"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... look was hard and cruel. "She persecutes me," he thought within himself, "and she comes to me with the air of a martyr." "You look very ill, my child," she said. "I don't like to see you look in that way." And she tottered to a sofa, still holding one of his passive hands in her thin, cold, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enchantments,"—"beguiling unstable souls," so this second beast "maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of (credulous) men." (2 Tim. iii. 8; Exod. vii. 22; Acts viii. 9-11.) The venal ministry of the heathenized church, (ch. xi. 2,) inculcate passive obedience to the beast of the sea, as to the "ordinance of God;"—to "resist" which, subjects the recusant to "damnation." (Rom. xiii. 2.) Here, then, we behold the counterfeits of the two great ordinances of church and state, against which ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... an 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 ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was convinced that the teacher was an active verb," said Nat. "He found out that he was neither neuter nor passive." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... snow-covered wrappings and then hers, that he might wrap her in his arms. He did not say what he had been feeling, but his manner of great gladness left Hazel to infer several things. And for a minute or two she was passive, shewing a pale, tired face. But then there swept over her such a sense of what she had, and of what she had escaped, that she could only lay her head down on his shoulder and be still; a shiver running over her as she remembered other ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... When platforms have been formulated and candidates have been chosen, these men develop from the partizan passive to the partizan militant. They know those who, in their own party, are "weakening," and by the same token those who are "weakening" ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... war in producing general distress among the poor, both in the agricultural and manufacturing districts. The agricultural population being more thinly scattered, and more passive by habit and education, bore their sufferings with exemplary patience; but the manufacturing labourers in the midland and northern districts, as well as in some parts of Scotland, exhibited a contrary spirit. Secret combinations and seditious assemblages became the order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 1832, O'Connell addressed a meeting of the Political Union of the London working classes. In his address, he humorously and graphically describes the system of passive resistance then adopted against the payment of Tithes, in the following amusing dialogue between Paddy and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... A thing is said to be assumable as being capable of being assumed by a Divine Person, and this capability cannot be taken with reference to the natural passive power, which does not extend to what transcends the natural order, as the personal union of a creature with God transcends it. Hence it follows that a thing is said to be assumable according to some fitness for such a union. Now this fitness in human nature ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... we must accept no terms, because we would thereby bind ourselves for the future, but that we should go over into a condition of passive resistance. But can we do that? It is a fact that when the war ceases there will be famine in the country, and what will be easier for the British Government than to supply the people with food on condition that the men take the oath of allegiance? Therefore I ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... and call the names of the children as usual," said the teacher. Those were no dainty little ones, accustomed to be dressed like passive dolls by careful nurses or over-fond mammas. They had but to receive their garments in the daily orderly way, and to put them on as they well knew how. There might sometimes be an obstinate string or button, but Nils ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... heroes of Disraeli's early novels are creative; in his later they become chiefly receptive. Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming show their genius by insubordination; Coningsby and Tancred learn wisdom by sitting at the feet of Sidonia; and Lothair reduces himself so completely to a mere 'passive bucket' to be pumped into by every variety of teacher, that he is unpleasantly like a fool. Disraeli still loves ingenuous youth; but he has gained quite a new perception of the value of docility. Here ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of this class of talkers may be mentioned, viz., the man who forces his logic upon you in such a dogmatic manner as leaves you without any hope of reply. You give him all the glory of victory. For the sake of peace and safety you remain passive, and think this the best valour for the occasion. Cowper refers to him in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... once operated, and then forever ceased its operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive, animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"—not a part nature, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... which usually fall upon persecuted men; it becomes worth their while to suffer, for a time, political martyrdom, for the sake of the canonization that awaits the suffering martyr; and I make no doubt the right honourable gentleman has so much penetration, and at the same time so much passive virtue about him, that he would be glad not only to seem a poor, injured, persecuted man, but he would gladly seek an opportunity of even really suffering a little persecution, if it be possible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hurry to precipitate the country into civil war; and therefore on them should fall the scourge of war in its worst form. Taunting messages had also come to us, when in Georgia, to the effect that, when we should reach South Carolina, we would find a people less passive, who would fight us to the bitter end, daring us to come over, etc.; so that I saw and felt that we would not be able longer to restrain our men as we ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... perfectly passive; for, to have attempted resistance against more than a hundred men, armed with guns, fish-spears, iron-crows, spades, and bludgeons, would have been an act of utter insanity. Mr. Geddes, with his strong sonorous voice, answered the question about the superintendent in a manner ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... appeared in the Times newspaper, which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it." On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive, icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... East without disputing or reviewing them. "Latin Christianity," says Dean Milman, "accepted the creed which its narrow and barren vocabulary could hardly express in adequate terms. Yet, throughout, the adhesion of Rome and the West was a passive acquiescence in the dogmatic system which had been wrought out by the profounder theology of the Eastern divines, rather than a vigorous and original examination on her part of those mysteries. The Latin Church was the scholar as well as the loyal partizan ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... regiment in Nova Scotia was brought up to the strength of one thousand men. By May the expedition was ready. Monckton, with two thousand troops, embarked at Annapolis Royal, and by June 1 the expedition was at Chignecto. In the meantime Vergor, the French commandant at Beausejour, had not been passive. He had strengthened his defences, had summoned the inhabitants of the surrounding districts to his help, had mounted cannon in a blockhouse defending the passage of the river, and had thrown up a strong breastwork of timber along the shore. On June 3 the British landed. They had ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... relief can be given. Fortifications, like natural accidents of ground, serve to counterbalance superiority of numbers, or other disparity of means; both in land and sea warfare, therefore, and in both strategy and tactics, they are valuable adjuncts to a defence, for they constitute a passive reinforcement of strength, which liberates an active equivalent, in troops or in ships, for offensive operations. Nor was it anticipated that when coast defence by fortification was affirmed to be a nearly constant element, the word "constant" would be understood to mean the same for ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... of himself, Will encountered her look, met the beautiful eyes, felt their smile envelop him. Never till now had he known the passive strength of woman, that characteristic which at times makes her a force of Nature rather than an individual being. Amazed, abashed, he let his head fall—and mumbled something about ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... as mental, you are going to enjoy excellent health, better health than that you have been able to enjoy up to the present. Now I am going to count three, and when I say 'Three', you will open your eyes and come out of the passive state in which you are now. You will come out of it quite naturally, without feeling in the least drowsy or tired, on the contrary, you will feel strong, vigorous, alert, active, full of life; further still, you will feel ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... talents and character. Michael Angelo could not have arisen in a half-civilized tribe. His creative power would have found no field in a society rude, and blind to the attractions of art. Nevertheless, his power was creative. Cromwell and Michael Angelo, and such as they, are not the passive organs, the mere outcome, of the communities in which they appear. Without the original thought and personal energy of leaders, momentous changes in the life of nations could never have taken place. A great man may be obliged to wait long ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... which was founded upon a worship of the prolific powers of nature. All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative principle—the active, or male, and the passive, or female. Hence the gods were always arranged in pairs, as Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus and Venus, Osiris and Isis. But the ancients went farther. Believing that the procreative and productive powers of nature might be conceived to exist in the same individual, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... wonder that my father, so sensible, so keen in other matters, could not see that her sole ambition was to have every person in the house under her control. One by one the old servants disappeared—there was some fault or other with each one—and my father grew more passive at each attack, and made less resistance; he was so deeply impressed with the fact that every change resulted in greater comfort ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... fear. His courage and recklessness had terrified Meleese, had astonished Croisset. And yet—what had he done? From the beginning—from the moment he first placed his foot in the Chinese cafe—his enemies had held the whip-hand. He had been compelled to play a passive part. Up to the point of the ambush on the Wekusko trail he might have found some vindication for himself. But this experience with Jean Croisset—it was enough to madden him, now that he was alone, to think ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... juxtapositions and balances. The truth is, that both equally illustrate the classic spirit, the spirit of their age par excellence and of French painting in general, in a supreme degree, though the conformability of the one is positive and of the other passive, so to say; and that neither illustrates quite the subserviency to the conventional which we, who have undoubtedly just as many conventions of our own, are wont to ascribe to them, and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... enjoyed a common civilisation. If the civilisation was the same the religion also was the same. How the Indo-Iranian religion was developed in India, we have seen. At first a worship of active and militant deities, it became by degrees a religion of a passive type, in which a suffering, acquiescent, and brooding humanity presented to heaven its needs and problems, and received a corresponding answer. The Aryans who remained in Iran retained their active and practical disposition. While ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... those lovely lips disclose The triumphs of the opening Rose; O fair! O graceful! bid them prove As passive to the breath of Love. In tender accents, faint and low, Well-pleased I hear the whispered "No!" The whispered "No"—how little meant! Sweet Falsehood that endears Consent! For on those lovely lips the while Dawns the soft relenting smile, And tempts with ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... notice which one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this momentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms for its prosody, that enlarges the mind to some practical purpose and informs it about the world. Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition of things ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... of fear fled. His position was uncomfortable and his limbs were cramped, but he resigned himself, with something almost like gladness, and began to look forward to that which lay ahead with a zest and a will to be no passive instrument which might have surprised his captors could they have read ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the same still more strikingly when the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects which they have encountered forms no symmetrical ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... were studiously fomented by the French King. He had long kept England passive by promising to support the throne against the Parliament. He now, alarmed at finding that the patriotic counsels of Danby seemed likely to prevail in the closet, began to inflame the Parliament against ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be respectful in meeting, and neither by look or expression irritate each other. They are to be wholly passive, being entirely under the guidance of ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke; fire flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each of these ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of love; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... Mr Marriot, confounded though enraged, saw their departure in passive silence: the right of attendance they had so tenaciously denied to each other, here admitted not of dispute: Delvile upon this occasion, appeared as the representative of his father, and his authority seemed the authority of a guardian. Their only consolation was that neither had yielded to the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... law of your growth is contingent upon the exercise of these faculties. The brain is the judicial function and the hand the executive. Together these two powers qualify you for the master-workman. If you allow them to exist in the passive sense, you become an apathetic segment in the midst of a great world pulsing with life around you. You merely add one to the population, instead of counting for a potential and energizing influence. ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... preached so long in vain and now almost forgotten, is the opposite of this. It insists that man is by nature a passive, an experiencing creature, and that he can do nothing well in action unless he has first learned a right passivity. Only by that passivity can he enrich himself; and when he has enriched himself he will act rightly. Man has a will; but he must apply ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... King John, King Richard, &c. What can be more agreeable to the Idea our Historians give of Henry the Sixth, than the Picture Shakespear has drawn of him! His Manners are every where exactly the same with the Story; one finds him still describ'd with Simplicity, passive Sanctity, want of Courage, weakness of Mind, and easie Submission to the Governance of an imperious Wife, or prevailing Faction: Tho' at the same time the Poet do's Justice to his good Qualities, and moves the Pity of his Audience for him, by showing him Pious, Disinterested, a Contemner of ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... the stalls of London. Her hold smelt like a garden of spices for all the benjamin and cloves, the nutmegs and the civet, the ambergris and frankincense. There was a fight before Raleigh's ship the 'Roebuck' could seize this enormous prize, yet somewhat a passive one on the part of the lumbering carrack, such a fight as may ensue between a great rabbit and the little stoat that sucks its life out. When she was entered, it was found that pilferings had gone on already at every port at which she had called; and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... gold and golden brown, Jenny was clinging to Keith, snatching once again at precarious happiness. Far off, in her aspirations, love was desired as synonymous with peace and contentment; but in her heart Jenny had no such pretence. She knew that it was otherwise. She knew that passive domestic enjoyment would not bring her nature peace, and that such was not the love she needed. Keith alone could give her true love. And she was in Keith's arms, puzzled and lethargic with something ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... doctor stuck in the saddle. He had set his teeth, and he was a sea-sick greenish-white. His hat was a-jog over one ear—his shirt tails flew out behind. And still he remained to battle. Aye, for he ceased the passive clinging to the saddle. He gathered up the long quirt which had hitherto dangled idly from his wrist, and at the very moment when the piebald had let out another notch in his feats, the doctor, holding on desperately with one hand, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... plans, vicissitudes, and suspense followed, during which Amanda strove manfully; Matilda suffered agonies of hope and fear; and Lavinia remained a passive shuttlecock, waiting to be tossed wherever Fate's battledore ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the man's pride which suffered: the pride of a high spirit which found itself helpless between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so false that hereafter men might say of the unfortunate that he had bartered his mistress for his life. He had not! But he had perforce to stand by; he had to be passive under stress of circumstances, and by the sacrifice, if she consummated it, he would ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and be out of her misery; with you, she would drag through years of increasing wretchedness. Your thwarted life would be her long torture. Remember how often I have told you that you have much that is feminine in your character. You have little real energy; you are passive in great trials; it is easier to you to suffer than to act. Your idealism is often noble, but never heroic. You have talked to me of your natural nearness to people of the working class, and I firmly believe that you are ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... 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 by sturdy and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... concentric expression must correspond to the sensitive, moral and intellectual state of man. When gesture is concerned, the law is thus modified: In the sensitive state, the gesture, which is naturally eccentric, may become concentric, as the orator is passive or active. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... he said, clasping his hands behind him and regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity— "woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive. Her only idea is to be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture. Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view of knowledge as sui causa optandum, "would you like to please me by licking that boy across ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fireplace, where we had a bright fire whenever it was cold, 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 ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... 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 ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... 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
... inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation, whilst we amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes,—when I consider all this, Wilhelm, I am silent. I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... and looked at her, the scales fallen from his eyes. Though she was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze without blenching. But now, behind the passive defiance, grave rather than sullen, which she presented to his attack, the weakness, the helplessness, the heart pain of the woman ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... cruelty of persecution, and that excesses and bloodthirstiness were confined to the "High Flyers," as the milder Covenanters called them. Morton represents the ideal of a good Scot in the circumstances. He comes to be ashamed of his passive attitude in the face of oppression. He stands up for "that freedom from stripes and bondage" which was claimed, as you may read in Scripture, by the Apostle Paul, and which every man who is free-born is called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of his countrymen. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that you hardly believe his folly is but folly." Sir George was a man born without impulse or capacity for anything. Lady Mary, who was fond of using him for her wit, made a grammarian's jest on him, "The creature's an anomaly: active in form, passive in meaning." He was bred in a society which made it a fashion to be vicious. He affected to follow the fashion. If vice must needs be something active, or at least, something of the will, Sir George Anville must escape punishment. But he was to a wholesome taste more offensive ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... of the convoy and then cease firing, never concentrating their fire on a definite point. Their ammunition too was evidently of an inferior quality. I saw no shrapnel fired. It is all very novel, laborious, exciting, hungry work, and perhaps the strangest sensation of all is one's passive ignorance of all that is happening beyond one's own narrow sphere of duty. An odd discovery is that one has so much leisure, as a driver, when in action. There is plenty of time to write one's diary when waiting with the teams. One pleasant thing is the change felt in the ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... Robinson was a most influential writer. Of necessity, his work was largely controversial, but he wrote from the standpoint of defense, and rarely departed from a broad and kindly spirit. In the "Seven Articles" Robinson admits the royal supremacy in so far as to countenance a passive obedience. His teaching had the greatest influence in shaping the religious life of the first and second ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... it. Nor would the numerous and formidable bands of Indians—the most warlike to be found in any land—which occupy the extensive regions contiguous to the States of Arkansas and Missouri, and who are in possession of large tracts of country within the limits of Texas, be likely to remain passive. The inclinations of those numerous tribes lead them invariably ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Love! as on the midway Slope Of yonder Hill I stretch my limbs at noon And tranquil muse upon Tranquillity. 30 Full many a Thought uncall'd and undetain'd And many idle flitting Phantasies Traverse my indolent and passive Mind As wild, as various, as the random Gales That swell or flutter on this subject Lute. 35 And what if All of animated Life Be but as Instruments diversly fram'd That tremble into thought, while thro' them breathes One infinite and intellectual ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... levelling 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
... the danger of discovery, whether from the acuteness of her enemies or the treachery of pretended friends; and even more when she pondered on the character of the king himself, so singularly unfitted for an undertaking in which it was not the passive courage with which he was amply endowed, but daring resolution, promptitude, and presence of mind, which were requisite. She was cheered, however, by repeated letters from the emperor, showing the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... had a friend of mine as his Curate; and he told us how this same Curate had come to him at a time when the parish, under circumstances inherited from past years, was ripe and ready for partizanship and division. Nothing would have been needed but the Curate's passive allowance of such tendencies to embarrass and spoil the difficult work of the Vicar. But my dear young friend was "found in Christ"; he knew his Lord's will in the matter, and he strove to do it. By active discouragement he precluded the mischief ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. The continuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left him inordinately fatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space he sat inert and passive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. He was roused by two medical attendants, come prepared with stimulants to sustain him through the next occasion. After he had taken their drugs and bathed by their advice in cold water, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate—the same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my bosom the season of 1882 came to ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... however pledged to the passive part, could not long sustain it without rebellion. To "hang round" the shut door of his hopes seemed, after two long days, more than even his passion required of him; and on the third he despatched a note of goodbye to his friend. He was going off for a few weeks, he explained—his ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... reason justly and 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 leaves a ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... The negro nodded several times, again put his hand on his heart, and then disappeared. A thrill of hope stirred every vein in Vincent's body. He felt his cheeks flush and had difficulty in maintaining his passive attitude. He was not, then, utterly deserted; he had a friend who would, he was sure, do all in his ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... closed, and formed themselves into an expression which he remembered they had always assumed when, as a little child, she used silently to hold up her face to him to be kissed. The miserable contrast between what she was now and what she had been them, was beyond the passive endurance, the patient resignation of the spirit-broken old man; the empty cup dropped from his hands, he knelt down by the side of the couch ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of the passive part he had played, Blake was perhaps more deeply affected by the doings at the prison than any other member of the party, and during the interval that followed he did not trust himself to see Vittoria. There was a double reason for ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... enterprise, where she was often inspiration, 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 were strange to his own ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these ten spies from Palestine, as he proposed to do with the rest of the congregation, would hardly be enough, for the rest of the Hebrews were, at most, passive, but these ten had wilfully ignored the will of Moses, or, as he expressed it, of the Lord. Therefore it was the Lord's duty, as Moses saw it, to punish them. And this Moses proposed that the Lord should ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... others, the memory and understanding into itself, and concentrated them in LOVE;—not but that they still subsisted, but their operations were in a manner imperceptible and passive. They were no longer stopped or retarded by the multiplicity, but collected and united in one. So the rising of the sun does not extinguish the stars, but overpowers and absorbs them in the luster of his ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive sweetheart. There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go around him, and her lips met his without ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... fifteen they went to their first party. A week of superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation. Dazed by the sight and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision. The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness. Their ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... had fought their country's cause, When now of conquest and dominion sure, They sought alone to hold their fruit secure; When taught by these, Oppression hid the face, To leave Corruption stronger in her place, By silent spells to work the public fate, And taint the vitals of the passive state, Till healing Wisdom should avail no more, And Freedom loath to tread the poisoned shore: Then, like some guardian god that flies to save The weary pilgrim from an instant grave, Whom, sleeping and secure, the guileful snake Steals near and nearer thro' the peaceful brake,— Then Curio ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Carthagena had been very largely increased by subsequent emigration, and the populace presented an appearance very similar to that of the mother city, save that instead of the swarthy desert tribesmen, with their passive face and air of proud indifference, mingling with the population of the town, there was in Carthagena a large admixture of native Iberians, who, belonging to the tribes first subdued by Carthage, had either been forced to settle here to supply manual labour needed for the rising city, or ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... unstirred by her splendid beauty. He found himself wondering why one kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who bore it was entirely passive. If this girl had been looking at him the matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often downright hypnotic; but she was looking at the work in her hands, and, so far as could be judged, she ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... at Mary's figure in its pale lilac gown touched here and there by the red sparkle of the fire, and noted the attentive poise of her head, and the passive quietude of her generally busy hands which now lay in her lap loosely folded ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of conquest continued. The barbarian Gauls proved fierce and valiant soldiers, but at the end of that time they had been completely subdued and made passive subjects of Rome. Caesar even crossed the sea into Britain, and look the first step towards the conquest of that island, of which Rome ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... its tail. The huge monster struggled for a few seconds, endeavouring to reach the water, and then lay still, while the jaguar worried and tore at its tough hide with savage fury. Martin was much surprised at the passive conduct of the alligator. That it could not turn its stiff body, so as to catch the jaguar in its jaws, did not, indeed, surprise him; but he wondered very much to see the great reptile suffer ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 moment ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... His Highness is the clever villain that we know him to be, I think we may safely trust him to arrange for your temporary disappearance from the scene. And whatever he does it will be easy for you to play the part of the passive victim for the time being. He can't injure or kill you, for if it came to extremities you have the means of giving his people such a fright as would probably drive them out of their senses, just as I could if their master got troublesome. Really, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... to judge from the physical aspect, from the facial expressions, from the movements, and from the voice of a man whether he is nervous or phlegmatic, active or passive, healthy or lacking in vigor and strength. A skillful size-up will determine that he is either eccentric or well balanced mentally, that he is thrifty or extravagant, that he is disposed to take comprehensive views or is inclined ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... nor worn, wert still thyself, Not aw'd by force, nor basely brib'd with pelf. What the insuperable stream of times Did dash thee with, those suff'rings were, not crimes. So the bright sun eclipses bears; and we, Because then passive, blame him not. Should he For enforc'd shades, and the moon's ruder veil Much nearer us than him, be judg'd to fail? Who traduce thee, so err. As poisons by Correction are made antidotes, so thy ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the United States. Far be it from us to justify the intention, which indeed was highly criminal; but in all such extreme cases we hold that a sad abuse of power, or a gross want of tact, must be the exciting cause, and that even in the passive obedience of a military life, there may be a limit to human endurance. The proximity of the United States rendered this plot a very feasible one, as the men in a body could have crossed the river Niagara without molestation ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... 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 or garish fly, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... might conceivably have gone over to them and helped them, in an orgy of forgiving charity. But the success of young Rathbone falsified his predictions utterly, and was, further, an affront to him. Thus the quarrel slowly crystallised into a permanent estrangement, a passive feud. Everybody got thoroughly accustomed to it, and thought nothing of it, it being a social phenomenon not at all unique of its kind in the Five Towns. When, fifteen years later, Rathbone died in mid-career, people thought ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... a fortune in Lame Gulch stocks, and he thought that even prosaic fortune-hunting in a new world would be better than the gnawing chagrin that monopolized things in the old. Better be active than passive, on any terms. By the time he was well on his westward way, the sting of that refusal had yielded somewhat, and he began to take courage again. Perhaps when he had made a fortune! "It takes a man to do that," she had said. Well, he had four times the money to start with that Dick Dayton had had, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... is a heritage from our ancestors. Can virtuous habits be transmitted? Can we secure virtues in our children by possessing them ourselves? Science sadly says, through her latest votaries, that we are scarcely more than passive transmitters of a nature we have received, and which we have no power to modify. It is only after exposure during several generations to changed conditions or habits, that any modification in the offspring ensues. The son ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... is the purest and noblest of all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most passive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... clear and no warmth penetrated it. He could see her face distinctly in the moonlight and it was passive ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... often regarded as a passive process by which we allow ourselves to be infected by the gloom, the weakness, the mental ill-health of other people. This is sympathy perverted. If a friend is suffering from small-pox or scarlet fever you do not ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... could neither soften our minds to pleasure, nor steel our fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand; if all objects drifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the will being purely passive, and as little able to avert the future as to arrest the past, we should in that case be equally indifferent to both; that is, we should consider each as they affected the thoughts and imagination with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but without the importunity of action, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... stateliest fane in England. To that his chief care was devoted, and for many years he was well content to leave the care of government to Harold. But after the monarchs who had immediately preceded him, his merits, if of a passive kind, were warmly appreciated by his subjects. His rule had been free from oppression, and he had always desired that justice should be done to all. In the earlier part of his reign he was Norman in tongue, in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... however, be fully expressed by the first one, for it is evident that if she always do what is right she will never be able to do what is wrong, and positive education is much better than negative, and an active, better than a passive state of mind. In the first years of the little girl's life this lesson can be impressed upon her only by example, and fortunate have those of us been who, both in grandmother and mother, from our earliest childhood up, can remember no single instance, however trifling, of deviation from ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... people, was determined against attracting another guardsman, and privately desired her sister to abstain from inviting her. Essie was aware that this was all for the sake of a certain curate at St. Kenelm's, and left Ellie to carry out her plan of passive resistance, becoming thus the more dependent ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the patient should be improved, by dieting and tonics. One of the most reliable methods of hastening union in these cases is by inducing passive hyperaemia of the limb after the method advocated by Bier, and this plan should always be tried in the first instance. An elastic bandage is applied above the seat of fracture, sufficiently tightly to congest the limb beyond, and, to concentrate the congestion in the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and clung to his mother, with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands over his head in mental prayer, she ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... temptation to write sonatas on her eyebrow—to borrow Peter's variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on his mistress's eyebrow"—and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit mistress for him—this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other—beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous with poetry ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... formerly rather passive than active; but from Mad. de Rosier she had learned that sensibility should not be suffered to evaporate in sighs, or in sentimental speeches. She had also learnt that economy is necessary to generosity; and she consequently sometimes ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... me with tracts, weak and well-meaning, which informed me that "Christians," being "not of this world," had nothing to do with politics; and preached to me the divine right of kings, passive obedience to the powers—or impotences—that be, &c., &c., with such success as may be imagined. I opened them each, read a few sentences, and laid them by. "They were written by good men, no doubt; but men who had an interest in keeping up ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... reverently at the turn of every page. The words, missing the unsteady hearts of men, rolled out to wander without a home upon the heartless sea; and James Wait, silenced for ever, lay uncritical and passive under the hoarse murmur ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland in former days, where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... going for months, crouching, creeping on all fours, starving, carrying their own death as mothers carry their children; since suffering and waiting and the passive acceptance of danger and pain have reversed the sexes, the women have felt strong, and even in their sensuality there has been a little glimmer of the new ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... play innocents abroad in a world that's not innocent; nor can we be passive when freedom is under siege. Without resources, diplomacy cannot succeed. Our security assistance programs help friendly governments defend themselves and give them confidence to work for peace. And I hope that you in the Congress ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... Verbs have no passive voice. If a native desires to state that a fish was swallowed by a pelican, he would say, "A pelican ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... exterminate them, sometimes even getting the upper hand, dispossessing the tortured mariners, and driving them on deck in terror and despair. The sick only, hapless martyrs unable to leave their cribs, lay passive, if not resigned, and were trampled under foot by their ferocious and unfragrant foes. These were rats and cockroaches. Typee—we use the name he bore during his Julian tribulations—records a singular phenomenon in the nocturnal habits of the last-named vermin. "Every night they had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... study to be absolutely passive. This was the Burgermeister's course at Grunberg to-night; Grunberg, first Town on the Frontier, sets an example of passivity which cannot be surpassed. Prussian troops being at the Gate of Grunberg, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... free discussion saturate the whole mass. Only time can show what possibilities of understanding, leadership, and political action lie in our new generation of the better-educated middle class. Will it presently begin to define a line for itself? Will it remain disorganized and passive, or will it become intelligent and decisive between these millstones of the organized property and the organizing State, between Plutocracy and Socialism, whose opposition is the supreme social and political fact in the world at the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... active? are you always passive? did your elements arrange themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? have you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are inspired as soon as they are assembled, although their members are sometimes ignoramuses? I pray ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... will know more by and by of what constitutes a fashionable lady's toilet; but now he is in blissful ignorance of minutiae, and sees only the tout ensemble, which he pronounces perfect. He was half afraid of her, though, she seemed so cold, so passive, so silent, and when in the same breath Susie Granger asks if he ever saw anyone so lovely as Ethelyn and bids him kiss her quick, he starts and hesitates, and finally kisses Susie instead. He might, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... silent—slowly there is heard The music of a breath-suspending song, Which, like the kiss of love when life is young, Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep; With ever-changing notes it floats along, 4600 Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep A melody, like waves ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... at least unconsciously feel, the oppositions in human nature and the differences in conditions of life, and will know them to be just. He cannot and must not keep himself wholly aloof from the elements of mental training; his contact with brainworkers will not cease; and thus his complete and passive resignation to the domination of ignorant ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Dom Diego's lodging and saw the unexpected, forgotten Ianthe—Ianthe grown from that sweet child to matchless grace of early womanhood; Ianthe with her dark smiling eyes and her caressing voice and her gentle movements—then this resolution of passive silence was exchanged for a determination to fight desperately against discovery. In the glow of his soul, in the stir of youth and spring in his veins, in the melting rapture of his mood, that first sight of a beautiful girl's face bent smilingly ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... remove by training, yet even in savages, among whom the women do most of the muscular work, they seldom equal or exceed the men in strength; any superiority, when it exists, being mainly shown in such passive forms of exertion as bearing burdens. In civilisation, even under the influence of careful athletic training, women are unable to compete muscularly with men; and it is a significant fact that on the variety stage there are very few "strong women." It would ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... his features; and in less than three months he became a thorough-paced husband. Not that his obstinacy was extinguished, though overcome. In some things he was as inflexible and mulish as ever; but then he durst not kick so openly, and was reduced to the necessity of being passive in his resentments. Mrs. Trunnion, for example, proposed that a coach and six should be purchased, as she could not ride on horseback, and the chaise was a scandalous carriage for a person of her condition. The commodore, conscious of his own inferior ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation, as "honest Alfred" made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... it was. He lifted himself up, stepped down into the dry channel, and knelt on the white stones, obeying old association with the attitude; laid his arms and head on a shelf of the bank, and let the stunned and nerveless will lie passive, while the accumulated forces of years—of generations—passion and pain and despair and love, shame and bitterness and loyalty—trampled back and forth over him, fighting out for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... are more active than passive. I may sum them up by saying that they are very affectionate mothers, and will sometimes, like horses and dogs, find their way across the country to the spot where they ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... blaze of jewels to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe, young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with their wolfish gleam—like Blucher, when he looked out over London and said: "God! What ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... all his might to quell the inner conflagration which she had fanned into leaping flames. Though he had listened before to doubt and criticism, this woman, with her strange shifting moods of calm and passion, with her bewildering faculty of changing from passive to active resistance, her beauty (once manifest, never to be forgotten), her unique individuality that now attracted, now repelled, seemed for the moment the very incarnation of the forces opposed to him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her vanity and in her love—Josephine wished not and could not bear, as a passive, silent sufferer, the neglect of her husband; he had insulted her as a woman, and the wrath of a woman rose within her. She screened not her jealousy from her husband; she reproached him for preferring other ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... of one opinion. 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, raised money, and collected ships; and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne |
