"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I, I own that must absolutely depend on your usage of me: for I will bear any thing you can inflict upon me with patience, even to the laying down of my life, to shew my obedience to you in other cases; but I cannot be patient, I cannot be passive, when my virtue is at stake! It would be criminal ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... spinal and pelvic lesions and consequent removal of irritation and pressure on the nerves, the cure of chronic constipation and malnutrition by pure food diet and hydrotherapy, the strengthening of the pelvic muscles and nerves by means of active and passive movements and exercises, were fully sufficient to correct the local symptoms in a natural manner. Thousands of cases cured by us by these methods attest the truth of our statements; while those who failed to understand the simple reasoning ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... that had passed at my memorable interview with Romayne, I felt some surprise that one of the persons present had made no effort to prevent the burning of the will. It was not to be expected of Stella—or of the doctors, who had no interest in the matter—but I was unable to understand the passive position maintained by the lawyer. He enlightened ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... rape, The mimic force of every savage shape; Or glides with liquid lapse a murmuring stream, Or, wrapp'd in flame, he glows at every limb. Yet, still retentive, with redoubled might, Through each vain passive form constrain his flight But when, his native shape renamed, he stands Patient of conquest, and your cause demands; The cause that urged the bold attempt declare, And soothe the vanquish'd with a victor's prayer. The bands releas'd, implore the seer to say What godhead interdicts the watery ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... another precious occasion of sparing to France the crimes and cruelties through which she has since passed, and to Europe, and finally America, the evils which flowed on them also from this mortal source. The King was now become a passive machine in the hands of the National Assembly, and had he been left to himself, he would have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should devise as best for the nation. A wise constitution would have been formed, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... authors as children have sundry distempers, being fractious while they lasted, but all the better for them when once over. Carlyle appeared like scarlet-fever, and raged violently for a time; for, being anything but a "passive bucket," Di became prophetic with Mahomet, belligerent with Cromwell, and made the French Revolution a veritable Reign of Terror to her family. Goethe and Schiller alternated like fever and ague; Mephistopheles became her hero, Joan of Arc her model, and she turned her black ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... or rather of the power to bring about the effect. With some people, it works better to insist that the result will happen, with others to promise that they themselves can secure it; in the one case they feel themselves as passive instruments, in the other as real actors. To some hysterics, it is better to say: "You will walk," to others, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... dreamed. Mr. Baker read on, grunting 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 of despair ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... large part of life must be set aside for that relaxation which, by relief from tension and from concentration, puts the worker into relation with the influences and forces that nourish and inspire the spirit. The more one can gain in his passive moods, the more will he have to give in his active moods; for the greater the range of one's thought, the truer one's insight, and the deeper one's force of imagination, the more will one's skill express and convey. A man's life ought to be immensely in excess of his expression, ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... have left in confusion, and in this and in other ways, by protective pampering and attention, their desire for work, their endurance, the gifts of invention and imagination, qualities proper to the child, become weak and passive. The home now is only a preparation for school. In it, young people growing up, are accustomed to receive services, without performing any on their part. They are trained to be always receptive instead of giving something in return. Then people are surprised at a youthful generation, selfish ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two other slaves of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the newelpost and gripped it so firmly that ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... North Sea. For these operations it is of the first importance that the Danish straits should not be occupied by the enemy. If they fell into the hands of the English, all free operations in the Baltic would be almost impossible, and our Baltic coast would then be abandoned to the passive protection of our ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... of the ruler to the minimum, the only power assigned to him being to maintain the morals of the state by making his life a model of virtuous living. The reformer claimed, too, that when the ruler exceeds his power he becomes a tyrant, and that people are justified in rejecting the doctrine of passive obedience and slaying him. See Buchanan, "De Jure Apud Scotos" (Aberdeen, 1762); Dunning, "History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu"; and P. Hume Brown, "Biography ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... followers. One of these was a sentiment which has nothing in it that is generous, but it was certainly a principle in which the young prince was trained, and which may be too probably denominated peculiar to his family, educated in all the high notions of passive obedience and non-resistance. If the unhappy prince gave implicit faith to the professions of statesmen holding such notions, which is ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... "If," says he, "there is no body immortal, there is none eternal; but there is no body immortal, nor even indivisible, or that cannot be separated and disunited; and as every animal is in its nature passive, so there is not one which is not subject to the impressions of extraneous bodies; none, that is to say, which can avoid the necessity of enduring and suffering: and if every animal is mortal, there is none immortal; so, likewise, if every animal may be cut up and divided, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... who sat upon the banquette were under different circumstances from these who strutted over the floor. While these talked loudly and laughed gaily, those were silent and sad. These moved about with the air of the conqueror—those were motionless with the passive look and downcast mien of the captive. These were masters—those were slaves! They were the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... Not dreaming of any danger in that direction, the robber only thought of guarding his "daylights" against the hornbill upon the wing. But the hen bird inside the nest— who could see well enough what was passing outside—had no idea of remaining a passive spectator; and perceiving her opportunity—for she was within striking distance—she quietly drew back her long ivory beak, and, throwing all the strength of her neck into the effort—assisted by the weight of her heavy helmeted head—as if with the blow ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... him, he bent her head back into the curve of his arm and kissed her fiercely. She lay passive, deliberately taking all he gave and thrilling to it. Self-pity surged over her; she had been so happy—not only happy, but so much better! It was very hard, she felt, as she trembled with pleasure under his kisses. She shrank from giving pain, but she shrank still more from ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... he had the good sense to leave the body and its surroundings untouched until a doctor and the police had been summoned by telephone. Thenceforth the day had passed in a whirl of excitement, active in respect to police inquiries and passive in its resistance to newspaper interviewers. He saw no valid reason why his employer's plans should be disturbed, so made no effort to communicate ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... while to give a detailed account of St. Teresa's mystical theology. Its cardinal points are that the religious life consists in complete conformity to the will of God, so that at last the human will becomes purely "passive" and "at rest"; and the belief in Christ as the sole ground of salvation, on which subject she uses language which is curiously like that of the Lutheran Reformers. Her teaching about passivity and the "prayer of quiet" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... Sulpice. He was listened 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 of his graciously haughty manner. When he concluded, the room echoed with the thunder ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... a passive spectator, these different intrigues, waiting till they should assume a character which would permit him to take part in them. If there had been an open and armed contest, he would have taken that side to which gratitude called him. Too young and too chaste, if we may say so, in politics, to turn ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... clothes, Nils, 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
... group came to the front in Bohemia, called the Young Czechs. The party was led by Sladkovsk, and had more democratic leanings than the Old Czechs. In the diet, however, the Czechs remained united in a single body. The Young Czechs opposed the policy of passive resistance which the Old Czechs pursued for fully sixteen years, that is up to 1879. The Young Czechs clearly saw that it enabled Vienna to rule without the Czechs and against them. The Czechs, of course, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... haunted the house night after night. Those blue eyes never met his. No step responsive to his came from that door. It seemed to have been so long unopened that it had grown as fixed and hard as the stones that held its bolts in their passive clasp. He dared not watch in the daytime, and with all his watching at night, he never saw father or daughter or domestic cross the threshold. Little he thought that, from a shot-window near the door, a pair of blue eyes, like Lilith's, but paler and colder, were watching ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... 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 and his religion. Holder, as he looked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the State made implacable war upon them. Yet the spiritual and moral forces won the victory, and Christianity established itself throughout the empire. Universal ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... somehow, that at this terrible passive game of fixed tension she would beat him. Her fixed female soul, her wound-up female will would solidify into stone—whereas his must break. In him something must break. It was a cold and fatal ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Mariano was one of the big men about town. He had been a smuggler in the happy days when revenue agents, from Captain of the Port to ordinary patrolman, had hands but never eyes. And even now, when things were not so lax, he would take a passive share in some enterprise of the sort. But his principal activity was doing charity—lending the fishermen, or their wives, advances on their pay at fifty per cent a month; and this had given him a grip on the throats of the poorest ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sale of real estate and 10 per cent. on the sale of all goods, were of course unconstitutional, and for a long time Brussels and Louvain refused to pay them. When at last they came into force, in 1571, all trade stopped and the people opposed passive resistance amid great privations and sufferings. The situation was at last relieved by the bold coup de main of the Sea Beggars on the port of La Brielle, in Zeeland. Up till then, they had sought refuge in the English ports, but in 1572 Queen Elizabeth closed ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... session, and if any member notices them, the mere notice clears the gallery; only the reporters can stay after that notice. O'Connell rose. One of the members said, "Before the member from Clare opens his speech, let me call his attention to the gallery and the instance of that 'passive resistance' which he is about to preach." "Thank you," said O'Connell. "Mr. Speaker, I observe the strangers in the gallery." Of course they left; of course the next day, in the columns of the London Times, there were no parliamentary debates. And for the first time, except in Richard Cobden's ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... heredity of somatogenic modifications is not in opposition to the mutation theory. The author's view is that are two kinds of variation in evolution, one somatogenic and due to external stimuli, acting either directly on passive tissues or indirectly through function, and the other gametogenic and due to changes in the chromosomes of the gametes which are spontaneous and not in any way due to modifications of the soma. Adaptations ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... the Regent, and urging his recall. But the altered manner of Pausanias deprived them of their just pretext; and the Ionians, more and more under the influence of the Athenian chief, were disinclined to so extreme a measure without the consent of Aristides and Cimon. These two chiefs were not passive spectators of affairs so critical to their ambition for Athens—they penetrated into the motives of Pausanias in the novel courtesy of demeanour that he adopted, and they foresaw that if he could succeed in wearing away the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... I seem to see most clearly is the way his glasses glittered with affection. I never knew but one other man who had (if you will permit the phrase) so kind a spectacle, and that was Dr. Appleton.[5] But the light in his case was tempered and passive; in Kelland's it danced, and changed, and flashed vivaciously among the students, like a perpetual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Canada at that time was small compared to what it now is; nevertheless, it was sufficiently large to attract the attention of the government. They were almost to a man fugitives from the States. They could not, therefore, be passive when the success of the invaders would break the only arm interposed for their security, and destroy the only asylum for African freedom in North America. The promptness with which several companies of blacks were organized and equipped, and the desperate valor they displayed in this brief ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... mysterious being who was turning my life into channels unsuspected, before that black tube with its unknown potentialities, I sat in a kind of passive panic which I cannot attempt to describe, which I had never experienced before and have never ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... dust of this dim spot, in every holy resolution, in every thrill and throb of love and desire. Each of these is mine—inasmuch as in my heart it is experienced and transacted; it is mine, inasmuch as I am not a mere dead piece of matter, the passive recipient of a magical and supernatural grace; but it is God's; and therefore, and therefore only, has it come to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... hold of her passive hands. They trembled in his, but she offered not to withdraw them. Indeed, she hardly noticed the act in the tide of emotion which was surging in her bosom. Her heart moved with a wild yearning to tell him that he had found the treasure he sought,—that a love as strong and as devoted as that of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... throughout was Indo-Chinese; assuming, insolent, aggressive, never perpetrating open violence, but by petty insults effectually preventing all good understanding. He was met by neglect or forbearance on the part of the Calcutta government; and by patience and passive resistance at Dorjiling. Our inaction and long-suffering were taken for weakness, and our concessions for timidity. Such has been our policy in China, Siam, and Burmah, and in each instance the result has been the same. Had it been insisted that the terms ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... pleasures; they will barter, therefore, the usurped prerogatives of the King for the money of the people. This is the agent by which modern nations will recover their rights. I sincerely wish that, in this country, they may be contented with a peaceable and passive opposition. At this moment we are not sure of this; though as yet it is difficult to say what form the opposition will take. It is a comfortable circumstance, that their neighboring enemy is under the administration of a minister disposed to keep the peace. Engage in war who will, may my ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the higher into the lower urges life upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, until it culminates in spiritually and self consciousness. It is not necessary here to go more into detail, it is enough to say that the elements in nature begin as passive qualities, their ethereal nature becomes gross, then positive and finally spiritual, and this abstract formula holds good for everything in nature. These changes which take place in the universe are repeated in man its microcosm, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... scholars, and they do not form part of the 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 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... possession of an owner whose claim is acknowledged by the government. The anomalous position of the island as to political situation is due to the erosion of the river as an active and the defects of statutory law as a passive agent. According to the enactment whereby the States of Arkansas and Mississippi were created, the river boundary of the former extends to mid-stream; that of the latter to mid-channel. Herein is the difficulty. A dissipated freshet turned the current against ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... glorious name had sunk almost to a by-word of reproach. But "the darkest hour is just before the dawn:" a new disaster, more humiliating, and more inexcusable than any which had preceded, at length goaded the passive indignation of the British people into irresistible action. The spirit that animated the men who spoke at Runnymede, and those who fought on Marston Moor, was not dead, but sleeping. The free institutions which wisdom had devised, time hallowed, and blood sealed, were evaded, but not overthrown. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... reference to R. L. Stevenson. For there is a wise way of "laying-to" that does not imply inaction, but discreet, well-directed effort, against contrary winds and rough seas, that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, where passive and active may balance and give effect to each other. Stevenson was by native instinct and temperament a rover—a lover of adventure, of strange by-ways, errant tracts (as seen in his Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey through the Cevennes—seen yet more, perhaps, in a certain account ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... hesitated. Their master frowned. Snatching a hammer from one of them, he himself attacked the great statue as if it were a personal foe. The Armenians, seeing he was in earnest, returned to their usual habits of passive obedience, and aided him in his labour. Within a few minutes the great and beautiful figure lay in fragments on the floor, and these fragments were soon crushed into indistinguishable atoms. I had promised to witness this work of destruction, and witness ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... are more passive to what is near them than to what is remote. Now spiritual vices are nearer the mind than carnal vices are. Therefore blindness of mind and dulness of sense are caused by spiritual rather than ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... conditions, and in inspiring them with the desire to devote their efforts to a certain cause or party, for the best of their people. Public opinion will become much broader and stronger when it shall reflect the sentiments of our women, who are at present a passive element where the duties of citizenship are concerned; and when in her dark hours the nation shall need assistance, she will receive it not only from her citizens, but also from her citizenesses, who will ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... Mere passive touch gives a certain amount of information, but comparatively little. It is necessary to explore; that is what is done in active touch—palpation—of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... face with his hands, and large tears fell over them. Passionless as he was, the priest was touched by this overwhelming emotion in one who had hitherto been so passive. He laid his hand on the sufferer's arm, and kindly said: "Tell me, my son, how ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... unmeaning etiquette and wearisome ceremonials, a daily labour of trifles, a ceaseless pageantry of nothings. I had been sent there upon one important event; the business resulting from it had soon ceased, and all the duties that remained for me to discharge were of a negative and passive nature. Nothing that could arouse, nothing that could occupy faculties that had for years been so perpetually wound up to a restless excitement, was left for me in this terrible reservoir of ennui. I had come thither at once from the skirmishing and wild warfare of a Tartar foe; a war ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of major excommunication (wherefrom, unless at the point of death, absolution was not to be granted save by the Roman pontiff himself); of forfeiture besides of active and passive vote, and of all dignities, administrations, and offices whatsoever; furthermore, of disqualification to hold and exercise the same in the future—all moreover to be incurred ipso facto by all religious, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... the feeling toward Tom subsided until nothing was left of it except a kind of passive disregard of him. Organized resentment would not have been tolerated at Temple Camp and it is a question whether the scouts themselves would have had anything to do with such a conspiracy. But the feeling had changed toward him and was ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of Louisiana was adopted against the will of a majority of the people. This is probably true, and in that fact may be found some instruction. Why did they allow the ordinance to go into effect? Why did they not assert themselves? Why stand passive and allow themselves to be trodden down by minority? Why did they not hold popular meetings and have a convention of their own to express and enforce the true sentiment of the State? If preorganization was against them then, why not do this now that the United States army is present to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... yet was in my chamber; then a vision appeared to my sickened sight,—a face which I dimly thought I had seen before,—a flood of curls and a rain of kisses showering upon me,—sobs and devouring caresses,—Flora's voice calling me passionate names; and I lying so passive, faintly struggling to remember, until my soul sank whirling in darkness, and I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... specifically the same with those we met on the Missouri, are by no means so ferocious; probably because the scarcity of game and the habit of living on roots may have weaned them from the practices of attacking and devouring animals. Still, however, they are not so passive as the common black bear, which is also to be found here; for they have already fought with our hunters, though with less fury than those on the other side of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... association became more and more intimate; and when they were both thirteen years old their endearments passed from kisses and embraces to manipulation of the genital organs. In these latter, X. always played a passive part, not herself touching her own genital organs nor those of her friend. Occasionally X. would feel drawn towards some other girl, but such errant inclinations never lasted long. At about the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... refuge on her sofa, and sobbed herself into a sound slumber, while Elizabeth, in her haggard anxiety, moved up and down, wounded by cruel reflections which wrung her soul and left it dumb, with a passive submission, born rather of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... days later. Evelina was buried in Calvary Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the necessary arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator, beheld with stony indifference this last ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... may be observed that the influence of the three elements just considered is to strengthen the tendency, produced by the sufferings considered first, to regard the tragic persons as passive rather ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... and 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 ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... follow the reminiscences of the hero, we may share the fancies of his imagination. Once more the case is distinctly different from the one in which we, the spectators, had our imaginative ideas realized on the screen. Here we are passive witnesses to the wonders which are unveiled through the imagination of the persons in the play. We see the boy who is to enter the navy and who sleeps on shipboard the first night; the walls disappear and his imagination flutters from port to port. All he has seen in ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... new and unknown ambition had invaded Bauer's hitherto placid and somewhat passive soul since Helen Douglas had come into his circle of interest. What was it the girl had said during that talk in the library that day when she had made a vow not to speak first and had broken it? Bauer remembered every phase of that incident; the girl's ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... of the public, do not declare war with them. It has not been my practice to preach slavery; but, while one deals with and depends on mimic sovereigns, I would act policy, especially when by temporary passive obedience one can really lay a lasting obligation on one's country, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... work-a-day sort of person,' said Lily, 'like all other poor people, hard and passive. Now, do not set up your eyebrows, Claude, I am quite serious, there is ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Elector. In clear and earnest language he explained how faith itself, on which everything depended, was a matter of innermost moral life and conduct, nay, the very highest work conformable to God's will; and further, how that same faith cannot possibly remain merely passive, but, on the contrary, the faithful Christian must himself become pleasing to God, on whose grace he relies, must love Him again, and fulfil His holy Will with energy and activity in all duties and relations of life. These duties he proceeds to explain according to the Ten ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 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 throne. Between Lewis and the Country Party there was one ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... coming. True occult knowledge is practical power and strength. Beware of prostituting the higher teachings for selfish ends and ignoble purposes. To guard and preserve your own will is right; to seek to impose your will upon that of another is wrong. Passive resistance is often the strongest form of resistance—this ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... indolent character, who never expect to rule their destiny by their own genius; but to those who feel themselves possessed of energy and abilities to surmount obstacles and to brave dangers, it is torture to remain passive—to feel that prudence, virtue, genius avail them not—that while rapid ideas pass in their imagination, time moves with an unaltered pace, and compels them to wait, along with the herd of vulgar mortals, for ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... boisterous by a spice of cruelty. So, a roar of many voices calls for Samson, and this deepest degradation is not spared him. The words employed for 'make sport' seem to require that we should understand that he was not brought out to be the passive object of their gibes and drunken mockery, but was set to play the fool for their delectation. They imply that he had to dance and laugh, while three thousand gaping Philistines, any one of whom would have run for his life if he had been free, fed their hatred by the sight. Perhaps ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... here. His sense of humour was quite unruffled, nay, he was even genuinely pleased to see the good, ample Martha, the strings of her black bonnet untied, her face wreathed in smiles, vigorously clearing out a tart dish, and Jessie's homely features lit up with passive enjoyment, her brown eyes shining beneath ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... 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 ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... a collective and belligerent way. It is not, as said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast; but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so, and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically, therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... window, looked out upon the dark, rain-filmed pane that, however, reflected no equal change in his own dark eyes, and then returned and walked round the kitchen table. When he was at her back, without looking at her, he reached out his hand, took her passive one that lay on the table in his, grasped it heartily for a single moment, laid it gently down, and returned around the table, where he again confronted ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... cried a vender from beyond the wall. A man stopped at the gate, put down his shoulder-tray of food, and bargained with the ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odors of food frying in oil stole out from the depths of the house behind him. And Dong-Yung, very quiet and passive in the pose of her body, gazed up at Foh-Kyung with those strange, secretive, ardent eyes. All around him was China, its very essence and sound and smell. Dong-Yung was a part of it all; nay, she was even the very heart of it, swaying ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... motionless, he caught her hands and drew her forward, and sat down again with her passive body resting upon his knees. She was ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... in the environment rather than within the organism itself. We fight shy of the Lamarckian conception that the living thing obscurely works out its own salvation by blind and instinctive effort. We like to think of organisms as machines, as passive inventions[457] gradually perfected from generation to generation by some external agency, by environment or by natural selection, or what you will. All this makes us chary of believing that Nature is prodigal ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... instinct of self-preservation, as people who would seek to become an appreciable power in the public affairs of their country, must be alive to every vital interest pertaining to it. To become rooted it must maintain an unyielding grasp. That the Negro is to-day only a passive member in the affairs of government, does not argue that his unflagging patriotism will not finally gain its reward. That he is quietly working now at long range to prepare himself for citizenship, means that he will in due ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it. Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake—that Elma Heath was in ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... with precisely the rapidity of thought, is tardy enough, owing solely to lack of receptivity in its only known medium, namely, the human subject. But—and here is the old-man fact of the ages— Light is inherently dynamic, not static; active, not passive: aggressive, not defensive. Therefore, as twice one is two, the momentum of Light, having overborne the Conservatism of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and other unpronounceable ages, has, in this 19th century, produced a distinct paling of the stars, with an opaline tint in the east. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... passive in the hands of a person who had just rendered him such a distinguished piece of service, got into the chaise as directed. Dinmont followed; Wasp, who had kept close by them, sprung in at the same time, and the carriage drove off very ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... fro he had come across a small conservatory on the other side of the house, far from the busy throng, and entered as well from the grounds as from a boudoir of Madame's; thither he led Vaura, not unwillingly, a sweet sense of being taken care of, a nameless feeling of passive languor, a sense of completeness pervaded her whole being, as Lionel, putting her hand through his arm and for a moment holding it there in a protecting sort of way, led her through long corridors until they reached the luxurious boudoir of their hostess, where, seating Vaura in a lounging ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... those of the Iranians dwelt together there, and 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 by no means wanting in sensitiveness ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... intention that it should be so. Nobody knew with whom this originated. Mrs. Boncassen had probably been told that it ought to be so, and Mr. Boncassen had been willing to pay the bill. External forces had perhaps operated. The Duke had simply been passive and obedient. There had however been a general feeling that the bride of the heir of the house of Omnium should be produced to the world amidst a blare of trumpets and a glare of torches. So it had been. But both the Duke and Mary were determined that ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... show its hand. In the Odyssey, for example, shipwreck and the interference of the gods are factors as decisive as Odysseus' courage and cunning. By contrast, in lyric poetry, nature is merely a reflection of moods; in dramatic poetry, it is simply the passive, causally ineffective stage for a social experience wholly determined by human agents. This distinction is, however, not absolute. In Brand, for example, through the stage directions and the utterance of the persons, we are indirectly made aware of the control exerted ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... what we term reason! Here then is a proof that both those gifts border very near on one another; for we see the perfection of the one mixing with the errors of the other! The peaceable swallow, like the passive Quaker, meekly sat at a small distance and never offered the least resistance; but no sooner was the plunder carried away, than the injured bird went to work with unabated ardour, and in a few days the depredations were repaired. To prevent however a repetition of the same violence, I removed the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... it very imperfectly, and Macco still less. More than once I observed Ali's quick, piercing, fierce eyes fixed on him attentively, as he appeared to be endeavouring to impress some matter on his mind. Macco's look all the time was passive, and he either did not comprehend what was said, or was ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... insisted that he should be proceeded against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was not possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to resort at once to the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely until the emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with the strong hand. It stood not "with his honour ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... factae below are used as predicate adjectives, not to form the pluperfect passive with erant. Translate, therefore, 'were covered.' ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... abilities as to be able to rely upon them. Everything that the proletarian can do to improve his position is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods of varying chances to which he is exposed, over which he has not the slightest control. He is the passive subject of all possible combinations of circumstances, and must count himself fortunate when he has saved his life even for a short time; and his character and way of living are naturally shaped by these conditions. Either ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... to indicate purpose, and always preceded by the preposition to. To call these words in question gerunds is to stretch the term gerund immensely beyond its meaning in Anglo-Saxon, and make it cover words which sometimes (1) are highly compounded; sometimes (2) are used in the passive voice; sometimes (3) follow other prepositions than to; sometimes (4) do not follow any preposition; sometimes (5) are objects of verbs; sometimes (6) are subjects of verbs; sometimes (7) are modified by the; sometimes (8) ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... waits for us, I fear?" simply observed Father Anselmo, who had known how to quiet his concern, in a look of passive courtesy. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to the Florida programme was more than an unpleasant episode in Jefferson's administration; it proved to be the beginning of a revolt which was fatal to the President's diplomacy, for Randolph passed rapidly from passive to active opposition and fought the two-million dollar bill to the bitter end. When the House finally outvoted him and his faction, soon to be known as the "Quids," and the Senate had concurred, precious weeks had been lost. Yet Madison must bear some share of blame for the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... through the mother's attention. From this center, too, he coldly refuses to notice the mother, when she insists on too much attention. This cold refusal is different from the active rejection of the lower center. It is passive, but cold and negative. It is the great force of our day. From the ganglion of the shoulders, also, the child breathes and his heart beats. From the same center he learns the first use of his arms. In the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... attitude assumed by General Lagarde restored Nimes to a state of superficial peace, beneath which, however, the old enmities were fermenting. An occult power, which betrayed itself by a kind of passive resistance, neutralised the effect of the measures taken by the military commandant. He soon became cognisant of the fact that the essence of this sanguinary political strife was an hereditary religious animosity, and in order to strike a last ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Colourd by phantasms, nor doth them reflect As doth a looking-glasse such imag'rie As it to the beholder doth detect: No more are these lightly or smear'd or deckt With form or motion which in them we see, But from their inmost Centre they project Their vitall rayes, not merely passive be, But by occasion wak'd rouze ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... devoted proselytes. From information I have since received, they may now amount to three hundred thousand; and they have wealth, energy, and unity—they have every thing in their favour; and the federal government has been so long passive, that I doubt if it has the power to disperse them. Indeed, to obtain their political support, they have received so many advantages, and, I may say, such assistance, that they are now so strong, that any attempt to wrest ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... for it sometimes contains within itself an adverbial element when it is conjugated for mode and tense, and a connective element when it is conjugated for agreement. With adjectives and nouns this verb is used as a predicant. In the passive voice also it is thus used, and the participles are nouns or adjectives. In what is sometimes called the progressive form of the active voice nouns and adjectives are differentiated in the participles, and the verb "to be" is used as a predicant. ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... 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 ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... upon "Righteousness and other cardinal Virtues," p. 87, thus asks—"An puella, quae per vin opprimitur teneatur clamare et opem implorare ne violetur?" The answer is this—"Non videtur teneri impedire peccatum alterius—sed mere passive ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... traces the Christian hope here. I must not be tempted to more than just a word of explanation, but perhaps you will tolerate that. Paul says that trouble works patience, that is to say, not only passive endurance, but brave persistence in a course, in spite of antagonisms. That is what trouble does to a man when it is rightly borne. Of course the Apostle is speaking here of its ideal operation, and not of the reality which alas! often is seen when our tribulations lash us into impatience, or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... house in the proposition; and the bill having been brought in, was passed rapidly through all its stages, and finally read a third time amidst loud cheers. Before the measure came into the upper house, it was announced by Lord Wharncliffe that ministers would be passive respecting it, each individual member taking what part they deemed prudent. The second reading was moved by the Earl of Devon, who, after vindicating the measure, contended that without any evidence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... will not submit to a passive reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the French and Italian sources on which ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... prevented her from noticing another but more passive one. A group of men standing before the new mill—the same men who had so solicitously challenged her attention with their bows a couple of hours ago—turned as she approached and suddenly dispersed. It was not until this was repeated by another group that its oddity forced ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Emotion dominated her intelligence. The images, the scenes called up by Colter's words, were as true as the gloom of the wild gulch and the loneliness of the night solitude—as true as the strange fact that she lay passive in the arm ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... being. For it compelled him to retain belief in a Creator distinct in essence from Creation. Such a belief Spinoza entirely rejected. For though his "Natura Naturans," or Nature Active, may in a manner be called the Creator of his "Natura Naturata," or Nature Passive, these are consubstantial and co-eternal, neither being before or after the other. Thus for him there was no beginning of the Universe and there could be no end. There was no creation out of nothing, nor any omen of weariness, ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... it—I shall not inquire—I have no curiosity—none,' said she, in a passive, dejected tone; 'that is not what I am thinking of in the least. I know there are invincible obstacles; I wish it to be so. But, if invincible, you who have so much sense, honour, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... outset to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional position of the already too-powerful general. Pompeius himself retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps he would in reality have returned home after fulfilling the commission which he had received, but for the occurrence of an ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no longer thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the demon. At length some strength returned to him; it occurred to him to take refuge in his tower beside his faithful Quasimodo. He rose; and, as he was afraid, he took the lamp from the breviary to light his way. It was a sacrilege; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the manager's glance in kind; Barnes' candor and simplicity were apparent antidotes to the other's taciturnity and constraint. During the country dance the soldier had remained a passive spectator, displaying little interest in the rustic merry-making or the open glances cast upon him by bonny lasses, burned in the sunlit fields, buxom serving maids, as clean as the pans in the kitchen, and hearty matrons, not averse to frisk ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... had always been centred upon the children. It was of them he talked chiefly now, telling of letters that their father had received from them, and of the art by which he, Morrison, had sometimes contrived to make the taciturn Day show him their contents. The interest of passive benevolence which the young medical student gave to Morrison's account of these children, who had grown quite beyond the age when children are pretty and interesting, would soon have been exhausted had the account been long; but it happened that the old man had ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... was lying passive in my palm—warm, soft, living; all the life, all the world, all the happiness, the only desire—and I dared not close my grasp, afraid of the vanity of my hopes, shrinking from the intense felicity in the audacious act. Father Antonio—I must say the word—blubbered. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... gratification of his passion. Over his bosom's mistress he did exercise a certain marital control,—which was, for instance, quite sufficiently fixed to enable him to look down with thorough contempt on such a one as Bishop Proudie; but he was not a despot who could exact a passive obedience to every fantasy. His wife would not have written the letter for him on that day, and he knew very well that she would not do so. He knew also that she was right;—and yet he regretted his want of power. His anger at the present moment was very hot,—so hot that he wished to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... co-operation in the scheme of life. And in this country through milleniums, there always have been some who, beyond the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, sought for the realisation of the highest ideal of life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, having acquired nothing has nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won, can enrich the world by giving ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... discussed. He places the pleasures of sympathy and moral goodness (also of piety) in the highest rank, the passive sensations in the lowest. Instead of making morality, like health, a neutral state (though an indispensable condition of happiness), he ascribes to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... 'while study of the Law was to Talmudists the very acme of piety, the mystics accorded the first place to prayer, which was considered as a mystical progress towards God, demanding a state of ecstasy.' The Jewish mystic must invent means for inducing such a state, for Judaism cannot endure a passive waiting for the moving spirit. The mystic soul must learn how to mount the chariot (Merkaba) and ride into the inmost halls of Heaven. Mostly the ecstatic state was induced by fasting and other ascetic exercises, a necessary preliminary being moral purity; ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... theory, which would destroy all our received ideas, and carry the civilisation and cradle of the Greeks much beyond the time and place that have till now been supposed. It is their very architecture that M. Petit Radel interrogates, and its passive testimony serves as a basis to his system. He has visited, compared, and meditated on the unequivocal vestiges of more than one hundred and fifty antique citadels, altogether neglected by the Greek and Roman authors. Their form and construction serve him, with the aid of ingenious reasoning, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... diversity of terms used to describe the pacifist position shows that none of them satisfactorily expresses the essence of the pacifist philosophy. Among those commonly used are: (1) non-resistance, (2) passive resistance, (3) non-violent resistance, (4) super-resistance, (5) non-violent non-cooperation, (6) civil disobedience, (7) non-violent coercion, (8) non-violent direct action, (9) war without violence, and (10) ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... those written before he went to Malta, where his opium habits were confirmed. If my father sought more from opium than the mere absence of pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations or the glowing phantasmagoria of passive dreams, but that the power of the medicine might keep down the agitations of his nervous system, released for a time at least from the tyranny of ailments which by a spell of wretchedness fix the thoughts upon themselves, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Spirit, as he conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light and heat that seem ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... literature entertained by that personage who, for want of a better, goes by the name of the general reader. Macaulay reversed in his own case, the experience of those countless writers on Indian themes who have successively blunted their pens against the passive indifference of the British public; for his faithful but brilliant studies of the history of our Eastern Empire are to this day incomparably the most popular of his works. [When published in a separate form the articles ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the mind Thus all passive lies; If no living power within Its own force supplies; If it but reflect again, Like a glass, things ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... hand, which goes naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's hand the other day, and how ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fact that the Chancellor had previously sought to bribe England to condone in advance the invasion of Belgium by Germany, and that Germany had also coerced Luxemburg into a passive acquiescence in a similar invasion, and there is as yet no pretense that Luxemburg had failed in ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... in, got Bradish's right hand in a grip, and doubled the arm behind his adversary's back. Then he tripped the city man and laid him backward over the table and against its edge with a violence that brought a yell of pain and made Bradish limp and passive. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... be nowhere to move from, and nowhere to move to; and without which external Form would be impossible because there would be nothing to limit the diffusion of substance and bring it into shape. Polarity, or the interaction of Active and Passive, is therefore the basis ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... every student; he should meet with sympathy and help in all his dearest aspirations, on every side. Perhaps it is needless to say that this young Visionary was disappointed, and that his collegiate career was, in fact, the beginning of that crusade, active and passive, which it appeared to be his destiny to wage against what is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... degree as his nephew Louis XV., whom he resembled in many ways, that morbid weariness of life, that contempt for mankind and distaste for business. He was afflicted, moreover, with that fatal impotence of will which makes a libertine king the slave of his mistresses, and, a faithful husband the passive instrument of a charming queen who may happen to be prompted by ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... will take 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 God who spared not Jesus! It may ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a sort, delighted; and Fleda was in too passive a mood of body and mind to have any care on the subject. The agitation of the past days had given way to an absolute quiet, that seemed as if nothing could ever ruffle it again, and this feeling was seconded ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... one until he is proved, and a soldier is brave until the day of trial comes. He however is independent and brave enough to set the opinion of the world at defiance, and he marries. Until then society is passive, but when defied and disobeyed, it is active, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and passive; now of a sudden he grew violent again, but in a different way. He flung himself upon his knees before Sir Crispin, and passionately he pleaded for the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... my intention to find fault with you because you don't act thoughtlessly. Of course we mustn't give up the victory out of sympathy with those who fight. It was only a momentary weakness, but a weakness that might spoil everything—that I must admit! But it's not so easy to be a passive spectator of these topsy-turvy conditions. It's affirmed that the workmen prefer to receive a starvation allowance to doing any work; and judging by what they've hitherto got out of their work it's easy to understand that it's true. But during the month that the excavations ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
