"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its privileges, I understand the ordinances of Israel as appointed by God, and the people of Israel in as far as they were necessarily passive in the hands of their priests and rulers. The husbandmen manifestly represent the leaders, who at various periods had usurped a lordship over God's heritage. Extraordinary ambassadors were sent from time to time in the owner's name, to demand the stipulated tribute,—prophets ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... In a moment Ugh-lomi was clinging to a bush right underneath the bear, and in another he was hanging to its back half buried in fur, with one fist clutched in the hair under its jaw. The bear was too astonished at this fantastic attack to do more than cling passive. And then the axe, the first of all axes, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... decade of extraordinary activity the Grand Trunk had been neither content nor passive. Offended by the incursions into its best paying territory, it fought its younger rival in parliament and on the stock exchange, {179} but with no lasting success in either quarter. It was more successful in its own constructive policy of expansion. In 1879 it had made a good bargain by selling ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... stood 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 ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... of Buddhism from the fourth century before Christ to its final expulsion from Hindustan. "Abundant proofs," says Turnour, "may be adduced to show the fanatical ferocity with which these two great sects persecuted each other; and which, subsided into passive hatred and contempt, only when the parties were no longer placed in the position of actual collision."—Introd. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse—it was as if she had wished ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... slaughter against the people of GOD, who stood firm to his cause. But withal, this proclamation, enjoined an oath in the room of all oaths formerly imposed, to be taken by all that minded to share in his royal favor; wherein they swore, not only absolute subjection and passive obedience, never to resist him, not only on any pretense, but for any cause, let him do, or command to be done what he would; but also, absolute, active obedience, without reserve: "That they shall, to the utmost of their power, assist, defend, and ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... was reached, the snake lay perfectly passive. Beyond all doubt, it understood the game that ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... presents a somewhat different problem. It cannot be described as either 'active' or 'passive,' inasmuch as it does not express either an attitude or an event. There is no definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as with the altarpieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet a unity is demanded. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... antithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other, so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative, formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated, receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... run this kind of saw is less than n x 1/4 H.P., on account of the number of passive parts. The most interesting application of the helicoidal saw is in the exploitation of quarries. Fig. 5 represents a Belgian marble quarry which is being worked by Mr. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... remembered they had always assumed when, as a little child, she used silently to hold up her face to him to be kissed. The miserable contrast between what she was now and what she had been them, was beyond the passive endurance, the patient resignation of the spirit-broken old man; the empty cup dropped from his hands, he knelt down by the side of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... sovereign decisions, has no other conception of Fourierism. Has he not been appointed Fourier's vicar on earth and pope of a Church which, unfortunately for its apostles, will never be of this world? Passive belief is the theological virtue of all sectarians, especially ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Liberty and Necessity; while, if the mental processes are the causes both of the cerebral processes and of one another (Spiritualism), the question before us becomes raised to a higher level. The causality in question being now regarded as purely mental, the will is no longer regarded as a passive slave of the brain, and the only thing to be considered is whether freedom is compatible with causation of a purely mental kind. Now, at an earlier stage of our enquiry I have argued that it is not; but this argument was based entirely upon ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... her head mournfully; and there was a long and painful silence. Never was wooing more strangely circumstanced than this,—the one lover pleading while the other was in view; the one, ardent, impassioned, the other, calm and passive; and the silence of the last, alas! having all the success which the words of the other lacked. It might be said that the choice before Sibyll was a type of the choice ever given, but in vain, to the child of genius. Here a secure and peaceful life, an ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... swung the hammock gently with his boot-heel, scraping a furrow in the sand. But she did not show any dimples, though his eyes and his lips smiled together when she looked at him, and when he took up her hand and kissed each finger-tip in turn, she was as passive as a doll under ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... so." Then added as in soliloquy, "Indeed, indeed, I was to blame in standing passive under such influences as that one-legged man's. My conscience upbraids me.—The poor negro: You see him ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... created a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the society has voices, receiving from this same act its unity, its common "I," its life, and its will. This body is the Republic, called by its members the state, the state when passive, the sovereign when active, a power in its relations with similar bodies. The partners are collectively called the people; they are citizens, as participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects as under obligation to ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... kind enough, if never enthusiastic; the general overturn and loss of the usual equilibrium in his little world. It was no blame to Theo if his feelings went little further than this. His father had been no active influence in his life. His love had been passive, expressing itself in few words, without sympathy in any of the young man's pursuits, or knowledge of them, or desire to know,—a dull affection because the boy belonged to him, and satisfaction in that he had never got into any scrapes or given any trouble. And the return ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... 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, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... every regiment in Nova Scotia was brought up to the strength of one thousand men. By May the expedition was ready. Monckton, with two thousand troops, embarked at Annapolis Royal, and by June 1 the expedition was at Chignecto. In the meantime Vergor, the French commandant at Beausejour, had not been passive. He had strengthened his defences, had summoned the inhabitants of the surrounding districts to his help, had mounted cannon in a blockhouse defending the passage of the river, and had thrown up a strong ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... light of the accomplishment of a sacred duty. Among the barbarian nations every man who has surprised a woman in her nakedness is put to death. The queen believed herself exercising her right; only inasmuch as the injury had been secret, she was doing herself justice as best she could. The passive accomplice would become the executioner of the other, and the punishment would thus spring from the crime itself. The ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... were freed by operation of law; but that act was merged in the legislative provisions which were subsequently enacted on the subject of importation of slaves into the United States generally. Under the now existing laws, the individuals thus imported acquire no personal right, they are mere passive beings, who are disposed of according to the will of the different state legislatures. In this country they are to remain slaves, and TO BE SOLD FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE STATE. The plaintiff, therefore, has nothing to claim as a freeman; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... perfectly had it been organized that it broke out almost simultaneously all over Europe—in France, Italy, Prussia and Austria. Just when the revolution was rife Pius the Ninth proclaimed an amnesty. That was soon after his election, and he vacillated into a sort of passive approval of the Young Italian party. It was even proposed that Italy should become a confederation of free states under the presidency of the Pope. No man in his senses believed in such a possibility, but at that time an unusual number of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... rheumatic pains which are augmented by pressure and motion, are diminished by faradization. This diminution is sometimes so considerable, that the joint, which prior to the faradization admitted of no movement, is able to execute passive and active movements ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... He'll not instruct, lest it should give offence. Should he by chance a knave or fool expose, That hurts none here, sure here are none of those. In short, our play shall (with your leave to show it) Give you one instance of a passive poet, Who to your judgments yields all resignation: So save or damn, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... Remarkable to relate, the Englishwomen were not absolutely the worst offenders, but competed for the palm with the girl from Polzin, who was filled with the highest regard for her mission as a painter. Nevertheless Effi, who assumed a passive attitude, could have withstood the pressure of this intellectual atmosphere if it had not been combined with the air of the boarding house, speaking from a purely physical and objective point of view. What this air was actually composed of was perhaps beyond the possibility of determination, but ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... we do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish fastidiousness which narrows itself down until it can see nothing but defects and faults, and loses the power of humbly and genuinely admiring. This passive dissatisfaction which attempts nothing of its own, and only finds fault with what is done by others, grows very fast if it is allowed to take hold, and produces a mental habit of merely destructive criticism or perpetual scolding. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... out in the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was about to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's hand the other ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which 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. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... soft senseless limbs, like sponge, as far, and as far down, as it could—but to get the salt out of the earth it has to sift all the earth, and taste and touch every grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. And therefore a root is not at all a merely passive sponge or absorbing thing, but an infinitely subtle tongue, or tasting and eating thing. That is why it is always so fibrous and divided and entangled ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... was both transitive and intransitive, as early as the sixteenth century: hence the passive is legitimate, and lays additional stress on the state ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... who rule this passive Earth, 345 This world of loves, this ME; and into birth Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart Magnetic might into its central heart; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide By everlasting laws, each wind and tide 350 To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; And lull ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... being in Delhi who knew of the hasty visit her secret lover had made in the night. The jeweled dagger of Mirzah Shah was now securely locked in a little chest where Alan Hawke kept a few articles hidden away in the humble home of the passive plaything of his idle hours. As he caught sight of the Marble House, with its gathered crowds, he saw the gleam of musket barrels, as a company of foot were picketing the vast garden inclosure, and forcing back the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... disagreement between their government and this, wish to prefer an appeal to the American people, they will hereafter, it is hoped, better appreciate their own rights and the respect due to others than to attempt to use the Executive as the passive organ ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... and the passage in Plutarch (Cato min. 44) introduces a new difficulty, for it indicates a court in which candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quae erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... made a religious visit to several of the society in Long Island. Here it was that the seed, now long fostered by the genial influences of Heaven, began to burst forth into fruit; Till this time he seems to have been a passive instrument, attending only to such circumstances as came in his way on this subject. But now he became an active one, looking out for circumstances for the exercise of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... desire to cause pain to the sexual object and its opposite, the most frequent and most significant of all perversions, was designated in its two forms by v. Krafft-Ebing as sadism or the active form, and masochism or the passive form. Other authors prefer the narrower term algolagnia which emphasizes the pleasure in pain and cruelty, whereas the terms selected by v. Krafft-Ebing place the pleasure secured in all kinds of humility and submission ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... master, that this important document should be withheld till Wucicz and Petronevich, "the authors of the late disturbances," had left the country. The ministers of the Porte, unsupported by the ambassadors of France and England, who remained passive, had no alternative but to yield to this audacious act of intervention, which was communicated by Baron Lieven to the Servian kaimakams appointed during the interregnum. "As soon as the intelligence was spread among the people, the universal exclamation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet then, ne soyez ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Captain with a gallant flourish of his tarpaulin, and then, bringing the rim to his mouth, with his head bowed, and his body thrown into a fine negligent attitude, stood a picture of eloquent but passive appeal. He seemed to say, Magnanimous Captain Claret, we fine fellows, and hearts of oak, throw ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... "The passive master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... substituted writing for the knotted strings which before formed the only means of record. He was also the author of the Eight Diagrams,—each consisting of three lines, half of which are whole and half broken in two,—which by their various combinations are supposed to represent the active and passive principles of the universe in all their essential forms. Confucius edited the Yih-King, the Shoo-King, the She-King, and the Le-Ke, which constitute the whole of the ancient literature of China which has come down ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the sun was again risen after the ages of night, for he felt on the back of his hand, which he experimentally exposed, the hot-and-cold mottling from the rays. The renewed opportunity for action after the passive misery of the night heartened him for a brief interval, and he bestirred himself eagerly with preparations for the day. First of all, he must have chips of bark for a fire, in order to make ready his breakfast. He had already, the night before, exhausted the supply within reach on the tree ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... only eighteen months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has been deemed worthy ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... right,—the Lord's anointed,—and the divine miraculous original of government, with which the priesthood had inveloped the feudal monarch in clouds and mysteries, and from whence they had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that of passive obedience and non-resistance. They knew that government was a plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and quite comprehensible by common sense.——They detested all the base services, and ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, "Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this." But examine the passions and feelings of mankind, bring ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... is crazy to go away from here, even to New Orleans; but like the rest, will be obliged to stand and await her fate. I don't believe Butler would dare execute his threat, for at the first attempt, thousands, who are passive now, would cut the brutal heart from his ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... 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 sooner by some dashing act of bravery; and several even thus have become generals. There are numerous ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... Courts, unless these views involve, in the language employed by Lord Granville in 1861, "a flagrant violation of international law." This is the beginning and end of the doctrine of contraband. A neutral Government has none other than this passive duty of acquiescence. Its neutrality would not be compromised by the shipment from its shores, and the carriage by its merchantmen, of any quantity of ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... will be done! As for slavery, the last defense which it had in this country was on religious grounds: that God had ordained it and that it was blasphemous to oppose his ordination. In a word, this spirit of passive resignation has been so deeply ingrained in religious thinking that it has become oftentimes a serious reproach to ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... come to terms of peace. In cases where the women must yield 'par force majeure,' then it is to be with an ill grace and in such a way as to afford the minimum of gratification to their partner; they are to lie passive and take no more part in the amorous game than they are absolutely obliged to. By these means Lysistrata assures them they will very soon gain their end. "If we sit indoors prettily dressed out in our best transparent silks and prettiest gewgaws, and with our 'mottes' ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... according to which the sins of believers were to be punished by civil authority, distressing to their consciences. They drew up a plantation covenant, promising to subject themselves "in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements" as might be made for the public good in an orderly way by the majority vote of the masters of families, "incorporated together into a town fellowship," but "only in civill things." Thus ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... aside—the rich robe placed in the armoire, and the frilled and embroidered robe de nuit placed upon her, and fastened with its gold buttons about her neck and wrists, with no more motion on the part of that passive figure, than if it had been a doll in ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... have a label according to the part he plays in this transaction. But the two labels are applicable in a larger and more philosophic way. In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... mere helplessness that one lies so remote from all but surface sensation, day after day gazing at the address of letters that come, with a passive wonder of how soon she is to vacate her name? Also a friend calls to say that to-morrow he travels afar. It seems then that he will be too much missed, and the parting has its share of unutterable longing. But by the morrow it is not the one left who is sorry. The new sun shines on an earth miles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... during those next few days, events of the Earth, Venus and Mars swirled and raged around Georg as though he were engulfed in the Iguazu or Niagara. Passive himself at first—a spectator merely; yet he was the keystone of the Earth Council's strength. The Brende secret was desired by the publics of all three worlds. Even greater than its real value as a medical discovery, it swayed the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... it the work of accident, or effect of an occasional transaction, that by which the sea had covered our land? Or, Was it the intention of that Mind which formed the matter of this globe, which endued that matter with its active and its passive powers, and which placed it with so much wisdom among a numberless collection of bodies, all moving in a system? If we admit the first, the consequence of such a supposition would be to attribute to chance the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in the laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority; which is represented by ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... humiliating circumstances; their fertility of resources; their cheerfulness under hunger and privation; and, above everything else, their submission to law with every temptation to break it,—proved that the spirit of the nation was unbroken; that their passive virtues rivalled their most glorious deeds of heroism; that, if light-headed in prosperity, they knew how to meet adversity; and that they had not lost faith in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... been subserved by it. There the great numbers gave us a hint as to their purpose. In this case, however, nearly all observers conclude that it was a religious work. Mr. MacLean, after describing these three figures, propounds this query: "Does the frog represent the creative, the egg the passive, and the serpent the destructive power of nature?" Not a few writers, though not acquainted with the presence of the frog-shaped figure, have been struck with the combination of the egg and the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... 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 effect Mademoiselle ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... standing on the side of the reformers, the orthodox could not fight in the open. They entrenched themselves behind a passive resistance. In this struggle, as was observed above, Gordon occupied the foremost place. Thenceforth a single idea animated him, opposition to the enemies of light. His bitter, trenchant sarcasm, his caustic, vengeful pen, were put at the service of this cause. Even his ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... dualism has nothing to do with any "mind" that I may be supposed to possess; it exists in exactly the same sense if I am replaced by a photographic plate. We may call the two places the active and passive places respectively.* Thus in the case of a perception or photograph of a star, the active place is the place where the star is, while the passive place is the place where the ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... sit quiet and passive while Catharine bound up the long tresses of her hair, and smoothed them with her hands and the small wooden comb that Louis had cut for her use. Sometimes she would raise her eyes to her new friend's face, with a quiet sad smile, and once she took her hands within her own, and gently pressed ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... his brother, planned in cold blood by a woman who was at that moment inhabiting the same house with him. While, to make the fatality complete, Agnes herself had innocently provided the conspirators with the one man who was fitted to be the passive agent of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb edo, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... hear him talk, but with the exception of a few "veramentes" and "grazies" he remained passive and silent. By way of saying something he asked me if I ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... otherwise determined, and Jerome was so passive an instrument in her hands that he began the study of Hebrew as a discipline only, and without any conception of the task he was to fulfil, still less of the scope of its fulfilment. I could joyfully believe that the words of Christ, "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... soldier's wife? She had remained a passive spectator of all that occurred. When the voice of her defender first broke on her ear, she turned and looked at him for a moment, then, as if indifferent whether his defense was successful or not, she turned her head away and listlessly gazed at the crowd. She cared not now for freedom and ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which, when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,—the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,—a ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... them all by their names; for that he is strong in power, not one faileth." That was in Faith's mind along with other words—"The Lord knoweth them that are his." Her mind was in a passive state; things floated in and floated out. It was some time before Mr. Linden said anything—he let her be as silent and still as she would; but at last he bent over her ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... became again serene under the composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed it advisable ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... He was passive, submissive, indifferent. He knew nothing of the one wild moment of Jenny's break-down. He had never been allowed one hint of where his blessed head had been pillowed that bitter November night. The girl had pledged ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... vibrate faintly in unison with the music of a more favored neighbor; it would bring a sensation of the possibility of music. The stronger harmony is caught up and carried on forever in endless sound waves, but the slight responsive murmur of the passive strings is ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... pilot blacked out at the start of an offensive approach. He lost contact before recovering—you realize how quickly that happens at interplanetary speeds. On several other ships, there were passive mutinies. One was destroyed; how, we do ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... nothing which I have decided since alters that in any way. If you still want me after the war—if we find that neither of us has made a mistake—I can still help you, Derek, I hope. But, my dear, it won't be quite a passive help, if you understand what I mean. I've got to be up and doing myself—actively; to be merely any man's echo—his complement—however much I loved him, would not be enough. I've come ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... horror that he knew into words. He waited to consult his brother; but Sweyn did not, or would not, notice the signal he made, and kept his face always turned towards White Fell. Christian drew away from the hearth, unable to remain passive with that dread ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... common, not only to all divisions of the human species, but to quadrupeds, birds, fish, and even flora; that brings into existence cripples and idiots, the blind, the deaf and dumb; and watches with passive inertness the most acute sufferings, not only of adults, but of sinless children and all manner of helpless animals. No! It is impossible to conceive that such incompatibilities can be the work of one Creator. But, supposing, for the sake of argument, we may admit the possibility ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... by his breath that is more miserable. Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd, but bred a dog. Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth In different beds of lust; and never learn'd The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd The sugar'd game before ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... water; each of the vessels has a metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvanometer with its needle. Now the theory is, that if you clutch the cylinder firmly with the right hand, leaving the left perfectly passive, the needle in the galvanometer will move from west to south; if, in like manner, you exert the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from west to north. Hence, it is argued that the electric current ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which his enemies have learned to estimate and dread. His eloquence is wonderful, and after success ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... all good men, those who sat in judgment on them. Something of this is due to the native nobleness of the men themselves, of whom the world was not worthy; something of it to their long discipline in the passive virtues under bitter persecution in their native land and in exile in Holland and in the wilderness; much of it certainly to the incomparably wise and Christ-like teaching of Robinson both at Scrooby and at Leyden, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... place three days later. Evelina was buried in Calvary Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the necessary arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator, beheld with stony indifference this ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... disappeared. When he returned Mamie could see him very plainly. He had a stick of dynamite and a fuse. Mamie saw him glance at his watch and measure the fuse. Then, leaping from log to log, he approached the one in midstream which lay passive, blocking the advance of all the others. With splendid skill and daring he adjusted the dynamite upon the small rock which held the log, and lit the fuse. He returned as he had come, and Mamie could hear the cheers of the men upon the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... right, yes, sir; but I am not going to do any thing now. M. de Boiscoran tells us that the facts are improbable. I should, therefore, in all probability, soon be astray; but, since we are now bound to be passive till the investigation is completed, I shall employ the time in examining the country people, who will, probably, tell me more than Anthony did. You have, no doubt, among your friends, some who must be well informed,—M. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... call of friends or business carries them back to their own land; they are strangers all their days in the mission district. Nevertheless, they are generally the moving, active force; upon them progress seems to depend. It is strange, but it is true generally: the permanent is the passive element, the impermanent is the active. Here we simply state the fact to excuse or condemn the placing of the missionary force first in our ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... Paris, and by the end of the 14th century there were thousands of students in attendance. Oxford responded quickly to the Renaissance, and by the time of the Reformation 13 colleges were founded. Her Protestantism stood firm through Mary's reaction, sank into passive obedience under the Stuarts, but woke up to resist James II.'s Catholic propaganda. Thereafter followed a serious lapse in efficiency, but this century has seen a complete revival. Oxford has now 21 colleges, among which are Balliol, Christ ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... entails might perhaps be borne; but the last seven months have proved that the objects with which Austria-Hungary and Germany went to war are unattainable in the present state of Europe. Austria-Hungary, even with the active aid of Germany and Turkey, cannot prevail in Serbia against the active or passive resistance of Serbia, Russia, Rumania, Greece, Italy, France, and Great Britain. Germany cannot crush France supported by Great Britain and Russia, or keep Belgium, except as a subject and hostile province, and in defiance of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Verbs have no passive voice. If a native desires to state that a fish was swallowed by a pelican, he would say, "A ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... of the Scriptures upon a certain point, and he was there simply to know what the Presbytery would do. Rev. Drs. Brinsmayd and Fewsmith then prayed, but Dr. See's frame of mind was not in the least changed. He still insisted that his was the passive part, to sit and see what they would do with his case. Rev. Dr. Wilson thought that if Brother See did not desire to do anything contrary to the usages of the church, he might say so. Brother See said it was a question of whether ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... lay between them, and gave transit to her senses from that other plane. They encountered each other in full recognition of the happiness of the accident, and he turned back with her as a matter of course. It was a kind of fruition of all that light and colour and passive delight that they should meet and take a path together, he at least was aware. Hilda asked him if he was quite all right now, and he said "Absolutely" with a shade of emphasis. She charged him with having been a remarkable ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... forward, and pressed the passive hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old friends and companions—for such they were, though they were man and child—held each other in a long embrace, and then the little scholar turned his face towards the wall, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Those who serve under an established government know exactly their present weight in the scale of worldly rank, and the extent of their future expectations; they have accustomed themselves to bound their ambition accordingly: and feeling conscious that passive obedience is the surest road to advancement, are led quietly, here or there, to be slaughtered at the will and caprice of their superiors. But the leader of the disaffected against an established government has a difficult task. He has nothing to offer to his followers ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The mob was kept passive by the archers' steel rather than by Denys's words, and growled at intervals with flashing eyes. The municipal officers, seeing this, collected round, and with the archers made a guard, and prudently carried the accused back ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... treachery. I wonder what will be the outcome of it all; if after all this turmoil and bloodshed China will really become a different nation? It is hard to change the habits of a nation, and I think that China will not be changed by this convulsion. The real Chinese will be the same passive, quiet, slow-thinking and slow-moving toiler, not knowing or caring whether his country is a republic or whether he is ruled by the Son of Heaven. He will be a stable, peaceable, law-abiding citizen or subject, with respect for his officials so long as they ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... were such an impatient blasphemer, however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth, that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in the most passive acceptance,—if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out around me at this moment the new June,—the leaves say June, though the calendar says May,—and we must needs hail our young relatives again, though with something of the gravity of adult sons and daughters ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... noon sometimes, for want of nervous impulse, and my food was tasteless and innutritious, even when I forced myself to eat a portion of what was placed regularly before me. It seemed to me that, long ere this, Wardour Wentworth must have ascertained my fate, and the thought that he might be passive when my very soul was at stake, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying listless in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... barrier confessed its frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary submission of her whole poise—she had actually leaned a little further toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation. Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... existence—and it was the mission of the Dabneys to see that no wind of provocation unduly stirred these depths. Worse even than these possibilities of violence, however, so far as every-day life was concerned, was the strain of obstinacy which belonged to the Thorpe temper. A sort of passive mulishness it was, impervious to argument, immovable under the most sympathetic pressure, which particularly tried the Dabney patience. It seemed to Julia now, as she interposed her soothing influence between these ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... moment those delicate fibers of the brain which respond to acute pain or pleasure, in which lies the power of exquisite sensation, and had seared them quite away. It is a painful thing to watch the light die out of the eyes of those Norsemen, leaving an expression of impenetrable sadness, quite passive, quite hopeless, a shadow that is never lifted. With some this change comes almost at once, in the first bitterness of homesickness, with others it comes more slowly, according to the time it takes each ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... fast when you take into consideration that a spermatozooen is only 1/300 of an inch long. Many of the spermatozoa, weaker than the others, perish on the way, and only a few continue the journey up through the uterus to the tube. When near the little ovum, which remains passive, their movements become more and more rapid, they seem to be attracted to it as if by a magnet, and finally one spermatozooen—just one—the one that happens to be the strongest or the nearest, makes a ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he would be 'Gormed' if he didn't cut and run for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... he stood still, and pulling the donkey's rein, caused him to stand still also. The beast required very little persuasion to be so guided, and obligingly remained meekly passive. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. During the progress of these events, the states which formed the Confederacy of Delos, with the exception of Chios, Lesbos, and Samos, had gradually become, instead of the active allies of Athens, her disarmed and passive tributaries. Even the custody of the fund had been transferred from Delos to Athens. The purpose for which the confederacy had been originally organised disappeared with the Persian peace; yet what ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... 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 ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... struggles as a Reformer. For this communion with God he never thought it necessary, as the mystics maintained, to renounce one's personality and retire altogether from the world and things temporal: a purely passive attitude towards God, and a blessedness consisting in such an attitude, was not his highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, he held, should only be destroyed so far as it resists the will of God, and dares to assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... its lowest and most brutal form, and man respected nothing but force, the disabled member of society, if man, was disposed of by stab or blow; if woman, and valuable as breeder of fresh fighters, simply reduced to slavery and passive obedience. Marriage in any modern sense was unknown. A large proportion of female infants were killed at birth. Battle, with its recurring periods of flight or victory, made it essential that every tribe should free itself ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell |
