"Passiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned, we are passive, but in the fact of the conscience we are not only agents, but it is by this alone that we know ourselves to be such—nay, that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and that we are patient (patientes), not, as in the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... art unhappy only because thou wilt be so. Thy mother enslaves thee, and thy passiveness meets only with hardships and abuse. Thy neighbors and acquaintance compassionate thee; all are scandalized at thy mother's treatment, and blame thee for not seeking a remedy for thy sorrows, when it is in thy power to do so. No moment more propitious than the present could offer itself to thee; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Ward was acquiescing in all Henry's projects with calm desperate passiveness. She told Mary that she had resolved that she would never again contend with Henry, but would let him do what he would with herself and her sisters. Nor had his tenderness during her illness been in vain; it had inspired reliance and affection, such as to give her ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quiet even to passiveness in all her dealings with Philip; he would have given not a little for some of the old bursts of impatience, the old pettishness, which, naughty as they were, had gone to form his idea of the former Sylvia. Once or twice he was almost vexed with her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Wordsworth said, in 1833, that "although he was known to the world only as a poet, he had given twelve hours' thought to the condition and prospects of society, for one to poetry." He did not retire into a "wise passiveness" as regards the world's affairs until he had written some of the greatest political literature—and, in saying this, I am thinking of his sonnets rather than of his political prose—that has appeared in England since the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... father's willingness to give her liberty excited her suspicions. She knew he would permit her to leave the Hall only that he might watch her, and, if possible, entrap her and John. Therefore, she rode out only with Madge and me, and sought no opportunity to see her lover. It may be that her passiveness was partly due to the fact that she knew her next meeting with John would mean farewell to Haddon Hall. She well knew she was void of resistance when in John's hands. And his letter had told her frankly what he would expect from her when next they should ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... As time progressed, the passiveness of Amanda encouraged in Lane his natural love of ruling. His household was his kingdom, and there his will must be the law. In his mind arose the conceit that, in every thing, his judgment was superior to that of his wife: even in the smaller matters ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... the Singhalese people there is to be traced much of the genius of their religion. The same passiveness and love of ease which restrain from active exertion in the labours of life, find a counterpart in the adjustment by which virtue is limited to abstinence, and worship to contemplation; with only so much of actual ceremonial as may render visible to the eye what would ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... he had ever thought he could say, would say. Then Rose's face shone out before his eyes, and his impulse of protection made him firm. He spoke abruptly. "Miss Lucy—" he began. Lucy cast her eyes down and waited, her whole attitude was that of utter passiveness and yielding. "Good Lord! She thinks I have come here at eight o'clock in the morning to propose!" Horace thought, with a sort of fury. But he did not speak again at once. He actually did not know how to begin, what to say. He did not, finally, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
