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passive
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  • The realization convinced me I couldn't be passive; I couldn't simply wait for the Germans to be defeated.†   (source)
  • Lydia had been an alert and appreciative audience to my grandmother's nearly constant comments, but Ethel was entirely unresponsive—efficient but uninspired, dutiful but passive.†   (source)
  • "I'm a passive person.†   (source)
  • She even tried to teach us the difference between active voice-"I snarfed the Oreos" and passive voice-"The Oreos got snarfed.†   (source)
  • I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.†   (source)
  • I think it's more the" he chews and swallows and Molly looks away, annoyed at his passive aggression—"appearance of it, y'know?"†   (source)
  • I stared blankly at her, as if completely failing to grasp what she was passive-aggressively implying.†   (source)
  • But he has the urge to be alone all of a sudden, to be thoroughly passive, to revisit the evening in solitude.†   (source)
  • "Aren't rhetorical accusations of passive aggression inherently passive-aggressive?" my dad responded, and they went on like that for a while.†   (source)
  • And, most of all, we become much too passive.†   (source)
  • "But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive.†   (source)
  • How can I stand here, passive and mute, leaving all the words to Peeta?†   (source)
  • He noted how passive the queen was trying to appear and had to keep himself from looking smug.†   (source)
  • And if I got into trouble by accident, I wouldn't dare just wait passively to be saved.†   (source)
  • She's too weak-willed and passive to suit me; she lets herself be swayed by others and always backs down under pressure.†   (source)
  • We don't want to be passive consumers, sitting at the end of a food chain and eating what we are served.†   (source)
  • HARRY looks up at the portrait of DUMBLEDORE, his face passive.†   (source)
  • Completely passive?†   (source)
  • For he still felt that the whole range of unhappy Stovington experiences had to be looked at with Jack Torrance in the passive mode.†   (source)
  • Where he was passive and introspective, I was always in motion and hated to be alone; while he placed a high value on education, school for me was like a social club with sports added in.†   (source)
  • Patient is functioning on a passive-aggressive personality, passive-dependent type.†   (source)
  • Their passive, silent, almost pleasant greeting made me uncomfortable, and the more I thought about their attitude, the more it concerned me.†   (source)
  • I was shy and passive and quiet, and only later did the anger come bursting out of me, roaring out of me with such blast-furnace force that I would wonder who that person was and where it all came from.†   (source)
  • The group followed the android down the stairs and into the night, their movement as tired and passive as a sigh.†   (source)
  • Angela was passively happy to be going to the dance, but not really interested in Eric.†   (source)
  • Passive, almost.†   (source)
  • While Columbia was relatively passive, Olaf was very aggressive.†   (source)
  • Here are two men, Didi and Gogo, who wish to find possibilities for change or improvement, yet they can only understand the road they wait beside passively, in terms of what it brings to them.†   (source)
  • For a moment, the couple watched as Mae maneuvered her way to their barge, curious about her, but passive, as if this was their living room and she their night's entertainment.†   (source)
  • Passive receivers of information.†   (source)
  • I have decided over the past few days that passive admiration may not be the best way to get a girl.†   (source)
  • The story occupied some recess of passive belief.†   (source)
  • …for instance, Mr Wilkinson, valet-butler to Mr John Campbell, with his well-known repertoire of impersonations of prominent gentlemen; Mr Davidson from Easterly House, whose passion in debating a point could at times be as alarming to a stranger as his simple kindness at all other times was endearing; Mr Herman, valet to Mr John Henry Peters, whose extreme views no one could listen to passively, but whose distinctive bellylaugh and Yorkshire charm made him impossible to dislike.†   (source)
  • The tall, thin master looked at me passively.†   (source)
  • Throughout the U.S. we find that the aging population (living on restricted and/or shrinking incomes in an inflation-prone world), along with reduced government support of education, conflicts with the needs of young people who live in a society that demands educational excellence even while promoting passive acceptance of mass-media culture.†   (source)
  • She's got me wondering, though, whether I naively bought into the idea that Nathaniel could get better with such a passive approach.†   (source)
  • He distrusted the sensual type, the ones who looked as if they could eat an alligator raw and tended to be the most passive in bed.†   (source)
  • While the other kids shuffled passively along as their escorts led them toward the dropship, it was clear Octavia was the one setting the pace.†   (source)
  • Paul stood passively as Kynes inspected the suit.†   (source)
  • Despite the fact that I wanted my features to remain passive, I know I must have been grinning widely.†   (source)
  • You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.†   (source)
  • In reproduction, woman is passive and receptive whilst man is active and productive; for the child inherits only the male characteristics, claimed Aristotle.†   (source)
  • This most masculine act of aggression becomes feminized in my language, "passive," and, I think, more accurately repellent when deprived of the male "glamour of shame" rape is (or once was) routinely given.†   (source)
  • Doctor Quinn's use of the passive slowed ray blood.†   (source)
  • Elsa had given me this book when I first got out of prison to show me, she said, that being passive and gentle could be revolutionary.†   (source)
  • Passive resistance, my hind foot ….†   (source)
  • I'm still on the board of directors of quite a large corporation, albeit in a passive role.†   (source)
  • Gradually we begin to tire of passively observing the TV screen from this side.†   (source)
  • But the constant motion of the flames soon lulled him into a passive state where unrelated fragments of thoughts, sounds, images, and emotions drifted through him like snowflakes falling from a calm winter's sky.†   (source)
  • But then they could no longer be passive.†   (source)
  • I was more passive, more unobtrusive; I did not ask for things, but instead let people tell me what to do.†   (source)
  • At the same time, he became strangely passive.†   (source)
  • He kept his face passive, easygoing, but his breath hitched in his throat.†   (source)
  • "Yes, I know," returned Johnnie passively.†   (source)
  • The candy had been treated with a tranquilizer, a drug strong enough to render the children docile and passive within a few minutes.†   (source)
  • Men who wrote about the Great Fire generally portrayed women as passive and helpless, waiting for their husbands, brothers, or some other man to save them.†   (source)
  • I had been down long enough to know that just waiting passively for the prison gods to give me a wonderful new bunkie was a losing strategy.†   (source)
  • Have the sonarmen listen on all passive systems.†   (source)
  • Mom settled for passive; she withdrew further intoher shell.†   (source)
  • There were so many factors to consider that he felt passive for a moment--an old feeling he knew well from his years of rangering.†   (source)
  • Youth bulges may well be particularly destabilizing in conservative Muslim countries, because women are largely passive and silent--amplifying the impact of young men.†   (source)
  • Not that she'll choose an abortion, but that she'll experience one, as if it's something that passively happens to her.†   (source)
  • I passively accepted a new road through the middle of the park, a steel-and-glass bank where a 200-year-old church had stood…and the fact that life seemed to get harder and faster with each day.†   (source)
  • He was quiet, passive, and noncompetitive.†   (source)
  • I thought myself so repulsed by the passive Oriental and the cruel white man.†   (source)
  • I thought myself then possessed of a passive mind, in a sense.†   (source)
  • The priest listened passively, with the bland expression of one who has heard it all before.†   (source)
  • They doted kittenishly on Nately and deferred passively to Aarfy, but they thought Yossarian was crazy and recoiled from him with distasteful contempt each time he made an indecent proposal or tried to fondle them when they passed on the stairs.†   (source)
  • When I look back, I think it was a miracle that Snow Flower survived those last two weeks in the mountains as she passively accepted beating after beating.†   (source)
  • Cedric sits passively tonight, keeping his distance.†   (source)
  • He didn't care whether his fellow-countrymen were good kickers or painters (none of the Czechs at the emigre gathering ever showed any interest in what Sabina painted); he cared whether they had opposed Communism actively or just passively, really and truly or just for appearances' sake, from the very beginning or just since emigration.†   (source)
  • 'This sounded so passive, so easy, although I knew it wasn't.†   (source)
  • He'd been a passive observer and a worthless assistant ever since Hema's arrival.†   (source)
  • Could salvation be not a passive acceptance, like I'd been led to believe, but an active pursuit?†   (source)
  • The people are fully aroused; if we fail to lead them into action, they will become passive, or they will become cynical.†   (source)
  • He submitted passively to the tests, examinations, questions.†   (source)
  • She wouldn't humiliate herself by struggling away now, but stood passive.†   (source)
  • Momma had hoped that the passing of time would make us more passive, more peaceful, but all it did was make us stronger so we could hit harder.†   (source)
  • Marie looked at her husband, his suddenly passive face outlined in the dim wash of the dashboard lights.†   (source)
  • "Firmness on our part, but passive firmness, is the true course," Jefferson cautioned after returning to Philadelphia.†   (source)
  • Though I knew my brothers were still exposed to Mother's lifestyle, I, like my father at the time, remained passive to the situation.†   (source)
  • How could I face a lifetime of passive waiting?†   (source)
  • Because Cooper's caught it in a Passive Fetter; you'll learn to make them by your Sixth Year.†   (source)
  • His opening arrays were different every time, yet all the same—conservative, defensive, passive.†   (source)
  • And Kennedy now understands he can no longer be a passive observer of the civil rights movement.†   (source)
  • Then she felt the wish to find a moment's joy outside, the wish to be held as a passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness.†   (source)
  • Media saturation may also provide what Dennis Baron called a "passive lingua franca."†   (source)
  • Before, I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion, but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience.†   (source)
  • He lay passively in the panting jaws.†   (source)
  • They'd probably form alliances, destroy our navigation, and confine us to PASSIVE COMMERCE.†   (source)
  • I could feel his heart beating as he pressed against me, as I stared up at the deer, the glass eyes so lifelike; the eyes were large and brown and passive, so unlike they really were at that last moment when paralyzed in fear, when Mr. Bo Poole raised his gun and fired, a shattering sound as the body collapsed in the silence of the trees.†   (source)
  • This man had become so intimate with gophers that he could charm them with sibilant whistles until they would emerge from their underground retreats and passively allow him to examine the hair on their backs.†   (source)
  • There had also been some passive resistance to the policy of the Overlords.†   (source)
  • It doesn't make you or your book any more attractive but at least it's possible to feel that you're more of a passive vessel for the poison rather than a willing—how would you describe it?†   (source)
  • Finally we spoke of Martin Luther King and his teaching of passive but unrelenting resistance.†   (source)
  • Between shows he merely went through the motions of living, waiting, almost passive.†   (source)
  • A little guilty, a little resentful, and more than a little bewildered, she waited passively for whatever might happen next.†   (source)
  • The Greenwood people had been instructed to keep me passive, were afraid of the law when I got loose and threatened them with it.†   (source)
  • The white students, who composed the large majority of the student body, for the most part reacted passively to the event.†   (source)
  • Indifferent to notice, indifferent to compassion or contempt, those faces were yet not vacant or passive or resigned.†   (source)
  • His prisoners were in the cellar, Millie gagged, full of bitchery and rage, Luke passive and despairing as himself, Nick silent as a snake, sunk into his mind.†   (source)
  • Leamas' passive role that evening enabled him once again to admire the unadorned efficiency of Peters' arrangements.†   (source)
  • They realized that passive acceptance of their plight would strengthen enemy morale.†   (source)
  • BERENGER is passive and limp; he spreads the proofs on the table, passes the manuscript to BOTARD; BOTARD sits down grumbling, whilst PAPILLON exits banging the door loudly.†   (source)
  • When she was still, there was a passivity about her, or a deception of passivity, that was not really passive at all.†   (source)
  • Yet it was a passive one, in some respects, for it depended on other people entirely.†   (source)
  • I could feel his anger as his mouth discovered my passive resistance.†   (source)
  • They react passively and stay in the background.†   (source)
  • Salander had taken charge, and passively he obeyed her instructions.†   (source)
  • But the mind does not just passively receive information from outside it.†   (source)
  • And whip or no whip, I wasn't going to stand passively and let her really hurt me.†   (source)
  • It does not just passively illuminate them.†   (source)
  • She sat passively on the floor, leaning against the wall.†   (source)
  • When Max had finished, Bob simply sat passively by and waited for more.†   (source)
  • Quite often she lay passively beneath them, not helping or hindering, until it was over.†   (source)
  • The park bench where Nadine sat passively, blood drying on her skin, a knife at her throat.†   (source)
  • She lay there passively, did not put up any resistance.†   (source)
  • I cannot rest passively with those who give up in the name of "human nature.†   (source)
  • This campaign was based on the principles of passive resistance.†   (source)
  • The dier passively succumbs.†   (source)
  • Passively, with no say, you ceased to be a creature of the mind and became a creature of the nerve endings; from college-educated man to wailing ape in five easy seconds.†   (source)
  • Passively she obeyed.†   (source)
  • So far it's still mostly a passive resistance, flights into the rural areas when they are possible and things like that, but it doesn't always have to be this passive.†   (source)
  • She lay passively looking up at the ceiling when the night nurse came in, said a polite hello, and asked how she was doing and whether she needed anything.†   (source)
  • When I pushed a bitencouraged him to tell me more about his wrongful conviction, suggested that Maggie might be able to use the information in court, asked him why he was willing to go along with an execution so passively if he wasn't guilty—he shut down.†   (source)
  • "Maybe I am now," I answer passively.†   (source)
  • At the ANC annual conference in Bloemfontein, the organization adopted the league's Program of Action, which called for boycotts, strikes, stay-at-homes, passive resistance, protest demonstrations, and other forms of mass action.†   (source)
  • Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelationshe was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.†   (source)
  • They perished within their despised clay tenements, in isolation, passively, or actively together, in mobs, thirsting and seeking for, and eventually reeking of blood.†   (source)
  • I asked, trying to keep my voice calm but frustrated that her husband was still using his fists against her, angry that she accepted it so passively, and hurt that she hadn't confided in me—again.†   (source)
  • And I remember how odd it seemed, to see grown men, men who fed pipe shop furnaces, who heaved around 200-pound sticks of pulpwood like firewood, lie like children in the preacher's arms, and go so passively under the water as the congregation silently mouthed the words "Praise God" and "Thank you, Jesus."†   (source)
  • Unable to understand what was being said — shouted in Chinese — the prisoner could only passively resist.†   (source)
  • Elmira obeyed passively.†   (source)
  • We explained that we thought the time had come for mass action along the lines of Gandhi's nonviolent protests in India and the 1946 passive resistance campaign, asserting that the ANC had become too docile in the face of oppression.†   (source)
  • The holy man sat passively at the table, his zealous eyes now gentler, observing the foolish activity, apparently neither condemning nor accepting but merely taking it all in with the compassion of a father watching errant yet precious children.†   (source)
  • That unpainted side changed passively with the day and the season, the way a natural place like the river bank changed.†   (source)
  • And so he now stood; without hope; passively waiting; wondering, as he stared across the moonlit valley, how and when the Spirit of Death would come to claim him.†   (source)
  • Why, that she didn't hold all the cards after all , that I had a certain passive hold over her.†   (source)
  • In risking their necks to sabotage their enemy, the men were no longer passive captives.†   (source)
  • He'd looked completely lost, and passive.†   (source)
  • Good thing your hawking mat has a passive transponder.†   (source)
  • The mind is not merely a passive receiver.†   (source)
  • For the mind of man is not just 'passive wax' which simply receives sensations from outside.†   (source)
  • Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and materialists would say.†   (source)
  • Lisbeth Salander is never passive, she thought.†   (source)
  • Passive, mild, middle-aged, ivory-towerish.†   (source)
  • The critical thing about Mavens, though, is that they aren't passive collectors of information.†   (source)
  • But hey, I'm sick and tired of playing passive.†   (source)
  • I saw nothing, just Kato being Kato—harmless and passive.†   (source)
  • It's too active for passive reflection, which is the soul of Confucius, as I'm sure you know.†   (source)
  • They stare at the walls, speechless, passive, won't even watch television.†   (source)
  • Our guest won't have anything useful to say until the effects of the passive fetter wear off.†   (source)
  • It was objected that this was merely passive energy absorption, not conversion.†   (source)
  • The passive systems he didn't want to think about.†   (source)
  • That's what many people mean when they say that television is passive.†   (source)
  • The passive demeanor has me totally creeped out, but I am not fooled by it.†   (source)
  • And the local citizens are not passive in their disdain.†   (source)
  • Thousands of Americans do not take so passive and tolerant a view.†   (source)
  • That's such an erroneously passive term.†   (source)
  • I looked about me, at their still, passive faces, those inscrutable smiles.†   (source)
  • Because she refused to take psychotropic drugs which made her listless and passive.†   (source)
  • The active sonar isn't too bad, but the passive stuft just isn't up to the drill, Skipper.†   (source)
  • Lambesis wasn't just a passive observer in this process, however.†   (source)
  • They take their emotions as a cause, and their mind as a passive effect.†   (source)
  • You do not hate the time you waste; it evokes a much more passive emotion than that.†   (source)
  • He searched for animals that seemed passive or in pain.†   (source)
  • And the idea of being passive is very attractive to many men, maybe to most men.†   (source)
  • But since I'm supposed to be Kaeleigh, I'll notch it back to something more like passive.†   (source)
  • Television is a passive way for people to communicate—they listen, they cannot participate.†   (source)
  • Kaeleigh, queen of passive, all the time saying no, but not strong enough to mean it.†   (source)
  • For me, hunger strikes were altogether too passive.†   (source)
  • What we want, we mean to get Speeches, logic, arguments or passive obedience won't save you now.†   (source)
  • The Dallas also had to remain invisible to her quarry's passive sonar systems.†   (source)
  • They sat at the backs of their cages, passive and blank faced.†   (source)
  • They did not make love, they were passive, they were acted on.†   (source)
  • She did not push him away, but she was completely passive.†   (source)
  • Instead, the expression on his lined face was passive, his sloped eyes distant.†   (source)
  • He's deep, and their passive sonars are not as good as ours.†   (source)
  • Behind him, silent, almost passive, stood the impostor.†   (source)
  • Using passive sonar was the normal routine in such a case.†   (source)
  • They were tracking the Forgers with passive systems only, in this case an infrared sensor.†   (source)
  • Enough that I can read passive," Sonar Chief Palmer said.†   (source)
  • The dome was used for both active and passive operations.†   (source)
  • Jones hesitated for a moment, still reading the reactor plant noise on his passive systems.†   (source)
  • Mine is the power of passive opposition.†   (source)
  • The children were subdued, passive, and exceedingly polite.†   (source)
  • No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges-absorbing but never creating.†   (source)
  • Miss Moody passed by and beamed in at them hovered around Easter's passive and mutinous form.†   (source)
  • But we do not consider that it is enough to be passive receptors of entertainment.†   (source)
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