"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and privileges of the mighty dead. And if such was really the intention of the ceremony, it is obvious that it was better effected by compelling the young communicants, as we may call them, to die and rise from the dead in their own persons than by obliging them to assist as mere passive spectators at a dramatic performance of death and resurrection. Yet in spite of this difference between the two rituals, the general resemblance between them is near enough to justify us in conjecturing that there may ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... waistcoat. It covers—in a most inadequate way—the wind, and even a gentle tap in the locality is apt to produce a fleeting sense of discomfort. A genuine flush hit on the spot, shrewdly administered by a muscular arm with the weight of the body behind it, causes the passive agent in the transaction to wish fervently, as far as he is at the moment physically capable of wishing anything, that he had never been born. 'Charles his friend' collapsed like an empty sack, and Charteris, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the Revolution the Cossacks refused to shoot down the people. When Kornilov marched on Petrograd they refused to follow him. From passive loyalty to the Revolution the Cossacks have passed to an active political offensive (against it). From the back-ground of the Revolution they have suddenly advanced to the front of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the London world—it was just the outermost ripple of the vast disturbance of the French Revolution which touched the little spot, part of the free new eager spirit which sent men questing for a loveliness they could neither make nor control, and of which they must be humble and passive spectators, and part also of vast causes and changes, which drove Englishmen to seek their holidays ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Affirmative or Indicative, the Negative or Interrogative, the Subjunctive, the Imperative, and the Infinitive. Many, but not all, Transitive Verbs have a Passive Participle. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... hunter friend, Piers Dayman, showed her an American paper which mentioned Captain Trevor among the officers killed in their attack. Dayman was devoted to her, and insisted on marrying her, and bringing up her daughter as his own. I fancy she was a woman of gentle passive temper, and had been crushed and terrified by all she had gone through, so as to have little instinct left but that of clinging to the protector who had taken her up when she had lost everything else; and she married him. Nor did Hester ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passive and active participles from the same root, Nasrvictory; the former means triumphant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the live waves turning, slip my tunic, Then run in naked. Cooled and soothed by swimming, Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned To placid acquiescent health, I float, suspended in the limpid water, Passive, rhythmically governed; So tranced worlds travel the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the clipped garden, which frequently accompanies it, is not. The custom of clipping trees into fantastic forms is always to be reprehended: first, because it never can produce the true grotesque, for the material is not passive, and, therefore, a perpetual sense of restraint is induced, while the great principle of the grotesque is action; again, because we have a distinct perception of two natures, the one neutralizing the other; for the vegetable organization is too palpable to let the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... bleedings, and then by gentle applications of tonics to the part, to increase its action; but when it arises from a debility of the minute vessels, without any increase of the propelling force, it forms what is known by the name of passive inflammation; in which general bleeding is not required, but the application of stimulants and tonics to the inflamed part to enable the vessels to recover their lost tone, and restore the balance between their action and the vis a tergo. From what has been said, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... individual misfortunes, nor of his national degradation; neither of the friends whom he has lost in the war, nor of the foreign soldiers whom it has placed at his elbow; his whole soul is absorbed in the game, in the dance, or in the spectacle. But his object is not laughter, or passive enjoyment, or relaxation; it is the excitation of his spirits, the occupation, and interest, and agitation of his mind, the varied gratification of his senses, the exercise of his fancy, the display of his wit, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... excommunication; the imperialists 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 to execute such censures," he ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... The attitude of the male and female here depicted was not regarded as obscene; on the contrary, to the ancient Sikyatki mind the picture had a deep religious meaning. In Hopi ideas the male is a symbol of active generative power, the female of passive reproduction, and representations of these two form essential elements of the ancient pictorial and graven ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... realities of fact—that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as the phrase is, a priori. But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... be so very mischievous as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it."[1] To us this may seem very mild and commonplace doctrine, but it was not commonplace in an age when Anglican divines—men like Archbishop Markham, Dr. Nowell or Dr. Porteus—had revived the base precepts of passive obedience and non-resistance, and when such a man as Lord Mansfield encouraged them. And these were the kind of foundations which Burke had been laying, while Fox was yet a Tory, while Sheridan was writing farces, and ...
— Burke • John Morley
... temptation on some future occasion. I wake, and I am what I was before. The opportune sleep has but removed the temptation for this once. It has not made me better; for I have not been shielded from temptation by any act of my own, but I was passive under an accident, for such I may call sleep. And so in like manner, if I hear a lecture indolently and passively, I cannot indeed be elsewhere while I am here hearing it,—but it produces no positive effect on my mind,—it does ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... had ceased to flow, but they were still trembling in her eyes, and the little face wore a very sad and troubled expression as she stood patiently passive in her nurse's hands. Chloe had soon finished her labors, and then the little girl opened her Bible, and, as usual, read a few verses aloud, though her voice trembled, and once or twice a tear fell on the page; then closing the book she ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... Feudalism has had a sufficient trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics and authority in religion was the grand, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not budged, had remained, till that moment, an eager, but passive spectator. He would have liked to fling himself into the contest with all his strength and to bring down the prey which he held at his mercy. He was prevented by ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the concept of evolution, when thought through to the end, began to suggest the possibility of further growth in man's spiritual capacities. But I saw also that this growth could no longer be merely passive, and the question which now beset me was: by what action of his own can man break his way into this new phase of evolution? I saw that this action must not consist merely in giving outer effect to the natural powers of human thinking; that was happening everywhere in the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... colder or more passive than the woman with whom it was Bazarov's bad luck to fall in love. The gradual change wrought in his temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in the most subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable for only one thing; he had told this very ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... had fathomed her inborn wickedness, . . and though his senses were attracted by her, his spirit loathingly repelled her, . . he therefore remained seated stiffly upright, watching her with a sort of passive, immovable intentness. As she now appeared before him, her loveliness was absolutely and ideally perfect,— she looked the embodiment of all grace,—the model of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mental poise and struck out calmly, swimming in the direction in which the wind bore him, for there was nothing else to do. Not that his effort helped him much, but he knew the good rule that one should never be passive in a crisis, for inaction is as depressing to the spirit as frantic exertion is to the body. And he knew that by swimming he could keep his "morale"—a word which he had heard a good ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... The manner of bringing it into play, though distasteful to him, suited their ideas of propriety, and Firmstone felt that they had earned the right to an exhibition of their personalities with no interference on his part. He preserved a passive, dignified silence. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... he murmured. "What can I do?" And yet it seemed to him impossible to wait in passive inactivity until a red glare in the sky should announce that the nefarious design ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... must be traced the spirit of materialism which is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... had been shunted to the 5:30. As fellow mariners will, we discussed famous breakdowns of old and the uncertainties of the commuter's life. "Yes," said our companion, "once you leave home you never know when you'll get back." And he smiled the passive, placable ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... develop standards by which conflicting claims could be resolved. It is not desired to signify agreement by this admission with those who believe that all principles of wage settlement must be purely passive, with those who argue that wage settlement must perforce be nothing more than a recurrent use of expedients produced on the spur of the occasion out of the magical hat of the arbitrator. All that is meant is that no policy of wage settlement will succeed if its results diverge too greatly ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... weeks. She saw more of him now than she had done for years, and was able, after a fashion, to work her quiet, loving, female will with him, exacting from him an obedience to feminine sway such as had not been exercised on him since his wife's death. He himself had been humbled, passive, and happy. He had taken his gruel, grumbled with modesty, and consoled himself with constantly reflecting that he was member of Parliament for the borough ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... with serious, thoughtful eyes, for she had felt the tingling of a new strange force in Brandon's touch. A man, not a worm, but a real man, with all the irresistible infinite attractions that a man may have for a woman—the subtle drawing of the lodestone for the passive iron—had come into her life. Doubly sweet it was to her intense, young virgin soul, in that it first revealed the dawning of that two-edged bliss which makes a heaven or a hell of earth—of earth, which owes its very ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... nothing at all to Johnny, even had he heard the name distinctly, which he did not. It cost him an effort to yield the control, but he pulled hands and feet away and sat passive, breathing quickly, gazing down at the wonders spread beneath him. For this was his first amazed sight of Los Angeles, though he had twice passed through the city in a train that clung to dingy streets and left him an impression ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... was telling his tale, in come the same fellow, with a woman, none of the least agreeable, and looking upon Ascyltos, entreated him to walk in and fear nothing, for if he would not be passive he might be active: the woman on the other hand press'd me to go in with her. We follow'd therefore, and being led among those bills, we saw many of both sexes at work in the cells, so much every of them seem'd ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... magnetic, It seemed like creative skill From the hand of the Great Master, To give passive being will. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... because Terence spoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the moods of depression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would sit passive in her chair exposed to pain, and Helen's fantastical or gloomy words were like so many darts goading her to cry out against the hardness of life. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... 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
... with a view to my safety and comfort; he understands how to procure that safety and that comfort better than I do. He worries himself; he spends hours and nights of vigil to look after me and carry me to my destination. Why should I worry myself, who can only assist him by passive obedience? Why'—" But here he was interrupted by a headlong plunge of the Excelsior, a feminine shriek that was half a laugh, the rapid patter of small feet and sweep of flying skirts down the slanting deck, and the sudden and violent contact of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... temptations to a prince of any spirit or energy, inducing him to advance as the Romans retired, to hang upon their rear, to cut off their supplies, and to render their retreat difficult, if not disastrous. Volagases appears to have remained wholly inert and passive. His conduct is only explicable by the consideration of the rapid decline which Parthia was now undergoing, of the general decay of patriotic spirit, and the sea of difficulties into which a monarch was plunged who had to retreat ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... were scarce worth hanging, that were fit for nothing, and neither seemed born to do themselves good, or any one else, had three clever, diligent, careful, and ingenious wives, not that the two first were ill wives as to their temper or humour; for all the five were most willing, quiet, passive, and subjected creatures, rather like slaves than wives; but my meaning is, they were not alike, capable, ingenious, or industrious, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which they both knew ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... that smoked and dined off the hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb edo, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first the underlying fundamental identity of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... subjects are animate, or inanimate; 2d. Whether their objects are animate, or inanimate; 3d. Whether they are transitive, or intransitive; 4th. Whether they are active, or passive, or reflective; 5th. Whether the expression ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... uplifted hand of the negro warned him of the necessity of silence. The negro nodded several times, again put his hand on his heart, and then disappeared. A thrill of hope stirred every vein in Vincent's body. He felt his cheeks flush and had difficulty in maintaining his passive attitude. He was not, then, utterly deserted; he had a friend who would, he was sure, do all in his power to ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed: in the one is a passive, though a voluntary, obedience; in the other an independence scornful of experience and jealous ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... night journey; and, in fact, the wine and the rest together had so far revived Madelon that she appeared quite capable of walking down to the station with the Countess. Madame Bertrand gave her great hug as she wished her good-bye, and was perhaps a little aggrieved at the passive way in which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... his host of passive enemies, Tarzan of the Apes added that day two active foes, both of whom remained awake long into the night planning means of revenge upon the white devil-god who had brought them into ridicule and disrepute, but with their most malevolent schemings ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... supposing that for Christ to be a priest and a sacrifice is all one and the same thing; and it may be it is, because they have not thought on this so well as they should—namely, that as He was a sacrifice He was passive, that is, led or had away as a lamb to His sufferings (Isaiah 53); but as a priest He was active—that is, He did willingly and freely give up His Body to be a sacrifice. "He hath given His life a ransom for many." This consideration ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bring herself to deprive her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering with this outside arrangement of destiny. For ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... remembering Lucilla's blindness, appealed to me. "You tell her!" said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground. "Are you both dumb?" she asked. "Oscar! I insist on knowing it—how have ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great strength in passive resistance—" Of all I have ever seen, I never saw one man struggle with ten like that," said one of the chiefs, angrily disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do—till they flung him out into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press: "The strong, broad, heavy, powerful ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... of bed, moved by obedience, by the passive obedience of a woman accustomed to blows and who still remembers and always will remember that voice! She said: "Here I am, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Mrs. Simcoe left the room after having told him to undress the boy carefully and bathe his face and hands. Gabriel was perfectly passive, Hiram was silent, quick, and careful, and in a few moments he closed the door softly behind him, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... seemed to her that in her thirty-one years the sum of her achievement was looking beautiful and being loved by Francis Sales: she put it in that way, but immediately corrected herself unwillingly. Her attitude towards him had not been passive; she had loved him. She had owed him love and she had paid her debt; she had paid enough, yet if to-day he asked for more, she would give it. Her pride hoped for that demand; ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... No one can make a lie serve for the truth—at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere—usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of the United States are passive; they are physically weak, and therefore succumb to the dictation of the rude masses. And what keeps up this singular action, but the constantly-recurring elections, the incessant balloting and voting, the necessity which every man feels hourly of saving his substance ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... incisors, above and below, grew so long that they overlapped and the animal could not eat anything. Too many teachers are so kind to their pupils that they crack all the educational nuts for them, with the consequence that the children become passive and die mentally for want of activity. The true teacher will allow his pupils to wrestle with their problems without interruption until they arrive at a conclusion. If some pupil "goes into the ditch" and flounders he should usually be allowed to get out by his own efforts as best he can. Here ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... 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 ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... by the distracted woman, and he had the good sense to leave the body and its surroundings untouched until a doctor and the police had been summoned by telephone. Thenceforth the day had passed in a whirl of excitement, active in respect to police inquiries and passive in its resistance to newspaper interviewers. He saw no valid reason why his employer's plans should be disturbed, so made no effort to communicate ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... the Toleration Act, which put a stop to violent persecution, retaining merely the passive sort. The Quakers were excluded from all schools, colleges and universities, and from all right of franchise and the holding of political office; like unto the fond mother who orders her child to come into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... held her close, and then held her off to look at her through quizzical, appreciative eyes. "Why, girl, I can't imagine you doing anything so passive." ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... prayed from my soul for light. It seems to me that God has spoken, but, oh, my darling, if what I am about to do is unwise, whisper me one word of warning, and I shall be passive. Sometimes I think that you visit me, beloved, and whisper words of angelic sweetness in my ear. Speak now, my Franz, speak if I am wrong—I will obey ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'—to drop into ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doctrine of nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was their distinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If we are to judge by that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they had preached about the duty of passive obedience at least as often and as zealously as about the Trinity or the Atonement. [4] Their attachment to their political creed had indeed been severely tried, and had, during a short time, wavered. But with the tyranny ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was only attained by a strenuous repression of feeling, and that underneath it all was something very different. Though her voice was firm, her cheeks were deadly pale, and there was a peculiar tightening of the lips and light in her eyes which puzzled him. Her expression seemed to speak less of passive grief, than of some active determination—some strong desire. She had all the appearance of a woman who was bracing herself up for some ordeal, nerving herself with all the stimulus of a firm will to triumph over her natural feelings, and follow out a difficult purpose. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... inexcitability &c. 826[obs3]; irresolution &c. 605; obstinacy &c. 606; permanence &c. 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be -inert &c. adj.; hang fire, smolder. Adj. inert, inactive, passive; torpid &c. 683; sluggish, dull, heavy, flat, slack, tame, slow, blunt; unreactive; lifeless, dead, uninfluential[obs3]. latent, dormant, smoldering, unexerted[obs3]. Adv. inactively &c. adj.; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... handle groups on the defense. You must bear in mind that there are two kinds of defense: first, where you do nothing but defend (passive defense); second, where you defend, but temporarily, with the idea of attacking the enemy as soon as a favorable opportunity arises (active defense). Let us assume that you have been ordered by superior authority to locate and prepare a definite ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... own coarse and savage nature. He abused him in presence of the class as ignorant and stupid; ridiculed him as awkward and ugly, and at times in the transports of his temper indulged in personal violence. The effect was to aggravate a passive distaste into a positive aversion. Goldsmith was loud in expressing his contempt for mathematics and his dislike of ethics and logic; and the prejudices thus imbibed continued through life. Mathematics he always pronounced a science to which the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... great power in England, turned his attention to his Spanish projects; [Footnote: Trevelyan's view.] and in 1386 he left England for Spain. Others of the great lords, however, were not content to play a passive role; the brother of John of Gaunt, Gloucester, as leader, and the Earl of Arundel and Warwick, most prominent followers, were particularly violent in their attacks on the King and his friends. To revert now to Chaucer's case: these are the ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... As time wore on, his friends induced him occasionally to withdraw from his solitude and take a feeble part in public affairs. But this interest was purely civic or municipal, never political. He persistently kept aloof from legislative councils and his loyalty to England was strictly passive. The ultra-British did not like him, always putting him down in their books as ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... invested by the Confederate forces. There was sharp firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, "apparently unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him, and General Wright peremptorily represented to him the needless risk he was running." Hay ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... their economic life, if they care to exercise it. 'Whoso has sixpence,' as Carlyle said, 'is sovereign (to the length of sixpence), over all men; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him,'—to the length of sixpence. Passive resistance and the boycott are always open to the public in the last resort against any of their servants who has abused the powers of his position. A good instance of this occurred in the events which led to the so-called Tobacco riots in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tub of fermenting beer is capable of propagating its fermentation by "infection," or "contagion," to fresh wort. In both cases it is the solid living particles which are efficient; the liquid in which they float, and at the expense of which they live, being altogether passive. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... subject is compelled by its active principle, when it is changed by it. But the will is a passive force: for it is a "mover moved" (De Anima iii, 10). Therefore, since it is sometimes moved by its active principle, it seems that sometimes ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... as English was the only common language they possessed. Ali knew 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 ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the face; besides which, the excitement of the occasion, and an unwonted indulgence in various strong cordials to celebrate it, had swollen and dilated his features to a most unusual extent. But, Nicholas and the doctor—who had been passive at first, doubting very much whether Mr Kenwigs could be in earnest—interfering to explain the immediate cause of his condition, the indignation of the matrons was changed to pity, and they implored him, with much feeling, to go ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... worldly wisdom, and his 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 you shook OFF poor Blank, when he came ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... While I thus reflected—the water rushing over my boots—a very ill-looking man came forth and began to stare curiously at me. I met his eye, but he offered no greeting. A woman joined him, and the two, quite passive, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... of the magistrates, according to which the sins of believers were to be punished by civil authority, distressing to their consciences. They drew up a plantation covenant, promising to subject themselves "in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements" as might be made for the public good in an orderly way by the majority vote of the masters of families, "incorporated together into a town fellowship," but "only in civill things." ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... by their names; for that he is strong in power, not one faileth." That was in Faith's mind along with other words—"The Lord knoweth them that are his." Her mind was in a passive state; things floated in and floated out. It was some time before Mr. Linden said anything—he let her be as silent and still as she would; but at last he bent over her ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with 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 ruin and ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... very sense of the sun-drenched garden, the man at last is conquered back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins, goes on—the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no less lustful, receptivity of his—and culminates in a chant to that "crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods," while "heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat," they lay ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pressed the passive hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old friends and companions—for such they were, though they were man and child—held each other in a long embrace, and then the little scholar turned his face towards the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... 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 especially noticeable ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Kate—not, by the deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse—it was ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... in the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependants. The Laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... such, could at last laugh at their losses. Beyond, also, the consciousness of having fought a successful fight, they were encouraged by the certainty that they had met and encountered with success the extremity of peril to which they would be subjected; and that thenceforth Nature could only be a passive enemy to them, with no terrors now to daunt them with, albeit she struggled against them still in the bowels of the earth, that refused as yet to give up those hidden riches which they were confident were there. Refuse? ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus's den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling. He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life. Then he arose to wander about the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... as well as 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 10th of September, 1797, arrived at Alexandria. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... wrong and woe exhausted, what I suffered and occasioned— As a wild horse through a city, runs, with lightning in his eyes, And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall impassioned, Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and dies— So I fell struck down before her! Do you blame me, friends, for weakness? 'Twas my strength of passion slew me! fell before her like a stone; Fast the dreadful world ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Finite: for there cannot be more than one Infinite: Nor to ascribe to him (unlesse Metaphorically, meaning not the Passion, but the Effect) Passions that partake of Griefe; as Repentance, Anger, Mercy: or of Want; as Appetite, Hope, Desire; or of any Passive faculty: For Passion, is Power limited by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... forth 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... initiative—the sin of trying to work out one's own salvation by the exercise of reason, conscience, imagination, aspiration, and other spiritual faculties—that the direst penalties are reserved. The path of salvation is the path of blind, passive, mechanical obedience. To deviate even a little from that path is to incur the penalty ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs! all join ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... was their family connections or borough interest, he retired into the country; and, not knowing what to do with himself—married. In his family, to regain his lost consequence, he determined to keep up the same passive obedience, as in the vessels in which he had commanded. His orders were not to be disputed; and the whole house was expected to fly, at the word of command, as if to man the shrouds, or mount aloft in an elemental strife, big with life or death. He was to be instantaneously obeyed, especially ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... this he agreed, and seating himself at my side, but without touching me, he devoured me with lustful eyes. For some minutes neither of us spoke, but at length he took my hand, and again passed his arm around my waist. I did not oppose him, but remained passive and silent. 'Dear girl,' he whispered, pressing me close to him—'why need you be so cruel as to deny me the pleasure of love? Consider, I am your minister, and cannot sin: it will therefore be no sin ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them. "Latin Christianity," says Dean Milman, "accepted the creed which its narrow and barren vocabulary could hardly express in adequate terms. Yet, throughout, the adhesion of Rome and the West was a passive acquiescence in the dogmatic system which had been wrought out by the profounder theology of the Eastern divines, rather than a vigorous and original examination on her part of those mysteries. The Latin Church ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... 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 God! He ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the Church played was not equally atrocious; but it must have been exquisitely diverting to a scoffer. Never were principles so loudly professed, and so shamelessly abandoned. The Royal prerogative had been magnified to the skies in theological works. The doctrine of passive obedience had been preached from innumerable pulpits. The University of Oxford had sentenced the works of the most moderate constitutionalists to the flames. The accession of a Catholic King, the frightful cruelties committed in the west of England, never shook the steady loyalty of the clergy. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... relative status of individuals. In whatever community we may live, we need only look around to discover that its real leaders are not the merely intelligent, educated, and good, but the energetic, the self-asserting, the aggressive. Nor will mere passive strength of will prevent subjection; for how often do we see a spirit, whose only prominent characteristic is a restless and tireless pugnacity, hold in complete subserviency those who are far superior in actual strength of mind, purely through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... water, too, fish are chased until they become so exhausted and nerve-shaken that they partially bury themselves in the sand, or endeavour to elude observation by concealing themselves beneath stone or coral, or by remaining passive among seaweed, trusting, no doubt, to protective tints and assimilation with their surroundings. Few of these stratagems of the fish are of avail when once a hungry black is on its track. The science of war, we ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... relates this instance, with others, and in 'Following the Equator' and elsewhere he records other such happenings. It was one of the "mysteries" in which he never lost interest, though his concern in it in time became a passive one. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and said not a word. All that Gladys or Minette could do to attract her attention was unavailing. But when Rowland came, she roused herself sufficiently to say, 'I am ready to go home now, Rowland: I must go directly.' And then she relapsed into a state of passive inaction. Rowland went for Mr Wenlock, and was fortunate in finding him at home. He accompanied him to Netta, and said that she must be roused by a change of some kind. Rowland said that it was absolutely ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... not found on the morrow, the probability was that some shepherd, in his remote and lonely shieling just outside the forest, would be feasting on venison for a considerable time to come. Lionel cared less now; heat and food had thawed him into a passive frame of mind; he was tired, worn out, and sleepy; and very glad was he when he was allowed to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... territory, used these words: "When a man is appointed to take a mission, unless he has a just and honorable reason for not going, if he does not go he will be severed from the church. Why? Because you said you were willing to be passive, and, if you are not passive, that lump of clay must be cut off from the church and laid aside, and a lump put on that ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... system, which 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 certain ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... of this class of talkers may be mentioned, viz., the man who forces his logic upon you in such a dogmatic manner as leaves you without any hope of reply. You give him all the glory of victory. For the sake of peace and safety you remain passive, and think this the best valour for the occasion. Cowper refers to him in the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and through yourself is not life at all, it is a passive condition, and man is a ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... was conscious of some one behind him, though he had heard no one approach. He swung round and was met by the passive face of the black slave in personal attendance on Harrik. The slave did not speak, but motioned towards a screen at the end of the room, and moved towards it. David followed. As they reached it, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... face now than then. She did not at all share his mirth. She was still looking at him with a strained gaze as though she saw him with difficulty, through a mist increasingly smothering. Finally, as though the fog had grown quite too thick, she dropped her eyes, and very passive, waited for ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... matter must be decomposed. Instead of regarding matter as a unique existence, rude, passive, incapable of moving itself, of combining itself, we ought to look upon it as a Kind of existence, of which the various individual members comprising the Kind, in spite of their having some common properties, such as extension, divisibility, figure, etc., still ought not ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... fingers to slip or twist, resulting in smears, blurs, and false-appearing patterns. The fingers should be held lightly without too much pressure. The subject should be warned not to try to help but to remain passive. ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... to say it up to the time that Michael arrived. Can it be that she is a coquette? They are mysterious, these young girls, very mysterious, above all when they have that calm and tranquil look that Natacha always has; a face, monsieur, as you have noticed perhaps, whose beauty is rather passive whatever one says and does, excepting when the volleys in the streets kill her young comrades of the schools. Then I have seen her almost faint, which proves she has a great heart under her tranquil beauty. Poor Natacha! ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... play. Then his eyes were caught and held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... succeeded; for every mind must have been hopelessly pre-occupied against all examination of its claims. It is, indeed, incomparably better that a man should be a sincere Christian even by an utterly unreasoning and passive faith (if that be possible), than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for holding it. But it is but too obvious, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of his soul, and lift him above himself: then indeed, and then only, "the muddy vesture of decay" doth not so "grossly close him in," but that some proper spirit-notices come upon him; as if in his passive state the voice of truth and good vibrated down to his soul, and stopped there, being unable to kindle any answering tones within: so that in his waking hours they are to him but as the memory ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... may be reduced to a passion, provided we understand passion to denote any kind of receiving, in which sense the Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 4) that "to understand is, in a way, to be passive." For just as, in natural knowledge, the possible intellect is passive to the light of the active intellect, so too in prophetic knowledge the human intellect is passive to the enlightening of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... go—let me go!" he cried, raising himself for a moment, and then sinking back again in his chair in a passive state. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 1660 (inserted in the bull) forbidding Recollect religious who had been sent to the Philippines from turning aside on the way or unnecessarily delaying their journey. The penalty imposed by the decree is that such fugitives are to be deprived of all active and passive vote, and can never hold any dignity or honorary charge in the order. That same year of 1660, a mission left Spain for the islands but did not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... constitution now completed had been able to restore order to the country and security to the throne, no sacrifice of power would have been felt by Louis XVI.: never did prince find more innate in his character the conditions of his moderation: that passive resignation, which is the character of constitutional sovereigns, was his virtue. He neither desired to reconquer nor to avenge himself. All he desired was, that his sincerity should be appreciated by the people, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Does it not lead my every step? You will be with me everywhere. Ah! it will not be the sun of India, but the fire of your eyes that lights my way. Therefore be happy—as happy as a woman can be without her lover. I would the last kiss that I take from those dear lips were not a passive one; but, my Ninie, my adored one, I will not wake you. When you wake, you will find a tear upon your forehead—make it a talisman! Think, think of him who may, perhaps, die for you, far from you; think less of the husband than of the lover ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their mere passive existence.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... algophily[98]; he only applies the term to masochism; it might equally well be applied to sadism. Schrenck-Notzing, to cover both sadism and masochism, has invented the term algolagnia (algos, pain, and lagnos sexually excited), and calls the former active, the latter passive, algolagnia.[99] Eulenburg has also emphasized the close connection between these groups of perverted sexual manifestations, and has adopted the same terms, adding the further group of ideal (illusionary) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... at her, the scales fallen from his eyes. Though she was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze without blenching. But now, behind the passive defiance, grave rather than sullen, which she presented to his attack, the weakness, the helplessness, the heart pain of the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... referendum that declared Kosovo independent from Serbia. The MILOSEVIC regime carried out repressive measures against the Albanians in the early 1990s as the unofficial government of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim RUGOVA, tried to use passive resistance to gain international assistance and recognition of its demands for independence. In 1995, Albanians dissatisfied with RUGOVA's nonviolent strategy created the Kosovo Liberation Army and launched an insurgency. In 1998, MILOSEVIC authorized a counterinsurgency ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... said no more. He lay still in his chair with his head back and eyes half-closed, a passive, pathetic figure with the shoulders of a strong man and the weak, shrunken limbs of a cripple. His face was quite smooth. It might have belonged to a boy of seventeen save for the eyes, which were deeply sunken and possessed the shrewd, quizzical ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... then, as his fingers relaxed,—with a sudden passionate cry, she had broken free; but, even so, he had caught and swept her up in his arms, and held her close against his breast. And now, feeling the hopelessness of further struggle, she lay passive, while her eyes flamed up into his, and his eyes looked down into hers. Her long, thick hair had come loose, and now with a sudden, quick gesture, she drew it across her face, veiling it from him; wherefore, he stooped his ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... all its details, a parallel between the machines with which he was familiar, such as clocks and pieces of hydraulic apparatus, and the living machine. In all such machines there is a central source of power, and the parts of the machine are merely passive distributors of that power. The Cartesian school conceived of the living body as a machine of this kind; and herein they might have learned from Galen, who, whatever ill use he may have made of the doctrine of "natural faculties," nevertheless had the great merit of perceiving that local ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the twilight, I lay alone in my little den, not thinking, but with mind surrendered and passive to what might come into it. It was very hot—indeed sultry. My little skylight was open, but not a breath of air entered. What preceded I do not know, but the face of the terrified boy rose before me, or in me rather, and all ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... It will not submit to a passive reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the French and Italian sources on ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... that he would try and heal sufferers in the name of Buddha, and it is said his success quite eclipsed the holy well. Several eminent Buddhists told me that he had healed members of their families. He is a robust man, of powerful will, and in these days of hypnotism his influence over the most passive of people may appear less wonderful to us than to them. No Christian was found willing to meet him in debate. By lectures, in which Ingersollism blends with Arnold's "Light of Asia," the Colonel brought about a sort of Buddhist revival. The Singhalese saw the Theosophists as wise ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... their eyes, which they did one by one—even the kitten curling itself up in the basket, weary of its too circumscribed play—the boy remained just as before. He then seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed divinity, sitting passive and regarding his companions as if he saw their whole rounded lives rather than ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... death of Algernon Etheridge has been in more than one sense a great shock to the community. Though a man of passive rather than active qualities, his scholarly figure, long, lean and bowed, has been seen too often in our streets not to be missed, when thus suddenly withdrawn. His method of living; the rigid habits of an almost ascetic life; such an hour for this thing, such an hour ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 to be quite paralyzed. ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in the devil's clutches. On coming to himself, he thought of his arms,—his pistols and dagger,—which were upon the table; and, turning his eyes towards them, he made a struggle, but that was all; for, reduced to the impossibility of doing any mischief, he was passive." ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Gregory, taking out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... important crisis in England's history all depended upon the attitude of the city of London. "The key of the situation was in the hands of the city, which had it in its power to paralyse the army by simply maintaining an attitude of passive resistance."(865) But great as was the detestation in which the army was held by the majority of citizens, their distrust of the royalists, should they regain the upper hand, was greater. Under the circumstances the City resolved to maintain its ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... while Bruce in the adjoining room, who had looked forward to a night of rest in a real bed, was lying wide awake staring into the dark. His body was worn out, numb with exhaustion, but his mind was unnaturally alert. It refused to be passive, though it desperately needed sleep. It was active with plans for the future, with speculation concerning Sprudell, with the rebuilding of the air castles which had fallen with his failure to find mail. In the restless days of waiting for Toy to get well enough to leave alone for a few days ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that when Madame de Bellaise, after some months, paid a long visit to her sister in England, Mrs. Darpent had consented to send the girl to make acquaintance with her French relations, and try the effect of change of scene. She had gone, indifferent, passive, and broken- hearted, but her aunt had watched over her tenderly, and she had gradually revived, not indeed into a joyous girl, but into a calm and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... antidote to emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undisguised affectionateness were something so different from what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. Rosa seized them, and pressed them; they left her; and remained passive and limp. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to. The regulations anent food and liquors are liberal enough; you can obtain almost anything by paying about twice its cost; but the privilege of having meals sent in, is not lightly valued by those who have once done battle with the boiled leather, called ration beef, contests in which passive resistance ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... was the faith of all High Churchmen—part of the deposition they had to guard—that the doctrine of non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive doctrine, and a chief ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... me?" I asked, my voice almost indistinct with emotion. Still, she spoke not. I kneeled down, for Gunilda had reseated herself near her mother's grave, and raising her hand, I took it in mine, and pressed it. I felt the pressure returned, and allowing her small passive hand to fall gently again ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross |
