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Active   /ˈæktɪv/   Listen
Active

noun
1.
Chemical agent capable of activity.  Synonym: active agent.
2.
The voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is performing the action or causing the happening denoted by the verb.  Synonym: active voice.
3.
A person who is a participating member of an organization.



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"Active" Quotes from Famous Books



... to redeem his promise. For Lady Calmady's convalescence was slow. An apathy held her, which was tranquillising rather than tedious. She was glad to lie still and rest. She found it very soothing to be shut away from the many obligations of active life for a while; to watch the sunlight, on fair days, shift from east by south to west, across the warm fragrant room; to see the changing clouds in the delicate spring sky, and the slow-dying crimson and violet of the sunset; ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... these are the tiger snake, Hoplocephalus curtus, the most widespread, active, and dangerous of them all: the brown snake, Diemenia superciliosa, pretty ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... community. Civic consciousness had not been born in them, for the simple reason that the city was constituted perfectly to suit them. Only when men are dissatisfied with their government do they seek to become responsible for it. There was no active public opinion against them. Men were too busy to bother with such things. Occasionally a fairly vigorous protest against some peculiarly outrageous steal made itself heard, but the men who made it ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... was using her own with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more socially and dangerously active because, by strict orders to every one, cut off from the gaming-table and the bar. She could not do a hundred things at once—though she could do six or seven—and it was well to grapple this one task first. Thus she kept Hugh ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... one's self against a wall. She never swerved from her position, her voice never lost its tone of studied toleration; and now he sat, the poor fellow! listening dreamily to the conversation between the other two men, too weary and depressed to take any active share in it himself. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant, and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... first opened its doors with a Faculty of two. The first Professor appointed to assume active duties was the Rev. George Palmer Williams, formerly the head of the Pontiac branch, who was elected in July, 1841, as Professor of Languages. In August, the Rev. Joseph Whiting was elected Professor of Languages, and Professor Williams ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... and father had retired to their rooms, but my thoughts were too active for sleep, so I continued to sit and to smoke by ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the door of Master Gifford's house now, and here they parted—Humphrey to the active service which would make him forget for the time the hopelessness of his quest for the boy Ambrose and ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... need is synthetic, that some synthetic idea and belief is needed to harmonize one's life, to give a law by which motive may be tried against motive and an effectual peace of mind achieved. I want an active peace and not a quiescence, and I do not want to suppress and expel any motive at all. But to many people the effort takes the form of attempts to cut off some part of oneself as it were, to repudiate ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... plying her ever active needle, at the same small window which overlooked the churchyard. The declining sun was throwing dark shadows across the graves. A ray of it gleamed on a corner of the particular tombstone which, being ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... who seemed to have been absolutely created by the war Currie was the first. He enlisted for active service in 1914, and Hughes made him brigade-commander at Valcartier. He was in the First Contingent that swung out of the Gulf the day that Hughes stood on the rope ladder, almost forgetting that he had ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... road, armed with whips, which they continually exercised in order to keep off the crowd that increased as we approached the capital, and, at length, was so great as to obstruct the road. We observed, however, that though the soldiers were very active and noisy in brandishing their whips, they only struck them against the ground, and never let them fall upon the people. Indeed a Chinese crowd is not so tumultuous and unruly as ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... brief discussion of modern sanitation and the war on the White Plague. The efforts of Parliament to fix wages can be illustrated by some of the minimum wage laws passed by recent legislatures. John Ball's teachings suggest a brief discussion of modern socialism, daily becoming more active in its influence. The medieval trade guilds and modern labor unions; the monopolies of Elizabeth's time and the anti-trust law of to-day; George the Third's two hundred capital crimes and modern methods of penology; the jealousy of Athens in guarding the ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell

... quite so positive as that," he said, "even then; but I cannot deny that this ridiculous fancy haunted me for many hours when I was endeavoring to snatch a little sleep amid the insomnia that a too active brain produced. Yes, there were moments when these two beings with greenish eyes, sinuous movements, golden hair, and mysterious ways, seemed to me to be blended into one, and to be merely the double manifestation of a single entity. As ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... was in front of her house, and the waggoner, who was a lusty fellow, strong and active, in it, preparing it for her, that she threw a cushion on his head, which caused him to fall on his hands and knees, at which she laughed ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... Purusha (or Soul), though without attributes himself, has his existence affirmed in consequence of the acts which the body does when it receives his reflection. Although the Soul is not subject to modifications of any kind and is the active principle that sets Prakriti in motion, yet entering a body that is united with the senses of knowledge and action, he regards all the acts of those senses as his own. The five senses of knowledge beginning with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... and doubtless he will be asking some appointment. I wish there may be any one for which he is fit. He is light, indiscreet, active, honest, affectionate. Though Bingham is not in diplomatic office, yet as he wishes to be so, I will mention such circumstances of him, as you might otherwise be deceived in. He will make you believe he was on the most intimate footing with the first characters in Europe, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... hot bath, let down her hair, got into a wrapper, lay down, and tried to rest. But her body twitched with desire for active movement, almost worn out though she was. Again and again she got up, went out to the terrace, and looked at the Loulia. She took her glasses and tried to discern Baroudi on the upper deck. But she could not see him. Presently she pulled a long chair out to the balcony, and was just going ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... spirit: for the mind cannot stop, except it be in a mad-house; there, indeed, it may rest, or rather stagnate, on one thought,—its little circle, perhaps of misery. From the very moment of consciousness, the active Principle begins to busy itself with the things about it: it shows itself in the infant, stretching its little hands towards the candle; in the schoolboy, filling up, if alone, his play-hour with the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... But it's nothing of a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound, he's such a rider. And I shouldn't wonder if he's back again to-morrow; he's too active to rest long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th' estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud give him plenty to do, and he'd do't ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... live without labouring. But Penrose was not the man to sit down in idleness. Wesley never had a more earnest follower than this miner of St. Just. Thenceforth he devoted himself to preaching, teaching, and doing good as his hand found opportunity, and, being an active man as well as conscientious, he laboured to the end of his days in the service of his Lord more energetically than he had ever toiled ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... works: it is, I think, generally admitted, that that of Shakespeare cannot; and in so far as this is the test of a complete dramatist, Mr. Browning fails of being one. He does not sink himself in his men and women, for his sympathy with them is too active to admit of it. He not only describes their different modes of being, but defends them from their own point of view; and it is natural that he should often select for this treatment characters with which he ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... rendering has been taken from the longer and more elaborate of the two MSS. containing the Treatise. The shorter form of his work On Grace and the Epistle have been added in the hope that they may meet the need of all, contemplative or active as they may ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... concealment, perhaps no notion that I was interested in her accounts of the prevalent feeling respecting the heretics of whom she heard much, except of course that Eveena's father was among them. Through her I learned that much pains had been taken to intensify and excite into active hostility the dislike and distrust with which they had always been regarded by the public at large, and especially by the scientific guilds, whose members control all educational establishments. That some attempt against them was meditated appeared ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... Then they unanimously demanded that he should be burnt alive. Their request was no sooner granted, but every one ran with all speed to fetch wood from the baths and shops. The Jews were particularly active and busy on this occasion. The pile being prepared, Polycarp put off his garments, untied his girdle, and began to take off his shoes; an office he had not been accustomed to, the Christians having always striven who should do these things for him, regarding it as a happiness ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... observer will soon see the affinity each has to the other. In general, the people of this isle are a slender race. I did not see a man that would measure six feet; so far are they from being giants, as one of the authors of Roggewein's voyage asserts. They are brisk and active, have good features, and not disagreeable countenances; are friendly and hospitable to strangers, but as much addicted to pilfering ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... active magistrate, busy in all the county improvements, and preserving as much order in the two parishes as was possible where there was no rural police, only the constable, Cobbler Cox, who was said to be more "skeered of the rogues than the rogues was of he," and, at Downhill, Appleton, ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the whole Church as seen by the eyes of searching flame. There is a mixture of bad and good, active bad, active good, and sleepy indifference. There is a Church within the Church. But the bad is bad enough and big enough to endanger seriously the usefulness of the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... of a century a master's-mate during an active war, should rush up through the grades of lieutenant and commander to be posted during another quarter of profound peace! But, perhaps, you would have depended upon your great family interest. Well, if I make out your commission as my housekeeper, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... disappeared, and were never heard of more; by what agency, or in what manner disposed of, could not be discovered. It was supposed for some time that a horde of banditti were harboured among the mountains, and the police were for a long time in active search for them, while the real miscreants remained unsuspected for their seeming insignificance and helplessness; these were the mistress of the inn, the cameriere, and the curate of the nearest village, about ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... with regard to person or number. Forms of the verb; time "being" (Present) takes the termination "-as;" time "been" (Past) "-is"; time "about to be" (Future) "-os"; the Conditional mood "-us;" the Ordering mood "-u;" the Indefinite "-i." Participles (with an adjectival or adverbial sense): active present "-ant;" active past "-int;" active future "-ont;" passive present "-at;" passive past "-it;" passive future "-ot." All forms of the passive are formed by the aid of a corresponding form of the verb "esti" and a passive participle of the required verb; the preposition with ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... a recent one, and the substitution of this modern artificial home for hollow trees illustrates the readiness with which it adapts itself to a change in surroundings. In perching, they cling to the side of the chimney, using the spine-pointed tails for a support. They are most active early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when one may hear their rolling twitter ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... looked most sweet and pleasant when he reached it. In accordance with his orders, various improvements had been made in his absence, and what was wanting to the establishment in extent, was compensated by its internal comforts and conveniences. Edward, accustomed by his more active habits of life to take decided steps, determined to execute a project which he had had sufficient time to think over. First of all, he invited the Major to come to him. This pleasure in meeting again was very great to both of them. The friendships of boyhood, like relationship of blood, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... was the imaging of the infinite (unity or essence) into the finite (plurality or form), so spirit is the taking up of the finite into the infinite. In the spiritual realm also all three divine original potencies are every, where active, though in such a way that one is dominant. In intuition (sensation, consciousness, intuition, each in turn thrice divided) the infinite and the eternal are subordinated to the finite; in thought or understanding (concept, judgment, inference, each in three kinds) the finite and the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... his feet; lithe, active, eager. Swiftness, alertness, poise, certainty were in every line of his splendid body. His was the assured, resourceful bearing of the man of action, whose hands have kept his head, contrasting sharply with the Miner's heavy and tentative slowness, the awkward self-consciousness of the Easy ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... will not long satisfy an active conscience or a thoughtful head. But to show you how one or the other may trouble a man, and what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages out ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... admiring the way in which he had got the stevedores to work so steadily and speedily in getting in the cargo and clearing the ship's deck, so that it was now trim and orderly in place of being littered over with lumber as previously—the active boatswain helping one here, encouraging another there, and making all laugh occasionally with some racy joke, that seemed to lighten their labour greatly and cause them to set to their task with redoubled vigour.—"It's wonderful ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... with some dignity in the tumble-down reception hall of the presidential mansion. Moira gazed proudly at him. The two still-active members of the Dail Committee looked uncomfortably around them. The cabinet of ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... says I, and made a lunge at my Count; but he sprang back (the dog was as active as a hare, and knew, from old times, that I was his master with the small-sword), and his second, wondering, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... would undertake that with the aid of two active men to hold the ropes for us. We have both done plenty of bird- nesting in the woods of Hedingham, and are not likely to ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... matter for deep regret on the part of her officers and men, who, since they belong to the Royal Navy or the Royal Naval Reserve, naturally long to assist in an active manner at the discomfiture of some floating Hun. Their thoughts may not exactly be pleasant when they read and hear of the warlike doings of their seagoing sisters, but they may console themselves ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... salient lines and deep vistas, which act more strongly on the attention than mass; compare further Mad., V. 27 per cent., L. 64 per cent., as against Alt., V. 13 per cent., L. 19 per cent., as confirming the view that they are used in the more irregular and active pictures. But I. keeps its predominance throughout the types, except in the portraits, where, indeed, we should not expect it to be so powerful, since the principal object of interest must always ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... organism—and destroy them in order to make one immense publicity! I do not mean that Europe has failed to adopt the telephone, nor that in Europe there are no hotels with the dreadful curse of an active telephone in every room. But I do mean that the European telephone is a toy, and a somewhat clumsy one, compared with the inexorable seriousness of the American telephone. Many otherwise highly civilized Europeans are ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... especially books which had not an outlandish appearance, would be purchased without scruple. "In a word, were an agent for the Bible Society to reside at this town [Kiakhta] for a year or so, it is my humble opinion, and the opinion of much wiser people, that if he were active, zealous and likewise courageous, the blessings resulting from his labours ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... week they had made it clear that the British Infantry battalion is the backbone of every mixed brigade, and they shared with the Guides Infantry one of those enviable reputations for steadiness which are so hard to gain and so easy to lose on active service. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who had neither foresight nor prudence nor ability. The generals of the republic and of the empire were removed from active service. An indemnity of a thousand millions was given by an obsequious legislature to the men who had emigrated during the Revolution,—a generous thing to do, but a premium on cowardice and want of patriotism. A base concession ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... forward to regain Alexander Fish's company, with whom he was holding an animated discourse on the making and using of artificial flies. The three boys trudged along in advance; the motions of their busy heads, and of their active feet, telling that there was no lack of interest or excitement there. The chair followed steadily with its little burden. It went nicely; she was very comfortable; it was a new and most pleasant mode of getting over the ground; and yet—there was something at work in Daisy's heart ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... longer regarded even with toleration in the Yildiz Kiosque. A hundred insignificant incidents prove it every day. And if Abdul dare not break with Germany it is only because he is not yet ready to defy the Young Turk party. The British Embassy is very active and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... with the mistaken opinion that womb-kinship arose through the uncertainty of paternity. But this was not the sole reason, or indeed the chief one, of descent being traced through the mother. We have found mother-rule in very active existence among the Pueblo peoples, who are monogamists, and where the paternity of the child must be known. The modern civilised man cannot easily accustom himself to the idea that in the old matriarchal family the dominion of the mother was accepted as the natural, and, therefore, the right ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... Emperor arrived during the night at his new residence, and waited there in intense anxiety till the fire should be extinguished at the Kremlin, intending to return thither, for the pleasure house of a chamberlain was no suitable place for his Majesty. Thanks to the active and courageous actions of a battalion of the guard, the Kremlin was preserved from the flames, and the Emperor thereupon gave the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... truly Emersonian bird, and the poet shows him to be both a hero and a philosopher. Hardy, active, social, a winter bird no less than a summer, a defier of both frost and heat, lover of the pine-tree, and diligent searcher after truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, preeminently a New England bird, clad in black and ashen gray, with ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... this, no complete, authentic, and authorized record of the work of Mr. Edison, during an active life, has been given to the world. That life, if there is anything in heredity, is very far from finished; and while it continues ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... worked, her mind reverted to the Ship. Would she be missed there? Would the new maid engaged be as active and attentive as she had been? Her place in the hearts of the old couple was now occupied by Iver. However much the innkeeper might pretend to be hard of reconciliation, yet he must yearn after his own son; he must be proud of him now ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... the printer's lad over his loss, seemed to have checked the activity of his pen. For during that period nothing of his appeared in the Herald. But after the sharp edge of his sorrow had worn off, his pen became active again in the discussion of public men and public questions. It was a period of bitter personal and political feuds and animosities. The ancient Federal party was in articulo mortis. The death-bed of a great political organization proves ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... sailed down the Rhine and proceeded to Amsterdam, reaching that city fifteen days before the embassy. "He flew through the city," says one of the annalists of those days, "like lightning," and proceeded to a small but active sea-port town on the coast, Zaandam. The first person they saw here was a man fishing from a small skiff, at a short distance from the shore. The tzar, who was dressed like a common Dutch skipper, in ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... struggle continued for another three hundred years, down to the beginning of the present century, reaching its highest level of intensity between 1914 and 1945, with contestants from all of the continents taking an active part. In this present round the contestants are nations and empires, organized in ever-changing alliances. Some of the contestants are old, scarred and battle weary. Others are young and vigorous, recent entrants in the planet-wide contest for pelf, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... of I report as best I can. On the roof of that London apartment-house where so many of our talks took place beneath the stars and to the tune of bustling modern traffic, he told them to me. Both were consistent with his theory that he was becoming daily more active in some outlying portion of his personality—knowing experiences in a region of extended consciousness stimulated so powerfully by his ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... exercises of our Training School for Nurses were held in this room. This year also marks the decennial of Dr. Russell's term of office as Medical Superintendent. When his devoted predecessor, Dr. Samuel B. Lyon, asked in 1911 to be relieved from active duty and became our first Medical Superintendent Emeritus, we were most fortunate in securing as his successor Dr. Russell. Coming to this institution after a broad psychiatric and administrative experience, he has taken ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... time, take time by the forelock, anticipate, forestall; have the start, gain the start; steal a march upon; gain time, draw on futurity; bespeak, secure, engage, preengage^. accelerate; expedite &c (quicken) 274; make haste &c (hurry) 684. Adj. early, prime, forward; prompt &c (active) 682; summary. premature, precipitate, precocious; prevenient^, anticipatory; rath^. sudden &c (instantaneous) 113; unexpected &c 508; near, near at hand; immediate. Adv. early, soon, anon, betimes, rath^; eft, eftsoons; ere long, before long, shortly; beforehand; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... a community, or a caste, to have a pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence lay in irons, it is barely now, that our South is casting off a certain apprehensive tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest provocation active, and now and then violent, concerning her "blacks." This fear, like others similar elsewhere in the world, has always been met by the same one antidote—terrific cruelty to the tyrant's victim. So we shall presently see the Grandissime ladies, deeming themselves compassionate, urging their kinsmen ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... attention of Inventors and Manufacturers to the fact that, at a large expense, he has arranged a hall in the Museum Building, for the purpose of exhibiting to the public Models, Machines, and all the products of inventive genius in active working operation. The space allotted for this purpose embraces 6,000 square feet, supplied with Steam-power, Gas, and all the requirements of the Workshop, the Factory, and the Laboratory, which will be kept ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... to witness the fight, they may all take part in it, provided they remember Achilles is to reap the main honors of the day. Hearing this, the gods dart off to side with Troy and Greece, as their inclinations prompt, and thus take an active part in the battle, for which Jupiter gives the signal by launching a thunder-bolt. Not only do the gods fight against each other on this day, but use all their efforts to second their favorites in every way. Before long, however, it becomes so evident they ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... as adequate social aid as does the physically weak, ill, or crippled. Such a serviceable little pamphlet as that of Mr. Brady's on "Mental Hygiene in Childhood" gives useful suggestions. Meanwhile, the family interest is keen and must become more active and commanding in ridding society of the inducing causes of diseased germ plasm. The whole "social-hygiene" movement, so-called, is in the direction of cutting off the supply of the defective and making every family less likely to ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... him the chaplain and counsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to a bloody end. He pauses, by the meetinghouse, to exchange a greeting with Roger Williams, whose face indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and more expansive, than that of Peters; yet not less active for what he discerns to be the will of God, or the welfare of mankind. And look! here is a guest for Endicott, coming forth out of the forest, through which he has been journeying from Boston, and which, with its rude branches, has caught ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... eight years Schiller had been cut off from intercourse with his parents and sisters, save through the medium of officially inspected letters. Returning now at last he found his mother in frail health, but his father still vigorous and active. Sister Christophine had grown into a strong and self-reliant young woman, the mainstay of the household. She took an interest in literature, loved her brother devotedly, had a sister's boundless faith in his genius, and now became his confidante and amanuensis. Another sister, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... as soon as he entered Iberia, he commenced active operations and in a few days raised ten cohorts in addition to the twenty which were already there, and with this force marching against the Calaici[471] and Lusitani he defeated them, and advanced to the shores of the external sea, subduing the nations which hitherto had paid no obedience to Rome. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... for improving it's method, retrenching it's superfluities, and reconciling the little contrarieties, which the practice of many centuries will necessarily create in any human system: a task, which those who are deeply employed in business, and the more active scenes of the profession, can hardly condescend to engage in. And as to the interest, or (which is the same) the reputation of the universities themselves, I may venture to pronounce, that if ever this study should arrive to any tolerable perfection either here or at Cambridge, the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... earth. The south shelter was the Control Point for the test (12). The Base Camp, which was the headquarters for Project TRINITY, was located approximately 16 kilometers southwest of ground zero. The principal buildings of the abandoned McDonald Ranch, where the active parts of the TRINITY device were assembled, stood 3,660 meters southeast of ground zero. Seven guard posts, which were simply small tents or parked trucks like the ones shown in figures 1-3 and 1-4, dotted ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer

... to its care. No one had ever seen any one of these gods, but the people had no doubt of their existence. Names in close accordance with their separate functions were given them; these names became symbols destined to represent the different active principles of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Richard was happier with that little brown-haired girl than with anyone else, and when Melinda suggested they should go together somewhere, he assented readily, mentioning Davenport as a place where Ethelyn had many times said she would like to live. Now, as ever, Melinda's was the active, ruling voice, and almost before Richard knew it, he was in Davenport and bargaining for a vacant lot which overlooked the river and much of the country beyond. Davenport suited them all, and by September, Melinda, who had spent the summer with her mother, was located ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... dormant in the Lamarckianas of my strain, and probably in all of them, as no single parent-plant proved ever to be wholly destitute of mutability. Furthermore the different causes for the sundry mutations must lie latent together in the same parent-plant. They obey the same general laws, become active under similar conditions, some of them being more easily awakened than others. The germs of the oblonga, lata and nanella are especially irritable, and are ready to spring into activity at the least summons, while those of gigas, rubrinervis ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... the Philadelphia Convention were to be "appointed by the States." As a matter of course, the choice devolved upon the legislature in every instance. To what extent the active economic interests directed and controlled the selection is a mere matter of speculation. Certain it is that the members of the convention belonged to the governing class in their respective communities. Almost to a man they had held important public positions. To a surprising extent they ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... Cary's grave. That was all natural enough; a thing they had done many times. They were taught at Greenwood that there was nothing mournful there. Shells lay about them, beneath the earth, but the beneficent activities had escaped, and were active still, beneficent still.... The word "shells" in the dream turned the page. She was upon a great sea beach and quite alone. She sat and looked at the waves coming rolling in, and presently one laid Richard at her feet. She bandaged the cut upon his forehead, and called him by his name, and he looked ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... I have not wanted to talk with you much about it until I was here. I know all your objections. You remember that you did not spare me when, a year ago, I told you that this was my plan. I realize that you—more active, younger, more interested in life, less burdened with your past—feel that it is cowardly on my part to seek a quiet refuge and settle myself into it, to turn my face peacefully to the exit, feeling that the end is the most interesting event ahead of me—the one truly interesting experience ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... Cardinal, and papal legate at the Diet of Augsburg, 1518; John Eck, professor in the University of Ingolstadt, who had been Luther's opponent at the Leipzig Disputation in 1519; Jerome Emser, also active at the Leipzig Disputation, whom Luther was to make the laughing-stock of Germany under the name of "the Leipzig goat," an appellation ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... of cutting holes in the organ pipes), I finally dropped in upon a Dorcas meeting at the house of Miss Brett. The Dorcas meetings are usually held at the vicarage, but my wife being unwell, Miss Brett, a newcomer in our village, but very active in church work, had very kindly consented to hold them. The Dorcas society is entirely under my wife's management as a rule, and except for Miss Brett, who, as I say, is very active, I scarcely know any members of it. I had, however, promised to drop in on ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... signifies DEAF; to dun, then, perhaps may mean to deafen with importunate demands: some derive it from the word DONNEZ, which signifies GIVE. But the true original meaning of the word, owes its birth to one Joe Dun, a famous bailiff of the town of Lincoln, so extremely active, and so dexterous in his business, that it became a proverb, when a man refused to pay, Why do not you DUN him? that is, Why do not you set Dun to attest him? Hence it became a cant word, and is now as old as since the days of Henry VII. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... entering the cabin, they saw this at a glance. Thick sulphurous smoke was rising through the open hatchway, and the cabin was already filled with it. There must be fire to produce such a smoke, and fire still alive and active—for it was not the smoke of a fire that had been lately extinguished! No; it was still alive—still burning—still spreading and increasing! That was evident to all as soon as they entered the cabin, and saw the smoke issuing up ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... of the transaction which, I thought, was pretty sure to follow, namely, that it would arouse in Yetmore an angry resolve to "get even" with Tom by hook or by crook. That he would resort to active reprisals if the opportunity presented itself I felt certain, and so I warned our friend. But Tom, careless as usual, refused to take any precautions, believing that Yetmore would not venture as long as he—Tom—had, as he expressed it, two such damaging ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... by their active properties, especially in combining with amines in acid solutions, or with phenols in alkaline solution to form the azo dyes, thus diazobenzene chloride will combine with ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... not ask the why and the wherefore of things. They live from day to day, weighed down by hard work. To them the actual fighting is a rest and a delight. As soon as it is over they have to resume the hard life of cavalrymen on active service, spend all their time looking after their horses, fetching rations and forage, often from a considerable distance, cleaning harness and arms, and every night contriving some sort of quarters for themselves and their beasts in the squalor of half-destroyed ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... is even hazardous to do what some people speak of—to preserve the heart young in bodily old age. Contentment, in old age, is deserved by him alone who has not lost his faith in what is good, his persevering strength of will, his desire for active employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as far as in him lay the power, assured, and obtained guarantees for, the welfare ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... place, both had suffered from Solomon sores. So had the rest of us (at the time, I was nursing two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive sublimate); but the two Japanese had had more than their share. And the sores are not nice. They may be described as excessively active ulcers. A mosquito bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment of the poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the ulcer commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and muscle with astounding rapidity. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... thing to be fairly active in determining that leaving leaning forward means marrying, if it is a happy thing that exhibiting means coming to be withdrawing what one was expecting to have had remaining, if it is a lonely thing to be telling some one who is one who has come to be one that they are waiting and ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... those which are matters of necessity rather than choice, prudent men will endeavour so to conduct themselves as to conciliate good-will. This species of prudence was well exercised by the Roman senate when they resolved to grant pay from the public purse to soldiers on active service, who, before, had served at their own charges. For perceiving that under the old system they could maintain no war of any duration, and, consequently, could not undertake a siege or lead an army to any distance from home, and finding it necessary to be able to do ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... goes into business without that intimate knowledge that is so essential, and stumbles into success or into failure. But this condition is gradually changing. We have been in active life long enough to have somewhat of an apprentice class of our own. Here and there we find men, who have, through this system gained a knowledge that gives them a decided advantage. It is through these means that we hope to improve the personnel of our merchant class, the character of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... Here was a subject upon which honest Stephen Roberts, whose shop is in a street where scales and measures abound, was entirely at home. He showed, in his sturdy and strenuous manner, that, at the rates then established, an active man could make two hundred dollars a day. 'Why,' said he, 'a man can inspect, and does inspect, fifty platform scales in an hour,' The cry of 'Question!' arose. The question was put, and the usual loud chorus ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... us know the worst at once." Through "all this mist of intoxication and folly," however, Washington saw that the Shays insurrection would probably be the means of frightening the indifferent, and of driving those who seemed impervious to every appeal to reason into an active support of some better form of government. He rightly thought that riot and bloodshed would ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... always be depended upon to write a story in which poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a mystery at the heart of the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans for Government. But, to my eye, the path of duty is as distinct as the Milky Way,—all studded with living sapphires, glowing with light. It is the path of active preparation, of dignified energy. It is the path of 1776. It consists not in abandoning our rights, but in supporting them as they exist and where they exist,—on the ocean as well as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... fare better at the hands of one used to phrasing and capable also of more points of view than the Colonel was used to taking. The outlines of the thing are strong, however, because the Deacon and I understood that fights were what the old Colonel had dealt in during his active life, much as other men do in stocks and bonds or wheat and corn. He had been a successful operator, and only recalled pleasantly the bull quotations. This type of Ranger is all but gone. A few may yet be found in outlying ranches. One of the ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... if the same meaning were applicable to three or four of them at the same time, but when all such words are reduced to a final analysis it is clearly seen that there is a marked difference in their meaning. For instance grief and sorrow seem to be identical, but they are not. Grief is active, sorrow is more or less passive; grief is caused by troubles and misfortunes which come to us from the outside, while sorrow is often the consequence of our own acts. Grief is frequently loud and violent, sorrow ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... of talk before. It's the same howl that an employer always makes when he's tried to bribe an agent who's active in the interest of the men, and got left at it. What have you got to show for it? Anything ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... Is opportunity to those, who spend An idle courtship on the fair, they well Deserve their fate, if they're disdain'd;—her charms To rush upon, and conquer opposition, Gains the Fair one's praise; an active lover Suits, who lies aside the coxcomb's empty whine, And forces ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... was that setting her aside when he had to, served so to cut in two his life, so wrenched at his heartstrings, so burnt and bruised his spirit, that when, in his active fashion he had lived some of the hurt down, he could not bring himself easily to reopen the old subject—fresh wounds for him might still lurk in it—how could he tell? Although it had been at the call, the insistence ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... blood. What was all very well for captains and lieutenants, once those ranks were reached, was not so easy for midshipmen. We know in every walk of life the woes of those whose position is doubtful or challenged; and what was said to his crew by Sir Peter Parker, an active frigate captain who was killed in Chesapeake Bay in 1814, "I'll have you touch your hat to a midshipman's jacket hung up to dry" (curiously reminiscent of William Tell and Gessler's cap), not improbably ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... in the neighborhood of the valley of Dundee, were formerly distinguished from all their neighbors by the superiority of their physical qualities. The men were of high stature, robust, active, and courageous; the women comely and graceful. Both sexes possessed an extraordinary taste for poetry and music. Now, alas! a long experience of poverty, prolonged privation of sufficient food and suitable clothing, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... everywhere, endangered by all departures in the model republic of the world from fundamental principles of good government, and all the more perilled in proportion to the station, quality, and character of the active offender. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... books as "preaching." During nearly four years of army life, at a period when most young men are forming style and making the acquaintance of literature, I scarcely had a chance to read at all. The subsequent years of the pastorate were too active, except for an occasional dip ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... Clovelly men, active as deer from forest training, ran two feet for the Spaniard's one; and in ten minutes returned, having done their work; while Amyas and his men hurried past the Indians, to help Cary and the party forward, where shouts and musket ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... see it at a glance. The old antithesis! All men and all animals fall, roughly speaking, into two great divisions of type: the impassioned and the unimpassioned; the vivid and the phlegmatic. I catch your drift now. Lethodyne is poison to phlegmatic patients, who have not active power enough to wake up from it unhurt; it is relatively harmless to the vivid and impassioned, who can be put asleep by it, indeed, for a few hours more or less, but are alive enough to live on through the coma and reassert their ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... he knew that the words would be in vain. Back he would never go, and, strong and active, he felt that he could easily free himself from the detaining clutch, and then—there was ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... street-lamps started into shivering life, as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs. Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had slipped away unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her back to an active realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was wont to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding some avenue of employment—she knew not what—open to her needs; and Carry had noted ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... eyes, and heavy fetters keep His senses bound in never-waking sleep, Till time shall cease, till many a starry world Shall fall from heav'n, in dire confusion hurl'd Till nature in her final wreck shall lie, And her last groan shall rend the azure sky: Not, not till then his active soul shall claim His body, a divine immortal frame. But see the softly-stealing tears apace Pursue each other down the mourner's face; But cease thy tears, bid ev'ry sigh depart, And cast the load of anguish from thine heart: From the cold shell of ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... common in men than women (because of the more active part played by them in the struggle for existence), in cities than in the country, in mental than in manual workers, in the "idle rich", and in races which live feverishly, like the Americans. It is rare ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... corner. Moriarty looked at him enviously. The sergeant was much the older man of the two, and was besides of portly figure. Sleep came easily to him under the most unpromising circumstances. Moriarty was not more than twenty four years of age. He was mentally and physically an active man. Before he went to work on "The Minstrel Boy" he had wooed sleep in vain. Even a three days' old copy of the Weekly Freeman had brought him no more than a series of stupefying yawns. If a man cannot ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... through the contradanza, the dance for which Havannah is especially celebrated, but his partner smiled graciously, and assured him that he performed it to perfection. When, however, he contrasted his own performance with that of the active-toed Spaniards, he could not help feeling that he was receiving undue flattery. As to his companions they soon had to give it up as a bad job, though they did their best to make themselves agreeable by tucking their partners' arms under ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston



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