had just come from Pango Dooni, the possessor of a great secret, and he had been paid high honour. He looked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fairly paralleled by what takes place at the ordinary spiritualistic seance. Those attending are advised that the chief condition of a communication with the inhabitants of the other world is a passive state of mind. This passivity cannot exclude expectancy, since it is only assumed in order that something may occur. If nothing occurs, if no communications are received, it is because the requisite conditions have not been fulfilled, and the sceptic is met with much semi-scientific ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... of this new duty, which easily became a great pleasure despite my occasional disgust at the impertinence of some applicants when it was discovered that I was ready to subscribe freely. I was not however satisfied with the easy work of giving, but soon passed from the passive act of signing cheques to active work among the needy. I studied the theories of tenement houses and hygiene, and became a leading spirit in ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... is a SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and he executive and practical force. Ever since, indeed, she had said to him with that kindled, eager look—"Accept! Accept!"—he had been sharply aware of how best to approach, to attract her. She was, it seemed, no mere passive girl. She was in her measure a thinker—a character. He perceived in her—deep down—enthusiasms and compassions, that seemed often as though they shook her beyond her strength. They made him uncomfortable; they ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he said cheerfully; "she presents herself. One is only the humblest possible medium. And the most passive." ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and suffered the child to lead him from the room. He seemed passive in her hands. I noticed that he thrust his fingers nervously into his pocket, and that a troubled look went over his face as they were withdrawn. His last sixpence was in ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very still and passive. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... the passage clearer;' but that, if we take the word fearful in its rarer signification of that which excites terror, 'no alteration is needed.' Certainly: none is needed; for the mistake (as I regard it) of REP. lies simply in supposing the passive sense of fearful—namely, that which suffers fear—to be the ordinary sense; which now, in the nineteenth century, it is; but was not in the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... especially as the domestic life was arranged, one might almost say, with a special view to promoting musical talent in the mistress of the household. Yet where were those oratorios? She shook her head. Mr. St. George, she thought, had clearly proved that the inherent nature of women was passive and imitative, while that of man, even in the least remarkable examples of the sex, was always powerful and original to the verge ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird |
