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Submissiveness   Listen
Submissiveness

noun
1.
The trait of being willing to yield to the will of another person or a superior force etc..






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Submissiveness" Quotes from Famous Books



... them so curtly, though, to be sure, she believed implicitly that the storm would soon pass. Stampa was already inside the hut. He was haranguing Barth and the porter vehemently, and they were listening with a curious submissiveness. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... movement Maslova rose with an air of submissiveness, and throwing back her shoulders, looked into the face of the presiding justice with her smiling, somewhat ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... must like the taper and transparent fretwork of the fleche above, which seems to bend to the west wind,—though it doesn't—at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... Clan, duly appointed; and I also was a priest. If the word had been given on the Sacred Mountain to those who sat before the Ark of the Mysteries that Atlantis would prosper more with Deucalion sent to the Gods, I was ready to bow to the sentence with submissiveness. That I had regret for this mode of cutting off, I will not deny. No man who has practised the game of arms could abandon the promise of such a gorgeous final battle without a ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... addressed by the high-souled king Yudhishthira the just, that royal sage, viz., Dhritarashtra, blessed Yudhishthira and gave him permission. The king comforted Bhima, that foremost of all persons endued with great strength. Endued with great energy and great intelligence, Bhima showed his submissiveness to the king. Embracing Arjuna and clasping those foremost of men, viz., the twins also, and blessing them repeatedly, the Kuru king gave them permission to depart. They worshipped the feet of Gandhari and received her blessings also. Their mother Kunti then smelt their heads, and dismissed them. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... surrounded by neatness and plenty. Austin added dexterity to submissiveness. My companion, whose name I now found to be Medlicote, was prone to converse, and commented on the state of the city like one whose reading had been extensive and experience large. He combated an opinion which I had casually formed ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... executive and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive,—the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its submissiveness. Then we have the mediaeval system, in which the mind of the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is guided and ennobled by the ruling mind. This is the truly Christian ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... Friend Without loyalty. A drunkard Without satiety. Compassionate Without mercy. Reserved Without secrecy. Long-suffering Without patience. Cowardly Without fear. Bold Without resolution. Obedient Without submissiveness. One who practices austerities Without suffering. Bashful Without sense of honor. Virtuous Without mortification. Clever Without capacity. Civilized Without politeness. Astute Without sagacity. Merciful Without pity. Modest Without shame. Revengeful Without valor. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... often the blind tools of leaders, of men whose only interest in their country is to use it for their own purposes, to make all they can out of it, and at its expense. The Democratic party has always been a disciplined party, and nothing is more notorious in its history than its submissiveness to its leaders. This has been the chief cause of its almost unbroken career of success; and it has been its pride and its boast that it has been well-trained, obedient, and consequently successful, while all other parties have been quarrelsome and impatient of discipline, and consequently have risen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. Intellectual qualities, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... people had now reached the spot, and while the animal, frightened into submissiveness by the blows and cries that surrounded him, was led away snorting and panting, Will looked in affright at the girl who lay white and ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... meantime, in November, Henry's most famous Parliament had opened session. The last, called six years before under Wolsey's regime to obtain supplies, had shown a qualified submissiveness. The new one, whether packed or not, displayed prompt signs of activity. Known to fame as the "Seven Years'" or "Reformation" Parliament, it consistently displayed three characteristics: it was anti-papal and anti-clerical; it endorsed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... admire, but whose love of beauty they do not really share. Such people tend to gravitate to early Italian painting, because of its historical associations, and because it can be categorically studied. They become what is called 'purists,' which means little more than a learned submissiveness. In literature they are found to admire Carlyle, Ruskin, and Browning, not because of their method of treating thought, but because of the ethical maxims imbedded—as though one were to love a conserve of plums for the sake of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... stray truth here or there; but the relations of truth, its perfectness, that which makes it wholesome truth, he can never perceive. As wholeness and wholesomeness go together, so also sight with sincerity; it is only the constant desire of and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects, and fit them and knit them into ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... a brief pause he replied with unexpected submissiveness: "All right, Mr. Knowles. You're the boss. Reckon you know best. I ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,—no, you must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but the woman will come ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... behalf of the young heroine. But to exhibit the determination and the deed of Antigone in their full glory, it was necessary that they should stand out quite alone, and that she should have no stay or support. Moreover, the very submissiveness of the chorus increases our impression of the irresistible nature of the royal commands. So, too, was it necessary for it to mingle with its concluding addresses to Antigone the most painful recollections, that she might drain the full ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... very different was passing in Ottilie. She had disclosed the secret of the course of her life to her friend, and she showed no more of her previous restraint and submissiveness. By her repentance and her resolution she felt herself freed from the burden of her fault and her misfortune. She had no more violence to do to herself. In the bottom of her heart she had forgiven herself solely under condition of the fullest renunciation, and it was a condition which would remain ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... thing immeasurable, surely not meant for the like of him; its high claims, to which no one could be equal; its reproaches. He would scarcely have proposed to "enter into" [219] such matters; was constitutionally shy of them. His submissiveness, you see, was a kind of genius; made him therefore, of course, unlike those around him; was a secret; a thing, you might say, "which no one knoweth, saving he ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... no longer repelled by her severity; she could appreciate now what lay beneath it. She said, "Yes, kinswoman," with proper submissiveness, and then looked over at ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the poor girl could not conceal her love for Gian' Battista. He could see it would be violent, exacting, suspicious, uncompromising—like her soul. Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her nature holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... a lovely guest in his house. She contrived to say a few gracious words to everyone, and was shrewd enough never to utter something witty without making me take a share in it. On my side, I openly shewed my submissiveness, my deference, and my respect for that divinity, but it was all in vain. She wanted everybody to know that I was her lord and master. She might have been taken for my wife, but my behaviour to her rendered such a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... old man. And so he remained in an attitude of complete subservience to Church tradition and authority, and even to his "director," an intermediary who is constantly mentioned by these post-Reformation mystics. Even this unqualified submissiveness did not preserve him from persecution during his lifetime, and suspicion afterwards. His books were only authorised twenty-seven years after his death, which occurred in 1591; and his beatification was ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... ore." "The large Romanised towns," says Professor Rolleston, "no doubt made terms with the Saxons, who abhorred city life, and would probably be content to leave the unwarlike burghers in a condition of heavily-taxed submissiveness." ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... to capture street by street; But, after that, habitual faith, Divorced from self, where late 'twas due, Walks nobly in its novel path, And she's to changed allegiance true; And prizing what she can't prevent, (Right wisdom, often misdeem'd whim), Her will's indomitably bent On mere submissiveness to him; To him she'll cleave, for him forsake Father's and mother's fond command! He is her lord, for he can take Hold of her faint heart ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... wise after the event. The confidence of the Europeans in the submissiveness of the natives is now seen to have been ill founded. Causes of discontent were rife among them, which, at first obscure, became subsequently clear. Two of these causes were already known at the time of my visit, though their seriousness was under-estimated. In Mashonaland the natives disliked ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... felt before that day that she could be ill-treated more easily than anyone, and that she could be wronged with impunity. Yet till that moment she had fancied that she might escape misfortune by care, gentleness and submissiveness before everyone. Her disappointment was too great. She could, of course, bear with patience and almost without murmur anything, even this. But for the first minute she felt it too bitter. In spite of her triumph and her justification—when her first terror and stupefaction had ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... refreshed the pirate, and when the grey dawn, struggling through the dense foliage, awoke him, he rose up with a feeling of submissiveness which seemed, somehow, to ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... any other method than that of earnest and devout truthfulness, love, good works, and pious submissiveness to God, cease to fancy that their souls, after waiting through the long sleep or separation of death, will return and take on their old bodies again. Recognizing the Divine plan for training souls in this lower ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... withdrew into his mouse-hole (SOURICIERE); but he still loved the lion; and seeing one day a net they were spreading out to catch the lion and kill him, he gnawed asunder one mesh of it. Sire, the mouse kisses very humbly your beautiful claws, in all submissiveness:—he will never die between two Capuchins, as, at Bale, the mastiff (DOGUE) of St. Malo has done [27th July last]. He would have wished to die beside his lion. Believe that the mouse was more attached than the mastiff."—V. [OEuvres de ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and shortly after Doctor Vaughan took his departure, wise and yet blind; blind as to the true cause of Madeline's outbreak and subsequent submissiveness. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... beautiful, but because they exist,—a scrupulous anxiety to give the every-day look of the objects they portray, as any passer-by would see them, free from any distorting personality. To do them justice, however, this submissiveness to the matter-of-fact, with the more gifted at least, is a virtue that is praised and starves. They do it lip-service, and suppose themselves loyal; but when they come to paint, they are under a spell that does not allow them to see in things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... more dynamic industrial world—than there is any hope of realizing while foreigners are excluded from our markets even when prices are there extortionate. Prices will be extortionate so long as the trusts are checked only by local rivals and are allowed to club these rivals into submissiveness. Keeping the foreigner away by competing fairly with him is what we should desire; but barring him forcibly out, even when prices mount to extravagant levels, helps to fasten on this country the various evils which are included under ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... Greeks thought their subjects boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested it in their minds with interest, and not with criminality. Versatile, restless, enterprising and self- confident, the Greeks presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals. And, of all the Greeks, the Athenians exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This spirit of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for the fate of their fellow-Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... slight reddish-haired man, who came suddenly out of a doorway of the White Tower, stopped a moment irresolutely, and then came towards them, bare-headed and bowing. He had sloping shoulders and a serious-looking mouth, with a reddish beard and moustache, and had an air of strangely mingled submissiveness and capability. His voice too, as he spoke, was at once ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... many offices and dignities to be enjoyed by the king's faithful vassals—indeed, "a great part of the Spanish people could come to reside there, and be ennobled." On account of the great virtue, modesty, submissiveness, and beauty of the Chinese women, they would prove to be excellent wives for the Spaniards; thus the two peoples would mingle, and "all would be united, fraternal, and Christian." It is for lack of such amalgamation that European experiments in Oriental colonization have hitherto failed; but the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character. He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youthful loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... exist any doubt for the man and for the childless woman, as to the path in which the fulfilment of the will of God lies, this path is firmly and clearly defined for the woman who is a mother; and if she has complied with it in submissiveness and in simplicity of spirit, she, standing on that loftiest height of bliss which the human being is permitted to attain, will become a guiding-star for all men who are seeking good. Only the mother ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi



Words linked to "Submissiveness" :   subordination, passiveness, obedience, servility, obsequiousness, passivity, submissive, subservience



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