"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hysterical mind is one in which large tracts of consciousness seem to get detached from the main body, and to take the control of the subject for the time being, giving rise to the phenomena rather foolishly called double or multiple "personality." This is a disease proper to the passive-minded, to those who give way to a "drifting" tendency, and habitually suffer their whole interests to be absorbed by the strongest sensation or emotion that presents itself. Such minds are generally chaotic and unorganized, as is ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... 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 dark ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him, kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her emotion meant, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Io, the languor of one who yields to unknown and fateful forces. Passive and at peace, she wanted nothing but to be wafted by the current to whatever far bourne might await her. That there should be such things as railway trains and man-made schedules in this world of winds and mystery and the voice of great waters, was hard to believe; hardly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... even some of the prince's nearest neighbours had begun to oppose him. Vera Lebedeff's passive disagreement was limited to the shedding of a few solitary tears; to more frequent sitting alone at home, and to a diminished frequency in her visits to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... at the first response to her cry for help. Sing was armed with a heavy revolver but he dared not attempt to use it for fear that he might wound either Bulan or the girl, and so he was forced to remain but a passive spectator ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a wriggle or two, but, like most of his countrymen, he had a good deal of common sense and self-command, which made him remain passive after a bit; when, throwing myself on my back, I floated, dragging his head across my body, so that he might rest awhile and recover himself before trying to ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... consequences which seem likely to flow from Bulgaria's surrender. There remains the question of the future attitude of Bulgaria herself. Will she remain a passive spectator of these momentous happenings, or will she, striking in on the Allies' side, do her share toward bringing them to pass? The latter eventuality is more than possible. The Bulgarians, from ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... tenses for which there is no inflection in the active, and all those of the passive, are formed by the auxiliaries skal (shall), hafa (have), vera (be) with the infin. and ptc. pret., much as ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... Nils, and call the names of the children as usual," said the teacher. Those were no dainty little ones, accustomed to be dressed like passive dolls by careful nurses or over-fond mammas. They had but to receive their garments in the daily orderly way, and to put them on as they well knew how. There might sometimes be an obstinate string or button, but Nils was sure to be able to help in any such difficulty, ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... history soon began to develop. Out of the long turmoil came a whole new line-up in the business. It affected Charles Frohman less than any of his immediate associates in the big combination because, first of all, he was a passive member, and, second, he had a kingdom all his own. Yet the story of these turbulent years is so inseparably linked up with the development of the drama in this country that it is ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... nephew Louis XV., whom he resembled in many ways, that morbid weariness of life, that contempt for mankind and distaste for business. He was afflicted, moreover, with that fatal impotence of will which makes a libertine king the slave of his mistresses, and, a faithful husband the passive instrument of a charming queen who may happen to be prompted by the most skilful ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... was a signal; "but, by God," says he, "if things go ill, the first thing I will do is to shoot him." He discoursed largely and bravely to me concerning the different sort of valours, the active and passive valour. For the latter, he brought as an instance General Blake; who, in the defending of Taunton and Lime for the Parliament, did through his stubborn sort of valour defend it the most 'opiniastrement' that ever any man did any thing; and yet never was the man that ever made any attaque ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... special immunities and often something of a sacred character ... Neither public authority nor private persons can use any force, or do any violence to him, without offending against the law of nations." [Footnote: Except that if necessary for self-defense, passive resistance may be made.] This immunity extends to his house, furniture, and attendants. Except in extreme cases, he is exempt from civil ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... into trance," she said. "That is rare with me, rare with anyone, though often assumed for effect. Of you, I ask only that you remain quiet and passive. I'd ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... Mrs Desmond credit for being more passive than active in the whole affair," he concluded, since Paul seemed disinclined to volunteer a remark. "But the deuce of it is, that I feel sure Desmond knows less about the thing than any one else. Can you see him putting up with it ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to Mr. Gladstone, put the case of Van Diemen's Land in a striking aspect. "Shall the fairest isle in the south be converted into one huge gaol? shall the free inhabitants be made the passive instruments of punishing these criminals? Is this the only capacity in which the British government will recognise the free colonists? The petitioners have laid their case before the legislature. They trust they have not appealed in vain—that they will not be driven from a land where ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable nervousness. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... seconds after the last echoes of the gun had rolled through the forest the girl lay passive in Nathaniel's arms, so close that he could feel her heart beating against his own and her breath sweeping his face. Then there came a pressure against his breast, a gentle resistance of Marion's half conscious form, and when she had awakened from her partial swoon he was holding her in the crook ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... from His being a sacrifice, the 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 being ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bless you, and him too, whoever he be! But if you want a friend, I may be that friend, may I not? and try to prove that my words of regard were true, in a better and higher sense than I used them at first." And kissing her passive hand, he was gone and she ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... enforced the charge of a solecism by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when, for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and, I think, some one before him, has remarked, "propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum[37]." From vapulo, which has a passive sense, vapulandus can never be derived. No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... unstable souls," so this second beast "maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of (credulous) men." (2 Tim. iii. 8; Exod. vii. 22; Acts viii. 9-11.) The venal ministry of the heathenized church, (ch. xi. 2,) inculcate passive obedience to the beast of the sea, as to the "ordinance of God;"—to "resist" which, subjects the recusant to "damnation." (Rom. xiii. 2.) Here, then, we behold the counterfeits of the two great ordinances of church and state, against which it is the special duty and arduous work of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... are visible even in his most favored circumstances. Such is his bigotry, surpassing everything in a quiet passive form, that has been witnessed since the more active bigotry of the times of the Spanish Philips. Such, too, is the exclusive, limited range of his knowledge and conceptions of all political and social topics and relations. The Englishman, the cultivated ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently against the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her. The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of the previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility. Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled and turned faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... charming as she could; and even if no one were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough. She was—as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed—the kind of woman who spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very disconcerting. With little or no power of initiative, she would do what she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator; temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him. He had arrived at a state of absolute indifference. He had so often rearranged his pliable nature to suit his changing environment that at last he found that he could be content in almost any circumstances. He had no pleasures, no cares, no ambitions, no regrets, no hopes. It was mere passive existence, an inert, plantlike vegetation, the moment's pause before the final decay, the last ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... of Mr. Walker's cottage was made known in the family, there was a passive acquiescence in the change on the part of all but Aunt ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... watchful of all that touches his country's prosperity, in which he has an individual lot, and interested in all that affects the advantages of business of which he is a factor, to be relegated to the level of a mere appurtenance to a great machine, with little free will, with no duty but that of passive obedience, and with little hope or opportunity of rising in the scale of responsible ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Prime Minister that the Queen would not take one step without them. The clergy, who are always great examples of slavish servitude themselves, preached it to others under the plausible title of passive obedience. Thus both clergy and laity were, in an instant, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... reasons for asking you.' She got up, for by the striking of the church clock she had just found out that it was later than she had thought, and she knew that her father would be at home by this time. She bent down and kissed Miss Browning's grave and passive face. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and that time takes off from the lustre of virgins in all other eyes but mine. I appeal to my letters to herself whether I was your friend or not in the whole concern, though the part I designed to act in it was purely passive." He had even thought "it could not be decently broken," without disadvantage to the lady's credit, since he supposed it was known to the town; and he had always spoken of her in a manner far from discouraging. Though he knew many ladies of rank, he had "nowhere met with an humour, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... approve. En route. Esq. Graduate, use is graduated. Gents, use gentlemen. Hon. House, use House of Representatives. Humbug. Inaugurate, use begin. In our midst. Item, use particle, extract, or paragraph. Is being done, and all similar passive forms. Jeopardize. Jubilant, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... It is a mortifying indication of the little importance that is attached to what we are saying; and there is something of the irritation that is produced in the living being by contending with the passive resistance of inert matter. And there is something provoking even in the outward signs that the mind is in a non-receptive state. You remember the eye that is looking beyond you,—the grin that is not at anything funny in what you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... be similarly formed from the roots of "transitive" verbs, and indicate an action of the verb not immediately due to the subject's acting upon itself (as in the case of reflexive verbs, 41) and not caused by any direct agency (as in the case of the passive voice, 169): ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... the universe. Pantheism is generally the creation of brooding wonder and uncritical thought; Pantheism feels rather than thinks; it accepts rather than seeks to explain. It may be devout enough but its devotion is passive rather than active. Pantheism is never scientific in the accepted sense of that term; it has little concern for law; it explains by personalizing the forces with which it has to deal; it is akin to the temper which finds some animating spirit in all natural ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... loaded with shawls, Charlotte flourishing about. Poor Mary—it was much against her will—but she had no heart to refuse the wreath of geraniums that Amy's own hands had woven for her; and there she sat, passive as a doll, though in despair at their all waiting for her. For Laura's toilette was finished, and every one began dressing her at once; while Charlotte, to make it better, screamed over the balusters that all were ready but Mary. Sir Guy was heard playing the 'Harmonious ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... explanations that might endanger Birch, or Harper, or both. Unused to contention, and really much attached to her kinsman, the feeble objections of Miss Peyton gave way to the firmness of her niece. Mr. Wharton was too completely a convert to the doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, to withstand any solicitation from an officer of Dunwoodie's influence in the rebel armies; and the maid returned to the apartment, accompanied by her father and aunt, at the expiration of the time that she had fixed. Dunwoodie and the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... premonition of impending trouble, the mongrel bristled the yellow hair of his neck, and, retreating to the mouth of his kennel, stood guard; but otherwise the scene was to a detail as it had been in the morning. The woman lay passive within the bunk. The child by her side, holding her hand, did not turn. The very atmosphere of the place tingled with an ominous quiet,—a silence such as one who has lived through a cyclone connects instinctively with ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... just put forward in relation to the closed iron ring, and its passive character under the condition of becoming polarized, are more important than at first appears. It has been found that the secondary current wave of a closed iron circuit induction coil or transformer, whose primary circuit ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... or the individual and national rights of all other people—expressed in a collective and belligerent way. It is not, as said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast; but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so, and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically, therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the yielding burden lying so passive in his strong arms filled him with a rapture such as he had never known. The thought of sex was still far from his mind, and only was the manhood in him yielding to the contact, and teaching him through the senses that which his upbringing ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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
... which cases we could not use negligence; negligence in dress implies want of care as to its arrangement, tidiness, etc.; neglect of one's garments would imply leaving them exposed to defacement or injury, as by dust, moths, etc. Neglect has a passive sense which negligence has not; the child was suffering from neglect, i. e., from being neglected by others; the child was suffering from negligence would imply that he himself was neglectful. The distinction ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... upon the cushioned seat inert and passive. In the flash of each passing street-light her face showed waxen pale, a cameo against the dark background; so drawn and pinched were her features, that Brencherly, in panic, seized her pulse, in order to assure himself that ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Could not have found an apter instrument For the performance of what you designe, Then I experience how much any man May become passive in obedience To the intent of woman, in my truth. Set the abstrusest comment on my faith Imagination can resolve, my study Shall mak't as easie as the plainest ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the State made implacable war upon them. Yet the spiritual and moral forces won the victory, and Christianity established itself throughout ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... tenth of June. At last, however, when matters were growing serious, and when she had treated all the pressure that it was possible to put upon her with quiet indifference—for, as usual, her father declined to interfere, but contented himself with playing a strictly passive part—she suddenly of her own mere motion, abolished the difficulty by consenting to appear before the registrar on the eighth of ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... turned swiftly to black tragedy, this passive spectator leaped into quick strenuous life. With a spring he was off his pony, and with another he was over the stone wall and flying swiftly across the field. Looking up from his victim, the great ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a man act so?" he says. "There's my fellow-man. Look at him! I'm sorry for him. Most of him had hard luck to be born, and yet when he gets in my way I just walk all over him. I can't help it. He's leathery and he's passive, my fellow-man. He goes to sleep in the middle of the road. When I ketch one of him, I kicks a hole in his trousers first, and then it occurs to me, 'My sufferin' brother! This is too bad!' Why, Pete Hillary was one of the dumbdest and leatheriest, and here's ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... their beads—for nearly every man carries his string of jet or amber beads, which he mechanically tells, though without a thought of prayer. They walk with half-closed eyes, and whilst they seem to be thinking, they are but taking a passive pleasure in existence. They sit down together at their cafes which debouch upon the streets, and sip the sweetest of coffee, and light their cigarettes, and regard the world which passes slowly by. There are all manner of ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... an hour he had the delight of perceiving that Amine was in a profuse perspiration; gradually her breathing became less heavy, and instead of the passive state in which she had remained, she moved, and became restless. Philip watched, and replaced the clothes as she threw them off, until she at last appeared to have fallen into a profound and sweet sleep. Shortly after, Father Seysen and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... gloom and listened to her mother's incessant moaning. When she attempted to move, her mother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try to alleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting in passive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute to her mother's relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes her mother projected questions concerning the local condition, and although she laboured to be graphic and at ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... very rare exceptions, found none in those badly-armed and worse-clothed bands who fought with a fixed idea; they were adventurers who wished for war for the sake of war; visionaries anxious for fortune; country lads from the fields, who in their passive ignorance had joined the factions, just as they would have stayed at home if they had had better counsels; simple souls who firmly believed that in the towns they were burning and destroying God's ministers, and who had thrown themselves into the fray so that society should not ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Friends, and never fail'd to be ungrateful; that if ever he committed a Murther, did it in cold Blood, because no body could prove he ever had any hot; who possess'd with a Poltroon Devil, was always wickeder in the Dark, than he durst be by Day-light; and who, after innumerable passive Sufferings, has been turned out of human Society, because he could not be kick'd or cuff'd either into good Manners ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... village, with its squalid and fetid huts, we caught the sound of bells, innumerable bells, tinkling at regular intervals. Many people trooped out from their houses to look at us, all flat-faced, all with oblique eyes, all stolidly, sullenly, stupidly passive. They seemed curious as to our dress and appearance, but not apparently hostile. We walked on to the low line of the monastery with its pyramidal roof and its queer, flower-vase minarets. After a moment's discussion they ushered us into the temple or chapel, which was ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... passive. She neither returned his ardor nor fought it. But when his hands began to stroke her back she pulled away from him and stood there looking at him. She took the necklace off and threw it at ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... be defined as a place where Man is passive and the rest of Nature active. Till quite recently Nature had her own sanctuaries, where man either did not go at all or only as a tool-using animal in comparatively small numbers. But now, in this machinery age, there is no place left where man cannot go ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... wild in a manner passive and still, had spoken no word; she attended Storri's wants in silence. When that sudden weariness came to claim him and he cast himself in slumber upon the couch, the San Reve, from where she stood statue-like in the center of the room, bent upon him her gray-green ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... been made for the Carlist leaders to meet at Lucerne in Switzerland. They are to discuss the situation. Many of them think that they have been passive long enough, and that it is now high time that a decided attempt should be made to secure the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 47, September 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the celerity of naval operations correspondingly increased. Yet, the more we tried it, the more obviously did the dangers and difficulties caused, especially at night, by fastening two ships together, one of whom is necessarily a passive agent, stare us in the face. The union of the tug and the "towed" was not far distant. The advent of the war steamer, the swift battleship, independent alike of wind and sea, was close ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house, walked down the steps to the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... all her little power. All manner of devices passed through her head, but were rejected, because, if Love said "Do wonders," Timidity said "Do nothing that you have not seen other wives do." So she remained, scheming, and longing, and fearing, and passive, all day. But the next day she conceived a vague idea, and, all in a heat, rang for her maid. While the maid was coming she fell to blushing at her own boldness, and, just as the maid opened the door, her thermometer fell so ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... attended by considerable noise and some shifting of feet. Some laughed, for there are some to laugh everywhere at the most sincere emotions of the human breast. The judge rapped for order. A flush of anger mounted to his usually passive face; he turned to the sheriff with a ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' without one spot of red in the cheek, one perturbation or flush of anger in the heart; and to do that might task us all to the utmost. But that is not all that Christ's ethics require of us. It is not sufficient to exercise the passive virtue of meekness; there must be the active one of mercifulness. And to call for that is to lay an additional weight upon our consciences, and to strain and stretch still further the obligation under which we come. We have not done what the worst men and our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... passes for a heap; A heap for none, that has a homely one! Where fashion makes the law—your umpire which You bow to, whether it has brains or not. Where Folly taketh off his cap and bells, To clap on Wisdom, which must bear the jest! Where, to pass current you must seem the thing, The passive thing, that others think, and not Your simple, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... place, and were subjected to the usual persecution; this, however, was now less prolonged than during the early days of their captivity, for they had now no longer strength or spirits to resent their treatment, and as no fun was to be obtained from passive victims, even the village boys soon ceased to find any amusement in ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... the house of commons. The speaker and four members only were present, and a motion of thanks and for printing the sermon was carried as a matter of course. When the sermon was printed, however, it was found to savour of the doctrines of passive obedience and the divine right of kings, and to contain principles in direct opposition to those which had placed the reigning family on the throne. This brought down a storm on the head of the preacher. Mr. Thomas Townshend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... obeyed. When they join, the officers may ill-treat them, pull their hair, and strike them with impunity. The officers have generally a fair supply of professional knowledge, and some are highly educated. The men have a larger amount of passive courage than of dashing bravery; yet they will usually follow where their officers lead them. The private has a possibility of rising to the rank of an officer after twelve years' probation, and even ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... It was not that I was the sort of monk we are told the Devil would be, when he was sick, although my physical weakness may have lain—God knows!—at the root of it, once. No, I had changed. Those who have gone through some such change (and I wonder, sometimes, how many of the passive, unremarkable people I pass on the street, in the fields, in hotels, have gone through such) know how well I knew the truth of this matter and how little likely I was to deceive myself. I loved her, yes, and shall love her while consciousness remains with me, but it would never again be bitter ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Philip of Macedon. This is the age which ushers in the last period of the nation, a mechanical state of the individual, when thought has so departed that the man is not able to attend even to his own life, and, like a passive machine, the state is impelled and directed in even the least things by one tyranny from without. It is hardly necessary to add that Alexander in Greece, Elagabalus in Rome, Louis XVI in France, were followed by a destruction as certain as the fact that God ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of this work have been demanded in eighteen months. Among the new additions are: Colonic lavage and flushing, Hirst's treatment for vaginismus, Dudley's treatment of cystocele, Montgomery's round ligament operation, Chorio-epithelioma of the Uterus, Passive Incontinence of the Urine, and Moynihan's methods in Intestinal Anastomosis. Nothing is left to be taken for granted, the author not only telling his readers in every instance what should be done, but also precisely how to do it. A distinctly ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... he ever was with merely passive or negative views, Burke was led to attempt a solution of the problem. He had never been under any illusion as to the possibility of limiting colonial constitutional pretensions. A free government was ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... to the legal and religious ceremony, what gratitude could you feel to me later for a gift in which my goodwill counted for nothing? If during the time that I remained indifferent to you (yielding only a passive obedience, such as my mother has just been urging on me) a child were born to us, do you suppose that I could feel towards it as I would towards one born of our common love? A passionate love may not be necessary in marriage, but, at least, you will admit that there should be no repugnance. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... that he was the least anxious of any of us. He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign country; he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no notion of meeting danger half way. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... in spite of herself as they approached the gates, and when her husband said, "Here we are at home!" and for the first time kissed her on the lips, she hardly knew of it: it was no more than the passive acceptance of a greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her hurrying life of the last three months a show, in which her consciousness was a wondering spectator? After the half-willful excitement of the day, a numbness had come over ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... eyes filled with tears, and his voice grew tremulous, as he took Salome's cold, passive hand, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... scene of this sort have I witnessed. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in her sprightly letters from Turkey, longs for some of the advocates for passive obedience and unconditional submission then existing in England to be present at the sights exhibited in a despotic government. A thousand times, in like manner, have I wished that those European philosophers ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... continue passive under these progressive usurpations and these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in defense of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... 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
... disturb him, and he must be kept very quiet—oh! very quiet, Doctor Conway says. Come in here, if you wish to speak to me," and she led the way into her little room. "Will you sit down?" she went on, with the same passive gentleness; "you were good to come, but—but—it must ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to write sonatas on her eyebrow—to borrow Peter's variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on his mistress's eyebrow"—and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit mistress for him—this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other—beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous with poetry and lofty thought, with dark, amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... all thought of that—I will deliver myself into your hands absolutely; nay, more, I will give you my most solemn word of honour that not only will I make no attempt at escape, but that I will not allow any one to help me to do so. I will be a passive and willing prisoner if you, on the other hand, will ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... of this war tries our power of passive will, but I feel that everything is coming out as I was able to foresee. I think that these long spells of inactivity will give repose to the intellectual machine. If I ever have the happiness of once more making use of mine, it is ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!"—If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, "to a certain extent, Applied Christianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... with an averted countenance, Venetia clinging to her hand, which she had caught when she rushed forward, and which now fell passive by Lady Annabel's side, giving no sign, by any pressure or motion, of the slightest sympathy with her daughter, or feeling for the strange and agonising situation in which they ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... whispered. But she had already recognised the fact that for the present meeting a passive part would become her well, and save her a deal of trouble. She had her lover there quite safe, safe beyond anything that Mr. or Mrs. Beckard might have to say to the contrary. She was quite happy; only that there were symptoms now ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... liking for those things which they have studied at great cost of time and intellect, and their proficiency in which has led to their becoming distinguished and successful. It is certain that out of this feeling arises, not only that passive blindness to their defects of which the example given by my Lord Tenterden was quoted in the last letter, but an active disposition to advocate and defend them. If it were otherwise; if it were not for this spirit of interest and ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... from Lisbon and Paris and Vienna. I am not proud of the power which undoubtedly lies in the palm of my right hand. On the other hand, I should be foolish if I did not remind you of these things at a time like this. I only ask you to take up a passive attitude. You escape in that way all trouble, and if you fancy that the climate of Paris would suit you or Mrs. Deane better than London, it would be a matter of a few months only; but—you must not advise the ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made her so great a favorite elsewhere. After a time she displayed it only in the homes of her little friends. By the end of the first month she had learned to be passive in her cousins' house,—so much so that Rogron one day asked her if she was ill. At that sudden question, she ran to the end of the garden, and stood crying beside the river, into which her tears may have fallen as she herself was about to ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... may be either operative, or passive. To them it is an evil, but to us none. We have no more to do with the sins of the wicked and unconverted here than with those of an infidel Turk; for all earthly bonds and fellowships are absorbed and swallowed up in the holy community of the Reformed Church. However, if it ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the free intercourse of mind with mind, which he established instead of the implicit submission which only ecchoed his own voice, how little of the pleasure that women were formed to give can be enjoyed, when they are considered merely as slaves to a tyrant's will, the passive subjects of transient dalliance and casual enjoyment. The pleasure which he took in the youthful beauty of ALMEIDA, was now endeared, exalted, and refined, by the tender sensibility of her heart, and by the reflexion ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... rarely, however, that the young lord allowed himself to be provoked into more than a passive share in these scenes. To the boisterousness of his mother he would oppose a civil and, no doubt, provoking silence,—bowing to her but the more profoundly the higher her voice rose in the scale. In general, however, when he perceived that a storm was at hand, in flight lay his only safe ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... nothing more to be said, and a poor man can put up with a good deal for twenty pounds a day, but I felt none the less that Lord Linchmere was acting rather scurvily towards me. He wished to convert me into a passive tool, like the blackthorn in his hand. With his sensitive disposition I could imagine, however, that scandal would be abhorrent to him, and I realized that he would not take me into his confidence until no other course was open to him. I must trust to my own eyes and ears ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... understood that a girl who loves never addresses such a question; but the feminine heart was a book in which he was a very poor speller. He imagined that Reine was only asking him as a matter of form, and that it was from a feeling of maidenly reserve that she adopted this passive method of escaping from openly declaring her wishes. She no doubt desired his friendly aid in the matter, and he felt as if he ought to grant her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Individualism. Catholicism, instead, is communistic by its origin and traditions.... The Catholic Church, with her powerful organization, dating back over many centuries, has accustomed Catholic peoples to passive obedience, to a passive renunciation of the greater part ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... bring it into order, establishing a uniform rule for receiving money, for serving in war, for sitting on juries, for doing what each, according to his age, can do, and what occasion requires. I never advise we should give to idlers the wages of the diligent, or sit at leisure, passive and helpless, to hear that such a one's mercenaries are victorious, as we now do. Not that I blame any one who does you a service; I only call upon you, Athenians, to perform upon your own account those duties for which you honor strangers, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and silent ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish. Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;—it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men. What are called ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the same time all hope for betterment from within must have ceased at the death of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, an avowed friend of the long-suffering nationalities. It is, therefore, no mere matter of conjecture that the passive attitude of the Rumanian Government at the beginning of the present conflict must have been a bitter ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... practice of showing Jesus's skill as a debater, makes him play a less passive part at his trial, he still gives substantially the same account of it as all the rest. And the question that would occur to any modern reader never occurs to him, any more than it occurred to Matthew, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... third regeneration. One hour within the radius of Madge Stanley's influence brought me to repentance. But repentance is an everyday virtue. Should I ever achieve regeneration? That is one of the questions this history will answer. To me, Madge Stanley's passive force was the strongest influence for good that had ever impinged on my life. With respect to her, morally, I was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain, for she, acting unconsciously, moved me with neither knowledge nor volition ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth! With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, titled, he ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... often from the imperceptible mechanism of political society—a subject of observation which seems at first view so little commensurate to our faculties, that it has been generally regarded with the same passive emotions of wonder and submission with which, in the material world, we survey the effects produced by the mysterious and uncontroulable operation of phisical sic causes. It is fortunate that upon this, as on many other occasions, the difficulties which had long baffled ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... that the teaching may make an adequate impression, it is necessary, if not to discard all these passive methods, at least to supplement them by exercises which call out the activity of the pupil. Some such exercises have already been experimented with, and others might be devised.[243] The pupil may be set to analyse engravings, narratives, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... ethnological life; and even the observer whose vision is limited by his own horizon in time and space marks a dependence, and speaks of cause and effect. All this follows from the existence and nature of man. Man is not inert, nor even passive, merely; and his activity will continually organize itself into facts and forms, ever changing in character, it may be, yet subject to a law as wise and fixed ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... ignores the fact that the Chancellor had previously sought to bribe England to condone in advance the invasion of Belgium by Germany, and that Germany had also coerced Luxemburg into a passive acquiescence in a similar invasion, and there is as yet no pretense that Luxemburg had failed in ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... found it old. Those lines were already evident which, when first noted, bring a stab of surprised pain to the breast of a child—the droop of the mouth, the wrinkling of the temples, the patient weariness of the eyes. Virginia's own eyes filled with tears. The subjective passive state into which a newly born but not yet recognized love had cast her, inclined her to gentleness. She accepted facts as they came to her. For the moment she forgot the mere happenings of the day, and lived only in the resulting mood of them all. The new-comer inspired ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... out his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two other slaves of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the luck of all things of the past to come down to us with some poetry about them; while from those of diurnal experience we must extract this poetry ourselves: and although all good men are, more or less, poets, they are passive or recipient poets; while the active or donative poet caters for them what they fail to collect. For let a poet walk through London, and he shall see a succession of incidents, suggesting some moral beauty by a contrast of times with times, unfolding some principle of nature, developing some attribute ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"—which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... ain't a speeder of matrimony Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder Serene presumption The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted Women are swift at coming to conclusions ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... said the clergyman, recovering himself and grasping the passive hand of the young soldier with enthusiasm, though he could not help smiling at his obvious embarrassment, "you seem to have been raised up to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... cheering hope! We are from Crete, Adrastus' sons, and I, the youngest born, Named Cephalus; my eldest brother, he, Laodamus. Between us two a youth Of savage temper grew, who oft disturb'd The joy and concord of our youthful sports. Long as our father led his powers at Troy, Passive our mother's mandate we obey'd; But when, enrich'd with booty, he return'd, And shortly after died, a contest fierce For the succession and their father's wealth, Parted the brothers. I the eldest joined; He slew the second; and the Furies hence For kindred murder dog his restless steps. But ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
