"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if not of positive injury, so long as he remained in the power of his enemies, for nothing rankles so deeply as the consciousness that an attempt to irritate has been met by contempt, a feeling that is usually the most passive of any that is harbored in the human breast. Rivenoak quietly took the seat we have mentioned, and, after a short pause, he commenced a dialogue, which we translate as usual, for the benefit of those readers who have not studied the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... inadequate forces, and would have been annihilated had not his colleague averted greater misfortune by the seasonable interposition of a fresh corps. This last turn of matters justified in some measure the system of passive resistance. But in reality Hannibal had completely attained in this campaign all that arms could attain: not a single material operation had been frustrated either by his impetuous or by his deliberate opponent; and his foraging, though not unattended with difficulty, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... not have feared. While the young herdsman and Dick stood by passive and admiring, this toro bravo of famous fighting breed reduced his run to a canter, and trotted up to Pilar as tamely as if he ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 public ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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
... which we were then passing. The two cavaliers rode together in front, my attendant and I followed, and the servants brought up the rear. Monna Paula, as we rode on, repeatedly entreated me to be silent upon the road, as our lives depended on it. I was easily reconciled to be passive, for, the first fever of spirits which attended the sense of liberation and of gratified affection having passed away, I felt as it were dizzy with the rapid motion; and my utmost exertion was necessary to keep my place on the saddle, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... prosecution may not, I trust will not, prove necessary; for I have neither malice nor vindictiveness to gratify, but only a resolute purpose to defend my reputation effectually against a malicious libel, and not to permit the libeller to set up a plausible claim that, by silence and passive submission, I "tacitly confess the justice of an official condemnation by Harvard University of my 'philosophical pretensions.'" Except for that one phrase, "professional warning," in Dr. Royce's attack, this appeal would never have been written, or the least notice taken ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... the 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 built up of pitiful little pints) was paid forthwith. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... strong men with sullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices, he was tolerated as possessing neither—not even rising by any dominant human weakness or ludicrous quality to the importance of a butt. In the dramatis personae of Redwood Camp he was a simple "super"—who had only passive, speechless roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolled beneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he was overlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in a ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... perfect consciousness which comes to us on better acquaintance with people, after we have thrown off prolonged and laboriously sustained illusions. Even the passing sight of individuals, in whose features I see nothing but the most terrible error of life,—a restless, either active or passive, desire,—affects me painfully; how much more then must I be terrified and repelled by a mass of people whose reason for existence appears to be the most shallow volition. These finely and very clearly cut physiognomies of the French, with their strong feeling for charming and sensuously ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Virginia Maxon who had fainted at the first response to her cry for help. Sing was armed with a heavy revolver but he dared not attempt to use it for fear that he might wound either Bulan or the girl, and so he was forced to remain but a passive spectator of what ensued. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seem inclined to swear, or even to say this for herself; she stood wonderfully unconcerned and passive, with an expression of humour lurking in her eyes, and about the corners of her mouth; whilst Lady Clonbrony was 'shocked,' and 'gratified,' and 'concerned' and 'flattered' and whilst everybody was hoping, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... qualified, to second their designs. Mr. Horneman, a German, who possessed considerable knowledge, such as might be of service to him on such an enterprise, and who was besides strong, active, vigorous, undaunted, endowed with passive courage, (a most indispensable qualification,) temperate, and in perfect health, was next selected. He prepared himself by learning such of the Oriental languages as might be useful to him; and on the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... like leather if you could affect the impertinence to test it by the sense of touch. Not that you would like to encourage this bit of impudence after a look into his devil-may-care eyes; but you might easily imagine something much stronger than brown wrapping paper and not quite so passive as burnt clay. His clothes fit him loosely and yet were graciously devoid of the bagginess which characterises the appearance of extremely young men whose frames are not fully set and whose joints are still parading through the last stages of college ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... business of the settlement flowed smoothly on to its destined end. Sir Joseph explained his views at the fullest length, and the lawyer's pen kept pace with him. Turlington, remaining in his place at the table, restricted himself to a purely passive part in the proceedings. He answered briefly when it was absolutely necessary to speak, and he agreed with the two elders in everything. A man has no attention to place at the disposal of other people when he ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... her treatment of himself—one might even say her passive endurance of him—served but to stimulate within him the wish to overcome it. The attraction of indifference is a distinct ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... character in doing fully the errand Thou didst send Me on. (And it was fully done in all the active part, though the greatest thing yet remained to be done in the tremendous yielding, the strong passive yielding to Hate's worst that so Love's truest and best might be clearly seen by men.) And now I am coming back to be recognized and acknowledged and received by Thine own self even as it was before I came away ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... in cases of mutiny (and this case was aggravated by the piratical seizure of a king's ship) that the officers and men in his Majesty's naval service should take no active part;—to be neutral or passive is considered as tantamount to aiding and abetting. Besides, in the present case, the remaining in the ship along with the mutineers, without having recourse to such means as offered of leaving her, presumes a voluntary adhesion to the criminal party. The only ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... love! how truly thou art the interpreter of our passion! For it is OURS, my Isabella, is it not? It is our love of which we speak, not mine alone. I have confessed to thee; now do the same by me. Tell me, my wife, didst thou hate the man to whom thy passive hand was given, without one thought of thee or ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... his favourite. This is the blessed condition of the most absolute monarch upon earth, who owns no law but his will. I cannot help wishing, in the loyalty of my heart, that the parliament would send hither a ship-load of your passive-obedient men, that they might see arbitrary government in its clearest strongest light, where it is hard to judge whether the prince, people, or ministers, are most miserable. I could make many reflections on this subject; but I know, madam, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 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
... until the fence was completed and they had made a trail around through the lava rocks. They would not risk any move at present; they would wait and tacitly accept the fence, or pretend to accept it, as a natural inconvenience. But Brit did not deceive himself that they would remain passive. That it had been "hands off the Quirt" he did not know, but attributed the Quirt's immunity to careful habits and the fact that they had never come to the point where their interests ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... as if her own fate touched her less than the parting from you, my good friend Geoffrey Vickars was well-nigh mad, and declared that in some way or other, and at whatever risk to ourselves, you must both be saved. In this matter I have been but a passive instrument in his hands; as indeed it was only right that I should be, seeing that he is of gentle blood and an esquire serving under Captain Vere in the army of the queen, while I am but a rough sailor. What I have done I have done partly because ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... a fickle collection of indeterminate happenings, and a great thought in the Mind of its Architect, a Pure Mathematician, serves merely to divert the activity of the scientific brain from its concentration on the contradictions and confusions of the all too real outward world to a state of passive and unreal contemplation." (Professor H. Levy: ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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
... long at his knee, while he talked to her the excited gibberish of the grown-up, he little thought what he forced upon you; what the things he called minutes really were, measured by a mind unused; what passive and then what desperate weariness he held you to by his slightly gesticulating hands that pressed some absent-minded caress, rated by you at its right value, in the pauses of his anecdotes. You, meanwhile, were infinitely ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... moral of which is that if Trehearne's royal master could have retained his services, his heavenward progress would have been considerably delayed. The Vestry minute for 15th October, 1577 (quoted by Dr. Thompson), shows the deceased to have been a passive resister in the matter of tithes, for which he had to pay double in the long run. He died on 22nd October, 1618, and was buried the very next day. His wife died on 22nd January, 1645. She was followed by the eldest son on 22nd ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... projects for the good of others, beware lest your benevolence should have too much of a spirit of interference. Consider what it is you want to produce. Not an outward, passive, conformity to your wishes, but something vital which shall generate the feelings and habits you long to see manifested. You can clip a tree into any form you please, but if you wish it to bear fruit when it has been barren, you must attend to what is beneath the surface, you must feed ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... sorts of economy: the active and the passive. Passive economy thinks day and night of the way to save a half-penny; active economy broods no less intently on the way to earn a dollar. The first sort of economy, the passive, prevails among us; the active in the ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... 'There comes in the "philosophy," I suppose. When will you understand, that this "philosophy" is only the passive of a religious faith? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while you are young. Work among the Whitechapel poor. It would be a way for discovering the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tedious and mischievous mania fell solely upon Janet. Janet was ready to admit that the health of the grandchildren was a matter which could fairly be left to their fathers and mothers, and she stood passive when Mrs Orgreave's grandmotherly indulgences seemed inimical to their health; but Mrs Orgreave was apt to endanger her own health in her devotion to the profession of grandmother—for example by sitting up to unchristian hours with a needle. Then there would be a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... old age. Since the death of its proprietor, Mr. Beresford-Hope, it has been steadily going down hill as is proved by its circulation, once 15,000, and now something nearer 5,000 than 10,000. It has become a poor shadow of its former self—preserving the passive ill- will but lacking the power of active malevolence—when journalists were often compelled to decline correspondence upon its misjudgments and to close to complainants their columns which otherwise would have been engrossed by just and reasonable ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... June. At last, however, when matters were growing serious, and when she had treated all the pressure that it was possible to put upon her with quiet indifference—for, as usual, her father declined to interfere, but contented himself with playing a strictly passive part—she suddenly of her own mere motion, abolished the difficulty by consenting to appear before the registrar on the eighth ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... shoulder as its natural resting-place. Her father was a man who had lived long enough to have encountered many reverses of fortune, and they had left him, as I am apt to believe long adversity usually does leave its prey, somewhat chilled and somewhat hardened to affection; passive and quiet of hope, resigned to the worst as to the common order of events, and expecting little from the best, as an unlooked-for incident in the regularity of human afflictions. He was insensible of his daughter's danger, for he was not one whom the fear of love endows with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... studies: he, the passive receiver, taking in the ideas acquired without effort; I, the fierce pioneer, blasting my rock, the book, with the aid of much sitting up at night, to extract the diamond, truth. Another and no less arduous task fell to my share: I had to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... man spoke and moved and looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things revealed which I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it were, by that vision on the platform to the identification of the murderer; and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined, by means of these mysterious teachings to bring about the ends of justice. For these things I have never ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... 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 ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... 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 generation of ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... law: The eccentric, normal and 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
... 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 and his religion. Holder, as he looked at her, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... then. That barrier confessed its frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary submission of her whole poise—she had actually leaned a little further toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lacey, pretty as she was, was not aggressively disposed. She was a passive, too sanguine little creature; and being limpid and tender as well, and more loyal than artful, she had failed to conceal her ardent attachment and its anxious expectancy. Had she loosed a wink of challenge from ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... interest. The opportunity is good to impress on the population the truth that they are more interested in civil government than we are; and that, to enjoy the protection of laws, they most not be passive observers of events, but must aid and sustain the constituted authorities in enforcing the laws; they must not only submit themselves, but should pay their share of taxes, and render personal services ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... very few. And why are there so few? One reason is, because the man finds, after the novelty is worn off, that his wife is uninteresting, has nothing to talk about; and so his love cools to a good-natured, passive tolerance of her. Most married men, when alone with their wives, sit in stupid silence. But see how the husband livens up if a man joins them! This man has been out in the interesting world. The wife has been cooped up at home. The ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... carefully non-committal; so that Dixie, having no suggestion of his master's wish, ventured to indulge his own. He turned tail squarely to the storm and went straight ahead. Vaughan put his hands deep into his pockets, snuggled farther down into the sheepskin collar of his coat, and rode passive, enduring. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... seemed just enough, in view of the passive way in which Hillsboro received what was done for it during ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... feminine heart was a book in which he was a very poor speller. He imagined that Reine was only asking him as a matter of form, and that it was from a feeling of maidenly reserve that she adopted this passive method of escaping from openly declaring her wishes. She no doubt desired his friendly aid in the matter, and he felt as if he ought ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... little ceremony. He had too much wit and perhaps too much self-respect, to rouse a street brawl on his own behalf, and when any one ran against him with unnecessary roughness he contented himself with stiffening his back and holding his own in passive resistance. He had reached his full strength and was a match for many little Greeks, yet the annoyance was distasteful to him, and he was glad to find himself pushed into a narrow lane between high walls and crossed by a low covered bridge; and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... passionate cry, she had broken free; but, even so, he had caught and swept her up in his arms, and held her close against his breast. And now, feeling the hopelessness of further struggle, she lay passive, while her eyes flamed up into his, and his eyes looked down into hers. Her long, thick hair had come loose, and now with a sudden, quick gesture, she drew it across her face, veiling it from him; wherefore, he stooped his head ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... abstract or immaterial existences —the former receiving the impress of things Objectively, or ab externo, the latter impressing its own ideas on them Subjectively, or ab interno—the former a feminine or passive, the latter a masculine ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... aroused them from their passive submission to papal dogmas. Wycliffe now taught the distinctive doctrines of Protestantism,—salvation through faith in Christ, and the sole infallibility of the Scriptures. The preachers whom he had sent out ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... address with painful exactitude on the margin of the paper, sometimes in two or three places. He has to think a moment before he writes; and perhaps he'll scratch the back of his head afterwards with an inky finger, and regard the address with a sort of mild, passive surprise. His old mate Jim was always plain Jim to him, and nothing else; but, in order to reach Jim, this paper has to be ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... site of a bit of bloody history. Away back in the fifties a man named Antrem, from New England, came to Brantly and, standing where the stone now stands, made an abolition speech. It was so bold an impudence that the citizens stood agape, scarcely able to believe their ears. At last the passive astonishment was broken by a slave-owner named Peel. He drew two pistols, handed one to the speaker, stepped off and told him to defend himself. The New Englander had nerve. He did defend himself, and with deadly effect. Both men were buried on the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... allegiance, constant faith or love, Where only what they needs must do appear'd, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When will and reason (reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd, Made passive both, had serv'd necessity, Not me. They therefore, as to right belong'd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Their Maker, or their making, or their fate, As if predestination over-rul'd Their will dispos'd by absolute decree Or high foreknowledge they themselves decreed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... mind, dreams like these are endless. While they were passing, I stared with fixed attention toward Olivia; and, had she not been almost motionless, my passive trances could not ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... many instruments cannot clever women play upon I ain't a speeder of matrimony Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder Serene presumption The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted Women are swift at coming to conclusions in ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... several passages between us, were amazed to think who it could be had so familiarly embraced me; especially as they saw I only played a passive part in it. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... other thing which our kneelers require to the making up of idolatry is, that the creature before which we adore be a passive object of the adoration; whereas, say they,(695) the sacramental elements are "no manner of way the passive object of our adoration, but the active only of that adoration which, at the sacrament, is given to Christ; that is, such an object and sign as moves us upon the sight, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed, —Not life, to wit, for a few short years, Tracking his way through doubts and fears, While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myriads, Though I, he gave it to, decay, Seeing death come and choose about me, And my dearest ones depart without me. No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... acquired without making further conquests. In England his main object was the same as that of his predecessors, to establish the king's authority over the great barons. What especially distinguished him was his clear perception of the truth that he could only succeed by securing, not merely the passive goodwill, but the active co-operation of those who, whether they were of Norman or of English descent, were inferior in wealth and ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... out of time by an unhallowed fist. The stiff, United States army helmet, obtained, it will be remembered, at Fort Sidney, Nebraska, and worn on the road ever since, saves my bump of veneration from actual contact with the stick of number two; and finding me making only a passive resistance, the valiant individual in the green kammerbund relaxes both the severity of his scowl and his grip on my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... pops,' said Helen, going to her father's side and slipping both arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise making free with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result of coming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a new emotion. 'I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is the nicest country in the world, too. And Alan and I were wrong to run off and leave you as we did. We'll ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... cavalier; he likes pretty women wherever he finds them, and not withstanding his high moral principles, is carrying on a flirtation with Rosina's maid, the charming Susanna. This does not hinder him from being jealous of his wife, who is here represented as a character both sweet and passive. He suspects her of being overfond of her Page, Cherubino.—From the by-standers, Doctor Bartolo and Marcellina, we hear, that their old hearts have not yet ceased to glow at the touch of youth and love; Bartolo would fain give his affections to Susanna, while Marcellina pretends to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... and all power of resistance ebbed slowly away from him; he became perfectly passive—almost apathetic—and yielding to the somewhat rough handling of his guide, allowed himself to be urged with silent rapidity onward over the thick sand, till he presently became conscious that he was leaving the fresh open air and entering a building of some ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the finest of all spectacles —that of a triumphant creator of works which are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. Does it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face with such a personality? Must not they who take any part whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings at Bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce reforms and to effect renovations in other spheres of life? Has not a haven been found for all wanderers on high and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others' burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden upon many without ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... to with delight. The sentimental exterior of this man concealed a jester's nature, and the sober appearance of this Castilian wore all the characteristics of a polished lounger. The least smile that animated his passive countenance became at once attractive. Marianne thought him most delightful, or rather, she found him just what she had formerly believed him to be, a refined, delicate and very simple man in spite ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... other nations. He found an American missionary at Macassar, whom they had detained, and some Germans, who were vainly entreating to be allowed to proceed to Borneo; and his efforts met only with the most baffling, passive, but systematic denial. It was reserved for the enterprise and prudence of Sir James Brooke to open a way in ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... general and absorbing was the spell produced by his presence and his mien, that, in all that crowd of fierce and excited spirits, there was not one so bold as to presume to brave his anger Sailors and marines stood alike, passive, humbled and obedient, as faulty children, when arraigned before an authority from which they feel, in every fibre, that escape is impossible. Perceiving that no voice answered, no limb moved, nor ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... and abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also find it in Greek, e.g. , "heresies of destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic is the Mpongwe's fondness for the passive voice, never using, if possible, the active; for instance, instead of saying, "He was born thus," he prefers, "The birth that was thus borned by him." The dialect changes the final as well as the initial syllable, a process unknown to the purest types ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... take into consideration that a spermatozooen is only 1/300 of an inch long. Many of the spermatozoa, weaker than the others, perish on the way, and only a few continue the journey up through the uterus to the tube. When near the little ovum, which remains passive, their movements become more and more rapid, they seem to be attracted to it as if by a magnet, and finally one spermatozooen—just one—the one that happens to be the strongest or the nearest, makes a mad rush ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... excitement that drives them restless from one amusement to another, and which finds relief in the extravagances of dress,—this passionate devotion to the frivolous and the absurd,—spring from the want of a reasonable employment for mind and body. My great principle is to exchange their passive condition for an active one. I would establish schools, where girls may receive a thorough education, such as is given to boys. In these schools, I should insist upon mathematical training as earnestly as Plato in his Republic. Women must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the women already described was Philippa Basset. There was nothing passive about her; every thing was of the most active type, and the mood in which she chiefly lived was the imperative. While really under the common height of women, in some mysterious way she appeared much taller than she was. Her motions were quick even to abruptness: her speech sincere ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... general system of instruction in public schools and universities. The study of Gothic grammar alone (where we still find a dual in addition to the singular and plural, and where some tenses of the passive are still formed, as in Greek and Latin, without auxiliary verbs), would require as much time as the study of Greek grammar, though it would not offer the key to a literature like that of Greece. Old High-German, again, is as difficult a language to a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... there, Wanhope. When it comes to polemics there's nothing like the passive obstruction of Mrs. Alderling. Marion might never have been an early Christian herself—I think she's an inexpugnable pagan—but she would have gone round making it awfully uncomfortable ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... creation which he could harmonize with the religious view. Plato declared that the material world had been created out of the Non-Ens ([Greek: me on]) i.e., that which has no real existence. He conceived space and matter as the mere passive receptacle of form, which is nothing till the form has given it quality. Though Philo's language is vague, this seems to be his view when he is speaking philosophically. It is, perhaps, a slight deviation from the earlier religious standpoint of the Jews, which looks to a direct and deliberate ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... The passive resistance of the Tolbooth-gate promised to do more to baffle the purpose of the mob than the active interference of the magistrates. The heavy sledge-hammers continued to din against it without intermission, and with a noise which, echoed ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... visitors, with her head held scornfully in air, and left the men together. Mr. Aram seemed to have a most passive and incurious disposition. He could have no idea as to who his anonymous visitors might be, nor did he show any desire ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... would, therefore, be more reliable than that of men. It is this, that in the noise and turmoil of party politics, or in the narrow, but rancorous arena of local factions, it must needs fare ill with what may be called the passive virtues of humility, patience, meekness, forbearance, and self-repression. These are looked on by the Church as the special prerogative and endowment of the female soul ... But these virtues would soon become sullied ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... of the water of a river, and the anti-German Tsar could not hope to make headway without the co-operation of his army of officials, who themselves were permeated with the Teutonic spirit. And as passive resistance was their attitude, his purging scheme was abortive. As a matter of cool calculation, the only hope of freeing Russia from the meshes of the German net was a war between the two peoples. And all radical legislation had therefore to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rake it. Now, this battery had been constructed for plain, straightforward cannonading in front, with no embrasures to command the roads on either flank. Curtains of earth had been thrown up on the flanks, to protect the men, it is true, but this passive sort of resistance could do very little good in a protracted contest. While this particular brig was gaining that favourable position, the ship and the other brig fell off to leeward, and were soon at so long a shot, as to be out of harm's way. This was throwing the battery ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... rather think than dream. I would rather come in contact with the nobler activities—the mental and spiritual forces—through the minds and works of men. I would find such attrition more helpful than this phase of creation which thou callest 'nature,' whose unfolding is more passive, depending on ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... recognize the winds and the clouds; but more especially the dark thunder cloud, soaring in space at the beginning of things, most forcible emblem of the aerial powers. They are the symbols of that divinity which acted on the passive and sterile waters, the fitting result being the production of a universe. Other symbols of the divine could also be employed, and the meaning remain the same. Or were the fancy too helpless to suggest any, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... added as in soliloquy, "Indeed, indeed, I was to blame in standing passive under such influences as that one-legged man's. My conscience upbraids me.—The poor negro: You ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... he made a religious visit to several of the society in Long Island. Here it was that the seed, now long fostered by the genial influences of Heaven, began to burst forth into fruit; Till this time he seems to have been a passive instrument, attending only to such circumstances as came in his way on this subject. But now he became an active one, looking out for circumstances for ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... passive since her defeat. But at this she rose from the window-seat where she had crouched, slaying them with furious glances. 'My lord,' she cried passionately, 'if you are a man, if you are a gentleman—you'll not ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... demeanor in which cold and haughty reserve blended strangely with an utter carelessness, and occasional rapidly checked electric ebullitions of passion to the lip and eye, but never reaching words, followed by a passive yet proud languor. I was too happy to observe or speculate. I received merely the impression, but was too much occupied in arranging for my wedded life, too much absorbed in the feeling of bliss, to analyze it. I believed in her love,—that was sufficient ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is said to humble himself, he either has or affects to have humility of heart. To disgrace may be to bring or inflict odium upon others, but the word is chiefly and increasingly applied to such moral odium as one by his own acts brings upon himself; the noun disgrace retains more of the passive sense than the verb; he disgraced himself by his conduct; he brought disgrace upon his family. To dishonor a person is to deprive him of honor that should or might be given. To discredit one is to injure his reputation, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... them back into the bag, and a cold, sickening fear rendered him almost faint with the sense of trust misplaced, illusions resolved into brutal realities. His fingers closed convulsively about her wrists; but she held passive. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I faint ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the bitterest draught from a father's hand. "This cup which Thou, O God, givest me to drink, shall I not drink it?" Be it mine to lie passive in the arms of Thy chastening love, exulting in the assurance that all Thy appointments, though sovereign, are never arbitrary, but that there is a gracious "need be" in them all. "My Father!" my Covenant God! ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... motives of Mr. Baldwin; none other of the administration is named, or possesses the least weight. I have not moved about or corresponded with a single member of the House, and I shall remain as passive as possible. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... conceded, that the same plan has been adopted in the formation of the Latin and Greek verbs, as in the Hebrew. Some languages have carried this process to a very great extent. Ours is remarkable for the small number of its inflections. But they who reject the passive verb, and those moods and tenses which are formed by employing what are called "auxiliary verbs," because they are formed of two or more verbs, do not appear to reason soundly. It is inconsistent to admit, that walk-eth, and walk-ed, are tenses, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... a much more subdued and philosophical temperament, not perhaps so well calculated to lead as to advise; there was great prudence in him united with courage; but his was a passive courage rather than an active one—a courage which if assailed would defend itself valiantly, but would be wary and reflective before it would attack. Humphrey had not that spirit of chivalry possessed by Edward. He was a younger son, and had to earn, in a way, his ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... passionately. "Oh Selene, I pulled you out of the water, and since that night I have never ceased to think of you and I must die for love of you. Have your thoughts never, never met mine on the way to you? Are you still and always as cold, as passive as you were then when you belonged half to life and half to death? For months have I prowled round this house as the shade of a dead man haunts the spot where he had left all that was dear to him on earth, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out to mingle with the mob. Each pursued his own line of enquiry. Appleplex, who had the gift of an extraordinary address with the lower classes of both sexes, questioned the onlookers, and usually extracted full and inconsistent histories: Eeldrop preserved a more passive demeanor, listened to the conversation of the people among themselves, registered in his mind their oaths, their redundance of phrase, their various manners of spitting, and the cries of the victim from the hall of justice within. When the crowd dispersed, Eeldrop and Appleplex ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... Their version is replete with errors in almost every page. They have rendered verse 78 in a most ridiculous way. The first line of the verse merely explains the etymology of the word Dandaniti, the verb ni being used first in the passive and then in the active voice. The idam refers to the world, i.e., men in general. K.P. Singha's version of the Santi is better, and, of course, gives the correct sense of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... source of this denial? And lastly, who authorized either you, or the pseudo-Athanasius, to interpret Catholic faith by belief, arising out of the apparent predominance of the grounds for, over those against, the truth of the positions asserted; much more, by belief as a mere passive acquiescence of the understanding? Were all damned who died during the period when 'totus fere mundus factus est Arianus', as one of the Fathers admits? Alas! alas! how long will it be ere Christians take the plain middle road between intolerance ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was now becoming more astute as to his condition. At first it was only a mild, passive wonderment at his helplessness and the strange thoughts which raced through his mind. Now he attempted to arouse ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... as to my literary ancestry is made whenever I violate the romantic convention that all women are angels when they are not devils; that they are better looking than men; that their part in courtship is entirely passive; and that the human female form is the most beautiful object in nature. Schopenhauer wrote a splenetic essay which, as it is neither polite nor profound, was probably intended to knock this nonsense violently on the head. A sentence ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the agency of, individual men. We are never presented with the view of society in a mass; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of the agency of individual man—or, to speak more correctly, in the development of which the agency is an unconscious, and often almost a passive, instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive species of biography, they not only did not withdraw the eye to the distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of things, but they did the reverse. Their great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... back. Beneath his passive exterior his nerves thrummed; his muscles had grown as hard as wood. Yes! Yes! But no! He had heard nothing; no more than a single step, a single foot-pressure on the planks within the door. Dear ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... passion, passive, impassive, impassioned, compassion, pathos, pathetic, impatient, apathy, sympathy, antipathy; (2) passible, impassible, dispassionate, pathology, telepathy, hydropathy, homeopathy, allopathy, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... son, Sir Walter Fleming of Cumbernauld, and the younger Boyd of Kilmarnock. The Parliament left a Committee of the Estates ("The Lords of the Articles") to carry out the royal policy. Taxes for the payment of James's ransom were imposed; to impose them was easy, "passive resistance" was easier; the money was never paid, and James's noble hostages languished in England. He next arrested the old Earl of Lennox, and Sir Robert Graham of the Kincardine ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... cousin out there whose husband was making 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," ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... at me!' she said. 'But I don't think I quite understand passive, inactive fortitude. I like Niobe's arms, all wrapped about her ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... or a child's carriage, or newspaper, or book; but there will seldom be, except by stealth, any free juvenile conversation at the table or the fireside. Here the child must sit as a blank or cypher, to ruminate on the past, or to receive half formed and passive impressions ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... of God, acting in man, is one of the wises of virtuous character. They believe it to be, of all others, the purest and sublimest source. It is that spring, they conceive, to good action, and of course to exalted character, in which man can have none but a passive concern. It is neither hereditary nor factitious. It can neither be perpetuated in generation by the father to the child, nor be given by human art. It is considered by the Quakers as the great and distinguishing mark of their calling. Neither dress, nor language, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... story, it is rather a fragment, beginning where usually a battle story ends, with a man being "casualtied," showing the principal character only in a passive part—a very passive part—and ending, I am afraid, with a lot of unsatisfactory loose ends ungathered up. I only tell it because I fancy that at the back of it you may find some hint of the spirit that has helped the British Army in many ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... flashed upwards, meeting those of the younger man with something of the effect of a collision. His body however remained quite passive, and his voice even sounded as if it had a laugh in it as he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... ideas of reality, but that these ideas are the realities themselves. Then the question is, if the concept of reality be reality itself, how is this related to phenomena? There is a double relation, active and passive. * * * Eternal realities are known to us only as terms of phenomena. They are in ourselves, and from ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... alligator by the soft part beneath 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 pain so quietly. It seemed ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... smasher hat from the grass, and took up the Lee-Metford carbine he had been carrying and had laid aside, and went to Lynette and took her passive hand, and bent over it and kissed it. It dropped by her side lifelessly when he released it. Her face was a mask void of life. He looked towards the Mother in distress. Her white hand imperiously motioned him ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hereafter, by despatching useless persons to Paradise and thus cheering the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are, so to say, unemployed philanthropists; we are but a potential and passive blessing to our fellow-creatures, though we burn to be doing good to all! I appeal to my friend, Count Gambardella, here. Is ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... news of Sadowa wrung "a cry of agony" from his court of the Tuileries, where everyone had confidently expected the victory of Austria. Napoleon might have arbitrated between the two countries, but he let the golden opportunity slip by in one of those half-sullen passive moods which came upon him when he felt the depression of his bodily weakness. Prussia began to lay the foundation of German unity, excluding Austria from ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... participles not transitive, and that are made to agree in case with other nouns or pronouns going before, and meaning the same thing. But some teachers who observe this distinction with reference to the neuter verb be, and to certain passive verbs of naming, appointing, and the like, absurdly break it down in relation to other verbs, neuter or active-intransitive. Thus Nixon: "Nouns in apposition are in the same case; as, 'Hortensius died a martyr;' 'Sydney lived the shepherd's friend.'"—English Parser, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that superiority over those of other places, that the veteran soldier obtains over the recruit. But the best troops can be appalled, and, on this memorable occasion, these celebrated firemen, from a variety of causes, became for a time, little more than passive spectators of the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of these views, history will stand your friend. History, in its passive irony, will make no objection. Like Jarno, in Goethe's novel, it will not condescend to argue with you, and will provide you with abundant illustrations of any thing which ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... How are you? Right glad to get sight of your face again!" said the other familiarly, as he grasped the merchant's passive hand, and squeezed it ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... extraordinary how this effort at self-expression excited Joan. She was rarely self-conscious, but she was usually passive or stolid; now there was a brilliant flush in her face and her large eyes deepened and glowed. "I heerd tell of you, Mr. Holliwell. Fellers come up here to see Pierre once in a while an' one or two of 'em spoke your name. An' I kinder figured out you was ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... visits to the Court of Charles the Second, and to Elizabeth of Bohemia. To the house of Stuart, Barclay was ever fondly attached. His father had suffered in the civil wars; and the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, avowed by the Quakers, were favourable to the Stuart dynasty. The last visit which Barclay paid to London was rendered memorable by the abdication of James the Second. As he was standing beside that monarch, near a window, the King looked out, and remarked that "the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... but there was something about him which led me to suspect that he was in a condition when he needed some woman to straighten out his affairs. I made no reply, which threw the burden of continuing the conversation upon him. I was in that passive state which made me perfectly willing to have him say good-night and go home or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. I knew he needed me; a good many men need their mothers once in a while as much as they ever did when boys. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... see, in domes and spires, Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,— In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,— The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires, Striving for strange effects that he admires, Changes their form from time to time; the land Forever passive to his mad demand, And to the sea's, who with the wind conspires. Here, as on towers of desolate cities, bay And wire-grass grow, wherein no insect cries, Only a bird, the swallow of the sea, That homes in sand. I hear it far away Crying—or is it some lost soul ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... body; they are our immediate representatives; they feel our wants, participate in our injuries, and sympathize in our distresses. They never will submit to have our country degraded; they never will be passive under the outrages upon our constitution; they never will be the instruments of voting away the people's rights. As our application to the president has been treated with scorn, let us make our appeal to that body which has the power of IMPEACHMENT, and we shall not find ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... we had fallen as into a vague dream, she came out of it with a start and a quiet sigh. She said, "I had forgotten myself." I took her hand and was raising it naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and the whole woman go inanimate all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand before it reached my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... early part of the nineteenth century were brought up in foreign seminaries, where passive obedience to the established order was inculcated, and where, as was natural in such places, a horror of the Jacobinical principles of the French revolution created among them an antagonism to any violent agitation, which admittedly or not drew its inspiration from that source, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... settled in all its elements, and cannot be altered. The frightful discredit with which the new Government has covered itself by its treatment of Spencer has drawn attention away from the signs of at least passive discord among us, signs which might otherwise have drawn upon us pretty sharp criticism. It appears to me that hesitation on the part of any of us as to our own responsibility for Spencer's acts can only be mischievous to the party and the late Cabinet, but will and must be far more ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... tender sympathy at the little marble image which yesterday was a poor, ragged peasant, to-day was a bright and winged angel. His thoughts flew back to the imperial palace, where his little motherless daughter was fading away from earth, and the father prayed for his only child. He took from the passive hands a rose, and softly as he came, he left the solitary cottage, wherein an angel was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... an' passive, Moore collects 'em an' sops 'em up an' down in the water trough for mebby it's fifteen minutes. Which they're reesus'tated an' reeproved at one an' the same time. When them yooths comes to, they're a model to angels. To be shore, their intellects don't shine out at first none ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... escorted by half a dozen of their own tribe, but apparently not as prisoners, was productive of tremendous excitement among the villagers, to whom such an occurrence was almost unique, for they had only known it to occur once before; but the excitement soon became passive when the leader of the party who had found George and Dyer explained in a few words that the strangers were Englishmen and friends of El Draque, and that they had landed from a big canoe, in which they had crossed the Great Water, in order to obtain certain information ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,—and as would probably have been the case if Werther had not forestalled him,—he breaks loose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... at which they ought not to be present; and at length the only recipients of her woes were myself and the physician, who, with ominous visage, and drops in hand, was administering his aid to the passive patient. As Madame's despair rendered her wholly useless, the doctor called on me to assist him in raising her from the floor, on which she had flung herself like a heroine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... originates in causation, as between that which is active and that which is passive, it does not always concern both terms. True, that which is acted upon, or set in motion, or produced, must be related to the source of these modifications, since every effect is dependent upon its cause. And it is equally true that such causes or agencies are in some ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had, and miraculous gifts they imparted; but in both instances others shared these powers with them. It was no apostle who laid his hands on the blinded Saul in that house in Damascus and said, 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' An apostle stood by passive and wondering when the Holy Ghost fell on Cornelius and his comrades. In reality apostolic succession is absurd, because there is nothing to succeed to, except what cannot be transmitted, personal knowledge of the reality of the resurrection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hardly gone in 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 ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... are called the first qualities because they slide first from the elements into the things that be made of elements. Two of these qualities are called Active—heat and coldness. The others are dry and wetness and are called Passive. ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... say that even now the banks might not do something which would help; still less do I wish to convey the impression that mankind must always remain passive and submissive, impotent to control these forces which so vitally affect his welfare. But I say that for any serious attempt to master this problem, the necessary detailed knowledge has still to be acquired, and the rudiments ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... view the subject in another point of view. Do passive indolent women make the best wives? Confining our discussion to the present moment of existence, let us see how such weak creatures perform their part? Do the women who, by the attainment of a few superficial accomplishments, have strengthened ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... requires that the child should restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body which have entrusted to them the discharge of ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... putting a stop to the slave-trade, I have only to say, that we do not leave America and go to Africa to be passive spectators of such a policy as traffic in the flesh and blood of our kindred, nor any other species of the human race—more we might say—that we will not live there and permit it. "Self-preservation is the first law of nature," and we go to Africa ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... fling back an answer to that, but I stepped between them. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on a bargain-counter. I was tired of being a passive agent before forces that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired of the shoddiness of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... conversant—it was thus, for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the emotions DOMINATE—such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.—As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page—he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate sense to them—just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche |
