"Passively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some real joy. To think that she used to plan, cold-bloodedly, when Billy was little, all she would do if only Martin should happen to die! The memory of it smote her as with a blow. She looked down at the powerful hand lying so passively, almost, she would have said, contentedly, in her own. How she had yearned for the comfort of it when her children were born. She wondered if Martin realized her touch, if it helped a little. If it ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... completely exhausted to struggle further, or whether it instinctively understood that I meant well by it, I cannot say, but the fact remains that from the moment it felt itself in my grasp it ceased to struggle and, when it was completely freed from the web, lay quite passively in my arms. I carried it to where Billy still stood awaiting my return and, showing it ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... industry, temperance, good temper, and so forth, is the express intention of being industrious, temperate, and gentle, and regulating one's actions accordingly. But the inward principle exercised by a routine of irksome restraints, submitted to passively on no other grounds but the laws of authority, or the influence of fashion, or imposed merely as the necessary condition of childhood, may be only that of yielding to present impression. He who, in youth, yields passively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... seemed beyond the frontiers, and in August 1912 began collecting troops in Thrace, ostensibly for manoeuvres. During the month of September the patience of the four Governments of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, which had for years with the utmost self-control been passively watching the awful sufferings of their compatriots under Turkish misrule, gradually became exhausted. On September 28 the four Balkan Governments informed Russia that the Balkan League was an accomplished ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... when the old woman went away, grateful when the darkness deepened. When it was quite night, she thought, she would break open the wooden screen and fling herself through the wood into the sands. She lay there passively waiting; her heavy eyes closed, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... from physics, collect together all the particulars actively at a given place, or all the particulars passively at a given place. In our own case, the one group is our body (or our brain), while the other is our mind, in so far as it consists of perceptions. In the case of the photographic plate, the first group is the plate as dealt with by physics, the second the aspect of the heavens which ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... forced along against his will. Every limb was in resistance; his feet were planted widely yet firmly upon the pavement; one of his arms was stretched out as if to lay hold on anything that should come within reach. M. le Cure resisted passively; but Jacques resisted with passion, laying his back to the wind, and struggling not to be carried away. Notwithstanding his resistance, however, this rough figure was driven along slowly, struggling at every step. He ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil while the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, and thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The inevitable and invincible desire ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... passively in the saddle while Rabbit headed straight for the spring. The bit of white curtain at the one small, square window facing that way troubled Starr, though it could not turn him ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... said Ephraim, passively. "The poor Jew will wait still longer; he will give to the prince royal the gold which he needs, and of which the poor Jew still has a little. I humbly ask your highness if you would not like to borrow another thousand, which I will gladly ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... those he employed in commanding his regiment. He was not able to rise above this; and under him martial law was practically, if not nominally, the form of the colony's government. Paterson, his successor, passively carried on until the arrival of Hunter the same lines as his predecessor; and the consequence was, the colony existed for the benefit of the officers of the regiment, who, by huckstering in stores, were rapidly acquiring fortunes. A few free settlers had already arrived ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... an impulse to unmask, proclaim himself, and compel the respect that was his due. But to do so might be to expose himself to the very danger of whose presence he was now convinced. His only hope must lie in allowing himself to be borne passively along until a chance opening allowed him ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... resistance or protest would be useless, Ridge passively allowed himself to be led away. A file of soldiers stood outside, and, surrounded by these, he was marched to the guardhouse, where, after being searched and relieved of everything contained by his pockets, he was led into ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... substantially so fearful, that was constantly proceeding in a quiet and religious parsonage—the bare possibility that sufferings so durable in their effects should be sweeping with their eternal storms a heart so capacious and so passively unresisting—are calculated to startle and to oppress us with the sense of a fate long prepared, vested in the very seeds of constitution and character; temperament and the effects of early experience combining to thwart all the morning promise of greatness and splendour; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... He stood her kisses passively, but gave none in return, until she asked him to kiss her. "When you are my wife," he said, evasively. And then—she must have loved him—she burst out into passionate sobs and fell at his feet in the quiet cabin and told him of her debased life in Fiji. "But, as God hears me, Will, that is all past ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... building, a parsonage, and a fund for the support of preaching among them at Hilbrook to the small body of believers to which his people adhered. This sect had a name by which it was officially known to itself; but, like the Shakers, the Quakers, the Moravians, it early received a nickname, which it passively adopted, and even among its own members the body was rarely spoken of or thought of except ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... out; one of them seizing the drunken gunner, and, in the brief struggle which ensued, I saw the two women run away, while their assailant held on to one of the white-clothed men, and, steadying himself, began striking him savagely, while the syce made no resistance, but passively received ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... watch the effect of what he had said upon the girl. She turned deadly pale, and seemed about to sink upon the floor. Spikeman took her hand, which she no longer withdrew, but yielded passively, as if in a state of stupefaction, and pressing it within his own, led her to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... cause it to cling to peace, like the sluggard to his pillow, at the expense of every valuable duty and consideration. Such supineness ensures the very evil from which it shrinks. One right yielded up produces the usurpation of a second; one encroachment passively suffered makes way for another; and the nation which thus, through a doting love of peace, has sacrificed honor and interest, will at length have to fight ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... his sympathy for perception of her train of thought, "Well, I'll never try to be high-strung again. But shouldn't you have thought, dearest, that I might expect to be high-strung with success at Niagara if anywhere?" She passively followed him into the long, queer, downward-sloping edifice on the border of the grove, unflinchingly mounted the car that stood ready, and descended the incline. Emerging into the light again, she found herself at the foot of the fall by whose top she had just stood. At first she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... returned to the house, and left the peasants outside, loudly murmuring. Hitherto they had passively obeyed their leaders. They had gone from one scene of action to another. They had taken towns and conquered armies, and abstained not only from slaughter, but even from plunder, at the mere request of those whom they had selected as their own Generals; now, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... reasonable prospect of a happy new year. There still remained a roof—of a sort—to cover him when he went home, which was not so often as it should be, and he still wore a suit of decent cut, though of a past fashion, but in its pockets there was no jingle of coins. Passively Paul had been drawn into the maelstrom of the marching crowds, yet he was not of its membership. He could not turn in at any of the doors that blazed with light and invitation. But he had certain dreams which vaguely recompensed him—and in his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... he was not in a state to analyse the origins of his weakness. He meant to take up his hat and depart with as few words as possible, but Miss Haldin's swift movement to shut the door took him by surprise. He half turned after her, but without raising his eyes, passively, just as a feather might stir in the disturbed air. The next moment she was back in the place she had started from, with another half-turn on his part, so that they came again into the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... less-crude knowledge of to-day. The contest, indeed, as presented in history, is simply the measure of the difficulty which men find in exchanging old views for new ones. All along, the practical question has been, whether we should passively acquiesce in the crude generalizations of our ancestors or venture actively to revise them. But as for the religious sentiment, the perennial struggle in which it has been engaged has not been with scientific inquiry, but with the selfish propensities whose tendency is to make ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... and without uttering a word, passively and silently placed herself on her brother's chair—he having, at the same time, taken ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... as Harry was convalescent, discussed this vehemently with him. Harry, weak with illness, took it passively. He was destined for the Navy. To him already the sea meant everything: as a child of three, on his voyage home in the Mogul East Indiaman, he had caught the infection of it; on it, as offering the only career fit for a grown man, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... successful column commander has done, allowed his ox-waggons to march on ahead of his more mobile transport, in order not to delay the progress of the column. What chance of success lies with the officer content to passively hug ox-waggons instead of pressing on against his mobile foe? None: yet half the column commanders have been content to parade the country as escort to drays packed with merchandise. When a man has been found enterprising enough to leave his ox-transport under escort, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... country and influence of Maso, and they loudly called upon him, for the love of God! to come and enforce their requests. But the mariner was occupied on the forecastle, lowering one anchor after another into the water, passively assisted by the people of the bark, who wondered at a precaution so useless, since no rope could reach the bottom, even while they did not dare deny his orders. Something was now said of the curse that had alighted on the vessel, in consequence of its patron's intention to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... to get into the carriage with them, and they drove away. Mr. Ridley did not stir nor speak, but sat with his head bent down until they arrived at their destination. He left the carriage and went in passively. As they entered a large and pleasant reception-room a gentleman stepped forward, and taking Mr. Elliott by the hand, called him by name in ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... other hand, the men of Abou Saood might refuse to enlist in government service. Already they had been rendered passively hostile by the influence of Abou Saood. They had secretly encouraged the Baris in their war against the government; they might repeat this conduct, and incite the tribes ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... felt it would be useless to endeavour to explain or to expostulate; he spoke not, but was passively hurried to a carriage in which he was borne to the metropolis as fast as four horses could carry him, without rest or refreshment. Of course, after a minute examination, he was declared innocent, and was released; but justice smiled too late, the bloom of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... a pitch-dark night; nothing broke the blackness save the scattered points of light from the sentries' lanterns. Stepping to the side of the half-garroted Maratha, who was leaning passively against the shed, the sinewy hand of the Gujarati still pressing upon his windpipe, Desmond thrust a gag into his mouth and with quick deft movements bound his hands. Now he had cause to thank the destiny that had made him Bulger's shipmate; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... which left welts like ribbons on her young shoulders, the girl was unable to endure more passively, and struggled to free herself. The partially successful opposition infuriated the man. He was not accustomed to defence. His fury knew no restraint. He rained the blows harder than ever and the girl finally caught the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... his quiet conscience, Bonaparte was not willing to meet his fate passively and silently, and, perchance, it seemed to him that it was "not enough to be innocent," so as to be saved from the guillotine. He therefore addressed a protest to both representatives of the people who ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... made no reply; but as he passively followed his conductress to the chambers, Ruth fancied she read assurance of his faith, in the expression of his eloquent eye. At the same moment, her husband and Submission left the house, to take their ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... tea-chest, and, finding it locked, poured out some coffee, which he drank almost unconsciously, then gave his cup for more, sighed, pushed his hair back, and looked up somewhat revived. John tended him affectionately, persuading him to take food; and when he had passively allowed his plate to be filled, his appetite discovered that he had tasted nothing since yesterday morning, and therewith his spirits were refreshed; he looked up cheerfully, and there was less despondency ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slowly, how regularly or irregularly they change. Nor do we know how far a determinant must be strengthened by the passive flow of the nutritive stream if it is to be beyond the danger of unfavourable variations, or how far it must be weakened passively before it loses the power of recovering itself by its own strength. It is no more possible to bring forward actual proofs in this case than it was in regard to the selection-value of the initial stages of an adaptation. But if ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... believe that in such a sequence there is nothing more than an image associated with an act? In point of fact, the patient has appropriated and assimilated the idea of the experimenter. She does not passively execute a strange order, but the order has passed in her consciousness from passive to active. We can go so far as to say that the patient has the will to steal. This state is complex and obscure, hitherto no one has explained it. * * * The facts of paralysis by suggestion completely ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... pencil. 'Sit down here while I give you an examination; that is my business,' he said. 'My lord has commissioned me to do this work.' Something inside me told me that here was an enemy; but he spoke with such a show of authority that I passively sat down. And ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... half-ruined house in the Rue des Pipots—Mme. la Marquise, M. le Vicomte and I—just think of that, monsieur! M. le Marquis had his chateau, as no doubt you know, on the outskirts of Lyons. A loyal high-born gentleman; was it likely, I ask you, that he would submit passively to the rule of those execrable revolutionaries who had murdered their King, outraged their Queen and Royal family, and, God help them! had already perpetrated every crime and every abomination for which of a truth there could be no pardon either on earth or in ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... alone on the scaffold, lost in prayer. There was a horrible minute of the struggles between life and death, when the body, so late the tenement of an immortal spirit, hung, like one of the jewel-blocks of the ship, dangling passively at the end of the spar, as insensible as the wood ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... He lay quite passively in the grasp of someone who held him fast, and learned, by breathing quietly, that the presence of the muffler about his nose and mouth did not greatly inconvenience him. There was some desultory conversation between the two men in the car, but it was ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... set sights in order that you might reply satisfactorily to the cloud of interviewers awaiting you outside the Garden? Or would you simply throw yourself down on the grass wherever the angel happened to leave you, and try to see or to realize or to recall nothing, but passively permit your soul to feel and experience and grow what way it would, prompted by the inner voice and guided by the inner light, heedless of what the interviewers were expecting and of what duty and obligation and the unique opportunity ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... idea occurred to him, a bright one, and not inconsistent with a true artist's character—he would decline to act in so doubtful a case. He would float passively down the tide of events—he would neither desert her, nor disobey his mother; he would take everything as it came, and to begin, as he was there, he would for the present say nothing but what he felt, and what he felt ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... all the rest of the house put together, for during our waking hours; we are moving about and constantly changing our location; but during sleep, when life is in abeyance to a certain extent, the system has passively to receive and be supported by whatever pure air the bedroom happens to possess. If, as too often is the case, that chamber is looked upon as a sort of cupboard, where, amongst other things, there is room for ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... protectress than the protected to the helpless dead. He could not gain from her any more satisfactory information than the landlady had already imparted, as to her friends and prospects; but she permitted him passively to look among the effects her father had left, save only that, if his hand touched something that seemed to her associations especially holy, she waved him back, or drew it quickly away. There were many bills receipted in the name of Captain Digby, old yellow faded music-scores for ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... few are cool. Their effect is negligible in the disorder of the mass; it is lost in numbers. It follows that we above all need a method of combat, sanely thought out in advance. It must be based on the fact that we are not passively obedient instruments, but very nervous and restless people, who wish to finish things quickly and to know in advance where we are going. It must be based on the fact that we are very proud people, but people who would all ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the false position from which neither the Salvation Army nor the Church of England nor any other religious organization whatever can escape except through a reconstitution of society. Nor can they merely endure the State passively, washing their hands of its sins. The State is constantly forcing the consciences of men by violence and cruelty. Not content with exacting money from us for the maintenance of its soldiers and policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... continued—though none of us would have said anything like that—"but unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well corroborated, as you will find you must admit." Jode's voice was almost threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers; I caught the fleeting sound of words like "meniscus" and "terrestrial minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some calculation. At last I heard something ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... was not making for myself a Church by an effort of thought; I needed not to make an act of faith in her; I had not painfully to force myself into a position, but my mind fell back upon itself in relaxation and in peace, and I gazed at her almost passively as a great objective fact. I looked at her;—at her rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts; and I said, "This is a religion;" and then, when I looked back upon the poor Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so hard, and upon ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... under the control of those of stronger wills, so as to realize the thoughts, and even sensations of the operator, feeling what he feels, tasting what he tastes, apparently more familiar with his body than their own, and passively subject to his will. They are said to be en rapport with him, and with no one else. In this condition his will is substituted for their own, which is entirely passive, and he is able to fix impressions on their minds and produce changes in their feelings and sentiments ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... he interpreted it as a request on the part of his captor that he should remain silent, and to this Mr. Blowter in a blue funk passively agreed. Three men caught him and bound him deftly with native rope, a gag was put into his mouth, and he was dragged cautiously through a hole which the intruders had cut in the walls of Notiki's dwelling of honour. Outside the hut door was a Houssa sentry and it must be confessed that ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... depend on sailing, then to run on shore at the point, and every one to shift for himself among the negroes; or failing these, to board, and blow up together, for he saw that the greatest part of his men were drunk, passively courageous, and ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could not stay in that house alone, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... necessary. If I tell the hypnotized person that he cannot speak and he absorbs this proposition, with that completeness in which he accepts it as a fact, not speaking itself unavoidably results. The motor ideas with which the speech movement has to start are cut off and the subject yields passively to the fate that he cannot intonate his voice. Thus a special influence on the will is in no way involved. If the idea is accepted, and that means, if the preparatory setting for the action has been completed, the ideas of opposite activity must remain ineffective; the suggested ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... but is very wasteful. The worst use that you can put a man to is to burn him, and a living witness may do more for Christ than a dead martyr. Christian heroism may be shown in not being afraid to flee quite as much as in courting, or passively awaiting, danger. And Christ's Name will be spread when His lovers are hounded from one city to another, just as it was when 'they that were scattered abroad, went everywhere, preaching the word.' When the brands are kicked apart by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Hammatt Billings, the ugliest granite canopy imaginable—in which canopy, to complete the grisly atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless the old rock now lies passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny, relate the facts substantially as ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... floor. She often began to feed herself when urged, but would not finish, and had to be spoon-fed, as a rule. She was never tube-fed. She was often quite stiff and showed marked resistance. This was manifested either when passive motions were tried, at which times she usually resisted passively, i.e., she became more tense; or when there broke through a more active aggression and she would strike. Above all, the opposition showed itself towards the nurses' attention; in this she also showed either a passive, aimless opposition and stiffness, or a more active one; but even ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... kingdoms of the earth, to one in that situation, became but so many wards of the same infinite prison. Flight, if it were even successful for the moment, did but a little retard his inevitable doom. And so evident was this, that hardly in one instance did the fallen prince attempt to fly; but passively met the death which was inevitable, in the very spot where ruin had overtaken him. Neither was it possible even for a merciful conqueror to show mercy; for, in the presence of an army so mercenary and factious, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... are gradually developed after the period of activity begins, when the mother leads them out, and they play with her and Avith each other. In the bat the instincts must ripen to perfection without exercise or training, and while the animal exists as passively as a ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of the world shows that the vast majority in every generation passively accept the conditions into which they are born, while those who demand larger liberties are ever a small, ostracised minority whose claims are ridiculed and ignored. From our stand-point we honor the Chinese women who claim the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... that the nation MUST do this as must the individual. Some one might say to me, 'I honestly think I should take off your right arm.' I would not permit it if I could help it. No more can a nation submit passively to dismemberment. The South did not expect that this nation would do so. It promptly prepared for war. If the North had said, 'We can do nothing, there's a blank, write out your terms and we'll sign,' we would have been more thoroughly despised than we were, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... edge of the mangrove swamp, and is reached by a sort of causeway of turf. When we drew near, we saw the gates standing open and a prodigious crowd outside—I mean prodigious for Apia, perhaps a hundred and fifty people. The two sentries at the gate stood to arms passively, and there seemed to be a continuous circulation inside and out. The captain came to meet us; our boy, who had been sent ahead was there to take the horses; and we passed inside the court which was full of food, and rang continuously to the voice of the caller of gifts; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moment the hooker became a wreck. The Matutina was irrevocably disabled. The vessel, just before in full sail, and almost formidable in her speed, was now helpless. All her evolutions were uncertain and executed at random. She yielded passively and like a log to the capricious fury of the waves. That in a few minutes there should be in place of an eagle a useless cripple, such a transformation is to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... was so far away that he could see only a dim, green blur below him, but just above and quite close was the sun. Tarzan reached out his hands and warmed them, for they were very cold. Then a sudden madness seized him. Where was the bird taking him? Was he to submit thus passively to a feathered creature however enormous? Was he, Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter, to die without striking a blow in his ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with sufficient vigor and wisdom to attract the observation of his great neighbors, the governments of England and Russia. He had shown rare skill in adapting circumstances to suit his own ends. The people passively accepted the authority which he was prepared to assert with his Khokandian soldiery, and the independent state of Kashgaria might have continued to exist for a longer period had the Chinese not returned. But in 1875 the arrival of Kinshun at Barkul showed Yakoob Beg that ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... must have, if he holds his grief fast tied to his heartstrings. But as grief must be fed with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the mind so busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of that ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to end in putting all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... purchases made by the tourists in Luxor were fly brushes made of palm fiber or of white horsehair with wooden handles and loops to attach them to the wrist. It was amusing to see English, German, and American tourists switching at the flies with their horsetail brushes while the natives passively endured the crawling insects. Egyptian mothers in the village permitted the flies to creep over the babies' faces and settle in clusters around their eyes without attempting to drive the tormentors away, either too lazy to do so or desirous that the babies should become hardened to the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... disappointment she became so forlorn, so passively desperate, that my heart almost burst at ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... sent word to him by the waiter to order a consommation and once, at some length, when we departed. On these occasions the effect was almost emotionally illuminating, so inexpressive was the ordinary cast of his features. A strange lad; I like to think of him always sitting there, passively, playing the accordion and shaking his sleigh-bells. He suggested a static picture, a thing of always, but I know it is not so, for even the next summer he had disappeared along with the bal and now he may have been shot in the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... me passively enough, and he did not speak until we had struck into the main trail of the Shawnees. Then ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... carried away. The little Tirzah, in her home attire, stupefied with fear, went passively with her keepers. Judah gave each of them a last look, and covered his face with his hands, as if to possess himself of the scene fadelessly. He may have shed tears, though no one ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the little trifle of eighteen hundred dollars a year more than we could possibly pay rendered the place undesirable. But a moment later I realized how little I knew her. When we got to the kitchen she remarked, passively, there was no morning sun in the windows. As the apartment faced east, and there was morning sun in the parlor, this condition seemed more or less normal, as the janitor meekly pointed out. But the Little Woman declared she would never live in another ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... this energy or fixedness; but it must be still more attentively considered here, as it shows itself throughout the whole structure and decoration of Gothic work. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the building. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... concentrated, until it had taken the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer. Now his mother's letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself over unsolved questions, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. Anyway he must decide ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... first clever bit of colloidal ooze, protoplasm as the ameba, protruded a bit of itself as a pseudopod, it achieved a new freedom. For, accidentally or deliberately, it created for itself a new power—the ability to go directly for food in its environment, instead of waiting, patiently, passively, as the plant does, for food to just happen along. Therewith developed in place of the previous quietist pacifist, quaker attitude toward its surroundings, a new religion, a new ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... appeared the most painful remedy that could be adopted by a heart fascinated with his accomplishments, and soothed by his professions of inviolable attachment. She was aware that, in the eye of the world, the reputation of the wife is supposed unsullied, while the husband, enduring passively his dishonour, gives to her the sanction of his protection. The circles of fashion afforded more than one instance of this obliging acquiescence in matrimonial turpitude. Could Mrs. Robinson have reconciled it to her own feelings to remain under the roof of her husband, whose protection ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... band for an opening, but could find none. The enemy had apparently retired into a tightly closed shell of energy. The small vessel no longer struggled, nor even moved, but was merely resisting passively. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... behind it. I was beyond the reach of fear—I was in a way prepared for anything but the deep, heart-shaking horror that sank under the cold, damp touch of those fingers. They laid hold of my elbow firmly, lifting as if to indicate that I was to rise. I did so, moving forward passively as it drew me on. To my astonishment I was unable to hear my own footfall or that of my conductor. I thought we were walking upon soft earth. Crossing our path in front of me I could see, in the darkness, a gleaming line. We moved slowly, standing ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... passively, still keeping her hands before her face. But no sooner was she seated than she began to rock uneasily back and forth, moaning to herself, till suddenly the long-dried fount was opened up; the merciful blessing of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X—— I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself—the work of copying and translating business-letters—was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... efforts to check herself. But her spirit was temporarily quite broken. She stood passively with the tears running down her face while Avery hastily dressed her again and set her rumpled hair to rights. Then again for a few seconds they held each other ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... alive to the sharp truth, that of all griefs, a strong love unreturned or unfulfilled is the grief which most blights a woman's life. Say, rather, any human life; but it is worst to a woman, because she must necessarily endure passively. So enduring, it is very difficult to recognize the good hand of God therein. Why should He ordain longings, neither selfish nor unholy, which yet are never granted; tenderness which expends itself in vain; sacrifices which are wholly unheeded; and sufferings ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... to resist, he went every afternoon to the house where she lived. He went there as passively as if in a dream. He could never make out how he had attained the footing of intimacy in the Dunster mansion above the bay—whether on the ground of personal merit or as the pioneer of the vegetable silk industry. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... death of Luria: the last act throws light back on all, I hope. Observe only, that Luria would stand, if I have plied him effectually with adverse influences, in such a position as to render any other end impossible without the hurt to Florence which his religion is, to avoid inflicting—passively awaiting, for instance, the sentence and punishment to come at night, would as surely inflict it as taking part with her foes. His aim is to prevent the harm she will do herself by striking him, so he moves aside from the blow. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... I did not comprehend his meaning. He got the rope and threw its end over the big beam. Our old shepherd dog had been nosing the mow near us for rats. Amos caught the dog who, suspecting no harm, came passively to the rope's end. He tied the rope ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... shall rest, and for a few days, possibly weeks, it shall be passively receptive of just such influences as nature and circumstances chance to bring to it. Who knows but that I may gain a deeper insight into the hidden mysteries than if I were delving among the dusty ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... block or more Dennis was passively borne alone by the rushing mob. Suddenly a voice seemed to shout almost in his ear, "The north side is burning!" and he started as from a dream. The thought of Christine flashed upon him, perishing perhaps ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... like the idea of being left alone; it was gloomy, she said. But he assured her he would not be gone more than a quarter of an hour at the outside, and she passively assented. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... She drew him passively into her own bed-chamber; some minutes later the soldiers forced their way forward, and found him concealed in an inner place. His mother sank at his feet, and cried out that the crime was hers, since she ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... The 28th had been ordered, on the morning of Saturday, to occupy Telegraph Mountain,—an elevation in the rear of Cedar Mountain,—which was used for a Federal signal-post. Nobody having notified the 28th to return to camp, they remained on the mountain, passively witnessing the carnage, and came away in the night. But although my remark was jestingly said, the knot of soldiers who heard it were intensely excited. They spoke of taking me "off that hoss," and called me a New York "Snob," who "wanted his head punched." This irate feeling may be attributed ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the mantel struck seven and the half hour before Bessie appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my greeting. Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and then, with something of her own manner, she said hurriedly, "Don't think I got your note, Charlie, last night, or I wouldn't, indeed I wouldn't, have kept you waiting so long ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... don't, you see," Bernard replied politely. "Stop pulling those blinds about. Come over here." Laura came to him. "Kiss me," said Clowes, and she laid her cool lips on his cheek. Clowes received her kiss passively: even Laura, though she understood him pretty well, never was sure whether he made her kiss him because he liked it or because he thought she ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... subtlety he was already trying to measure by how much more he himself might now be in peril of fear; so rejoicing that he could, in another form, actively inspire that fear, and simultaneously quaking for the form in which he might passively know it. ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... a sensation a form of reaction means, then, that the sensation is not something done to the person, nor passively received by him from outside, but something that he himself does when aroused to this particular form of activity. What comes from outside and is received by the individual is the stimulus, and the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... I was certain from the very first it was not mere robbery. But at the time, I'm confident, I never reasoned about his motives or his actions in any way. I merely took in the scene, as it were, passively, in a great access of horror, which rendered me incapable of sense or thought or speech or motion. I saw the table, the box, the apparatus by its side, the murdered man on the floor, the pistol lying pointed with its muzzle towards his body, the pool of blood that soaked deep into the Turkey ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... urging me to proceed as rapidly as possible, lest another "Voyage to China," which it was reported a gentleman of high reputation was now composing, should come out, and preclude mine for ever. I cannot account for my folly: the power of habit is imperceptible to those who submit passively to its tyranny. From day to day I continued procrastinating and sighing, till at last the fatal news came that Sir George Staunton's History of the Embassy to China, in two volumes ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... voice of Zicci as Glyndon, pale, wan, and silent, returned passively the joyous greeting of Merton,—"Signor Inglese, I told your friend we should meet to-night; you see you have ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in Socialism which followed the astonishing success of the Labour Party at the polls. When Keir Hardie was chosen as leader of the party, it was recognised that Socialism was no longer the creed of a few fanatics, but a political force supported, actively or passively, by the great organisations of Labour throughout the country, able to fight, and sometimes to beat both the older parties. A new era in politics had begun. The Tories had been defeated before by Mr. Gladstone's unrivalled ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the framework of the ribs expands, the dome of the diaphragm, naturally, and as if voluntarily, descends and, at first, the walls of the abdomen extend or are pushed outward. The clavicle is slightly, one might say passively, raised and, finally, the lower part of the anterior abdominal wall is slightly drawn in, thus forming a support or foundation for the lungs and at the same time putting the abdominal muscles in position for participation in the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... conscious of it—for his gaze became fixed with a religious earnestness, which no look of mine could possibly divert or unfix. He solicited my wife to play on the guitar, but she declined, until requested by Mrs. Porterfield, when she took up the instrument passively, and sung to it one of those ordinary negro-songs which are now so shockingly popular. I was surprised at this, for I well knew that she heartily detested the taste and spirit in which such things were conceived. Under the tuition ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... retired passively enough, but when the Senora Rodriguez came with her morning coffee, the room was empty. There were no signs of a struggle, the silence had remained unbroken throughout the night, and the front door was ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... in my own room a sudden revelation startled me. Everyone knows what it is to have details come under the eye which the mind first interprets long after the eye ceases to rest upon them. The impressions are received passively; but they are registered, and can be calmly read whenever the mind is in activity. It was so now. I suddenly, as if now for the first time, saw that the addresses on Bourgonef's letters were written in a fluent, masterly hand, bold in character, and with a certain ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... to a man of mark, had been that of one of the poorest and meanest, even among the Christians. Any lawless act, any breach of constituted order was odious and intolerable to the Roman; he would not have been the man he was if he had looked on passively at an attack by the mob, in times of peace, on the life and property of a quiet and estimable citizen. This licentious man of pleasure, devoted to every enervating enjoyment, in battle, or whenever the need arose, was as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be seen from considering these facts that the fall of pressure is concomitant with rest, rather than with sleep. As, moreover, it has been determined on strong evidence that the cerebral vessels are not supplied with vasomotor nerves, and that the cerebral circulation passively follows every change in the arterial pressure, it becomes evident that sleep cannot be occasioned by any active change in the cerebral vessels. This conclusion is borne out by the fact that to produce in the dog a condition of coma like to sleep, it is necessary to reduce, by a very great amount, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... anything. I must leave you perfectly free." She rose from her chair, and they, both rose too from the sofa on which he had seated himself at Imogene's side. "I shall have to leave you, I'm afraid; my head aches still a little. Imogene!" She advanced toward the girl, who stood passively letting her come the whole distance. As if sensible of the rebuff expressed in this attitude, she halted a very little. Then she added, "I hope you will be very happy," and suddenly cast her arms round the girl, and stood long pressing ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... well-to-do farmers, with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow, folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held books—why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a few "good words" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension indeed, but with a simple faith in its ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... he had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All this tallied with the appearances as now presenting themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards with her head to the door; the servant, from her kneeling posture, had been incapable of rising, and had presented her head passively to blows; after which, the miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to expose her throat, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... day be horrified at the things they now believe of God. If they have not thought about them, but given themselves to obedience, they may not have done them much harm as yet; but they can make little progress in the knowledge of God, while, if but passively, holding evil things true of him. If, on the other hand, they do think about them, and find in them no obstruction, they must indeed be far from anything to be called a true knowledge of God. But there are those who find them a terrible obstruction, and yet imagine, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... He looked passively calm, heroically enduring, as we went past him. From his eyes came scintillations of a joy whose root is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... long breath, and moved closer. "I wish you'd let us get help," he said, wistfully. It all seemed so horribly brutal, their sitting around him like that, waiting passively for him to die. ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... will stimulate the womb to functional activity when it is passively congested and torpid. As to its elementary composition this oil closely resembles the spirit of turpentine; and when given in small well diluted doses as a tincture (made of the oil mixed with spirit of wine), such medicine does good service ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Tuppence obeyed passively. Her good sense told her that there was nothing else to do but accept the situation. If she shrieked for help there was very little chance of anyone hearing her, whereas there was probably quite a good chance ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... sat a large, dark-featured Spaniard, his hands crossed upon his bosom and his head inclined heavily forward, the attitude perfectly denoting deep sleep, even had not his cigar, which remained passively between his lips, ceased to give forth its blue smoke wreath. At a little distance from him sat a young girl, who, even by the uncertain light, I could perceive was possessed of all that delicacy of form and gracefulness of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... notion of causality, as Schwarz[1] shows, is essentially foreign to the man on the street. He is led mainly by the analogy of natural causality with that of human activity and passivity, e. g., the fire is active with regard to water, which simply must sizzle passively. This observation is indubitably correct and significant, but I think Schwarz wrong to have limited his description to ordinary people; it is true also of very complex natures. It is conceivable that external ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... his way into her hopeless and cruel existence she lived like a person liberated from a condemned cell by a natural cataclysm, a tempest, an earthquake; not absolutely terrified, because nothing can be worse than the eve of execution, but stunned, bewildered—abandoning herself passively. She did not want to make a sound, to move a limb. She hadn't the strength. What was the good? And deep down, almost unconsciously she was seduced by the feeling of being supported by this violence. A sensation she had never experienced ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... on far below the flood-tide wharf. Here the long landings of solid masonry, covered with deep water four months of the year, were lined with vessels. Between yard-arms hanging aslant and over decks, glimpses of the Nile might be caught. It rippled passively between its banks, for it was yet seven months before the first showing of the June rise. Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... imagined. Those who beheld it were too stunned to cry out, too overwhelmed with terror and horror to utter a word. They stood, or fell into chairs or upon the floor, trembling in every limb, with staring eyes and drooping jaws, passively awaiting their fate. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... survey the business of blood. There are three parties concerned, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the government: the Catholics advance upon the one hand; the Protestants upon the other; and the government, by whom all ought to be controlled, looks passively on." Alarmed at the position in which they had placed themselves, the agitators began somewhat to retrace their steps; or at least they adopted measures to secure peace. The Association on the 26th of September adopted these resolutions:—"1. That while we warmly congratulate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... court knew that he had revealed them. His position had become untenable. His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him with the delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish Florentine, who had passively authorized and actively profited by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to guard his face, and kept it raised; Von Wetten let his eyeglass fall, lifted it in his hand and held it there; only Herr Haase, preserving his formal attitude of obedient waiting, his large bland face inert, stood unmoved, passively watching this incident ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours, but passively allowed the hours to get through HIM. Where other men in his situation would have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept and rested his body. Where other men would have pondered anxiously ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... bodily to possess;—with whose breathing frame an infernal substance was incorporate and almost identified;—whose thoughts were sufferings, and his words involuntary blasphemies. Can we wonder that all this was not borne passively;—that its authors were hunted out, even, if needful, by their own charms;—that suspicion grew into conviction, and conviction demanded vengeance;—that it was deemed a duty to hold them up to public ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... he had given no sign of his emotion, even at the near approach of Donna Mercedes, and the hand which signed his name beneath her father's as the principal witness was as steady as if it held merely the sword in some deadly combat. He endured passively the affectionate greetings of the happy de Tobar, who was intoxicated at the assurance afforded by the betrothal of the coming realization of all his hopes. He sustained with firmness the confidence of the Viceroy and the admissions de Lara made to him in private, of his pleasure ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... impressions which descend from intellect. Hence, slays Proclus, it folds itself about the indivisibility of true intellect, conforms itself to all formless species, and becomes perfectly every thing, from which the dianoetic power and our indivisible reason consists. Hence too, it is all things passively which intellect is impassively, and on this account Aristotle calls it passive intellect. Under this subsist anger and desire, the former resembling a raging lion, and the latter a many-headed beast; and the whole is bounded by sense, which is nothing more than ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... lines and became absorbed, whilst Rene noiselessly busied himself in and out of the chamber. Presently he got up, book in hand, slowly walked to the north window, and passively gazed at the misty distance where rose the blue outline of the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... I should have abandoned without regret the Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not reflected that the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively connected with the most splendid and important revolutions which have changed the state of the world. The space of the lost provinces was immediately replenished with new colonies and rising kingdoms: the active virtues of peace and war deserted from the vanquished to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... muscle and sinew whose suppleness gives ease to the body, and so moulds and manipulates them that we lose the rigidity of our mechanism, and become plastic in his hands. He turns us upon our face, repeats the same process upon the back, and leaves us a little longer to lie there passively, glistening ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... together and went on, afraid now in a new way. It was not the fear that he should die passively from lack of food, but that he should be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted the last particle of the endeavor in him that made toward surviving. There were the wolves. Back and forth across the desolation drifted their ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... the natives. He maligned the Boers in even more forcible terms than the emissaries of the London Missionary Society, and openly favoured the Kaffirs, placing them on a higher pedestal than the Boers. The latter had succeeded in rescuing their cattle from the Kaffirs, but were forced to look on passively while the very same cattle, with the owner's brand marks plainly visible, were sold by public auction to defray the cost of the commando. It was useless to hope for justice from Englishmen. There was no security for life and property under the flag of a Government ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... common with all other nations they deem some form of religious worship indispensable, but, contrary to the usage of most, they are singularly indifferent as to what that particular form is to be; leaving it passively to be determined by the conjunction of circumstances, the accident of locality, and the influence of friends or worldly prospects of gain. Still, in the hands of the Christian missionary, they are by no means the plastic substance which such a description would suggest—capable of being moulded ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... fully made up his mind to go through with it. Just as the pirates gained the foot of the rocks, which hid us for a moment from their view, we bent over the sea and plunged down together, head foremost. Peterkin behaved like a hero. He floated passively between us like a log of wood, and we passed the tunnel and rose into the cave in a shorter space of time than I ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... saloons in Grosvenor Square—had passed away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median. Why visions so belying the gloomy and anxious thoughts that preceded them should visit the pillow of Randal Leslie, surpasses my philosophy to conjecture. He yielded, however, passively to their spell, and was startled to hear the clock strike eleven as he descended the stairs to breakfast. He was vexed at the lateness of the hour, for he had meant to have taken advantage of the unwonted softness of Egerton, and drawn therefrom ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the worst of fates, and should save me from the agony of losing her to such a man as Sir George had selected for Dorothy's husband? Is it not a sin to disobey the law of self-preservation actively or passively?" Answer these questions as you choose. As for myself, I say God bless Dorothy for lying. Perhaps I am in error. Perhaps I am not. I but tell you the story of Dorothy as it happened, and I am a poor hand at solving questions of right and wrong where a beautiful ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... there is not real national history here as elsewhere; but it is hard to disentangle from the puerile personalities of historians generally. Nevertheless, some brief attempt to reconstruct the main facts in the subsequent history of Sussex must still be undertaken. The part which Sussex bore passively in the actual Conquest is itself typical of the new relations. England was getting drawn into the general run of European civilisation, and the old isolation of Sussex was beginning to be broken ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... heard all patiently, or, at least, passively. He had disdained to vindicate his name otherwise than by his word; he had smiled at the accusations of sorcery, when applied merely to himself; but when the sublime art, which had been the study and passion of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... I replied, "these better things, surely, are not really 'open' to them, except so far as external circumstances are concerned. They are hampered in their choice by passions and desires, by that part of them which does not choose, but is passively carried away by alien attractions; and the course they actually adopt is the best they can choose, though they see a better which they would choose if they could. The choice is always of Good, but it may be diverted by passion to ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... fiery-metalled jades, are ever drawing. A younger brother best becomes arms, an elder the thanks for them. Every heat makes him a harvest, and discontents abroad are his sowers. He is actively his prince's, but passively his anger's servant. He is often a desirer of learning, which once arrived at, proves his strongest armour. He is a lover at all points, and a true defender of the faith of women. More wealth than makes him seem a handsome foe, lightly he covets not, less is below him. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in this way, plays a permanent role in the spiritual life of the individual. Now and then an impression passively received in the train of an accidental chain of ideas makes its way into the sphere of the personal consciousness as a mental image, whose novelty astounds us. In specific cases this image or illusion takes the form of a peculiar voice, a vision, or even a hallucination, whose origin ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... like her landlady, and the present scene made her coldly wrathful. She saw the probability of having another's troubles piled on the top of her own. She did not, in her mind, actively object, because she felt that she could not be more hopelessly miserable than she was; but she passively resented the imposition. Her reason told her that she ought to sympathize with this ageing, ugly, disagreeable, undignified woman; but her heart was reluctant; her heart did not want to know anything at all about Madame Foucault, nor to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... coming before him as the door-keepers of his court." But he was subservient, and had pleased the King by preaching the courtly doctrine that "subjects hold their liberties and their property at the will of the Sovereign whom they are bound in every extremity passively to obey."[6] Men like Fleming and other creatures of the throne, sanctioning the King's abundant claim to absolute power, were sure of judicial distinction; while it was only the force of public opinion which ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... English school, where she sat with hands folded through the long mornings, passively permitting the lessons to filter through her brain, and listening in smiling patience while the kind foreign ladies spoke incomprehensible things. Sometimes she helped pass the hours by watching the shadows of the dancing leaves outside; sometimes she told herself stories ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... of late in a little fool's paradise, why, she had made it for herself. She could not accuse him of having any other part in it than that of merely being there. If she went back a month, or three months, or almost a year, she saw herself either taking the initiative or, what was just as bad, passively submitting. Of course, her motive had been merely to help him in an impersonal sort of way. She had seen that he needed help, but she had not dreamed the reason for it. She had no warning that he had been deserted by her who should have helped him. She had no ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... from going over to some enemy or other. On the other hand, there was a tendency in the south for the many neighbouring states to amalgamate, and as this process took place close to the frontier of North China the northern states could not passively look on. During the "Later Han" period there were wars and risings, which continued in the time of the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... had passively endured the shame that Hamlin's crimes had brought upon her. They had been so unexpected that they had stunned her—they had been so miserably mean that she had not dared to ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hidden within—the few perfect lines, the phrase, the single word perhaps, to which he often works up mechanically through a poem, almost the whole of which may be tame enough. He who thought that in all creative work the larger part was given passively, to the recipient mind, who waited so dutifully upon the gift, to whom so large a measure was sometimes given, had his times also of desertion and relapse; and he has permitted the impress of these too to remain in his work. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... stirred, sorry for the very love of himself that he saw written in her face. He took her hand in his, and his touch filled her with an exquisite content; her hand lay in his neither lifelessly nor entirely passively, yet only lightly returning the light pressure of his fingers. To her the situation was the supreme moment of a life; to him it was passionless as the betrothal piece ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... seem to hear her, did not seem to notice, as she passively permitted herself to be seated in the chair, while Abijah poured out a glass of wine. Her face was pale and rigid, her eyes wide open, her expression one of horror rather ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could not stay in that house ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Beverleys would have us suppose, not only that the great body of the students are a licentious crew, acknowledging no discipline or restraints, but that the grave elders of the university, and those who wield the nominal authority of the place, passively resign the very shows of power, and connive at general excesses, even when they do not absolutely authorize them in their personal examples. Now, when such representations are made, to what standard of a just discipline is it that these writers would be understood as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... arms. They know not how to go about it, neither have they power to effect it if they did know. The thing is not within the compass of human practicability, for America is too extensive either to be fully conquered or passively defended. But she may be actively defended by defeating or making prisoners of the army that invades her. And this is the only system of defence that can be effectual ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... he was trying to control he seized hold of her hand and drew her on to his knee. She offered no resistance, but passively sat there, clasped against his broad shoulder, her face radiant with happiness at the load which his words had taken off ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... her brows portentously, and Mrs. Orton Beg was sure that she heard no note of the mellow chime which sounded once while she was so engaged, and seemed to her aunt to plead with her solemnly to cast her care on the great Power watching, and continue passively in the old worn grooves, as Mrs. Orton ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... pale and trembling, surrounded by the abbess and the nuns. The ceremony proceeded; the crown of flowers was taken from her head; she was shorn of her silken tresses, received the black veil, and went passively through the remainder of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... heart never heeding the need and the loneliness of his wife. Absorbed by other interests, he seemed to leave it to her whether she should continue to hope for the fulfillment of her longing, or like him, however young in years, passively give up all hope. She told him what wrong he was directly committing against himself and her, by renouncing what after all, as he well knew, the law of nature would not force her to forego for a long time to come. She left him no room for doubt, that she ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... curtain-falls. The exquisite close of the first act of The Admirable Crichton was merely dreamfully suggestive of the past and future of the action; and the second act ended pictorially, without a word. But whether a curtain-fall gains its effect actively or passively, it should, if possible, sum up the entire dramatic accomplishment of the act that it concludes and foreshadow the subsequent ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... orthodox way of teaching and learning this greatest and hardest of all the arts, in which ear, mouth, eye and hand must each in turn train the others to automatic perfection, in ways hard and easy, by devices old and new, mechanically and consciously, actively and passively ... this is a great gain and seems now secure. While a good pedagogic method is one of the most economic—both of labour and of money—of all inventions, we should never forget that the brightest children, and indeed most children, if taught individually or at home, need but very few refinements ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... I had never been thought easy to intimidate, but I quailed before this unapproachable ice-berg. It made no attempt from that moment to vindicate what I was pleased to call my rights, but awaited passively ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous |
