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tacit
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  • …I heard folks talk of the love/ hate relationship between blacks and Jews I understood it to the bone not because of any outside sociological study, but because of my own experience with Jewish teachers and classmates-some who were truly kind, genuine, and sensitive, others who could not hide their distaste for my black face— people I'd met during my own contacts with the Jewish world, which Mommy tacitly arranged by forcing every one of us to go to predominantly Jewish public schools.†   (source)
  • The Taliban moves around these mountains; only by the unspoken approval and tacit permission of the Pashtuns, who grant them food and shelter.†   (source)
  • Then whoever is persecuting them, and all those who tacitly support this persecution, would realize that to persecute them would mean persecuting at least 10 percent of the population—including their sons, daughters, neighbors and friends—even their own parents.†   (source)
  • I had a feeling that they were going to let me in, at least—even before I told Professor Christie about the one judge's "long time since we've had an Oregon country girl" comment, even before she hyperventilated because she was so convinced this was a tacit promise of admission.†   (source)
  • What had happened to our tacit agreement to advance smartly through the program without time-consuming and controversial delving?†   (source)
  • Mammachi knew this, but preferred to construe Margaret Kochamma's silence as a tacit acceptance of payment for the favors Mammachi imagined she bestowed on her son.†   (source)
  • Bribed police guards simply turned a blind eye at agreed times, and then whole columns of carts would drive through the ghetto gate right under their noses and with their tacit agreement, carrying food, expensive liquor, the most luxurious of delicacies, tobacco straight from Greece, French fancy goods and cosmetics.†   (source)
  • Tacitly they had agreed not to kill each other.†   (source)
  • In this relatively lucid period of Moody's troubled life his willingness to draw closer to Ellen and Hormoz was a' tacit acknowledgment that some or all of the trouble had resulted from his craziness.†   (source)
  • He had become chief minister of the KwaZulu homeland with the tacit support of the ANC, and even his launching of Inkatha as a Zulu cultural organization was unopposed by the organization.†   (source)
  • We tacitly agreed that severed heads really wouldn't go with the decor in our hotel rooms.†   (source)
  • I felt that I had navigated the situation with as much grace as I had available, and no hideous repercussions to my tacit rejection seemed forthcoming.†   (source)
  • After a few more moments, they both, by tacit agreement, went to the desk pushed against one wall.†   (source)
  • But no one dared to challenge Reb Saunders' tacit transference of power to his younger son.†   (source)
  • She also decided that since her brother and her client had not so far communicated with each other, the conspiracy—if it was one—had to be a tacit agreement that had developed naturally.†   (source)
  • Foreigners, when they come to trade with a nation, make themselves temporary citizens, and tacitly consent to be bound by the same laws.†   (source)
  • Miss Bradford dismounted and handed me the reins, tacitly assuming that I would stable the mare for her.†   (source)
  • There seemed some tacit and exploitable acknowledgment that it was wrong to have forced Grace to join this escapade.†   (source)
  • It would have involved telling him about Petra herself, and we had had a tacit understanding that the less he knew about us the less he would have to hide in case of trouble.†   (source)
  • It is said that in spite of speed regulations and in view of the frequent breakdowns of the ventilating system, it was the tacit custom of all engineers to go full speed while in the tunnel.†   (source)
  • Thus, sir, by paying a bill with the tax declared is a tacit admission by these men that they believed they were buying African bozales.†   (source)
  • Many of them reached a tacit consensus, which some voiced openly: Confederate soldiers had not fought for slavery; Union soldiers had not fought for its abolition.†   (source)
  • But beyond them were many tacit promises: to my family, my friends, my town, my country, my fellow soldiers.†   (source)
  • I tacitly denied the racist's contention, for he would not hesitate to use it against the Negroes in his conversations around town: "Why, I had one of them admit to me just last night that he craves white women.†   (source)
  • And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn, Oedipa remembered.†   (source)
  • Of tacit blackmail in me implied imperative?†   (source)
  • He would hint that it was they who had compromised his network; this seemed to be an obsession with him, and it was poor reward for attempts to console him, it made him bad company, so that those who had known and even tacitly liked him, wrote him off.†   (source)
  • All I've just told you is happening with the tacit consent of the Soviet Government, but not so openly that it would be wise to talk much about it.†   (source)
  • There was, it seemed, a tacit agreement that the Turner case should not be given undue publicity by gossip.†   (source)
  • Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn't jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with their behavior.   (source)
    tacit = implied or understood, but not expressed directly
  • Jack nodded, as much for the sake of agreeing as anything, and by tacit consent they left the shelter and went toward the bathing pool.   (source)
    tacit = unspoken
  • In the deep, tacit way in which feeling becomes stronger than thought, I had always felt that the Devon School came into existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and then blinked out like a candle the day I left.   (source)
    tacit = understood, but not said or thought directly
  • Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.   (source)
    tacitly = in an indirect manner
  • Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three super-states are very much the same.   (source)
    tacitly = understood, but not said directly
  • By tacit compact forged only of their flesh, they took no rest.†   (source)
  • The art of screening out potential crank calls was by no means a perfect science, but this caller had just passed the BBC's two tacit tests for authenticity of a phone source.†   (source)
  • He'd watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he'd sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people.†   (source)
  • Whereas a tacit consensus united Confederate soldiers in support of "southern institutions," including slavery, a bitter and explicit disagreement about emancipation divided northern soldiers.†   (source)
  • I had never held myself out to him as an authority in that area, and there had always been a tacit understanding between us that my methods of manipulating circumstance and identity were not open to discussion.†   (source)
  • " 'He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew,' " recited Bortz," 'Now recks no lord but the stiletto's Thorn,/And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn.'†   (source)
  • As they walked side by side, Peters and he, along the interminable corridors, through the cursory customs and immigration check, and still no familiar face turned to greet him, he realized that his anxiety had in reality been hope; hope that somehow his tacit decision to go on would be revoked by circumstance.†   (source)
  • But Gennaro ends on a note most desperate, probably for its original audience a real shock, because it names at last the name Angelo did not and Niccolo tried to: He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew Now recks no lord but the stiletto's Thorn, And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn.†   (source)
  • This is why the Day of the Dead this year was tacitly but willfully ignored.†   (source)
  • By tacit consent, they had adopted a plan of campaign.†   (source)
  • It was a secret he would never learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to keep him believing that his word was law.†   (source)
  • …the published psychoanalytical literature, the dream sources of the symbols are analyzed, as well as their latent meanings for the unconscious, and the effects of their operation upon the psyche; but the further fact that great teachers have employed them consciously as metaphors remains unregarded: the tacit assumption being that the great teachers of the past were neurotics (except, of course, a number of the Greeks and Romans) who mistook their uncriticized fantasies for revelation.†   (source)
  • At last the promise, apparently exacted by father, and tacitly accepted, that they were to live on with us after their marriage, an arrangement now incredible but then accepted, became intolerable; and she went up to father one night in his study; and told him so; and there was 'an explosion'.†   (source)
  • Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God's existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen His creatures serve Him at first hand, I had had my doubts.†   (source)
  • He had expected eagerness, a kind of tacit apology; or lacking that, an acquiescence that wanted only to be wooed.†   (source)
  • Ellsworth, however, was the ruler of the household, by a tacit, voluntary submission of both parents, though his father could never understand the cause of his own share in that submission.†   (source)
  • This language was the symbol of their profound identity with one another, for just as resignation was a word insufficient to describe the spiritual change that came over the Marquesa de Montemayor on that night in the inn at Cluxambuqua, so love is inadequate to describe the tacit almost ashamed oneness of these brothers.†   (source)
  • What relationship is it in which few words are exchanged, and those only about the details of food, clothing and occupation; in which the two persons have a curious reluctance even to glance at one another; and in which there is a tacit arrangement not to appear together in the city and to go on the same errand by different streets?†   (source)
  • The roundhouse was the racial boundary of the neighborhood, and it had been tacitly agreed between the white boys and the black boys that the whites were to keep to the far side of the roundhouse and we blacks were to keep to our side.†   (source)
  • He was satisfied with them both, but conveyed the fact to them only in a tacit way.†   (source)
  • Yet they may have a tacit sympathy with the workings of Nature which is denied to us of the town.†   (source)
  • By tacit agreement they ignored the remarks and insinuations of their acquaintances.†   (source)
  • As if by tacit agreement, neither of them ever mentioned the lecture again.†   (source)
  • Tacitly, she acquiesced in what he felt.†   (source)
  • By tacit consent they hardly once spoke of any incident of the past subsequent to their wedding-day.†   (source)
  • His attitude became one of good-humored subservience and tacit adoration.†   (source)
  • "Upon my word, she does it very well," he tacitly commented.†   (source)
  • It was as if they had tacitly agreed to take their different provinces.†   (source)
  • Wouldn't he see my four–month silence as a tacit acceptance of this situation?†   (source)
  • The amount was significant; it may tacitly have said to her that he bought her back again.†   (source)
  • She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that she accepted his offer.†   (source)
  • To his tacit engagement with Miss de Bourgh?†   (source)
  • His assent could only be tacit, for he had never been dazzled by his sister's intellectual lustre.†   (source)
  • A secret feud of some years' standing was thus healed, and with a tacit reconciliation.†   (source)
  • Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's tacit consent.†   (source)
  • He longed to assure himself of a tacit assent from her.†   (source)
  • Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's tacit consent.†   (source)
  • She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose.†   (source)
  • The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own.†   (source)
  • Scrutinizing them narrowly from the rear she noticed that Jude's hand sought Sue's as they stood, the two standing close together so as to conceal, as they supposed, this tacit expression of their mutual responsiveness.†   (source)
  • A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the attributes of romance.†   (source)
  • They seemed never before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband's kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-understood.†   (source)
  • But although he and the prince were intimate, in a sense, and although the latter had placed the Burdovsky affair in his hands-and this was not the only mark of confidence he had received—it seemed curious how many matters there were that were tacitly avoided in their conversations.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Welland agreed, as if allowing for an inherited oddity; and after that the question of Newland's unemployment was tacitly dropped.†   (source)
  • In their views as to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were entirely agreed, and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off the various shabby friends and relations who, with much show of affection, gushed into the drawing-room with its Japanese plates on the walls.†   (source)
  • SWANN IN LOVE To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under her patronage that year, and of whom she said "Really, it oughtn't to be allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!" left both Plante and Rubinstein 'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant…†   (source)
  • The other members of the class tacitly acknowledged their superiority, and never dreamed of trying to compete with them.†   (source)
  • Everybody does" It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to get work and pay her board.†   (source)
  • And being of warm blood he had not the phlegm tacitly to negative any proposition by unresponsive inaction.†   (source)
  • Leonora, she said, was always trying to deliver her over to Edward, and Edward tacitly and silently forced her back again.†   (source)
  • First it was schools, and Amory, alone from St. Regis', watched the crowds form and widen and form again; St. Paul's, Hill, Pomfret, eating at certain tacitly reserved tables in Commons, dressing in their own corners of the gymnasium, and drawing unconsciously about them a barrier of the slightly less important but socially ambitious to protect them from the friendly, rather puzzled high-school element.†   (source)
  • In the tacit agreement of husband and wife to keep their estrangement a secret they behaved as would have been ordinary.†   (source)
  • As it was, the situation stopped there in the only way it could; but I was left alone in my little hut, glowing warmly through and through with a pleasant satisfaction; and I knew that a tie, or a tacit something, existed between us which had not existed before.†   (source)
  • After that he no longer made love to her with his fiddle, but they would sit for hours in the kitchen, blissfully happy in each other's arms; it was the tacit convention of the family to know nothing of what was going on in that corner.†   (source)
  • No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness.†   (source)
  • If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship.†   (source)
  • It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity.†   (source)
  • So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who broke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this principle.†   (source)
  • They had not spoken to one another about the day's plan since yesterday morning, and even now walked on by tacit agreement.†   (source)
  • With the ensuing success and the promise of comparative stability that followed, Mrs. Speers had felt free to tacitly imply tonight: "You were brought up to work—not especially to marry.†   (source)
  • She allowed him to draw his own cheques, but there was hardly a cheque that she did not scrutinize—except for a private account of about five hundred a year which, tacitly, she allowed him to keep for expenditure on his mistress or mistresses.†   (source)
  • I don't mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement.†   (source)
  • And each person who passed offered her a special greeting that fully expressed what was so eloquently tacit in their general conduct—the young men turned to the mother and quickly, formally, lightly crossed their arms against their chests and bowed their heads with a smile; the maidens approached with just a hint of a curtsy, much like the fleeting genuflection with which visitors honor the high altar in a church, but then made sure to add several energetic, cheerful, cordial nods.†   (source)
  • Ever since the occurrence of the event which had cast such a shadow over Tess's life, the Durbeyfield family (whose descent was not credited) had been tacitly looked on as one which would have to go when their lease ended, if only in the interests of morality.†   (source)
  • Mr. Pontellier had been a rather courteous husband so long as he met a certain tacit submissiveness in his wife.†   (source)
  • …the centre of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May Archer's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and cousin.†   (source)
  • One or two of the men wandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others, noticing Selden's approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the ball-room.†   (source)
  • With that, crossing the deck he resumed his place by the sashed port-hole, tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision.†   (source)
  • A woman's standard of truthfulness was tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.†   (source)
  • She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.†   (source)
  • He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset's friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the tacit retractation of all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously delivered into her hands.†   (source)
  • The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary arm-chairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger man's philippic.†   (source)
  • The fiction of the cab had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a bench, he said: "Sit down a moment."†   (source)
  • Her careless allusion had no doubt been the straw held up to see which way the wind blew; the result had been reported to the family, and thereafter Archer had been tacitly omitted from their counsels.†   (source)
  • Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake.†   (source)
  • 'What makes you think that, sir?' demanded the collector, who seemed, by a tacit understanding, to have been chosen and elected mouthpiece to the company.†   (source)
  • Not that they are deeply interested in his fate; for if, by chance, their exertions are unavailing, they immediately forget the object of them, and return to their own business; but a sort of tacit and almost involuntary agreement has been passed between them, by which each one owes to the others a temporary support which he may claim for himself in turn.†   (source)
  • On the present occasion, he would have abstained from betraying a feverish haste by a too speedy return, since it would have contained a tacit admission that the time asked for was more than had been wanted; but, on the other hand, had the idea occurred to him, he would have quickened his movements a little, in order to avoid the dramatic appearance of returning at the precise instant set as the utmost limit of his absence.†   (source)
  • "Do you like peppermints, young sir?" required only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.†   (source)
  • But if a legal formality be required, which, however advantageous to the community, is of small importance to individuals, plaintiffs may be less easily found; and thus, by a tacit agreement, the laws may fall into disuse.†   (source)
  • Men began to pride themselves on having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree tacitly with those who regarded public office as a private perquisite.†   (source)
  • He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own; for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume the name of Churchill on coming of age.†   (source)
  • Doctrine it was necessary to preach, for nothing less would have satisfied the disputatious people who were his listeners, and who would have interpreted silence on his part into a tacit acknowledgment of the superficial nature of his creed.†   (source)
  • In fact, tacit expectations of what would be done for him by uncle Featherstone determined the angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch; and in his own consciousness, what uncle Featherstone would do for him in an emergency, or what he would do simply as an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable depth of aerial perspective.†   (source)
  • By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and he took her hand.†   (source)
  • By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates.†   (source)
  • With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.†   (source)
  • But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was a large reward offered for the THIEF, also; and it was offered secretly and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned—or at least tacitly admitted—in what was supposed to be safe circumstances, but may NOT have been.†   (source)
  • In tacit acknowledgment of the effect, the Roman spoke as an older man to a younger, not as a master to a slave.†   (source)
  • It was as if I had seen her admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me, by her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that little heart.†   (source)
  • Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still; but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury and leapt on my knees.†   (source)
  • As for Jasper Eau-douce, though he would gladly have endeavored to move a mountain to relieve Mabel, this was asking assistance it exceeded his power to give; and he shrank back with the shame that is only too apt to overcome the young and vigorous, when called on to perform an act that tacitly confesses their real weakness and dependence on a superior power.†   (source)
  • For four years he had thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient worship, as the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his father's home had never been; and it would be easy, when she was always near, to shake off those foolish habits that were no pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling vacancy.†   (source)
  • For it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby's part under which he remained in my office.†   (source)
  • Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.†   (source)
  • Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.†   (source)
  • The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company, Jan went on meditatively:— "And he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, Joseph?†   (source)
  • The maiden felt the tacit reproach conveyed in this covert question, and for a moment she remained in an embarrassed silence.†   (source)
  • Now, Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person, which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it.†   (source)
  • It was, indeed, only the relics and embers of the fight which continued to burn; for of the few knights who still continued in the lists, the greater part had, by tacit consent, forborne the conflict for some time, leaving it to be determined by the strife of the leaders.†   (source)
  • Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included.†   (source)
  • Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love and chivalry.†   (source)
  • They exchanged a few words and made no reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not to speak of it for a time.†   (source)
  • Has he not received a sort of tacit mandate to work persistently and assiduously for the welfare of those whose opinions he represents?†   (source)
  • As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these proceedings.†   (source)
  • What had she come for then, and why did she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention?†   (source)
  • Morrel hesitated for a moment; he feared it would be hypocritical to accost in a friendly manner the man whom he was tacitly opposing, but his oath and the gravity of the circumstances recurred to his memory; he struggled to conceal his emotion and bowed to Franz.†   (source)
  • Like washable beaver hats that improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted him.†   (source)
  • For such dealing with criminals, white or black, the South had no machinery, no adequate jails or reformatories; its police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a member of that police.†   (source)
  • ' "It is not my intention," ' he continued reading on, ' "to enter on a detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though it is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor nature, affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to which I have been a tacitly consenting party.†   (source)
  • But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in.†   (source)
  • Already there seemed a tacit understanding between them and the new driver, who had performed his part calmly, and with the confidence which always begets confidence.†   (source)
  • She said nothing, either tacitly or explicitly, and as she was never very talkative, there was now no especial eloquence in her reserve.†   (source)
  • Two rather ugly questions these, always going about town with Mr Merdle; and there was a tacit agreement that they must be stifled.†   (source)
  • Mr. Casaubon did not question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know what had passed between Lydgate and himself "She knows that I know," said the ever-restless voice within; but that increase of tacit knowledge only thrust further off any confidence between them.†   (source)
  • Can you seriously ask me, Harriet, whether I imagined him attached to another woman at the very time that I was—tacitly, if not openly— encouraging you to give way to your own feelings?†   (source)
  • Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them.†   (source)
  • The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.†   (source)
  • The baroness had looked forward to this marriage as a means of ridding her of a guardianship which, over a girl of Eugenie's character, could not fail to be rather a troublesome undertaking; for in the tacit relations which maintain the bond of family union, the mother, to maintain her ascendancy over her daughter, must never fail to be a model of wisdom and a type of perfection.†   (source)
  • In like manner does the republican government exist in America, without contention or opposition; without proofs and arguments, by a tacit agreement, a sort of consensus universalis.†   (source)
  • And as every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and silence—which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism—above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.†   (source)
  • Either his passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration.†   (source)
  • Between this eccentric personage and Clennam, a tacit understanding and accord had been always improving since Mr Pancks flew over Mr Rugg's back in the Marshalsea Yard.†   (source)
  • He therefore assented tacitly to the proposition which Mrs. Penniman had tacitly laid down, that it was of importance that the poor motherless girl should have a brilliant woman near her.†   (source)
  • If, intent upon the battle, he would but think of him, it would be proof of his opinion formed—proof that he had been tacitly promoted above his associates in misery—such proof as would justify hope.†   (source)
  • The central power, successively stripped of all its prerogatives, and reduced to impotence by tacit consent, would become incompetent to fulfil its purpose; and the second Union would perish, like the first, by a sort of senile inaptitude.†   (source)
  • God knows, I've been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made things worse; I'd better have given way at first."†   (source)
  • …Speranski, either because he appreciated the other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.†   (source)
  • It is perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship, but tacitly at least they called the future to witness.†   (source)
  • If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.†   (source)
  • Yet these two noble and intelligent creatures, united by the indissoluble ties of maternal and filial love, had succeeded in tacitly understanding one another, and economizing their stores, and Albert had been able to tell his mother without extorting a change of countenance,—"Mother, we have no more money."†   (source)
  • The father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business.†   (source)
  • Fanny acknowledged him haughtily; the position she tacitly took up in all such cases being that there was a vast conspiracy to insult the family by not understanding it, or sufficiently deferring to it, and here was one of the conspirators.†   (source)
  • Her husband had not been obliged to say anything to her; she yielded to the vague but clear pressure of his tacit intentions, and obeyed blindly.†   (source)
  • But it was tacitly understood that Stephen would not come in the evening; and on the strength of that tacit understanding he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-bye until after four.†   (source)
  • In the Southern States the subject is not discussed: the planter does not allude to the future in conversing with strangers; the citizen does not communicate his apprehensions to his friends; he seeks to conceal them from himself; but there is something more alarming in the tacit forebodings of the South, than in the clamorous fears of the Northern States.†   (source)
  • To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was.†   (source)
  • It belonged to a job-master in a small way, who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of ceremony, in that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded as the private property of the jobber for the time being, and that the job-master should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber in possession.†   (source)
  • Two men who have a secret in common, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, exchange not a word on the subject, are less rare than is commonly supposed.†   (source)
  • But it was tacitly understood that Stephen would not come in the evening; and on the strength of that tacit understanding he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-bye until after four.†   (source)
  • He felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to Miss Morland, and believing that heart to be his own which he had been directed to gain, no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent, no reversing decree of unjustifiable anger, could shake his fidelity, or influence the resolutions it prompted.†   (source)
  • By tacit agreement, we avoided any mention of Frank.†   (source)
  • Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's views on the importance of dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature.†   (source)
  • …or contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon's Studies in Blue, to a publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S.†   (source)
  • Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers, We who have grandly fill'd our time, With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight, We welcome what we wrought for through the past, And leave the field for them.†   (source)
  • …the divinations of the ape, as he did not think it proper that an ape should divine anything, either past or future; so while Master Pedro was arranging the show, he retired with Sancho into a corner of the stable, where, without being overheard by anyone, he said to him, "Look here, Sancho, I have been seriously thinking over this ape's extraordinary gift, and have come to the conclusion that beyond doubt this Master Pedro, his master, has a pact, tacit or express, with the devil."†   (source)
  • Tacite Approbation Of The Soveraign, Extenuates Those facts which the Law expresly condemneth, but the Law-maker by other manifest signes of his will tacitly approveth, are lesse Crimes, than the same facts, condemned both by the Law, and Lawmaker.†   (source)
  • Tacit obedience implies no force upon the will, and consequently may be easily, and without any pains, preserved; but when a wife, a child, a relation, or a friend, performs what we desire, with grumbling and reluctance, with expressions of dislike and dissatisfaction, the manifest difficulty which they undergo must greatly enhance the obligation.†   (source)
  • There is nothing of this kind declared in the articles that compose it; and to imply a tacit guaranty from considerations of utility, would be a still more flagrant departure from the clause which has been mentioned, than to imply a tacit power of coercion from the like considerations.†   (source)
  • He knew the tacit consideration upon which all her favours were conferred; and as his necessity obliged him to accept them, so his honour, he concluded, forced him to pay the price.†   (source)
  • This has been represented as a tacit relinquishment of those debts, and as a wicked contrivance to screen public defaulters.†   (source)
  • …appear, that this inconvenience, proceedeth not from that forme of Government we call Monarchy, we are to consider, that the precedent Monarch, hath appointed who shall have the Tuition of his Infant Successor, either expressely by Testament, or tacitly, by not controlling the Custome in that case received: And then such inconvenience (if it happen) is to be attributed, not to the Monarchy, but to the Ambition, and Injustice of the Subjects; which in all kinds of Government, where the…†   (source)
  • Mrs Fitzpatrick was a little nettled at this; and indeed, if it may not be called a lapse of the tongue, it was a small deviation from politeness in Jones, and into which he scarce would have fallen, had not the delight he felt in praising Sophia hurried him out of all reflection; for this commendation of one cousin was more than a tacit rebuke on the other.†   (source)
  • But as there are no perfections of the mind which do not discover themselves in that perfect intimacy to which we intend to introduce our reader with this charming young creature, so it is needless to mention them here: nay, it is a kind of tacit affront to our reader's understanding, and may also rob him of that pleasure which he will receive in forming his own judgment of her character.†   (source)
  • …philosopher very well knew what virtue was, though he was not always perhaps steady in its pursuit; but as for Thwackum, from what reason I will not determine, no such thoughts ever entered into his head: he saw Jones in a bad light, and he imagined Allworthy saw him in the same, but that he was resolved, from pride and stubbornness of spirit, not to give up the boy whom he had once cherished; since by so doing, he must tacitly acknowledge that his former opinion of him had been wrong.†   (source)
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