Passive And Active Quotes & Sayings

Even if, at the moment, you can't sit down and do the gruntwork of stringing verbs and nouns together, you are writing. It is a way of seeing, a way of being. The world is not only the world, but your personal filing cabinet. You lodge details of the world in your sparkling nerve-library that spirals through your brain and coils down your arms and legs, collects in your belly and your sex. You write, even if you can't always "write."
However, writers write. Active, not passive. — Luis Alberto Urrea

Just see the difference - in the ancient days, people used to "fall in love." Now people "make love." You see the difference? Falling in love is being overwhelmed by love; it is passive. Making love is almost profane, almost destroying its beauty. It is active, as if you are doing something; you are manipulating and controlling. Now people have changed the language - rather than using "falling in love" they use "making love. — Osho

When you have a diagnosis of cancer, or any serious illness, your choices are basically to be passive and kind of accept whatever is offered you, or to be active and to learn about your disease, and understand your options, and be an active partner with your doctor. That's the course I took with all three of my cancers. — Hamilton Jordan

The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it. — Arthur Goldberg

Undeniably, the audience for improvisation, good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music that is not achieved in any other situation. — Derek Bailey

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive. — William Ralph Inge

We practice conscious forgetting by refusing to summon up the fiery material, we refuse to recollect. To forget is an active, not a passive endeavor. It means to not haul up certain materials, or turn them over and over, to not work oneself up by repetitive thought, picture, or emotion. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

God's fighting for us does not exclude the responsibility to be prepared for battle both in the area of strategy and in equipment. Trusting God completely in prayer, believing that He is able to do all things, does not remove the need to pray for His strength to accomplish what He has prepared us to do! We are to do what He is unfolding for us to do, fulfilling what God is giving us strength to do, acknowledging that it is His strength and not ours. It is a truly active passive, not a false whining humbleness that says, 'I can't do anything; I'm too weak. — Edith Schaeffer

There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: passive systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and active systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too. — Dave Barry

Belief is in a sense passive, an agreement or acceptance only; faith is active and positive, embracing such reliance and confidence as will lead to works. Faith in Christ comprises belief in Him, combined with trust in Him. One cannot have faith without belief; yet he may believe and still lack faith. Faith is vivified, vitalized, living belief. — James E. Talmage

Not that he [Uzbek] rejected Mendel's proposals or rebelled against his decisions; but he exercised a subtle, passive abrasion against every active thrust: like dust in a watch, Mendel thought to himself. He's got dust in him, even though he is young. It's stupid to say the young are strong. You understand many things better at thirty than at twenty and you can also bear them better. — Primo Levi

Biblical interpretation is not a passive matter. It requires our own active negotiation. When we pretend that, deep down, all the voices are really saying the same thing and ought to be able to get along, we forfeit our responsibility as inheritors of this richly, sometimes disturbingly, contradictive literature. — Timothy Beal

In fact, entertainment has taken the place of celebration in the present world. But entertainment is quite different from celebration; entertainment and celebration are never the same. In celebration you are a participant; in entertainment you are only a spectator. In entertainment you watch others playing for you. So while celebration is active, entertainment is passive. In celebration you dance, while in entertainment you watch someone dancing, for which you pay him. — Rajneesh

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say, "I lost it. — Sydney J. Harris

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent ... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps
and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities ... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source]. — Lorraine Hansberry

At its core, black theology is predicated on the assertion that God has a unique relationship with African Americans. God is not a passive bystander in human history but rather an active participant in the struggles of oppressed and dispossessed people. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time. — Diane Ravitch

My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something: trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. — Charlotte Bronte

Fine! He is being passive aggressive with me, and it's gonna backfire; I'm gonna be active friendly. — Natalya Vorobyova

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a lion. But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character; and if between any two contestants, even in college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the right side is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the other way, it is the character side that will win. — Theodore Roosevelt

Scared for health, afraid of death, bored, dissatisfied, vengeful, greedy, ignorant, and gullible - these are the qualities of the ideal consumer. Can we imagine a way of education that would turn passive consumers into active and informed critics, capable of using their own minds in their own defense? — Wendell Berry

When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? — Adam Smith

We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. — T. S. Eliot

Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination. — Joseph Joubert

The more one engages in conscious action to understand and transform the world -- one's reality -- through the interplay between reflection and action, the more fully human we become, that is, we have greater control over our destinies. If we just accept the world as set by others, we allow ourselves to become dehumanized -- an object shaped and made by others rather than expressing our uniquely human potential to be involved actively in creating what we become. As human beings, our shared vocation is to become active individual subjects engaged on an equal basis with others in the process of creating (or naming) the world. We should create history and culture rather than exist merely as passive objects accepting reality and the world as ready-made by other people. In creating history and culture, we create our own beings in the process. — Marie Emmit

For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The norms of femininity suppress the body potential of women. We grow up learning that the feminine body is soft, not muscular, passive, incapable, vulnerable. Our parents, teachers and friends suppress our natural urges to run, jump, risk, by cries that we should not act so boldly and move so daringly. . . . Developing a sense of our bodies as beautiful objects to be gazed at and decorated requires suppressing a sense of our bodies as strong, active subjects moving out to meet the world's risk and confront the resistances of matter and motion. — Iris Young

...if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting." (MLK)
"...If given a choice between violent resistance and passive acceptance, King and Gandhi both accepted violence..."
"...like violence, it [non-violent resistance] was aggressive, but it was spiritually, bot physically, so."

"...At the same time the mind and the emotions are active, actively trying to persuade the opponent to change his ways and convince him that he is mistaken and to lift him to a higher level of existence. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science. — Rupert Sheldrake

Many dog owners believe that as much as 60 percent of their pet's brain is set aside solely to demonstrate applications of the verb "to eat"-in both the active and passive forms. — Stanley Coren

Who is the learner and what is his or her relationship to knowledge and learning? Is he or she basically good or evil (or both)? Passive or active in learning? Capable of choice, or has life already been determined somehow? Motivated internally or externally? An unmarked slate or having unrealized potential? These questions are answered every day in every classroom, daycare center, or basketball court - answered by the way children are viewed and treated by adults. — Elaine Cooper

Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice. — Laurie R. King

For the perception of the beautiful we have the term "taste"
a metaphor taken from that which is passive in the body and transferred to that which is active in the mind. — Thomas Reid

Organisation, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders. — Errico Malatesta

Opting for peace does not mean a passive acquiescence to evil or compromise of principle. It demands an active struggle against hatred, oppression and disunity, but not by using methods of violence. Building peace requires creative and courageous action — Pope John Paul II

Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing. — Pauline Oliveros

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities. — Benjamin Franklin

Whether we like it or not, if we are to pursue a career in science, eventually we have to learn the "language of nature": mathematics. Without mathematics, we can only be passive observers to the dance of nature rather than active participants. As Einstein once said, "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." Let me offer an analogy. One may love French civilization and literature, but to truly understand the French mind, one must learn the French language and how to conjugate French verbs. The same is true of science and mathematics. Galileo once wrote, "[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to understand a single word. — Michio Kaku

If old consumers were assumed to be passive, then new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where you told them, then new consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were isolated individuals, then new consumers are more socially connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, then new consumers are now noisy and public. — Henry Jenkins

The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse. — Thomas Hardy

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. — William Godwin

If the work of our sanctification presents us with difficulties that appear insurmountable, it is because we do not look at it in the right way. In reality, holiness consists in one thing alone, namely, fidelity to God's plan. And this fidelity is equally within everyone's capacity in both its active and passive exercise. — Jean-Pierre De Caussade

You can't be what you can't see, so it's harder for women to say, "I'm going to be a [presidential] candidate," so we need to go to women who would be good candidates and say, "You would be a good candidate and I'll help you." It's not a passive question, it's not when will it happen, but an active question, when will we make it happen? — Gloria Steinem

A medium of communication is not merely a passive conduit for the transmission of information but rather an active force in creating new social patterns and new perceptual realities. — Leonard Shlain

Sylvia rarely flattered the men in her life- she envied them. She was far more likely to compete with a man than a woman. In her journal she describes this jealousy of which she is painfully aware; "It is an envy born of the desire to be active and doing, not passive and listening." She craved the "double life" of men, who could enjoy career, sex, and family. "I can pretend to forget my envy," she writes, "no matter, it is there, insidious, malignant, latent. — Elizabeth Winder

In every company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and women, and the uninventive or accepting class. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female ... In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness — Laura Mulvey

Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture. Nota bene.
It tells you.
You don't tell it. — Joan Didion

I am ambivalent about cluster servers. At the same time, they are marvelous and kludgy. They can add redundancy and failover to applications that weren't designed for it. Configuring the cluster server itself is finicky, though, and applications usually have a few small glitches when failing over. The biggest drawback is probably that these run in active/passive mode. So, redundancy is achieved, but scalability is not. I consider cluster servers a Band-Aid for applications that don't do it themselves. — Michael T. Nygard

Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active. — Richard M. Nixon

I've been a passionate adventurer in the solar industry and the sustainability movement my whole life. I try hard to walk my talk. My wife, Nantzy, and I live in an off-the-grid home (see page 70) built of recycled and green materials, powered by solar (passive and active) and hydroelectric energy, with gorgeous biodynamic gardens and fruit orchards that provide most of our food, a 15-acre biodynamic olive orchard, an 8-acre biodynamic vineyard, and a dozen beehives. I'm fortunate to benefit from the fruits of all our collective labors. As the solar industry continues to grow and mature, and as our cultural consciousness evolves, I remain hopeful that, once and for all, we will get things right in — John Schaeffer

Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. — George Stillman Hillard

The modern mind ... is interested above all in subtleties, equivocations and the subterranean complexities which dominate the average man and compose his life ... modern literature is concerned with the twilight, the passive rather than the active mind ... those undercurrents which flow beneath the apparently firm surface.
(Joyce to Arthur Power) — James Joyce

Leonora is the grownups' version of Cinderella. She doesn't take crap from any ugly stepsisters. She doesn't sit indoors waiting to be rescued by prince charming. Oh, no, she rescues prince charming, Florestan, who's locked up in a dungeon by his archenemy, Pizarro. Cinderella was fun when we were little girls, played with dolls and believed in passive fairytales. Now that we're grown women who play with toys, it's only fit to believe in active fairytales. — Luella Christie

Not knowing trauma or experiencing or remembering it in a dissociative way is not a passive shutdown of perception or of memory. Not knowing is rather an active, persistent, violent refusal; an erasure, a destruction of form and of representation. The fundamental essence of the death instinct, the instinct that destroys all psychic structure is apparent in this phenomenon. . . . The death drive is against knowing and against the developing of knowledge and elaborating [it]. — Dori Laub

Objectivity is the subject subjugating the object. That is how you assert yourself. You make yourself the active voice and the object is the passive no-voice. — Emily Levine

Peacemaking contains all the elements of the Christian faith. Peacemaking is the result of not only taking the beatitudes seriously, but living them. It involves right relationships. Right relationships with God, right relationships with God's people and right relationships with God's creation. It involves love. Proper love of self, love of God and creation, and love of all people - even our enemies. It is not passive, it is active; it is peacemaking not peacekeeping. Above all, it is following the way of Jesus, which was the way of the cross, where his power was 'made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9). — Donald R. Clymer

Thinking, even when thinking is difficult, versus nonthinking Awareness, even when awareness is challenging, versus unawareness Clarity, whether or not it comes easily, versus obscurity or vagueness Respect for reality, whether pleasant or painful, versus avoidance of reality Respect for truth versus rejection of truth Independence versus dependence Active orientation versus passive orientation Willingness to take appropriate risks, even in the face of fear, versus unwillingness Honesty with self versus dishonesty Living in and being responsible to the present versus retreating into fantasy Self-confrontation versus self-avoidance Willingness to see and correct mistakes versus perseverance in error Reason versus irrationalism — Nathaniel Branden

Adolescent girls discover that it is impossible to be both feminine and adult. Psychologist I. K. Broverman's now classic study documents this impossibility. Male and female participants in the study checked off adjectives describing the characteristics of healthy men, healthy women and healthy adults. The results showed that while people describe healthy men and healthy adults as having the same qualities, they describe healthy women as having quite different qualities than healthy adults. For example, healthy women were described as passive, dependent and illogical, while healthy adults were active, independent and logical. In fact, it was impossible to score as both a healthy adult and a healthy woman. — Mary Pipher

Reading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other. — Jonathan Lethem

The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent. — Abraham Maslow

In Tetrad form, the artifact is seen to be not neutral or passive, bur an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground. — Marshall McLuhan

In the course of aesthetic experience, the perceiver may be overwhelmed by this 'mere object', overcome with emotion, altered to the very roots of his being.[ ... ] The experience of beauty involves an exchange of power, and as such, it is often disorienting, a mix of humility and exaltation, subjugation and liberation, awe and mystified pleasure.[ ... ] Many people, fearing a pleasure they cannot control, have vilified beauty as a siren or a whore. Since at one time or another though, everyone answers to 'her' call, it would be well if we could recognize the meaning of our succumbing as a valuable response, an opportunity for self-revelation rather than defeat.[ ... ] It entails a flexibility and empathy toward 'Others' in general and the capacity to see ourselves as both active and passive without fearing that we will be diminished in the process. — Wendy Steiner

These steps are: Deep Observation (The Passive Mode), Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode), and Experimentation (The Active Mode). Keep — Robert Greene

A life well lived is the best antidote to that fatal truth. Be active, not a passive worrywart. Find magic in the moment, joy in making someone smile. Listen to a lover's sigh; look into the dancing eyes of a child you made feel special. Most of all, marvel at the wonder that eons of evolutionary time and all your unique experiences have joined to comprise the symphony that is YOU. — Philip G. Zimbardo

We have thought of peace as passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences ... From War to Peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life ... The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree. — Mary Parker Follett

The challenge to shifting perspective can be broken down into two general categories. The first relates to passive ignorance - people are not aware that they even have a perspective and that others might see things differently. The second relates to active indifference or resistance - we don't care that the other side may see things differently; we only want to see things our own way. — Donny Ebenstein

...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the state would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. — Edward Gibbon

It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree. — James Weldon Johnson

We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences. — Mary Parker Follett

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental. — Stephen Spender

To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work. — Hannah Whitall Smith

Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can - working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!
Impatience, on the other hand, is a symptom of selfishness. It is a trait of the self-absorbed. It arises from the all too-prevalent condition called "center of the universe" syndrome, which leads people to believe that the world revolves around them and that all others are just supporting cast in the grand theater of mortality in which only they have the starring role. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Active people make lots of mistakes, and wise ones grow from them (Hebrews 5:14). They try something, experience a limit, and adapt. They experience the depth of God's forgiveness because they do things for which they need to be forgiven. Passive people have trouble learning because they are afraid to take risks. Because of this, they also have a harder time taking charge of their lives and boundaries. God is not pleased with those who "shrink back" in passivity (Hebrews 10:38). He wants his people to participate in life with him, not wait on the sidelines. — Henry Cloud

As an exercise bicycling is superior to most, if not all, others at our command. It takes one into the outdoor air; it is entirely under control; can be made gentle or vigorous as one desires; is active and not passive; takes the rider outside of himself and the thoughts and cares of his daily work; develops his will, his attention, his courage and independence; and makes pleasant what is otherwise irksome. — Frances E. Willard

For our ancestors music was something that you sat down to listen to, or which you made for yourself. It was a ceremonial event, in which you participated, either as a passive listener or as an active performer. Either way you were giving and receiving life, sharing in something of great social significance.
With the advent of the gramophone, the radio and now the iPod, music is no longer something that you must make for yourself, nor is it something that you sit down to listen to. It follows you about wherever you go, and you switch it on as a background. It is not so much listened to as overheard. — Roger Scruton

Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision. — Jorge Luis Borges

Now that I am a father myself, I know that powerlessness is the defining characteristic of fatherhood. This begins with the pregnancy. Men spend their whole lives being active. We evolved as hunters. "Me get job, me get girl, me get girl pregnant. Now me shut mouth and wait for girl to tell me what to do." As expectant fathers, we become silent spectators. Passive participants in a series of external events over which we have zero control. — Jim Gaffigan

I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me. — Christopher Hitchens

Grief-work. It sounds such a clear and solid concept, with its confident two-part name. But it is fluid, slippery, metamorphic. Sometimes it is passive, a waiting for time and pain to disappear; sometimes active, a conscious attention to death and loss and the loved one; sometimes necessarily distractive (the bland football match, the overwhelming opera). — Julian Barnes

When you're shy, a camera becomes an entry into life. It was a kind of shield I could hide my shyness behind, and it allowed me to become an active observer rather than a passive one. — Lynn Johnston

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive. — William Ralph Inge

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between. — Sylvia Plath

Francis Spufford, using very contemporary idiom, calls for the same thing in this way. When discussing our sinfulness, he says: What we're talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It's our active inclination to break stuff, "stuff" here including . . . promises, relationships we care about and our own well-being and other people's. . . . [You are] a being whose wants make no sense, don't harmonize: whose desires deep down are discordantly arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not to at the very same time. You're equipped, you realize, more for farce (or even tragedy) than happy endings. . . . You're human, and that's where we live; that's our normal experience.180 Until we fully acknowledge the chaos within us that the Bible calls sin, we live in what Calvin calls "unreality. — Timothy J. Keller

[ ... ] without much ardor but quite unmistakably, she was writhing her hips as if she were dancing. When he was very close, he saw' her gaping mouth: she was yawning lengthily, insatiably: the great open hole was rocking gently atop die mechanically dancing body. Jean-Marc thought: she's dancing and she's bored.
He reached the seawall: down below, on the beach, he saw men with their heads thrown back releasing kites into the air. They were doing it with passion, and Jean-Marc recalled his old theory: there are three kinds of boredom: passive boredom: the girl dancing and yawning; active boredom: kite-lovers; and rebellious boredom: young people burning cars and smashing shop windows. — Milan Kundera

First, it is largely unknown just how the Holy Spirit interacted with the author of an original Biblical manuscript- 'passive' vs. 'active' (I contend that it was both/and). Secondly, it is also widely unknown just what the 'process' involved in 'canonization' was. Additionally, I see little evidence of the injection of personal bias if any by the Biblical authors. — R. Alan Woods

We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures. — Tom Hodgkinson

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. — Joan Didion

I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression. — John Oliver

Humanity has always conquered the flux of natural time by means of a rhythm between active and passive time-spans. To reconquer his holidays, to establish a new and better time schedule for life, has been the great endeavour of man ever since the days of Noah. — Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

In the Second Part of this Dialogue, that which hath already been shewn concerning the passive power of the universe is demonstrated for the active power of the efficient cause, set forth with arguments of which the first deriveth from the fact that divine power should not be otiose; particularly positing the effect thereof outside the substance thereof (if indeed aught can be outside it), and that it is no less otiose and invidious if it produce a finite effect than if it produce none. — Giordano Bruno

A healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent, but active and critical. — Harold Laski

Poetry is something that disturbs the mainstream with minor things and it is something that breaks down active discrimination with passive things, and it can break down something that polishes the filthy things with filthy things. — Kim Hyesoon

Thanksgiving is oral, positive, active. It is the giving out of something to God. Thanksgiving comes out into the open. Gratitude is secret, silent, negative, passive, not showing its being till expressed in praise and thanksgiving. Gratitude is felt in the heart. Thanksgiving is the expression of that inward feeling. — E. M. Bounds

In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character. — Theodore Roosevelt

The triangle pointing downward is a female symbol corresponding to the yoni and the upward pointing triangle is the male, the lingam ... When the two triangles are interlaced, it represents the union of the active and passive forces in nature; it represents the male and female elements. — Albert Mackey

Q: Is it still possible nowadays to influence the world by songs? To be political by means of messages?
A: No, there are newspapers for that. When people want to deal with the world, they should watch television.
Q: That's very passive.
A: The world has become like that. People are going to the football stadium, they don't play themselves anymore.
Q: Did you ever think you could be politically active through your songs?
A: No, no, no. If I had wanted to do that, I would have gone to Harvard or Yale, would have studied and would have a become a politician after that. — Bob Dylan

Passive Mind generates mood swings and active mind generates Ideas — Rajesh Walecha

The Etymologiae says that bees are virtuous because they are much loved by all, and sought after with great longing by everyone, because their honey tastes as sweet in the mouths of paupers as in the mouths of kings. Do you think that's logical? That a creature can be virtuous just because it is loved and sought after, that the act of being loved, of being sought after, even if it is passive, is equal to an act of martyrdom or great piety, which is active? That it can confer grace to a whole species? — Catherynne M Valente