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Passively   Listen
adverb
Passively  adv.  
1.
In a passive manner; inertly; unresistingly.
2.
As a passive verb; in the passive voice.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Passively" Quotes from Famous Books



... the idea of Energy, and away from ordinary sexual thoughts or imaginings. If these thoughts come into the mind do not be discouraged, but regard them as manifestations of a force which you intend using for the purposes of strengthening the body and mind. Lie passively or sit erect, and fix your mind on the idea of drawing the reproductive energy upward to the Solar Plexus, where it will be transmuted and stored away as a reserve force of vital energy. Then breathe rhythmically, forming the mental image of drawing up the reproductive energy with each inhalation. ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... Hilbrook to the small body of believers to which his people adhered. This sect had a name by which it was officially known to itself; but, like the Shakers, the Quakers, the Moravians, it early received a nickname, which it passively adopted, and even among its own members the body was rarely spoken of or thought of except ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... professed to be unutterably shocked by Ulster's declared intention to resist Home Rule both actively and passively, they could not have based their attitude on the principle that under no circumstances could such resistance be morally justified. Indeed, in the case in question, there were circumstances that would have made the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... that, and he could do a rash thing, a foolish thing, a spiteful thing; pique that, and, prodigious! the watch went! He had a rooted pique against his marchioness. Apparently he had conceived this pique from the very first. He showed it passively by supreme neglect; he showed it actively by removing her from all the spheres of power which naturally fall to the wife when the husband shuns the details of business. Evidently he had a dread lest any one should say, "Lady Montfort influences my lord." Accordingly, not only the management ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... contemptuous approval. Jacobus gave up the subject passively. After a time he unglued his thick lips to ask me if I had seen his brother yet. I was ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... this," he pleaded, and Jane lifted her eyes, now serious again, and smiled tenderly, letting her hands stay in his passively. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... back swiftly, and she stood, a frozen thing, passively awaiting him; a frozen thing, she let him take her in his arms, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... sign of his emotion, even at the near approach of Donna Mercedes, and the hand which signed his name beneath her father's as the principal witness was as steady as if it held merely the sword in some deadly combat. He endured passively the affectionate greetings of the happy de Tobar, who was intoxicated at the assurance afforded by the betrothal of the coming realization of all his hopes. He sustained with firmness the confidence of the Viceroy and the admissions ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... man-servant to get into the carriage with them, and they drove away. Mr. Ridley did not stir nor speak, but sat with his head bent down until they arrived at their destination. He left the carriage and went in passively. As they entered a large and pleasant reception-room a gentleman stepped forward, and taking Mr. Elliott by the hand, called him by name in a tone ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well? Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world's materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferently whatever alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... presidio) for the malefactors of the mother country. Agriculture did not emerge from primitive simplicity. The inhabitants led a pastoral life, cultivating food barely sufficient for their support, because there was no stimulus to exertion. They looked passively upon the riches centered in their soil, and rocked themselves to sleep in their hammocks. The commerce carried on scarcely deserved that name. The few wants of the people were supplied by a contraband trade with ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... window which overlooked the little canal was a young woman. Her hands lay passively in her lap, and her head was lowered. The pose was resignation. She did not stir as ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... carefully helping her down to the landing; and then, her hand was on a stronger arm than that of Mrs. Wishart, and she was slowly following the stream of people to the front of the station-house. Lois was too exhausted by this time to ask any questions; suffered herself to be put in a carriage passively, where Madge took her place also, while Mr. Dillwyn went to give the checks of their baggage in charge to an expressman. Lois then ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... honor and of justice; and cause it to cling to peace, like the sluggard to his pillow, at the expense of every valuable duty and consideration. Such supineness ensures the very evil from which it shrinks. One right yielded up produces the usurpation of a second; one encroachment passively suffered makes way for another; and the nation which thus, through a doting love of peace, has sacrificed honor and interest, will at length ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... Evelina let herself be passively held; then she drew back from her sister's clasp and looked about the shop. "I'm dead tired. Ain't ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... Severac Bablon, and Haredale, knowing himself in the presence of the most notorious criminal in Europe, yet listened passively, as a schoolboy to the admonition of his Head, "you have acted to-night unworthily. I had noted you, Sir Richard, as a man whose friendship I had hoped to gain. Knowing your trials, and"—glancing at the girl's pale face—"with what object you suffered them, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... yoke of custom or allow anything different to seem to it real. The sensitiveness and impressibility of the imagination are affected, and unhealthily affected, not merely by strangeness, but by sameness; to one as to the other it may "passively submit and surrender itself, give way to the mere form of attraction, and, instead of grasping something else, be itself grasped and mastered by some dominant idea." And it is then, in one case as much as in the other, "not ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... the ugliest granite canopy imaginable—in which canopy, to complete the grisly atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless the old rock now lies passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny, relate the facts substantially as I ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... inauguration of a new and higher order as part of the divine plan. The decease that the Savior was then so soon to accomplish was the voluntary surrender of His life in fulfilment of a purpose at once exalted and foreordained, not a death by which He would passively die through conditions beyond His control. (See ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... gradually broke upon her mind, and Mary too soon remembered all. The physician said she was recovering, that she would quickly be enabled to leave her bed and go about as usual. Greville swore he would no longer be prevented seeing her, and Mary made no opposition to his entrance. Calmly and passively she heard all he had to say; what he told her then she did not repeat in writing to Herbert. She merely said that she had implored him to wait till her health was a little more restored; not to force her to become the wife of Dupont, till ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... and hanging in splinters, while the port boat was torn clean away. These were the only two boats that the vessel had. The slant or "list" grew more pronounced, for the cargo had shifted; and the steamer was now like a boxer whose left hand is tied behind his back. She seemed to take the blows passively, only lungeing doggedly up when the wild welter had flowed over her, and still keeping her nose to the sea. All night long the captain hung on the bridge. It was his second night, and in that time he had only had one biscuit, ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... saying means to me?" he cried. "Don't you know how I love you?" He advanced toward her. She stood and waited passively, looking at him. "Dorothy—my love—do ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... last into the fit of weeping for which Janetta had been waiting. But it was more piteous than violent, and she seemed to listen while Janetta tried to comfort her, and passively endured rather than returned the elder sister's caresses. Finally the two girls fell asleep in ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the groom as a guide, set off to the suburban region. Mrs. Beaufort had wished to accompany him; but the husband observing that young men would be young men, and that there might possibly be a lady in the case, Mrs. Beaufort, after a pause of thought, passively agreed that, all things considered, she had better remain at home. No lady of proper decorum likes to run the risk of finding herself in a false position. Mr. Beaufort accordingly set out alone. Easy was the carriage—swift were the steeds—and luxuriously the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... bit a few months before at Barbados. He begged of the surgeon to speak to me, to take him out of the ship; for he said, the cruel fellows had murdered his mother; and indeed so they had, that is to say, passively; for they might have spared a small sustenance to the poor helpless widow, that might have preserved her life, though it had been just to keep her alive. But hunger knows no friend, no relation, no justice, no right; and therefore is remorseless, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... to be heard in the cause of freedom and justice for all men, black or white. These rumors and discussions drifted into the little home and arguments rose high around the crackling woodfire as neighbors dropped in. Martin Conwell was not a man to watch passively the trend of events. He took sides openly, vigorously, and though the small, blue-eyed boy listening so attentively did not comprehend all that it was about, Martin Conwell's views later took shape in action that had a marked bearing on Russell's ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... hard to guide or check the endless undersea coral growth before bay and channel and lagoon shall all be dry land. The wormlike, lazy, fast-multiplying Anthozoa is fighting passively but with terrific power, to set at naught all ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... So she stood passively by until the storm was spent; and Dr. Maryland having satisfied his book quest, came out again, awakening to the fact that it was time he and Primrose were jogging homeward. Primrose took him aside and explained the situation ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... Carrie heard this passively. The peculiar state which she was in made it sound like the welcome breath of an open door. Drouet seemed of her own spirit and pleasing. He was clean, handsome, well-dressed, and sympathetic. His voice was the voice ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... habit of deriving your whole pleasure passively from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of curiosity or of some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your pleasure, an ample portion ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... than all the rest of the house put together, for during our waking hours; we are moving about and constantly changing our location; but during sleep, when life is in abeyance to a certain extent, the system has passively to receive and be supported by whatever pure air the bedroom happens to possess. If, as too often is the case, that chamber is looked upon as a sort of cupboard, where, amongst other things, there is room for a bed, so much the worse for any one who has to sleep there. If the sleeper arises in ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... persons can be brought under the control of those of stronger wills, so as to realize the thoughts, and even sensations of the operator, feeling what he feels, tasting what he tastes, apparently more familiar with his body than their own, and passively subject to his will. They are said to be en rapport with him, and with no one else. In this condition his will is substituted for their own, which is entirely passive, and he is able to fix impressions on their minds and produce changes in their feelings ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... found Phoebe sitting in her room in the Peacock Inn, silently meditating in an effort to establish order in the chaos of her mind. Her hands lay passively in her lap, and between her fingers was an open sheet of paper whose crisp folds showed it ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... it with her eyes closed, faintly aware of the ring hung low on her breast. As the canoe was rather large it was moving very slowly. The two men dipped their paddles without a splash: and surrendering herself passively, in a temporary relaxation of all her limbs, to this adventure Mrs. Travers had no sense of motion at all. She, too, like Jorgenson, was tired of thinking. She abandoned herself to the silence of that night full of roused passions and deadly ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... origins of his weakness. He meant to take up his hat and depart with as few words as possible, but Miss Haldin's swift movement to shut the door took him by surprise. He half turned after her, but without raising his eyes, passively, just as a feather might stir in the disturbed air. The next moment she was back in the place she had started from, with another half-turn on his part, so that they came again into ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... that the Electoral Prince was coming that way, they would certainly lie in wait for him and fall upon him, either for purposes of plunder or in order to carry him off and extort a high ransom for him. The Electoral Prince will not passively submit to capture, but will resist; a battle will ensue, and then it might easily happen that in the heat of conflict a dagger should pierce the Prince or a ball go through his head. Those Swedes and Hessians are wild, fierce soldiers, and the Prince is in perpetual danger, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... down his broom passively, and saying, "What an impatient little miss you are!" clappered off to the dining-room, and brought forth the desired articles ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... window sat a large, dark-featured Spaniard, his hands crossed upon his bosom and his head inclined heavily forward, the attitude perfectly denoting deep sleep, even had not his cigar, which remained passively between his lips, ceased to give forth its blue smoke wreath. At a little distance from him sat a young girl, who, even by the uncertain light, I could perceive was possessed of all that delicacy of form and gracefulness of carriage which ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... carried away. The little Tirzah, in her home attire, stupefied with fear, went passively with her keepers. Judah gave each of them a last look, and covered his face with his hands, as if to possess himself of the scene fadelessly. He may have shed tears, though no ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... discharge of assegais from all sides at once, the Zulus crouched down, covering as much as possible of their bodies with the shield. A few men fell, but the gaps were at once filled by the circle shortening in. For some time the Zulus only resisted passively, the circle slowly moving on towards the forest-fringe of the river, and consequently the Makalakas became bolder, and closed in nearer and nearer to the doomed circle. But the Zulus did not mean to die quietly. All at once they stopped in their ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... departing from physics, collect together all the particulars actively at a given place, or all the particulars passively at a given place. In our own case, the one group is our body (or our brain), while the other is our mind, in so far as it consists of perceptions. In the case of the photographic plate, the first group is the plate as dealt with by physics, the second the aspect of the heavens which it photographs. ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... or stream Kindle thus beneath his beam, Ne'er did miser's eye behold Such a glittering mass of gold 'Gainst the gorgeous radiance float Darkly, many a sloop and boat, While in each the figures seem Like the shadows of a dream Swiftly, passively, they glide As sliders ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... man on the bed had swallowed it all passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. She did nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stood looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk from green to grey, from grey to black. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Bernard replied politely. "Stop pulling those blinds about. Come over here." Laura came to him. "Kiss me," said Clowes, and she laid her cool lips on his cheek. Clowes received her kiss passively: even Laura, though she understood him pretty well, never was sure whether he made her kiss him because he liked it or because he thought ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer. Now his mother's letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself over unsolved questions, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. Anyway he must decide on something, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... estate, ever to reconcile herself to the changed order of things following the return of peace; and with an unsound yet not unnatural logic, she visited some of her displeasure upon those who had profited most, though passively, by her losses. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... poor little beggar was too completely exhausted to struggle further, or whether it instinctively understood that I meant well by it, I cannot say, but the fact remains that from the moment it felt itself in my grasp it ceased to struggle and, when it was completely freed from the web, lay quite passively in my arms. I carried it to where Billy still stood awaiting my return and, showing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... with his top hat and spade passed the window, dimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father Brown stared passively ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... one had ever imagined. Those who beheld it were too stunned to cry out, too overwhelmed with terror and horror to utter a word. They stood, or fell into chairs or upon the floor, trembling in every limb, with staring eyes and drooping jaws, passively awaiting their fate. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... the half-dozen well-to-do farmers, with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow, folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held books—why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a few "good words" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved silently, following the service ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... more speech, they set out together, and were already got some distance from the spot, ere he observed that she was still carrying the hand-bag. She gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley of the Thyme, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with the first, namely, to show you what it is to suffer for righteousness. Now that may be done either passively ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a way prepared for anything but the deep, heart-shaking horror that sank under the cold, damp touch of those fingers. They laid hold of my elbow firmly, lifting as if to indicate that I was to rise. I did so, moving forward passively as it drew me on. To my astonishment I was unable to hear my own footfall or that of my conductor. I thought we were walking upon soft earth. Crossing our path in front of me I could see, in the darkness, a gleaming line. We moved slowly, ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... one of the busiest men that might be found in the metropolis, struck out new lines. Hitherto he had received his correspondence interestedly and pleasurably but passively. He began to take it up actively and sharply. He began to write back, either graciously approving or very sharply criticising his samples, his specimens and his free trials; and the advertisers responded voluminously, either abjectly ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... Inglesant's perjury for the sake of Charles I. was then brought forward, and it was this which led Professor Huxley to say that in his judgment no one had the right passively to submit to a false accusation, and that] "moral suicide" [was as blameworthy as physical suicide.] "He may refuse to commit another, but he ought not to allow himself to be believed worse than he actually is. It is a loss to the world of MORAL ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... the chief supporter of tyranny, advanced four theses: 1. Subjects are bound to obey God rather than the king. This is regarded as self-evident. 2. If the king devastates the church and violates God's law, he may be resisted at least passively as far as private men are concerned, but actively by magistrates and cities. The author, who quotes from the Bible and ancient history, evidently has contemporary France in mind. 3. The people may resist a tyrant who is oppressing or ruining the state. Originally, in the author's ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... to submit passively to all these regulations, however injurious to majesty. He sent writs to all the sheriffs ordering them to constrain everyone to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; he dismissed all his foreign forces; he pretended that his government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... subjects, e.g. the overstay in its ports of belligerent fleets, or the export from its shores of ships of war for belligerent use; and, on the other hand, the cases in which the neutral government is bound only to passively acquiesce in interference by belligerents with the commerce of such of its subjects as may choose, at their own risk and peril, to engage in carriage of contraband, breach of blockade, and ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... very passively listening to an impassioned setting forth of the gospel, his hands wandering about restlessly, picking up little bits of the coverlet in that strange way so ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... that followed were gloomy, but Fleda's ministry was unceasing. Hugh seconded her well, though more passively. Feeling less pain himself, he perhaps for that very reason was less acutely alive to it in others not so quick to foresee and ward off, not so skilful to allay it. Fleda seemed to have intuition for the one and a charm for the other. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... excuse to stand aloof, indifferent spectators of what passes in the Company's name in India and in London. But if we are the very cause of the evil, we are in a special manner engaged to the redress; and for us passively to bear with oppressions committed under the sanction of our own authority is in truth and reason for this House to be an ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... hour is spent beneath a grove of shady peepuls, watching the amusing antics of a troop of monkeys in the branches. Their marvellous activity among the trees is here displayed to perfection, as they quarrel and chase one another from tree to tree. The old ones seem passively irritable and decidedly averse to being bothered by the antics and mischievous activity of the youngsters. Taking possession of some particular branch, they warn away all would-be intruders with threatening grimaces and feints. The youthful members ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... with the army. Nearly every branch of business is at a standstill. The shelves in stores are almost everywhere empty; the shop of the artisan is abandoned and in ruins. The people who are to be seen passively submit to all that emanates from Richmond without a murmur; they are for the most part simple minded, and ignorant of all that is transpiring in the great theatre about them. An intelligent-looking man in Columbia ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... numerous and turbulent Faction here, to be suddenly restored to a proper and desirable Subordination." A few of the habitants joined his forces; fewer joined the invaders or sold them supplies—till they grew suspicious of paper "Continentals." But the majority held passively aloof. Even when France joined the warring colonies and Admiral d'Estaing appealed to the Canadians to rise, they did not heed; though it is difficult to say what the result would have been if Washington had agreed to Lafayette's plan of a joint French and American ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... party being marshalled to their places by a confused clerk, who assigned the wrong brides to the wrong bridegrooms, and appeared excessively anxious that his mistake should not be corrected. Mr. Verdant Green also had an idea that he himself was in that state of mind in which he would passively have allowed himself to be united to Miss Kitty Honeywood, or to Miss Letitia Jane Morkin (who was one of Miss Patty's bridesmaids), or to Mrs. Hannah More, or to the Hottentot Venus, or to any one in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... Is layman's land, the glebe, the stream, the wood: His oxen low where monks retired to eat, His cows repose upon the prior's seat: And wanton doves within the cloisters bill, Where the chaste votary warr'd with wanton will." Such is the change they mourn, but they restrain The rage of grief, and passively complain. We've Baptists old and new; forbear to ask What the distinction—I decline the task; This I perceive, that when a sect grows old, Converts are few, and the converted cold: First comes the hotbed heat, and while it glows The plants spring up, and each with vigour ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... in no wise help her. He would not even passively discourage the vicar, or refrain from offering to give him a seat in going to the meets. Mark and Lord Lufton had been boys together, and his lordship knew that Mark in his heart would enjoy a brush across the country quite ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... elder Brother, became King Max, first King of Baiern; begot Ludwig, second King,—who, for his part, has begotten Otho King of Greece, and done other feats still less worth mentioning. August Christian's behavior is praised as excellent,—passively firm and polite; the grand requisite, persistence on your ground of "No:"—but his luck, to find such a Friedrich, and also to find such a Gortz, was ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... tugged steadily at their oars, but the dead fish hung behind like a log, and our progress was very slow. Every now and then it gave a slight quiver, but that soon ceased, and it hung quite passively ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... government of Archangel state, as much as possible. These people of the northern state were indeed jealous of their rights of local government. And the work of the Red agents in levying on the property and the man-power of the North was passively resisted by these ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... the apprehension of the one incorporeal Beauty, by teaching him to separate beauty from the various objects in which it appears scattered and divided. And it is even in the third class, the lowest of whom there is hope, namely, the musical man, capable of being passively affected by beauty, without having any active appetite for it; the sentimentalist, in short, as we should call ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... picture to ourselves the intellectual and moral state of Europe in the Middle Ages, some fixed and almost stereotyped ideas immediately suggest themselves. We think of the nations immersed in a gross mental lethargy; passively witnessing the gradual extinction of arts and sciences which Greece and Rome had splendidly inaugurated; allowing libraries and monuments of antique civilisation to crumble into dust; while they trembled under a dull and ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... it over the child's bare shoulders. The first-communion chemise was of fine white linen and trimmed with crochet lace. Julie took out the folds and drew it over Horieneke's head. Then came white petticoats, bodices and skirts. The child stood passively, in the middle of the floor, with her arms wide apart to give free room to Julie, who crept round on her knees, sticking in a pin here, smoothing a crease there. Mother fetched the things as they were wanted. There was a constant discussing, approving, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... government, personal agency is essential; but Calvinistic fatalism reduces all agency to that of the Deity alone. The human soul is moved mechanically by impulse from without, and passively yields to ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... of day was utterly gone, and in the place of it the mysterious glow of night over a city hung high and luminous. He, a town-bred cat, descended from generations of town-bred cats, listened passively to the gentle roar of traffic that stood, to him, for the running of brooks and the sighing of forest trees. It was to him the auditory background of ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... anticipated the sudden outburst of interest in Socialism which followed the astonishing success of the Labour Party at the polls. When Keir Hardie was chosen as leader of the party, it was recognised that Socialism was no longer the creed of a few fanatics, but a political force supported, actively or passively, by the great organisations of Labour throughout the country, able to fight, and sometimes to beat both the older parties. A new era in politics had begun. The Tories had been defeated before by Mr. Gladstone's ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... whom the sexual instinct has never been aroused, and who not only do not masturbate, but do not show any desire for normal gratification; while in a large proportion of other cases the impulse is gratified passively in ways I have already referred to. The auto-erotic phenomena which take place in this way, spontaneously, by yielding to revery, with little or no active interference, certainly occur much more frequently in women than in men. On the other hand, contrary to what ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... first chapter, she knew the general events of the story before her; but this morning she was penetrated with the keenest sense of the unfathomable difference it made in those events in that they were about to happen to her. She had been passively watching the excited faces of people hurling themselves down-hill on toboggans, but now she was herself poised on the crest of the slope, tense with an excitement not only more real, but somehow more vital to the scheme of things, than ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... supremest felicity of the next. In common with all other nations they deem some form of religious worship indispensable, but, contrary to the usage of most, they are singularly indifferent as to what that particular form is to be; leaving it passively to be determined by the conjunction of circumstances, the accident of locality, and the influence of friends or worldly prospects of gain. Still, in the hands of the Christian missionary, they are ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... she said. With her beautiful head leant on the back of her low chair, and her arms extended listlessly by her side, she looked as if she were waiting passively ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... consequence, the war assumed a character of unrestrained ferocity. On receiving this information Lord Carnarvon wrote that his Government "could not view passively, and with indifference, the engagement of the Republic in foreign military operations the object or the necessity of which had not been ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... own room a sudden revelation startled me. Everyone knows what it is to have details come under the eye which the mind first interprets long after the eye ceases to rest upon them. The impressions are received passively; but they are registered, and can be calmly read whenever the mind is in activity. It was so now. I suddenly, as if now for the first time, saw that the addresses on Bourgonef's letters were written in a fluent, masterly hand, bold in character, and with a certain sweep ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... thrust a hand inside, touched an electric switch, flooding the room with light, and motioned the girl to enter. She obeyed passively, thoroughly subjugated: and found herself in a large and well-furnished office, apparently the outer of two rooms. The glare of electric light at first partly blinded her; and she halted instinctively a ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... should be a penitentiary felony; yet you will have seen that they have drawn me out into the arena of the newspapers. Although I know it is too late for me to buckle on the armor of youth, yet my indignation would not permit me passively to receive the kick ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... swamp, and is reached by a sort of causeway of turf. When we drew near, we saw the gates standing open and a prodigious crowd outside—I mean prodigious for Apia, perhaps a hundred and fifty people. The two sentries at the gate stood to arms passively, and there seemed to be a continuous circulation inside and out. The captain came to meet us; our boy, who had been sent ahead was there to take the horses; and we passed inside the court which was full of food, and rang continuously to the voice of the caller of gifts; I had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the exclamations of the group, who, having no acknowledged leader to direct their motions, passively awaited the return of the sufferer, and determined to be guided by ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... by him." If that is true, we have there simply a case of actual crime, against which nobody can be protected by mere knowledge. In short, a thorough study indicates clearly that the girl who falls is not pushed passively ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... man in the world would be a trifle annoyed at being defeated in an election, Miss Thorn," said Vancouver blandly. "I am afraid you are not very sorry for him. He is an old friend of mine, and though I differ from him in politics, very passively, I cannot do less than go and see him, and tell him how much I regret, personally, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... her younger ones to bed, came in search of them. "Dear, dear! poor darlings," said she, as she found them sitting in the dark; she felt their cold hands, and made them all come into the nursery, where Mary was already, and, fondling them, one by one, as they passively obeyed her, she set them down on their little old stools round the fire, took away the high fender, and gave them each a cup of tea. Harry and Mary ate enough to satisfy her, from a weary craving feeling, and for ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... little coffin on the table, and you know who is to occupy it; but it is too sudden, too dreadful for you to realize at once! Do not try to take her up, nor warm the cold cheek against your own burning face. The blood is quite chilled in the blue veins, and the limbs fall passively down. There's a bud from Nannie's bush in one hand, but she does not hold it first to your nostrils and then to her own, with her cunning little ways, as she used to do. Do not ask them how it all happened; how can they tell you, and their hearts almost breaking? ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... a chill to my home life, and yet I could accuse the good woman of no special offence. She was no vulgar meddler, and never wished or intended to mar our domestic felicity. She had managed to keep control of our household arrangements and we had passively acquiesced, but I felt that it would be better if Bessie would take command and cater more to our own desires. We could then have things our own way, and her position would be more becoming as the lady of the house. She began to regard it in the same light herself. Our social ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... vigilance or activity; watches in the city, out-posts before the gates, and guards stationed along the walls: and a justitium was observed for several days (a thing which was necessary in such general confusion). In the mean time the consul Furius, after he had at first passively endured the siege in his camp, burst forth from the Decuman gate on the enemy when off their guard; and though he might have pursued them, he stopped through fear, lest an attack should be made on the camp from the other side. The lieutenant-general Furius (he was the consul's brother) was ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... was broken. He felt it would be useless to endeavour to explain or to expostulate; he spoke not, but was passively hurried to a carriage in which he was borne to the metropolis as fast as four horses could carry him, without rest or refreshment. Of course, after a minute examination, he was declared innocent, and was released; but justice smiled too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... stands as a high priest in the temple of nature, and calls mankind from scientific lore to offer their orisons there at his altar and receive passively the teachings of the material ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... lips by way of return to my salutation, turning herself at the same time a little away as if to avoid further notice or intercourse: curiosity, however, overcame good-breeding in me, and mounting the little bank to a level with the shady tree against which she passively leaned, I immediately became ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... detriment of the interests and happiness of their children; while at the same time they often bring disgrace and misery upon their own heads and home. They set themselves up as the choosers of companions for their children, presuming that they should passively submit to their selection whatever it may be. This is taking away the free moral agency of the child, making no account of his taste, judgment, or affections; and forming between him and the object thus chosen a mere outward union, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... bishop sat passively receptive to this healing beauty. Then a little flow of thought began and gathered in his mind. He had come out to think over two letters that he had brought with him. He drew these now rather reluctantly from his ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The charm of her transparent face and large bright brown eyes, was, not that they were passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... long before they were known to the world, and the French court knew that he had revealed them. His position had become untenable. His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him with the delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish Florentine, who had passively authorized and actively ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current; now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster and haste, but as stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at one as he sails overhead and, unless wounded badly, he will not change ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... interruption into the yard; but here, alas, he was at bay. It was not the same yard through which he had entered so shortly before, and he could find no way of exit. It was futile to attempt anything further, and, discovering this unwelcome fact, he passively yielded himself up, and was rewarded for so doing by receiving sundry cuffs and jerks from his captors, who carried him straightway ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... farther off. Another, darker bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close. It had foreign lines, more than a bit sinister to the Bunch's first, startled view. It was a Tovie vehicle, representing the other side of the still—for the most part—passively opposed forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through the darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures—again somewhat sinister—only raised their hands ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... are logical in their mad heroism, they utter neither cries nor complainings, and passively undergo the obscure and rigorous fate they make for themselves. They die for the most part, decimated by that disease to which science does not dare give its real name, want. If they would, however, many could escape from this fatal denouement which suddenly terminates their life at ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... us that he had fully made up his mind to go through with it. Just as the pirates gained the foot of the rocks, which hid us for a moment from their view, we bent over the sea and plunged down together, head foremost. Peterkin behaved like a hero. He floated passively between us like a log of wood, and we passed the tunnel and rose into the cave in a shorter space of time than I had ever ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... words, and still he held her hand. He knew that his words could not console her; but the sounds of his kindness at such desolate moments are, to such minds as hers, some alleviation of grief. She hardly answered him, but sat there staring out before her, leaving her hand passively to him, and swaying her head backwards and forwards as though her grief were too ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... she saw me, she redoubled her cries; but her voice was so broken, I could not understand a word she said. I was so much shocked, that it was with difficulty I forebore exclaiming against the cruelty of the Captain for thus wantonly ill-treating her; and I could not forgive myself for having passively suffered the deception. I used my utmost endeavours to comfort her, assuring her of our present safety, and begging her to rise and return to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... He looked passively calm, heroically enduring, as we went past him. From his eyes came scintillations of a joy whose root ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... imagine the Backfisch married and mentally little altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that she would find a daughter with the new ideas upsetting. At present both types are living side by side, for there are still numbers of women of the old school in Germany, women who passively accept the life made for them by their surroundings, whether it suits their needs or not; and who would never strike out a path for themselves, even if by doing so they could forget their own troubles in the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... spite of herself. She remembered the visit so well, and Lady Augusta's loftily resigned air of discovering, in the passively degenerate new arrival, the culminating point of ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the cry in silence, the tears running over her cheeks. Roughly, impetuously, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her, as though he would once more re-knit and reconsecrate the bond between them. She lay passively against him, the tangle of her fair hair spread over his shoulder—too frail and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... morning at daybreak, Wilton and his two sons were mounted, and ready to set out, intending to take Nero with them; but nothing could induce him to leave his mistress: he resisted passively for some time, until one of the young men attempted to pass a rope round his neck, to drag him away: then his forbearance vanished, and he sprang upon his tormentor, threw him down, and would have strangled him, if Susan had not been present. Finding it impossible to make Nero accompany them, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... delightful! And it's so delicate of you to think of that! I will just enclose his note—give it here, Willis—and he need never know that it ever went to the wrong address. Oh, I always felt that you were truly refined, anyway." He passively yields the letter, and she whirls away to a writing-desk in the corner of the room. "Now, I'll just keep a copy of the letter—for a joke; I think I've a perfect right to"—scribbling furiously away—"and then I'll match the paper with an envelope—I can do that perfectly—and ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells

... coming under his rifle fire, because the edge of the plateau was only a thousand yards from the second and main Boer position, and unless the guns were on the edge of the plateau they could see very little and do less. The cavalry guarded the left flank passively, and I remember no particular incident except that our own artillery flung the fragments of two premature shells among us and wounded a soldier in the Devonshire Regiment. The following fact, however, is instructive. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... quick, alert, impulsive man is acting quickly, alertly and impulsively most of the time. Nothing less than a calamity slows him down and then only temporarily; while the slow, patient, mild and passive individual is acting slowly, patiently, mildly and passively in spite of all goads. Some overwhelming passion or crisis may speed him up momentarily but as soon as it fades he reverts to his ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... point in Leicester's favour; and it was this. Walford still knew him, and appeared to recognise, in spite of the mists which obscured his intellect, the fact that George was keenly interested in him; and he was always passively obedient to any injunction which ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... mass of inertia, which opposes, passively, all fundamental changes, cannot now resist scientific demonstration as it has in the past. The instruction in the College of Therapeutics, is thoroughly demonstrative, leaving no room for doubt, and it gives a species of knowledge which ought to be a part of every ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... phantasy or fantasy (many psychologists preferring the former spelling). Phantasy or fantasy, so understood, presents numerous and varied images, often combining them into new forms with exceeding vividness, yet without any true constructive power, but with the mind adrift, blindly and passively following the laws of association, and with reason and will in torpor; the mental images being perhaps as varied and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual images in a kaleidoscope; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... intellect. Hence, slays Proclus, it folds itself about the indivisibility of true intellect, conforms itself to all formless species, and becomes perfectly every thing, from which the dianoetic power and our indivisible reason consists. Hence too, it is all things passively which intellect is impassively, and on this account Aristotle calls it passive intellect. Under this subsist anger and desire, the former resembling a raging lion, and the latter a many-headed beast; and the whole is ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... be led passively to a cab, and the strength of her resolution was such that before they reached the spot where Huss was burnt, Molly was in possession of the last detail as to the preceding evening. She said never a word in reply, being much engaged in looking out of the side of the cab to see ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... ended what Spinoza began, by reaffirming the creative power of the mind itself. It does far more than passively receive, it interprets, organizes, contributes, creates. True enough, it is not an unconditioned creator, it has laws of its own in obedience to which it finds both its freedom and its power. It must take the material which experience supplies and yet, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... now, after all, she really would be obliged to confess that the little trifle of eighteen hundred dollars a year more than we could possibly pay rendered the place undesirable. But a moment later I realized how little I knew her. When we got to the kitchen she remarked, passively, there was no morning sun in the windows. As the apartment faced east, and there was morning sun in the parlor, this condition seemed more or less normal, as the janitor meekly pointed out. But the Little Woman declared she would never live in another place where the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... not wish, if it were possible by any means, that she should save herself from the worst of fates, and should save me from the agony of losing her to such a man as Sir George had selected for Dorothy's husband? Is it not a sin to disobey the law of self-preservation actively or passively?" Answer these questions as you choose. As for myself, I say God bless Dorothy for lying. Perhaps I am in error. Perhaps I am not. I but tell you the story of Dorothy as it happened, and I am a poor hand ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... since. As if she were determined "to die and make no sign," she sat, bowing and smiling, and amounting to nothing, one way or another,—giving no opinion, if asked, and asking no question. She was passively polite, but so very near nothing that I was rejoiced when Mr. Remington entered with my husband, and proposed that we should go into the dining-room. He carelessly introduced Mrs. Remington, but further than that seemed not to know she was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... he kept his temper, remarked courteously that some mistake must have been made, embraced his weeping wife, and went off passively, while the pristav carried away a bundle of letters in which I occupied the ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... are but little acquainted with such matters), people so circumstanced always do. He jumped up, and, throwing his arm round the neck of the spinster aunt, imprinted upon her lips numerous kisses, which after a due show of struggling and resistance, she received so passively, that there is no telling how many more Mr. Tupman might have bestowed, if the lady had not given a very unaffected start, and exclaimed in an ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... the priest begging him to remain at his convenience a moment till he could descend and show him the way up- stairs. His eyes were not yet used to the obscurity of the narrow entry in which he stood, when he felt a cold hand laid on his, and passively yielded himself to its guidance. He tried to excuse himself for intruding upon Don Ippolito so soon, but the priest in far suppler Italian overwhelmed him with lamentations that he should be so unworthy the honor done ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... them. The girl had been a dweller in the shady byways of life, had played her small unmoral part and gone on, perhaps to some place where men were kinder and less urgent. Dick did not judge her. He saw her, as her kind had been through all time, storm centers of the social world, passively and unconsciously blighting, at once the hunters and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... consciousness the visible signs of cold, of sorrow and desolation, were very painful. No longer battling with the disease, he seemed as it were to place himself [118] at the disposal of the victorious foe, dying passively, like some dumb creature, in hopeless acquiescence at last. That old, half-pleading petulance, unamiable, yet, as it might seem, only needing conditions of life a little happier than they had actually been, to become refinement of affection, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... of causality, as Schwarz[1] shows, is essentially foreign to the man on the street. He is led mainly by the analogy of natural causality with that of human activity and passivity, e. g., the fire is active with regard to water, which simply must sizzle passively. This observation is indubitably correct and significant, but I think Schwarz wrong to have limited his description to ordinary people; it is true also of very complex natures. It is conceivable that ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... listless attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove, and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers, so that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his month, she still reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her dress. At last she said, "Well, sir, what excuse for ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... more and more clearly, that the stuff of your external world, the method and machinery of the common life, is not merely passively but actively inconsistent with your sharp interior vision of truth. The heavy animal is diseased as well as indolent. All man's perverse ways of seeing his universe, all the perverse and hideous acts which have sprung from them— these have set up reactions, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... is clear. He will advance his pawns, and break up those that surround the Black King, always taking care that Black does not free his Queen's side meanwhile. His pieces will then break in easily, and Black is forced to look on passively. ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker

... a moment and she lost all responsibility. It was the first time the Lashcairn madness had seized her—and it was not the raging Berserk fury of her father. She stood quite still, very white. Ole Fred thought she was waiting passively for his kiss. But when he reached her on his unsteady feet she caught him by the shoulders, shook what little breath he had left out of him, and slid him deliberately along the deck. He was too surprised to resist effectively ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... Manisty's expense. Eleanor Burgoyne first laughed at his sallies, then gently turned her head in a pause of the general advance and searched the crowd pressing at their heels. Lucy's eyes followed hers, and there far behind, carried forward passively in a brown study, losing ground slightly whenever it was possible, was Manisty. The fine significant face was turned a little upward; the eyes were full of thoughts; he was at once the slave of the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... girl without too many important and importunate relatives; for he is not one who would dream of adding to his greatness by using the wealth or position of a woman. He has all he needs, or wants, of that sort. And then, Dal reminds me, Leopold is very partial to England, who helped Rhaetia passively, in the time of her trouble eight years ago. The fact that you have lived in England and had an English education, would be favorably regarded both by Leopold and his Chancellor. And though I've never allowed you to have a photograph ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... Gracie made gallant efforts to check herself. But her spirit was temporarily quite broken. She stood passively with the tears running down her face while Avery hastily dressed her again and set her rumpled hair to rights. Then again for a few seconds they held each ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... ideas and words not necessary to produce the effect you desire. Each element in a mental picture either helps or hinders. Be sure they do not hinder, for they cannot be passively present in any discourse. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... which should amply compensate and console a misguided and unhappy race for the miserable past and the painful and dreary present. To those, therefore, who could not sympathise with his views, it will be seen that Herbert, in attempting to fulfil them, became not merely passively noxious from his example, but actively mischievous from his exertions. A mere sceptic, he would have been perhaps merely pitied; a sceptic with a peculiar faith of his own, which he was resolved to promulgate, Herbert ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... would part from them forever, and in the mean time why should he not try to please and be pleased? There might, to be sure, have been many reasons why he should not do this; but however the balance stood he now yielded himself passively to his fate. He was polite to Mrs. Ellison, he was attentive to Kitty, and as far as he could he entered into the fantastic spirit of her talk with the colonel. He was not a dull man; he had quite an apt wit of his own, and a neat way of saying things; but humor ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her. She hurried at once to her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference. "Never mind, Lenore, it can't be helped. It is all for the cause, and to stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged beauty, and to that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... brows portentously, and Mrs. Orton Beg was sure that she heard no note of the mellow chime which sounded once while she was so engaged, and seemed to her aunt to plead with her solemnly to cast her care on the great Power watching, and continue passively in the old worn grooves, as Mrs. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... getting acquainted with all living and inanimate objects in his environment. It sharpens his observation. A child who tries to "act a horse," for example, will be much more apt to notice all the different activities and habits of the horse in his various relations than a child who merely observes passively. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil while the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, and thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The inevitable and invincible ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... forehead spoke, whose brilliant eyes glittered like stars; they saw it in the sweat that covered his brow to the roots of his hair, while more than once his voice vibrated with impatience and fury. Marthe obeyed passively. Armed to the teeth and with his gun over his shoulder Michu dashed into the avenue, followed by his wife. They soon reached the cross-roads where Francois was in waiting hidden ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... to its progress but what itself, by its own independent motion, created; and that opposition or resistance would be exactly the same in whatever direction it might be sought to be established. The Balloon, passively suspended in the air, without the exercise of a propulsive power, experiences no effects whatever from the motion of the atmosphere in which it is carried, however violent; and the establishment of such a propulsive ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley

... eager form of the distinguished reform Governor. At Cincinnati he represented the conservative Tilden men, and although upon reaching the platform he faced a man of greater force, he betrayed no docile character, ready to receive passively whatever the Boss might allot. His speech was cleverly framed. He expressed no desire that Tilden Democrats be forgiven for the political sins which their opponents had committed; neither did he mar the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... have, if he holds his grief fast tied to his heartstrings. But as grief must be fed with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the mind so busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of that ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to end in putting all the mental ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of no mind to die passively. He clawed and struck at Bradley while with his great wings he attempted to shield himself from the merciless rain of blows, at the same time searching for a hold upon his antagonist's throat. Presently ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is wholly different. As a female she has merely to be herself and passively attract; neither to compete nor to pursue; as a mother her whole process is one of growth; first the development of the live child within her, and the wonderful nourishment from her own body; and then all the later cultivation to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... observation, or—which was more probable—was not conscious of it—for his gaze became fixed with a religious earnestness, which no look of mine could possibly divert or unfix. He solicited my wife to play on the guitar, but she declined, until requested by Mrs. Porterfield, when she took up the instrument passively, and sung to it one of those ordinary negro-songs which are now so shockingly popular. I was surprised at this, for I well knew that she heartily detested the taste and spirit in which such things were conceived. Under the tuition of my demon, I immediately assumed ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... was absent on this errand, and Margaret waited passively, Tom went to her, kissed her cheek, and then came away ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... flickering candlelight. He repeated petition after petition. He would not allow himself to think. It was his to obey, not to question. He would regain his old tranquillity, his old docility. He would submit passively. It was his own fault, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... moulds and manipulates them that we lose the rigidity of our mechanism, and become plastic in his hands. He turns us upon our face, repeats the same process upon the back, and leaves us a little longer to lie there passively, glistening ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... had stirred, sorry for the very love of himself that he saw written in her face. He took her hand in his, and his touch filled her with an exquisite content; her hand lay in his neither lifelessly nor entirely passively, yet only lightly returning the light pressure of his fingers. To her the situation was the supreme moment of a life; to him it was passionless as the betrothal piece in a ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... so far as to try to check her tears. But Katy could not stop, and she wept so passionately that Wilford's anger subsided, leaving only tenderness and pity for the wife he tried so hard to soothe, telling her he was sorry, and suing for forgiveness, until the sobbing ceased, and Katy lay passively in his arms, her face so white and the dark rings about her eyes showing so distinctly that Wilford did not press her when she declined his mother's invitation. He could go, she said, urging so many reasons why he should, that, for ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... strides the stealthy plotter stalks I must be quick too with my counterplot. To wait his onset passively, for him Is sure success, for ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... that you can put a man to is to burn him, and a living witness may do more for Christ than a dead martyr. Christian heroism may be shown in not being afraid to flee quite as much as in courting, or passively awaiting, danger. And Christ's Name will be spread when His lovers are hounded from one city to another, just as it was when 'they that were scattered abroad, went everywhere, preaching the word.' When the brands are kicked apart by the heel of violence, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... us from the outer world calculated to "buck up" troops who feel the ignominy of having a passively defensive role thrust upon them for "strategic reasons," cribbed, cabined, and confined within a ring of hills by forces believed to be inferior to their own, and exposed daily to shell fire, which, if not so destructive as our enemies intend it to be, brings a possible tragedy ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... those, Breaking upon my lurid loneliness So brusquely?... Yet, 'tis true, I have ever know That such a Will I passively obeyed! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... demands, originating in particular industries because of high profits in these industries, and spreading over a large part of the field of industry. For, as has been emphasized, organized groups of wage earners will not accept passively a change for the worse in their position in the economic scale. Finally, there is a safeguard in the fact that no wage increase need occur in any industry except upon the demand of the wage earners in ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... reconnaissance, while I smoked philosophical cigarettes. He found the rest in a house near by, and soon we were sitting on the floor of a room, in a dense crowd, drinking hot milk, and in our right minds; sick or wounded men of many regiments talking, sleeping, smoking, sighing, and all waiting passively. A benevolent little Scotch officer, with a shrewd, inscrutable face, and smoking endless cigarettes, moved quietly about, counting us reflectively, as though we were a valuable flock of sheep. We sat here till about 2.30 A.M., when several waggons drove up, into which we ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers



Words linked to "Passively" :   passive, actively



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