"Impel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wisdom, to avoid these victims. They have no ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... symbolism in it, and confess finally that no man unregenerate to letters, by any a priori or empirical knowledge, could have at all suspected that a bit of dirty parchment, with an ecclesiastical scrawl upon it, would have power to drive the currents of history, inspire great national passions, and impel the wars and direct the ideas of an epoch. The conflicts of the iconoclasts can be understood even by a child in its first meditations over a picture-book; hieroglyphics may represent or suggest their objects by some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... directions we must arrange to have these half-tooth movements exactly alike, or, as stated above, of equal angular values; and also each impulse must convey the same power or force to the balance. All escape wheels of fifteen teeth acting by half impulses must impel the balance during twelve degrees (minus the drop) of escape-wheel action; or, in other words, when a tooth passes out of the cylinder from the position shown at Fig. 126, the form of the impulse face of the tooth ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... the cloud which still envelops them, she does not distinguish them clearly, nature gives her a presentiment of what the cost will be if she allows you the least opportunity to instruct her in a passion which she doubtless already shares. Women rarely inquire into the reasons which impel them to give themselves up or to resist; they do not even amuse themselves by trying to understand or explain them, but they have feelings, and sentiment with them is correct, it takes the place of intelligence and reflection. It is a sort of instinct ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... expect, that women who decline to suckle the infant recover from childbirth somewhat less rapidly than those who follow nature's plan. In this fact, therefore, is found a selfish motive, yet a very good one, which should impel mothers to perform this ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, encompass. Increase, grow, enlarge, magnify, amplify, swell, augment. Indecent, indelicate, immodest, shameless, ribald, lewd, lustful, lascivious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the child may come from hysteria in the mother. A drunken father may impel epilepsy, madness or idiocy in the child. Ungoverned passions, from love to hate, from hope to fear, when indulged in overmuch by the parents, may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and rapacious prince, the nation might have found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination; but the grievances which the country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when compared ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... be a painter you must go to France—France is the only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not when ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... moment he thought she was going to throw herself on his neck and burst into tears. A sudden impulse seemed to impel her. But they saw each other in their semi-nudity. She, who had not noticed it before, was now conscious that she was only half dressed, that her arms were bare, her shoulders bare, covered only by the scattered locks of her unbound ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... down the shame of scorching another man's happiness, after finding that the cause which drove him to do so, has lost its power to impel? I am not ashamed of having loved Lucy; I am ashamed of not having loved her enough. Thank God no greater harm was done to Fulton than was done. He has his Lucy, what there is left of her, his children, and a greater financial success than ever he hoped for. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... be inhuman cruelty. Slaves, who have regarded labour as an irksome task, can have little idea of liberty, except as an exemption from toil. To liberate them, without some arrangement for their subsistence, would produce starvation, or impel them to acts of lawless violence. Emancipation must, therefore, as those friends of the slaves contend, be gradual and prospective. The British Parliament have not decreed an immediate emancipation, in the West Indies; thus recognizing the principle, that the ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... yearnings burn the human breast; What wild desires like prisoned birds Impel the heart from east to west; What urgings baffling words Beat up from nature unexpressed Till soul distinct stands manifest, On guard for heaven, or, wanton, hurled Toward ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... that God would abstain from impelling the wicked is, according to Luther, tantamount to wishing that He cease to be God. Luther: "There is still this question which some one may ask, 'Why does God not cease to impel by His omnipotence, in consequence of which the will of the wicked is moved to continue being wicked and even growing worse?' The answer is: This is equivalent to desiring that God cease to be God for the sake of the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... intercession of the lady I have the honour of addressing, with her niece Miss Ringgan, that my reward,—the single word of encouragement I ask for,—may be given me?—Having that, I will promise anything—I will guaranty the success of any enterprise, however difficult, to which she may impel me,—and I will undertake that the matter which furnishes the painful theme of this letter shall never more be spoken or thought of, by the world, or my father, or by ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... be considered only as proving her aversion to me. So strong is it as to impel her to indiscreet and self-destructive expedients; and so I should likewise reason if these very expedients did not argue a confidence in my integrity somewhat inconsistent with the censure passed on ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... assertion of a mind behind phenomena, the workings of which could be seen in the forms of animal life. And whether we find that proof in the growth of a flower, or in the moral sense of man, or in the creation of natural conditions that impel the development of life along a certain road, the distinction is not vital. We are still finding proofs of God in the structure of the world (where otherwise, indeed, are we to find it?) and we are still depending ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... wills forces them to break. And so Hebbel, passing over the individual, as one of myriads, directs inquiry into the causes that make him what he is, that make him do what he does, that prevent him from doing what at the same time they impel him to attempt; and he reveals, back of the individual typical phenomenon, an irreconcilable conflict in the very condition and definition of its existence. This conflict has its roots in the dualism ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... certainly hard that they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean, and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments the argument, for instance, that they have not fashioned us for the science of the shears, and do yet impel us to wield them. Nevertheless, they to whom mortal life has ceased to be a long matter perceive that our appeals for conviction are answered, now and then very closely upon the call. When we have cast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is orderly,—and more, - "The Waves behind impel the Waves before;" Monotonously musical they glide, Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; This Line in Foam and Thunder ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... that the prevalence of inherent defects of composition and the lack of serious motive, coupled with the author's constant and conscious employment of the implements of broad farce and extravagant burlesque, impel us inevitably to the conclusion that we have before us a species of composition which, while following a dramatic form, is not inherently drama, but a variety of entertainment that may be described as a compound of comedy, farce and burlesque; while ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... me that this "only" difference is at the very foundation of the religious training of the children of the present day in our country. We do our best to awaken their imaginations, to put to them suggestions that will impel, to say to them the "same thing" that was said to the children of more austere times about remembering their Creator; but so to say it that they feel, not that they will be unhappy if they do not remember, but that they will be happy ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... presented to them; neither moral nor physical means are made use of to soften their chains; they are left in their original and untutored state; that very state wherein the natural propensities of revenge and warm passions are so soon kindled. Cheered by no one single motive that can impel the will, or excite their efforts; nothing but terrors and punishments are presented to them; death is denounced if they run away; horrid delaceration if they speak with their native freedom; perpetually awed by the terrible cracks of whips, or ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... principles calculated to diminish the power of the Federal Government and magnify that of the States, thus served to smooth the way, to lay the track, upon which the engine of rebellion was to be started. But there was still wanting the motive power which should impel the machine and give it energy and momentum. Something tangible was required—something palpable to the masses—on the basis of which violent antagonisms and hatreds could be engendered, and fearful dangers could be pictured to ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the motives which impel persons to buy and use patent medicines? The history of medicine offers a partial explanation. In somewhat remote times we find that the medicines in use by regular physicians were of the most vile, nauseating, and powerful nature. We read of "purging gently" with a teaspoonful of calomel. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... baby years, Sweet dirges from the cradle's keys, The glories of your harmonies Impel my secret soul to tears! The roses of my fancies fade Into the dust of wicked strife, And all the promise boyhood made Has proved ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... may well be called a gulf, since nothing ever returns from it, it is not possible for ships to get off when once they approach within a certain distance. If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current impel them; and if they come into it when a land-wind blows, which might seem to favour their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current carries them ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a Bipinnaria, a Brachialaria, a Pluteus, is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... slightest motion of the animal spirits: further, that this gland is suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different manners, as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and, again, that as many different marks are impressed on the said gland, as there are different external objects which impel the animal spirits towards it; whence it follows, that if the will of the soul suspends the gland in a position, wherein it has already been suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way or another, the gland in its turn reacts on the said spirits, driving ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... you may as rationally expect to produce sense, thought, and knowledge, by putting together, in a certain figure and motion, gross particles of matter, as by those that are the very minutest that do anywhere exist. They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do; and that is all they can do. So that, if we will suppose NOTHING first or eternal, matter can never begin to be: if we suppose bare matter without motion, eternal, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... that flitted over his companion's countenance. For a time he would seem lost in some deep mournful reverie, and his head drooped as if in sadness or perplexity; then a sudden gleam would light up his face, as if a brilliant project had occurred to him, his lips would part, his eyes flash, he would impel his horse forward as though leading a charge, or lift up his head with kindling looks, like one rehearsing a speech; but ever a check would come on him in the midst, his mouth closed in dejection, his brow drew together in an anguish of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moral power in ancestor-worship can be proved, it will be necessary to have exact details of moral ideas and conduct in all the lower tribes, together with some information regarding the attitude of individuals toward questions of conduct, and the motives that impel toward this or that action. The question of ethical growth in society is a complicated one, and the most that can be said for any element of social constitution is that it tends to strengthen or weaken the individual's confidence in and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... isolated position, and using its revenues to maintain its own physical force, than if allied with those who would thus war upon its prosperity and domestic peace; and reason, pride, self-interest, and the apprehension of secret, constant danger would impel ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... which descends upon him in some season of religious gloom,—some hour of sickness, or danger, or death,—when the great eternity, with all its awful realities, and all its unknown terror, opens upon his quailing gaze. There are times in man's life, when he is the subject of movements within that impel him to deeds that seem almost superhuman; but that internal ferment and convulsion which is produced when all eternity pours itself through his being turns his soul up from the centre. Man will labor ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... has thus far done little to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence they ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... rose—she could not have told why; something seemed to impel her, some will outside her own. She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... an hour, when he who climbs, had need To walk uncrippled: for the sun had now To Taurus the meridian circle left, And to the Scorpion left the night. As one That makes no pause, but presses on his road, Whate'er betide him, if some urgent need Impel: so enter'd we upon our way, One before other; for, but singly, none That steep and narrow scale admits ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... my two dear readers how sensibly I felt her goodness, when I acquaint them of its effect upon me ; which was no less than to induce, to impel me to trust her with my performance of her request. just as she was quitting her dressing-room, I got behind her, and suddenly ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity in the maiden's manner to impel him to any risk. His only answer was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument. Holding the neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the steel twice or thrice around it. A faint rasping, scratching sound was all the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sous, which will gain him admission to the base of the column; let him ascend to the summit; thence let him leap with all his energy, in a direction at right angles with the shaft of the column, into the open air; and it will be found that, though the original impulsion would not probably impel the body more than ten or twelve feet, motion would continue until it had reached the earth. Corollary: hence it is proved that all bodies in which the vis inertia has been overcome will continue in motion, until they come in contact with some power ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... taste, judgment, or principle; and even when she deals with the feelings, I would rather follow the calm course of her quiet pen than the flourishes of a more redundant one where there is not strength to restrain as well as ardour to impel. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... it," was Holmes's reply. "Now, Watson, I'll need you again. I've had my eye on a certain party since my deduction-trance yesterday noon, and was waiting for her sense of shame to impel her to confess her part in the cuff-button robbery; but since she has not as yet done so, I shall be forced to resort to sterner measures. Come with me, and leave these fellows to kill time any way ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... exhausts his power of speed and plods henceforth eyes downward over flattest plains of dulness. That my mind may remain curious and alert in isolation, I must conceive in the universal scheme a power that does not alone impel, but also draws me forward. For were it true that the sum of things blunders from change to change, swept by blind force into uncharted voids, I should abandon myself in despair to that hopeless course, and drift indifferent to the direction ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the party injured to redress the wrong, than it is the right of others. All men are interested in the prevention of wrongs, and hence all men should unite to redress them. All men are endowed by their Creator with a sense of justice, in order to impel them to secure its claims, and throw the shield of its protection around the weak ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... sense of light, rather than organs of seeing. Their almost paradoxical number at least, and the singularity of their forms, render it probable that they impel the animal by some modification of its irritability, herein likewise containing a striking analogy to the known influence of light on plants, than as excitements of sensibility. The sense that is nearest ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... results from them, which, all forming in reality the true complement of the world, were, without doubt made at the same time as the universe. By this silence history wishes to train the activity of our intelligence, giving it a weak point for starting, to impel it to the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... not lightly of the actor's art, Who smiles to please you, with a breaking heart! Neglect him not in his hill-climbing course, Nor treat him with less kindness than your horse: Up hill, indulge him—down the steep descent, Spare—and don't urge him when his strength is spent; Impel him briskly o'er the level earth, But in the stable don't forget his worth! So with the actor—while you work him hard, Be mindful of his claims ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... unless they obeyed the laws, the first duty of citizens is the care of the public interests, which unite and preserve states, as private interests distract them. A man may know what is for the public good, but if he have absolute power, human nature will impel him to seek pleasure instead of virtue, and so darkness will come over his soul and over the state. If he had mind, he would have no need of law; for mind is the perfection of law. But such a freeman, 'whom the truth makes free,' is ...
— Laws • Plato
... Gladdy. For more than twenty years, she has been experiencing "visitations of the spirit". These do not occur with any degree of regularity, but they do always occur in "the dead hours of the night" after she has retired, and impel her to rise and write in an unknown hand. These strange writings of her's now cover eight pages of letter paper and bear a marked resemblance to crude shorthand notes. Off-hand, she can "cipher" (interpret or translate) about half of these ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... and pleasant, if we could have the desire granted; but duty is greater than desire, and circumstances may at times impel us to the performance of the one rather than favor us with the gratification of the other. What I mean is, that it is our duty sometimes to take a part in scenes in which our hearts cannot ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... total loss to Japanese trade, various authorities have settled upon $50,000,000, which we may accept as a close approximation. At any rate the pressure was great enough to impel the Japanese merchants of Peking and Tientsin, with apparent ruin staring them in the face, to appeal to their home government for protection. They insisted that the boycott should be made a diplomatic question of the first order and that demands ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... was needed, and her heart being deeply absorbed in the cause she willingly allowed her sympathies to impel her to ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... to be doubted, may by art exempt himself in part from the influence of the heavens; it being common opinion, that the heavens give an inclination, but do not impel us; for which reason the learned say, that a wise man rules the stars. I was born with a very choleric disposition, insomuch that there was no living with me; but I took notice of it, and considered, that a person swayed by his passion, must ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... "Yes, the reasons which impel you to prefer a dinner of bitter herbs, under Mr. Alspaugh's usually soiled thumb, to a stalled ox and my profitable ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... I rolled up into my blanket, filled with strange presentiments. Again the question came up: What is the source of the influence that this madman of the mountains, this wild hunter, this leader of the black wolf pack, had on me to impel me to trail him over the mountains? Was it mental telepathy? Could he really be my father? Somehow I felt convinced that soon I would be face to face with the riddle, soon I would know the facts and the truth ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... guests for whom the banquet was prepared, could they have fared better. If, then, we would have a pledge of their good living and perseverance, we must lock at the good dispositions of those who enter Religion rather than at the motives which impel them: for there are many souls who would not have entered the convent at all if the world had smiled upon them, and whom we nevertheless may find to be resolute in trampling under their feet the vanities ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... feudal-minded ones act upon substantially the same impulse. Everywhere they impel and, to a large extent, though by indirection, they compel, prolific breeding among the less intelligent persons. These latter are also the victims of the prevailing religious, political, economic ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into the motives which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the force, truth, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... despair across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and rejoiced,—shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my mother with me and in me to impel ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... mind creates (within itself) numerous ideas (of objects or existent things). The Understanding settles which is which. The heart discriminates which is agreeable and which is disagreeable. These are the three forces that impel to acts. The objects of the senses are superior to the senses. The mind is superior to those objects. The understanding is superior to mind. The Soul is regarded as superior to Understanding. (As regards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Athenians into enthusiasm so great that in delight at his eloquence they forgot his advice. "I want you," he said, "not to applaud me, but to march against Philip." [35] There was no danger of the Roman people forgetting action in applause. They rejoiced to hear the orator, but it was that he might impel them to tumultuous activity; he was caterer not for the satisfaction of their ears, but for the employment of their hands. Thus he paid a heavy price for eminence. Few of Rome's greatest orators died in their beds. Carbo put an end to his own life; the two Gracchi, Antonius, Drusus, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Let the nobleness of your mind impel you to its improvement; you are too strong to be defeated, save by yourselves. Refuse to live merely to sleep and eat. Brutes can do this; but you are men. Act the part of men. Prepare yourselves to endure toil. Resolve to rise—you have but to resolve. Nothing can hinder your success ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... same expression in her countenance. "Lady Helen," cried she, "I request an explanation of that look of derision which I now see on your face. I wish to know whether the intoxication of your vanity dare impel you to despise claims which may one day be established ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... measure dependent upon the wind, is absolutely at its mercy in a storm. When the gale increases beyond a certain limit, she can no longer make head at all against its fury, but must turn and fly—or be driven—wherever the fury of the tempest may impel her. In such cases, she goes bounding over the seas, away from her course, toward rocks, shoals, breakers, or any other dangers whatever which may lie in the way, without the least power or possibility of resistance. She goes ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... to him. Outwardly the Syndic was cool, inwardly he was at a white heat that at any moment might impel him to the wildest action. "Well?" he said. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... is, where my Saviour is; There with him I hope to dwell: Jesu is the central bliss; Love the force that doth impel." ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... conscious exercise of judgment or reason on our part. Then habit is all-potent with us, temperament is potent, health and disease are potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason that an ordinary man uses in his life, compared with the great unreason or blind impulse and inborn tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights, compared with the light of day—indispensable on special occasions, but a feeble matter, after all. Reason is an artificial light in the sense that it is not one with the light of nature, and in the sense that men possess it in varying degrees. The lower animals ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the use of sails would save a considerable quantity of coals; or what is the same thing, using them would expedite the steamer proportionally more on her voyage, and bring it so much sooner to a close. Sails may fairly be calculated to impel a vessel at the rate of 2-1/2 miles per hour on a voyage, and which will save either directly one-fourth the quantity of coals, or impel the steamer so much sooner to the end of her journey than the time calculated, where time is taken as if it ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... seeing this, darted forward in front of a regiment of Polish lancers; and that the latter, excited by the presence of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish lances were ready couched and condensed behind him; they covered the whole width of the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... forces of which we know little, except that these, again, are needed to balance the force of gravitation. Each force, if left to itself, would be the destruction of the universe. Were it not for the force of gravitation, the centrifugal forces which impel the planets would fling them off into space. Were it not for these centrifugal forces, the force of gravitation would dash them against the sun. The ultimate fact of astronomical science, therefore, is not the law of gravitation, but the adjustment ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... causes preserve which have existence themselves. I cannot conceive these your Gods to have any. But how does all this face of things arise from atomic corpuscles? Were there any such atoms (as there are not), they might perhaps impel one another, and be jumbled together in their motion; but they could never be able to impart form, or figure, or color, or animation, so that you by no means demonstrate the immortality of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... incident to make them apprehensive. The maherry would not have gone off at such a gait, without some powerful motive to impel it. Up to that moment it had shown no particular penchant for rapid travelling, but had been going, under their guidance, with a steady, sober docility. Something must have attracted it towards the interior. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the competing forms of government have nearly so effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical Minister to correct and impel the routine ones. There are but four important forms of government in the present state of the world—the Parliamentary, the Presidential, the Hereditary, and the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary. Of these I have shown that, as now worked in America, the Presidential form of government ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... whose courage and genius contributed the most to free it from bondage, and elevate it to the rank of an independent and sovereign power. The regrets caused by the death of this great man, the memories aroused by these regrets, and a proper veneration for all that is held dear and sacred by mankind, impel us to give expression to our sentiments by taking part in an event which deprives the world of one of its brightest ornaments, and removes to the realm of history one of the noblest lives that ever honored the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... discovery already once begun and then again discontinued. And as the Spaniards based their exclusive right to the possession of the other hemisphere on the Pope's decision, Protestant ideas, which mocked at this supremacy of the Romish See over the world, now contributed also to impel men to occupy lands in these regions. This was always effected in the main by voluntary efforts of wealthy mercantile houses, or enterprising members of the court and state, to whom the Queen gave patents of authorisation. In this way Walter Ralegh, in his political ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... waist, and twisting her about, and making her spin headlong over the floor through this wild fierce dance. It was terrible, terrible. Yet she could not prevent it. A force not her own seemed to sustain and impel her. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... bowed impressively to the group on the porch. "I should much prefer to stay here," said he gallantly, "but business reasons impel me to seek that inferno out yonder. What Jarve finds interesting in that sort of thing is ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... refused; he placed thee high in power, Gave thee to sway the sceptre o'er us all, But courage gave thee not, his noblest gift.[2] Art thou in truth persuaded that the Greeks Are pusillanimous, as thou hast said? 50 If thy own fears impel thee to depart, Go thou, the way is open; numerous ships, Thy followers from Mycenae, line the shore. But we, the rest, depart not, 'till the spoil Of Troy reward us. Or if all incline 55 To seek again their native home, fly all; ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling, and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other concepts of the sort? All this must remain very vague to one who has not submitted his ethical ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... that the Polish legions were founded to fight for the independence of Poland, and that in the hope of freedom the Poles had gladly fought "enemies who were, besides their own, the enemies of freedom," but that their dearest hopes had already been deceived. "These considerations impel me to beg you to show us some ray of hope regarding the restoration of independence to our country."[2] He required guarantees from Bonaparte, and these ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... as must ever impel a knight to serve a lady in distress," said he, "and perhaps, too, the memory of the charity with which you tended my wounds ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... furrowed up the gravel and earth before it in long ridges, which we find running nearly parallel to the road; the other group, which lies higher up the valley, and seems of considerably greater extent, indicates where one of those river-like glaciers that fill up long hollows, and impel their irresistible flood downwards, slow as the hour-hand of a time-piece, had terminated towards the sea. I could but glance at the appearances as the gig drove past, and point them out to a fellow passenger, the Establishment minister of——, remarking, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... another being (viz. to an intelligent being—to which it actually is addressed). The term 'sstra' (scriptural injunction) moreover comes from ss, to command, and commanding means impelling to action. But scriptural injunctions impel to action through giving rise to a certain conception (in the mind of the being addressed), and the non-sentient Pradhna cannot be made to conceive anything. Scripture therefore has a sense only, if we admit that none but the intelligent enjoyer of the fruit of the action ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of this all-important moment. Had the din of battle been ringing in his ears, his martial ardor might have endured to the end; but there, in the silence of that nearly untenanted blockhouse, with no sound to enliven him, no appeal to keep alive factitious sentiment, no hope of victory to impel, things began to appear in their true colors, and this state of being to be estimated at its just value. He would have given treasures for religious consolation, and yet he knew not where to turn to seek it. He thought ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... their rougher frolics, are of as much importance as the accompanying exertion; and as not supplying these mental stimuli gymnastics must be radically defective, and can never serve in place of the exercises prompted by nature. For girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... certain instances where it is obvious that honesty is the best policy. I think I am justified, however, in stating that, upon the whole, Japan has no national conscience in international affairs. Her brutal exploitation of China and her merciless and bloody conquest of Korea impel that point of view from an Anglo-Saxon. When, therefore, the Tokyo government says, in effect, to us: 'For one hundred and forty-four years you have proclaimed to the world that all men are equal. Very well. Accept us. We are a world-power. We are on a basis of equality with you,' ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... exceeded by the disgrace arising from the inglorious conduct of their Chief, whose galley weighed anchor when the day was lost, and sailed down the lake with all the speed to which sails and oars could impel her. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... your own, Mr. D'Alton, is pretty well hardened. No; I have no conscientious motives to impel me to show your true character to the world; but revenge is sweet, and I have not forgotten the scorn and contempt with which both you and your fashionable wife treated me while I was in Montreal. I was ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... man, that incongruity seems to subsist between the latter? 'Fanatic,' again, is just the Roman 'fanaticus,' one addicted to the fana,[7] the temples in which the 'fanatici' or fanatics were wont to spend an extraordinary portion of their time. But besides this, their religious fervor used to impel them to many extravagances, such as cutting themselves with knives, etc., and hence an 'ultraist' (one who goes beyond (ultra) the notions of other people) in any sense. Whereupon it might be remarked ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... different from that in which he usually spoke; "must it be so, indeed? For twenty years of youth and manhood I have clung to that man, and woven my destiny with his, because I believed him born under the star which shines on statesmen and pontiffs. Does dread Necessity now impel me to betray him?—him, the only man I ever loved. So—so—so! Count Devereux, strike me to the core: I will not betray ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... interest on invested capital, and will thus prevent the accumulation of some capital which would have helped to find employment for some more working men. The immediate direct interests of a particular body of workmen and a particular company of employers may, and frequently will, impel them to a course directly opposed to the wider interests of their fellow- capitalists or fellow-workers. But it is evident that the smaller the industrial unit, the more frequent will these conflicts between the immediate special interest and the wider class interest be. Since this ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... If we could suppose it possible, that the infant logician had to make the discovery of an external world by an effort of reasoning upon its sensations, we should say that this case was the least likely of any to lead him to the discovery—the least likely to impel him to look out of the circle of sensations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... bank by the wind. One of his workmen, a German, here hit upon a strange invention, if Strada's description of it is to be credited. He affixed a sail under the vessel, which was to be acted upon by the water, just as an ordinary sail is by the wind, and could thus impel the ship with the whole force of the current. The result proved the correctness of his calculation; for this vessel, with the position of its sails reversed, not only kept the centre of the stream, but also ran against the bridge ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... has carried him so very far, I am amazed that it did not impel him to advance one step farther. Happiness is what I and all men desire, as certainly as you do: but that happiness is of a strange kind, and held by a frail and feeble tenure, that is agitated by innumerable fears: that, if the means on which it depends be ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... we may perhaps conclude that the natural bias of mankind is towards kindness to his neighbour, however much the brute in him may sometimes impel him to uncharitable words or actions. And certainly this natural bias is intensified and made into a binding law by the teachings of Christ. But there is the other point of view set forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche—if indeed such writings ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... willing to brave the hatred of their fellow-creatures for sixpence, Mr Mill's argument against monarchies and aristocracies would be true to the full extent. But the fact is, that all men have some desires which impel them to injure their neighbours, and some desires which impel them to benefit their neighbours. Now, if there were a community consisting of two classes of men, one of which should be principally influenced by the one set of motives and the other by the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to become a Tory by the "graciousness" of any "marquises" or great folks of any kind. I am inclined to think that there was one great personage, whose (not graciousness, but) intellectual influence did impel her mind in a Conservative direction. And this was Metternich. She had more talk with him than her book on Vienna would lead a reader to suppose; and very far more of his mind and influence reached her through the medium ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... may be driven off for a time by the efforts of a human enemy, but his natural voracity will soon impel him to return to the attack. When the Indian therefore rose to the surface of the water—remembering his old practice as a pearl-diver—he cast around him a glance of caution. Having shouted back to his companion in misfortune some words which the latter had indistinctly heard, he placed his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and the proprietor of another Dutch journal, in which we read similar vaunting adulations of Mr. Harcourt, was fined 60 Pounds (so his paper says) for alleged complicity in the recent rebellion. These facts should impel the Rt. Hon. the Colonial Secretary to stop, look round and inquire "who's who" among his ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... to Mr. Rees, hoping that his "sense of honor" would impel him to acknowledge his mistake. She told him that her father's convictions never wavered on his death-bed; that Mr. W. R. Bradlaugh was never converted, because he was always a professed Christian; that Sir Isaac Holden must be laboring under a misapprehension; and that if Mr. Rees would call ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... for Captain Forest and Padre Antonio and her devotion to the child whose life, she knew, depended upon her answer. Up to that moment she had been completely at a loss to know what to say or how to act, but that invisible something which until then had deprived her of speech, now seemed to impel her to ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... not recognise your love, or that your love is but a trifling consideration with me, you will not believe. What else should impel me to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and the need of proving this devotion to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "I can in no wise agree with thee here, and censure thy language. Is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in evil, Takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow with others Knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel him? Rather than ever to-day would I make up my mind to be married: Many a worthy maiden is needing a husband's protection, And the man needs an inspiriting wife when ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which, in the first transport of his rage, he had meditated battering upon until Gride's very fears should impel him to open it, he turned his face towards the city, and working his way steadily through the crowd which was pouring from it (it was by this time between five and six o'clock in the afternoon) went straight to the house ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... young man's offence chiefly suggests the deference that was essential to the maintenance by a dependent of peaceful relations with a self-willed and self-indulgent patron. Southampton's sportive and lascivious temperament might easily impel him to divert to himself the attention of an attractive woman by whom he saw that his poet was fascinated, and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest on the part of his protege. There is no clue to the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... would mechanically draw away a few paces, out of the route of persons passing in or out of the shop. No particular play of the mental processes would actuate them in so doing; an instinctive impulse, operating mechanically and subconsciously, would impel them to remove themselves from the main path of foot travel. But this woman and her acquaintance take root right there. Persons dodge round them and glare at them. Other persons bump into them, and are glared at by the ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and lowered at sunset. It should not be displayed on stormy days or left out over night, except during war. Although there is no authoritative ruling which compels civilians to lower the flag at sundown, good taste should impel them to follow the traditions of the Army and Navy in this sundown ceremonial. Primarily, the flag is raised to be seen and secondarily, the flag is something to be guarded, treasured, and so tradition holds it shall ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... referred to the need for safeguards instead of mere reliance on prohibition. Such views and facts as the above should be more generally known in order that very worthy sentiments may not impel us to adopt an unsound solution for future peace. However alarmed and revolted we may have been in 1915 and later during the war, it is essential to take a balanced view in the ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... but I could see he was trembling pitifully. Between the threatening Chinese and the rising water he was beside himself with fright; and, more than the Chinese and the water, I feared him and what his fright might impel him to do. I could see him casting longing glances at the small skiff towing astern, so in the next calm I hauled the skiff alongside. As I did so his eyes brightened with hope; but before he could guess my intention, I stove the frail bottom through ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... for a statement of the true idea of hell in its final formula. The will of God is expressed in that gradation of goods or scale of ranks which indicates the fixed conditions of universal welfare and the accordant forces of the motives which should impel our pursuit of them. To seek these goods in their proper order of importance and authority, every level of function beneath kept subservient to every one above, is the law of salvation, or the pathway of heaven through the universe. To substitute our will for the will of God, the intensity ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... any helper, but for the knowledge of these matters, his judgment was at once infallible and self-sufficing. Capable of reasonably setting forth and defining moral questions, (14) he was also able to test others, and where they erred, to cross-examine and convict them, and so to impel and guide them in the path of virtue and noble manhood. With these characteristics, he seemed to be the very impersonation of human perfection ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... cannot be defeated or annulled. They are merely transformed by a sort of 'composition and resolution' of social and political causes, exactly similar to that which takes place in mechanics, when two or more forces not concurrent in direction, impel a body in a line altogether different from that in which either of the forces may have acted. Every physical impulse, it is said, which is initiated anywhere on the earth, is felt to the extremities of our solar system—every motion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... triumphant march. If with decaying sectional spirit, the grand idea of British American independence takes hold of the minds and hearts of the people, this would be found the gradual power that would impel the country to its national destiny. As we behold mighty provinces forming and splendid cities rising, we begin more fully to realize the glorious career on which the Dominion has entered, these events should compel, yea they announce a ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... improvement of the natives, whether by conferring on them the advantages of education, or by diffusing among them the treasures of science, knowledge, and moral culture. For these desirable results, we are well aware that you, like ourselves, are anxious, and we doubt not that, in order to impel you to increased exertion for the promotion of them, you will need no stimulant beyond a simple reference to the considerations we have ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... having espoused the cause of the basket-maker, the heart of Bud Means could not help feeling warmly on the same side. Blessed is that man in whose life the driving of duty and the drawing of love impel the same way! But why speak of the driving of duty? For already Bud was learning the better lesson of serving God for ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays not meant for any hand to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to overthrow whatever the effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast a straggling multitude of flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries with an ever-rising tide of moss, and knotted round the necks of marble statues the flexible cords of creepers with which ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them in action are so poor, so ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... ladies of high rank, is not conspicuously certain; but if not, what were those special motives which should warrant the fathers in incurring this peril in such cases? Mere Christian charity would undoubtedly impel a man to meet danger for the welfare of the soul of a poor sempstress as readily as for that of a duchess or the mistress of a monarch. If, therefore, the peril is to be braved in the one case which ought to be evaded in the other, there must be present some motive of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... of this moral growth of man, two things seemed to me necessary—an Ideal which should stir the emotions and impel to action, and a clear understanding of the sources of evil and of the methods by which they might be drained. Into the drawing of the first I threw all the passion of my nature, striving to paint the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... could not long continue to act together. Townshend retired, and, with rare moderation and public spirit, refused to take any part in politics. He could not, he said, trust his temper. He feared that the recollection of his private wrongs might impel him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to oppose measures which he thought generally beneficial to the country. He therefore never visited London after his resignation, but passed the closing years of his life in dignity and repose among ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... carrying out the work of reconstruction. The sphere of selection is limited. England and Russia, as far as can at present be foreseen, appear to be the only two Powers whose mission or interest seems likely to impel their influence Eastwards. Any idea that England will ever deliberately enter upon the possession of even a part of Chinese territory may at once be dismissed as unworthy to be entertained. Although her vast trade and world-wide associations are perpetually ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... therefore, of high-pressure engines will be readily understood. The boiler producing steam of a very powerful pressure, is placed in communication with a cylinder furnished in the usual manner with a piston; the steam is allowed to act upon one side of the piston so as to impel it from the one end of the cylinder to the other. When it has arrived there, the communication with the boiler is reversed, and the steam is introduced on the other side of the piston, while the steam which has just urged the piston forwards is permitted to escape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... remains no rational relaxation to fill the void of their days, and who seek by slander and treachery to console themselves for the loss of pleasures which they can no longer enjoy. Resist that inclination which seems to impel you to gloomy meditation, solitude, and melancholy. Devotion is only suited to inert and listless souls, while yours is formed for action. You should pursue the course I recommend for the sake of your husband, whose happiness depends upon you; you ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the waist-line high up adds to length of limb, and, of course, is to be desired, but the fact that what is added below is taken from above the waist, should impel careful discrimination in the arrangement of ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... throne And nearest to thy counsels, know with thee For ever to have been; but who she is, Or what her likeness, know not. Man surveys 620 A narrower scene, where, by the mix'd effect Of things corporeal on his passive mind, He judgeth what is fair. Corporeal things The mind of man impel with various powers, And various features to his eye disclose. The powers which move his sense with instant joy, The features which attract his heart to love, He marks, combines, reposits. Other powers And features of the self-same ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... may think so now, but let me reason you into seeing the falsity of your thought,—for I do not wish to force or impel you to do a thing repugnant to your reason as well as to your feelings. To begin with, you ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... which are necessarily very sympathetic. Whoever has watched the flight of wild geese must have remarked the beautiful way in which they arrange at once for close companionship and for safety in the violent movements which impel their heavy bodies at high speed through the air. In the order of their flight the alignment is more perfect than in the march of trained soldiers. Each bird keeps as near to his neighbor as possible; but manages always to preserve the interval which will insure against a collision ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... They made their weary way to another, only to be met with a similar refusal. Finally she thought of an acquaintance who had had a wretched experience with a bad husband and was now divorced, and she felt that sympathy would certainly impel this woman to give them shelter. When they reached the house they found her keeping boarders and she said all would leave if they learned she was "harboring a runaway wife." It was then midnight. They went ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... German, who, while he cannot help admiring the spirit of enterprise that impels him, fails to comprehend where the enjoyment can possibly come in. The average German would much rather loll around, sipping wine or beer, and smoking cigarettes, than impel a bicycle across a continent. A few miles eastward of the Rhine another grim fortress frowns upon peaceful village and broad, green meads, and off yonder to the right is yet another; sure enough, this Franco-German frontier is one vast military camp, with forts, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the slaver, fleeing from a man-of-war, was to throw over slaves a few at a time in the hope that the humanity of the pursuers would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out their children as ransom to pursuing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... that the hypothetical case was not "on all fours" with the real one. His first impulse had been to gain the opinion of an expert without disclosing family dissensions. Did some unconscious secondary motive impel him to shape the case so that only one ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... at sea, against cities and great fortified structures, and Clewe believed that the automatic shell might be brought within fifty miles of a city, set up with its trough and ram, and projected in a level line towards its object, to which it would impel itself with irresistible power and velocity, through forests, hills, buildings, and everything, gaining strength from every opposition which stood in the direct line of its progress. Attacking fortifications from the sea, the vessel ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... under German influence a double power is more or less strongly at work: the creative power of the spirit ... and the creative power of the body, that is to say, fecundity.... Whither our spiritual and our bodily fecundity impel us, thither we must go—out over the world! (hin ueber die Welt!).—J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... occurrences of life; and thirdly, the personifying instinct which belongs to the childhood of nations as of individuals. This tendency leads to the attributing of conscious life to things inanimate. A like tendency may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... then it was just as well that he should. Suffering would perhaps impel him to effort. When he communicated to her his new address—he could scarcely neglect to do that—she would send a not unfriendly letter, and hint to him that now was his opportunity for writing a book, as good a book as those which ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... military discipline, in addition to knowledge in practical industry, are necessary concomitants to successful colonization. With these qualities, the colored man will cease to feel helpless, and be fitted for enterprise, he will have the confidence to go forward, and the aspirations to impel him. It may be the lot of the colored man to encounter in some foreign land powers and influences quite as barbarous as those he has hitherto encountered in the white man's prejudices. If he is armed for the encounter, he will have little inclination ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... has become the habit of confusing the use of manifold gifts with mere dexterity that men of quality and power often question the promptings which impel them to use different or diverse forms of expression; as if a man were born to use only one limb and enjoy only one ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... wishes to behold a remote object, this volition will cause the pupil of the eye to dilate, but if he thinks merely of the dilation of the pupil, to have that volition will profit him nothing, because Nature has not connected a motion of the gland which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way suitable for dilation or contraction of the pupil with the volition or dilation or contraction, but only with the volition of beholding objects afar off or close at hand. Finally, he ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and celery, and then take wing for other feeding-grounds. This kind of life seems fitted for mallards and maids, and I have no quarrel with either. From my view, there are happier instincts than those which impel migration; but remembering that personal views are best applied to personal use, I wish both maids and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... of interest and safety impels them to consent to live under a Government which secures the blessings they desire. If, on the other hand, in their judgment, their most sacred rights are violated, interest and honor, and the instinct of self-preservation, all conspire to impel them to withhold their consent; which being withheld, the Government, as far as they ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Romance is, to group historical characters according to their internal natures, and thus to elucidate and illustrate history. This illustration then leads to the third task, which is the discovery and exposition of the motives which impel individual historical personages to the performance of great historical acts, and from outwardly, apparently insignificant events in their lives to deduce their inmost thoughts and natures, and represent ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... a will to their oars, our genial mariners quickly impel our barque round the first jutting headland, so that the thickly populated Piano di Sorrento is at once lost to view. Making good headway over the clear water, it is not long before we find ourselves passing beneath the wave-washed precipices of the Salto, and well within our time ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan |
