"Impulse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know of," she answered; but the impulse to add, "What makes you ask?" was checked by the reappearance of the parlor-maid with ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... furious or insane, just as they may from some other bodily disorder; since such like passions do not take place without some change in the body. And of such the same is to be said as of irrational animals, which follow, of necessity, the impulse of their passions: for in them there is neither movement of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... I would accept Mr. Hexton they would be content, as they knew him to be a very well-conducted young man, a member of the church, and prosperous in his business. My first, and for a time my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I thought him mean, and because I felt he lacked sympathy ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... reasoned impulse that stirred her to do what she then did. Nor was it a sense of pity, nor obedience to the "Thou shalt not" of religion. Rather was it some sense of law, an ethic of her race and early environment, that compelled her to interpose ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... His first impulse was to catch Ned's arm, stoop down and hurry away to reach the shelter of the trees, but Ned ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... surrounding the name of James Brooke, who became Raja of Sarawak, in 1841. His story has often been told, but a brief account may not be out of place. He had been to the Far East and its fascination, together with an impulse to benefit the natives, drew him back again. After resigning his commission in the army of the British East India Company, he built his own yacht of 140 tons, practised his crew in the Mediterranean and then set sail for the Malay Archipelago. In ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... came in to-day from the seacoast. They reported that William L. Farquhar, whom I left sick at Mpwapwa, Usagara, and his cook, were dead. Farquhar, I was told, died a few days after I had entered Ugogo, his cook died a few weeks later. My first impulse was for revenge. I believed that Leukole had played me false, and had poisoned him, or that he had been murdered in some other manner; but a personal interview with the Msawahili who brought the news informing me ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... maid met him at the door with little Flavia, and told him that Marcia had gone out to the Hallecks', but had left word that she would soon return, and that then they would have supper together. Her absence dashed his warm impulse, but he recovered himself, and took the little one from the maid. He lighted the gas in the parlor, and had a frolic with Flavia in kindling a fire in the grate, and making the room bright and cheerful. He played with the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... had left Sweden under the impulse of love for those glorious enterprises which make great generals, but still more of a desire to maintain the Protestant cause, which he regarded as that of God. He had assembled the estates of Sweden in the castle of Stockholm, presenting to them his daughter Christina, four years ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... do not doubt but that the first automatic impulse of all our automatic friends here present, on hearing this sentence, will be strenuously to deny the accuracy of my definition of the aims of modern English education. Without attempting to defend it, I would only observe that this automatic development of solar caloric in scientific ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... hall, and the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into the house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcock appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if it were the most natural thing ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the others, perhaps, and came suddenly on a hole in the side of the rock. Not a natural fissure, but evidently a man-made doorway; oval, with carved pillars at the sides, and an inscription over the door. Kavanagh's first impulse was to go in, his second one not to. Why, there might be an army inside! But by the time the risk occurred to him he was through the portals, and he was afraid of turning, not knowing what was behind him. So he took a pace to his ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... points to, and partly explains, the charm of the poems in A Shropshire Lad . The fastidious care with which each poem is built out of the simplest of technical elements, the precise tone and color of language employed to articulate impulse and mood, and the reproduction of objective substances for a clear visualization of character and scene, all tend by a sure and unfaltering composition, to present a lyric art unique in English poetry of ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Tim Linkinwater, how dare you talk about dying?' roared the twins by one impulse, and blowing their old ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... were two slaves who rowed very badly, and to whose bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from a bull's pizzle. Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them with pity. Their features though greatly disfigured, had a slight resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Jesuit and Westphalian ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... of the metal things may have picked up the sound of his voice: but in any event, green flame flashed about them on the instant. Feeling a sudden protective impulse, Dan started toward Helen. That was his last recollection, before what seemed a terrific concussion swept him into the abyss ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... ostracism; penal servitude, hard labor; galleys &c. 975; beating &c.v.; flagellation, fustigation[obs3], gantlet, strappado[obs3], estrapade[obs3], bastinado, argumentum baculinum[Lat][obs3], stick law, rap on the knuckles, box on the ear; blow &c. (impulse) 276; stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel; slap, slap in the face; wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade[obs3]. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c.v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... equally mingled feelings, complicated by astonishment, that he learned a week or so later that Dom Diego had been acquitted of Judaism and set free. Impulse drove him to seek speech with the sufferer. He crossed the river to the physician's house, but only by extreme insistence did he procure access to the high vaulted room in which the old man lay abed, surrounded by huge tomes on pillow and counterpane, and overbrooded ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... impulse, wheeled his horse and galloped away. It was evident that his comrades had been taken, and he alone was left to carry out their mission. Shots were fired at him and bullets whistled past, but none touched him, and he only urged his horse to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had acted upon a sudden impulse in making his call upon Mr. Gorham. He had unexpectedly gained possession of certain information which he felt might be of commercial value to himself, and beyond this it offered him an opportunity to come in close contact with ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... by this time; and if Castanier's first impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts, he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the immediate result was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... him Fox and Bouverie, for this change of front. The openness, the charm, the self-effacing patriotism of the Minister thenceforth drew him as by an irresistible magnet. The brilliance and joviality of Fox and Sheridan counted as nothing against the national impulse which the master now set in motion and the pupil was destined to carry to further lengths. There was a natural sympathy between these men both in aim and temperament. It is a sign of the greatness of Pitt that from the outset ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... forward for the first time on its wooden snowshoes. As it caught the impulse of the great propeller, it sprang into the air and then dropped to the snow again with the wiggling motion of an inexperienced skater. Then, suddenly responding again to the propeller, it darted diagonally toward a menacing tree stump; but Norman was too quick for it. Before harm could ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... distinguished geniuses of the age, honour me with partial approbation. A new sensation seemed to awake in my bosom; I felt that emulation which the soul delights to encourage, where the attainment of fame will be pleasing to the esteemed object. I had till that period known no impulse beyond that of friendship; I had been an example of conjugal fidelity; but I had never known the perils to which the feeling heart is subjected in a union of regard wholly uninfluenced by ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... impulse, led the way to the left, passing further into the forest as he advanced. After half an hour of careful walking, he stopped suddenly. The others ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... muttered. Moved by an impulse and hardly conscious of what he did, he folded it twice and placed ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the most savage impulse may arise: in the deep recesses of fondness, sometimes is implanted the root of cruelty; and from loving William with unbounded lawless affection, she found herself depraved so as to become the very object which could most of all ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... transportation, banishment, expulsion, exile, involuntary exile, ostracism; penal servitude, hard labor; galleys &c 975; beating &c v.; flagellation, fustigation^, gantlet, strappado^, estrapade^, bastinado, argumentum baculinum [Lat.], stick law, rap on the knuckles, box on the ear; blow &c (impulse) 276; stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel; slap, slap in the face; wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade^. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c v.; electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {356} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable doctor of medicine, who was engaged in conversation with the master of the house at the upper and farther end of the table, the writer, being a poor ignorant lad, sitting of course at the bottom. The doctor, who had served in the Peninsula, having observed ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... resemblance is in respect to their generosity. The unfailing testimony of all their friends is that neither could restrain the impulse to give. The celebrated De Quincey is led to characterize Lamb's munificence as princely, while Procter, one of his younger friends, simply says, "he gave away greatly." On the other hand, the testimony in regard to the generosity of Johnson is equally strong. He was so open-hearted that he ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... is called for the purpose of giving the city government to understand that the business-men, the working-men, of the city, mean what they say, when they say that they want public parks; and there is no question that an impulse will be given to the action of the city government by this meeting. We are the city of Boston; and the members of the ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... one perceives that their authors are measuring the worth of all teaching in terms of strictly intellectual products. Life is more than precise information; it is impulse and action. The fairy tale is a literary rather than a scientific achievement. Its realities are matters of feeling, in which thought is a mere skeleton to support the adventure. It matters little that the facts ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Dorothy could not eat. Her eye had discovered a clock on the wall, with the hands pointing five minutes to three. At ten minutes past that hour the "Eastern Limited" would roll out of the station and she be left behind. In a sudden impulse, she threw her arms about Aunt Betty's ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... day, about two in the afternoon, Madame d'Espard, who had seen and heard nothing of the princess for more than a month, went to see her under the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever more amusing of its kind than the conversation of these two crafty adders during the first ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... strong desire, and a half formed purpose to become a missionary in foreign lands. Before he had proceeded far in his studies, however, he became alive to the claims of the 'perishing heathen' here at home. When he received his licensure, his mind was divided between the still felt impulse of his first purpose and the pressure of his later convictions. While yet unsettled on this point, the case of the little church at Womelsdorf was made known to him, followed by an urgent request from the people and from the Home Missionary Society to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... here and there, on questions of discipline, and even on questions of belief; but in its leading characteristics it has been faithful to the main purpose of its founder. Its success did not consist mainly in what it accomplished for its own people; it achieved a great work also by the impulse it gave to the Church of England. That Church for a while seemed to be filled with a reviving spiritual and ministerial activity. It appeared to take shame to itself that it had remained so long apathetic and perfunctory, and it flung itself into competition with the younger ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... would," retorted G.J. icily, carried away by a ruthless and inexorable impulse. "You'd do anything to make her happy even for three months. Yes, to make her happy for three weeks you'd be ready to ruin my whole life. I know you and Queen." And the mild image of Christine formed in his mind, soothingly, infinitely desirable. What balm, after the nerve-racking contact of these ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... talked, laughed and, in his chest, there was a sharp acute pain like a knife. He had still with him that feeling that nothing in life now was worth while and there followed on that a wild impulse to let go, to fling off the restraints that he had retained now for so long and with ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... yielded to the impulse to own to those degraded years, and claim the nickname they had earned him, and take her loathing and contempt in exchange. What sudden madness had possessed him, akin to that unaccountable, overmastering surge of emotion that he had known just now ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sovereignty to be exercised within a certain territory is national safety. National safety is as dominant in the life of a nation as self-preservation is in the life of an individual. It is even more so, as nations do not respond to the impulse of self-sacrifice. With national safety as the primary object to be attained in territorial settlements, the factors of the problem assume generally, though not always, the following order of importance: the strategic, to which is closely allied the geographic and ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... corrupting public opinion, the use of force leads men to the fatal conviction that they progress, not through the spiritual impulse which impels them to the attainment of truth and its realization in life, and which constitutes the only source of every progressive movement of humanity, but by means of violence, the very force which, far from leading ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... suitable channels. Let there be no mistake about this. Perhaps some one may say: Cannot it make suitable channels for any sort of expression that it needs? The answer is, that it can, and it does so up to a certain point. As we have seen, the Word, Thought, or Initial Impulse of the Ever-Living Spirit starts a centre of cosmic activity in which the mathematical element of Law at once asserts itself; thenceforward everything goes on according to certain broad principles of sequence. This is a Generic Creation, creation according to ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... after all but children of the century. We follow its inspiration blindly; and while we think ourselves spontaneous in our ecstasy, perform the part for which we have been trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we live. It is this very unconsciousness and universality of the impulse we obey which makes it hard to analyse. Contemporary history is difficult to write; to define the spirit of the age in which we live is still more difficult; to account for 'impressions which owe all their force to their identity with themselves' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... on your retirement; I have not shadowed your steps; I have not kept watch on your actions; I have not surrounded you with spies who would perhaps have brought me the assurance, 'If she quitted the world which outraged her, she was not driven forth by an impulse of wounded pride or noble indignation; she did not even seek to punish those who misunderstood her by her absence; she buried herself where she was unknown, that she might indulge in stolen loves.' Such were the thoughts that came to me, and yet I respected ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... mistress of Malinovka, where the life and prosperity of the whole place depended on her, the wise and happy ruler of her little kingdom. It was as if she were not walking of her own accord but was driven on by an impulse exterior to herself, as unconscious of her movements she climbed the steep hill through the brushwood, with her shawl hanging down from her shoulders dragging its corners in the dust; her eyes, from which stony horror looked ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the whole day, a common beggar, who was asking alms, pitying his condition, sat down and asked him, "Why so sad?" Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered "Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of course, that the musician lived in the neighboring house—the gable and chimney of which was just visible above the orange-trees. But that was all. Obedient to some whimsical impulse that prompted them both, and was born, no doubt, of the circumstance and mood of that first evening, they did not seek to learn more. They feared—though they did not say it—that to learn the identity of the musician would rob them of the peculiar pleasure they ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... expressed in regard to the cause of the fall. According to one of these, the superstructure was suddenly wrenched from its bearings upon the pier, and was horizontally displaced by an impulse such that, when it touched the masonry, its up-stream girder struck the center of the pier, upon which it divided, while the down-stream one was already in space. The fall would have afterward continued without the superstructure meeting the face ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... colour of the shining road, bright drenched fields, and dripping sky. My back was toward the courtyard, that is, "three-quarters" to it, and about noon I became distracted from my work by a strong self- consciousness which came upon me without any visible or audible cause. Obeying an impulse, I swung round on my camp-stool and looked up directly at the gallery window of the salon of the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... smouldering rebellion against the order of things. He was such a mere creature of moods, that individual judgments of his character might well have proved irreconcilable. He had not yet begun by the use of his will—constantly indeed mistaking impulse for will—to blend the conflicting elements of his nature into one. He was therefore a man much as the mass of flour and raisins, etc., when first put into the bag, is a plum-pudding; and had to pass through ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... sufficient to break in pieces the chaotic systems of her neighbours. The mania of the French for centralization was seen in their dealings with the Batavian Republic, and with the Swiss Confederation, which they crushed into the mould of an indivisible Republic. Everywhere the new unifying impulse undermined or swept away local Parliaments or provincial Estates. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in practice meant a single, democratic, and centralized Government. In self defence the Powers threatened ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the crusade, and pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... sinister words. She longed to stride into the room and confront the murderer and call down retribution on his head. It was no fear of him that restrained her, for the Crawling Stone girl never knew fear. She would have confronted him and denounced him, but prudence checked her angry impulse. She knew what he meant to do—to ride into Medicine Bend under cover of the storm, murder the two he hated, and escape in the night; and she resolved he should never succeed. If she could only get to the telephone! But the telephone was in the room where ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the step there was no retracing. He had cast the dice, and the next few minutes would decide whether it was for life or death. He had done it deliberately; yet at the last he had been so carried away by impulse that, as he stood there, looking after the man he had insulted, looking on the placid water glittering in the early sunshine, looking along the lake-side road, by which he had come, he could hardly credit what had happened, or that in a moment he had thrown for a stake so stupendous, that ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the finest," I said in a low voice; for now I marvelled more at the impulse which had prompted his feat, and at the circumstances surrounding it, than ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... It was my impulse to escape the grilling that this merciless woman was evidently going to put me to; my first primitive instinct to strike my adversary with some bitterly worded accusation and then turn and fly. But I stood my ground. Without ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... an impulse; and, as the arms of England have overcome those of the Celestial Empire, and we are colonizing the outer Barbarian, so shall we colonize the shores of the Pacific, south of Russian America, in order to retain the supremacy of British ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... mine; on the other side slept—and soundly, too, I would wager—her aunt. Indeed, our rooms connected by a door, always locked and without a key, of course. By a sudden impulse I took out my bunch of keys. Fortune favored me; an old key, that of my room at College, not only fitted perfectly, but opened it as softly as one could wish, and the door itself never creaked. Locking it again, I went into Amy's room through the hall. A low ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... religious faith with patriotism; they were religious heroes. Then came the time of David, in which the nation, having become independent, became also powerful and wealthy. After his time the religion, instead of being a law to be obeyed or an impulse to action, became ceremony and pageant. Going one step further, it passed into reflection and meditation. In the age of Solomon the inspiration of the national religion had already gone. A great intellectual development had taken the place of inspiration. So that the Jewish ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... was the picture, —a sketch in oils of the best-known model in DAYsseldorf, this time rigged out as a Roman peasant. The girl looked at the picture with a frown; she seized it as though she would dash it on the floor in scorn, but, checking the impulse, she carried it to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Employer and Workmen.—The first effect of machinery is to give a new and powerful impulse to the centralizing tendency in industry. "Civilization is economy of power, and English power is coal," said the materialistic Baron Liebig. Coal as a generator of steam-power demands that manufactures shall be conducted on a large scale ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... he could say, but the intensity of his mingled feeling went into the syllables of her name. An impulse made them pause and turn, and they stood looking back together at the great house which loomed the greater in the thickening darkness, its windows edged with glow. Never, as in this moment when the cold rain wet their faces, had the thought of its comfort and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a little while thus looking and listening. He could see nothing, and could hear only the sound of distant talking. What were they doing on the lonely shore thus at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, he turned and cut off across the sand-hummocks, skirting around inland, but keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them, and to watch what they were about from the back of the low sand-hills that fronted ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... schooner in a body and were presently face to face with skipper and clerk on the deck. The crew went on with the unloading; there was never a hint of hesitation or embarrassment. And the skipper of the Spot Cash was serenely made welcome. Whatever rat-like impulse to bite may have been in the heart of the little clerk, when Bill o' Burnt Bay came over the crest of the hill, it had now vanished in discreet politeness. There was no occasion for biting. Had there been—had the crew of the Black Eagle been caught in the very act of scuttling ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... long on deck. The accommodation afforded to passengers was not, however, very great. Twenty berths were all that cabin passengers could be accommodated with. Great crowds visited her saloons. The Mercury told its readers that the steamboat received her impulse from an open, double-spoked perpendicular wheel, on either side, without any circular band or rim. To the end of each double-spoke, a square board was fixed, which entered the water, and by the rotatory motion, acted like a paddle. The wheels were put and kept in ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... following admirable sentiments: "It is impossible to peruse the written life of any man or woman who has manifested great intellectual or moral power, whether in a holy cause or an unholy one, without a strong admiration and a deep sympathy, and a powerful impulse toward imitation. The soul is awakened, the active powers are roused, the contemplation of high achievement kindles emulation; and well would it be were the character of those leading minds, which thus draw after them the mass of ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... kept so still and silent that the shopkeeper's wife was surprised. She went back to her, and on a nearer view a sudden impulse of pity, blended perhaps with curiosity, got the better of her. The old lady's face was naturally pale; she looked as though she secretly practised austerities; but it was easy to see that she was paler than usual from recent agitation of some kind. Her head-dress ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... irrepressible impulse to spring forward and greet her, but something there was in her look which deterred him. It was her face of despair, her attitude of utter weakness and prostration, her downcast eyes, her averted look. He could not move; he was petrified. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... were lost in the noise of its plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... The friends we loved of yore, With leaves of autumn weather, Are gone for evermore. How blest to age the impulse given, The hope time ne'er destroys— Which led our thoughts from earth to heaven, When you ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... here. Last night, about nine o'clock the door opened and he rushed into the room. I got to my feet on impulse, and then tried to brace myself and control my disordered reason, for, of course, I believed myself delirious. He stopped by the door long enough to throw down his suitcase, and in that instant I struggled fiercely to disbelieve my eyes. I was fighting myself. My legs trembled. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... sudden impulse, she went to the mirror on her dressing table, and looked long and earnestly at her image there. Martha was twenty-five years old, and looked older. Her shoulders were slightly bent, and would suggest to an accurate observer that they had become so by carrying heavy burdens. Her hair was hay-coloured ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... secondary to his main pursuit. After his memorable adventure, the features and the forms of the girl he had rescued so haunted him that the pale ideal which was to work itself out in the bust faded away in its perpetual presence, and—alas, poor Susan!—in obedience to the impulse that he could not control, he left Innocence sleeping in the marble, and began modelling a figure of proud and noble and imperious beauty, to which he gave the name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... was a great walker, or, indeed, fond of exercise of any sort, and his walking, as an Irishman might say, was half sitting—on stiles and stones and fallen trees. He was not in bad health, he was not lazy, or given to self-preservation, but he had little impulse to activity of any sort. The springs in his well of life did not seem to ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... appears that Demosthenes did not take Pericles entirely for his model. He only adopted his action and delivery, and his prudent resolutions not to make a practice of speaking from a sudden impulse, or on any occasion that might present itself; being persuaded that it was to that conduct he owed his greatness. Yet, while he chose not often to trust the success of his powers to fortune, he did not absolutely neglect the reputation which may be acquired by speaking ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... self-directed, is but a shallow life at best; he only lives deeply in the intellect whose thought begins in instinct, rises slowly through experience, carrying with it into consciousness the noblest, truest one has felt and been, and finds speech at last by impulse and direction of the same law which summons the seed from the soil and lifts it, growth by growth, to the beauty and the sweetness of the flower. Under the same law of unconscious growth every true poem, every great work of art, and ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... greatly and he played the next number upon the program with the greatest exactness, but, strange to say, it lost the wonderful charm of the interpretation of the piece in which his memory had failed him. Rubinstein was really incomparable, even more so perhaps because he was full of human impulse and his playing very far removed from ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... thinking of you," she said, almost in a whisper. "Yet it is always a trial to meet you. I think I would rather not. Tell me," with a sudden impulse of tenderness and contrition, looking up to him with humid eyes, "are you well and happy? How have you borne the terrible ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... The first impulse of the visiting party was to laugh at the extraordinary appearance he presented; but a stronger feeling of interest and sympathy overruled the inclination, and the culprit was spared this humiliation. Richard was almost as much astonished ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... impulse, an impulse that speedily became a conviction. Every delay and every reduction of force was a help to the white men and white women and children down below the Ohio. A week of time, or the difference of twenty warriors might be their salvation. He must ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... any moral situation lies in the rejection which every choice involves. Not only must we ask what a given impulse has to offer us, in immediate and remote satisfaction; we must consider what alternative goods its adoption precludes. What might we have been doing with our time and strength or money? Is this act not only a good one, is it the best one for that moment of our ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... wash-leathers and dusters, pokers, carpet brooms, and every instrument of torture with which a poor cat could be chased from garret to cellar. I am pretty nimble, and though I never felt less disposed for violent exercise, I flatter myself I led them a good dance before, by a sudden impulse of affectionate trustfulness, I sprang straight into my mistress's arms ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... in the order of nature being thus, however powerful and useful, an unintelligent impulse of which we can give no rational account, in what way does this discovery affect the question of miracles? In this way, that this belief not having itself its foundation in reason, the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained that miracles as opposed to the order ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... provided it had a very long barrel, and a series of air chambers at intervals from the breech to the muzzle. Each of these chambers, beginning at the breech, could be opened in turn as the bullet passed along the barrel, so that every escaping jet of gas would give it an additional impulse." ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... into a large leather chair, and, hardly knowing what she was doing, in the wild hurrying of her senses, Norma sat down opposite him. Her one flurried impulse was not to make a scene. Chris was always so entirely master of a situation, so utterly unemotional and self-possessed, that if he kissed her, upon his return from a three-weeks' absence, it must be a perfectly ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... soul that with an overwhelming impulse and a perfect trust gives itself up forever to the life of other men, finds the delight and peace which such complete ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... goes away so pleasantly, you conclude to spend the summer with them; and a bright and blissful summer it is as your young heart has ever enjoyed. You cannot stand idle, despising labor. You catch the impulse of the place and people, and none are more ready than you for tasks that test courage and strength, and make the warm sweat flood the glowing face. You are up and away in the morning before the whippoorwill closes her song; and are breathing the fragrant air, and enjoying the brisk exercise ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has ALL the marks of a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the same order and together take the same length of time. The memory of each several reading, on the contrary, has NONE of the marks of a habit, it is like an event in my ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... emptiness. As nearly as I might judge, I contained naught save vast hollow spaces and acoustics and vacuums and empty, echoing, neglected convolutions. Sorely was I tempted to relax the rigors of the just-inaugurated regime; nobly, though, I resisted the impulse. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... character by written inscriptions in his bedroom and memoranda inside his watch case. "Keep steady!" was one of them. "Keep the End in View." And, "Go steadfastly, coherently, continuously; only so can you go where you will." In distrusting all impulse, scrutinising all imagination, he was persuaded lay his one prospect of escape from the surprise of countless miseries. Otherwise he danced among glass bombs and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... not tell when first came the impulse to turn back. It might have been while he was working his way cautiously up a slippery coulee side, or it might have come suddenly just when he stopped; for stop he did (just when he should logically ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... midst of all this degradation, however, there was one recollection which he never gave up; but alas, to what different and shameless purposes did he now prostitute it! That which had been in his better days a principle of just pride, a spur to industry, an impulse to honor, and a safeguard to integrity, had now become the catchword of a mendicant—the cant or slang, as it were, of an impostor. He was not ashamed to beg in its name—to ask for whiskey in its name—and to sink, in its name, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Acting on a sudden impulse, he rose and went into the sleeping room to get his Bible. The child's face took on an expression of disappointment as she heard his words. Her brow knotted, and a troubled look came into ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... should reign to-day, whereon I stand an outcast and a stranger, devoured by the sad and bitter memories, of which banished men have died. I compared my brother's brilliant destinies with my sad and labourious career; and my indignation well nigh overmastered reason. The mad impulse stirred me to force the doors, to rush into the grand salon, and drive out the intruder,—the son of Madame Gerdy,—who had taken the place of the son of the Countess de Commarin! Out, usurper, out of this. I am master here. The propriety of legal means at once recurred to my distracted mind, however, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... even so Messer Gentile, albeit he had been minded to tarry there no longer, now said to himself:—Wherefore touch I not her bosom a while? I have never yet touched it, nor shall I ever touch it again. Obeying which impulse, he laid his hand on her bosom, and keeping it there some time, felt, as he thought, her heart faintly beating. Whereupon, banishing all fear, and examining the body with closer attention, he discovered that life was not extinct, though he judged it but scant and flickering: ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... broad shoulders sympathetically. He looked down at the limp, smooth skins in his hand, and sat up stiffly. From the gloves to Warrington and back again to the gloves, his gaze traveled. With an impulse rather mechanical he raised the gloves to his nose. Quickly he dropped them on the desk, took up the photograph, rose and replaced it on the mantel. Hearing ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... "Passion," and "Ignorance." These three bind down The changeless Spirit in the changeful flesh. Whereof sweet "Soothfastness," by purity Living unsullied and enlightened, binds The sinless Soul to happiness and truth; And Passion, being kin to appetite, And breeding impulse and propensity, Binds the embodied Soul, O Kunti's Son! By tie of works. But Ignorance, begot Of Darkness, blinding mortal men, binds down Their souls to stupor, sloth, and drowsiness. Yea, Prince of India! Soothfastness binds souls In pleasant ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... wife resolves to be considerate and agreeable for one month, she is the right kind of young wife. The right impulse is working within her. The very fact that she makes the resolve proves this. Most people are influenced by two motives, necessity and pleasure. They work because they have to work to exist. But a great deal of the work is indifferently done. The woman ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... The plain Huguenot, like the plain Christian in the primitive age, was fully persuaded that he had an owner's title in the public idol, which not only justified him in destroying it when he had discovered its vanity, but rendered it his imperative duty to execute the natural impulse. As for the obligation of nine-tenths of the population to use the idol tenderly, because of any rightful claim of the remaining tithe, this was a consideration ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... have echoed the words after him open-mouthed. As it was, she extricated herself from her mingled impulse to deny and question, and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... application of fair and proper means. Before one engageth in an act, one should consider the competence of the agent, the nature of the act itself, and its purpose, for all acts are dependent on these. Considering these one should begin an act, and not take it up on a sudden impulse. He that is wise should either do an act or desist from it fully considering his own ability, the nature of the act, and the consequence also of success. The king who knoweth not proportion or measure as regards territory, gain, loss, treasury, population, and punishment, cannot retain his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... created by the news of the boarding of [the Trent]. The people are frantic with rage, and were the country polled, I fear 999 men out of a thousand would declare for immediate war. Lord Palmerston cannot resist the impulse if he would." And another American, in Edinburgh, wrote to his uncle in New York: "I have never seen so intense a feeling of indignation exhibited in my life. It pervades all classes, and may make itself heard above the wiser ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Sometimes, noticing my terror, he would jeer at me, and, to make me still more afraid, set his horse plunging again. Twenty times, in a frenzy of despair, I was on the point of throwing myself off; but the instinctive love of life prevented me from giving way to the impulse. At last, about midnight, we suddenly stopped before a small pointed gate, and the drawbridge was soon lifted behind us. My grandfather took me, bathed in a cold sweat as I was, and threw me over to a great fellow, lame and horribly ugly, who carried me into the house. This was my ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... can now that impulse paint, Which fires the mother's breast? Nor toil, nor danger, makes her faint; She ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... rose from his chair; Marya Dmitrievna also rose, and stepping briskly behind a screen, led forth Varvara Pavlovna. Pale, half-fainting, with eyes cast down, she seemed to have renounced every thought, every impulse of her own—to have placed herself wholly in the hands of ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... down its channel; a huge rock tumbling from the hill-side and falling in mid-stream; the baffled waters broken and confused, pausing in their flow, dash high against the rock, foaming and murmuring, with divided impulse, uncertain whether to turn to the right ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... gone, thought after thought crowding fast upon him, and half bewildering him by their intensity. He could answer Louise's question now! It had come to him at last, sitting there with Mr. Trevor's letter in his hand, and Dora at his feet. Dora who was so dear to him, and his first impulse was to hasten to her side, and sue for the love she could not ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... have been out of place at any court, since he himself possessed all the gifts and the bearing of an accomplished ruler, and because his calm supremacy in all things, both outward and spiritual, implied a too independent nature. The inner impulse which inspired him was directed, though our author does not acknowledge the fact, not to the service of the prince, but to his own perfection. One instance will make this clear. In time of war the courtier refuses even ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... space they regarded each other without a word, then Fraser, with his wife on his arm, took a step towards him. Flower still regarding them steadily, drew back a little, and moved by a sudden impulse, and that new sense of dignity, snatched a handful of rice from the old woman's bag and threw ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... through the years have made some sporadic attempt to influence these people, but so far as I know these Eskimo are not Episcopalians. What then must we call these splendid fellows so full of integrity and honour, whose every impulse is a generous one? Heathens? The ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... from infancy to feel herself in a constant circle of invisible spiritual agencies, Agnes received this wave of intense feeling as an impulse inspired and breathed into her by some celestial spirit, that thus she should be made an interceding medium for a soul in some unknown strait or peril. For her faith taught her to believe in an infinite struggle of intercession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... I perceived him about a hundred yards before me, walking as fast as his load permitted him towards his master's residence. I called loudly after him, but my voice only acted as a spur, and increased his pace. My natural impulse was to follow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... with first principles. A fellow student, Robert Smith, who is chiefly noted as having been the brother of Sydney Smith, the noted essayist and preacher, was enjoying a swim in the river, near the campus. Arthur could not resist the impulse to throw mud ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... if acting on a sudden impulse, he got up, said good-bye, and went away with his curiosity, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... had commenced to sprawl on the ground, was now hedged in by brush; and, better still, thirty cedar poles stood tall and straight among her Lima beans, whose long slender shoots had been vainly feeling round for a support the last few days. Her first impulse was to clap her hands with delight and exclaim: "How, in the name of wonder, could he do it all in a night! Oh, Malcom, you are a canny Scotchman, but you put the 'black ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... grant a general amnesty than to punish one massacre by another. But this representation is the very reverse of the truth. Numerous instruments had doubtless been employed in the work of death; but they had all received their impulse, directly or indirectly, from a single mind. High above the crowd of offenders towered one offender, preeminent in parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many victims immolated by treachery, only one victim ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... go to Chastel himself. He did not know how he would go or what he would do when he got there, but the impulse was strong and it remained ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Her first impulse on entering the room had been to throw her arms about his neck, but the momentary glimpse of his face she had caught when he turned to greet her arrested her steps. His face was deathly pale, and there was an excited look in his eye which seemed strangely ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... chief doubts were directed to the epistle to the Hebrews and the seven general ones. The former was early excluded, and continued to be so even in the time of Jerome. The latter were adopted much sooner. The impulse given by Constantine to determine the books of Scripture re-acted on the West, where the Church considered it its own privilege. Augustine's influence contributed much to the settlement of the question. The ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... curious impulse which she could not quite understand, glanced quickly around to where the man-servant was standing. For once she had caught him unawares. For once she saw something besides the perfect automaton. His eyes, instead of being fixed at the back of his master's chair, were simply ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... incontestably closer union which has been formed between the political sections of the country. There are no longer any political parties, there are Belgians in Belgium, and that is all; Belgians better acquainted with their country, feeling for it an impulse of passionate tenderness such as a child might feel who saw his mother suffering for the first time, and on his account. Walloons and Flemings, Catholics and Liberals or Socialists, all are more and more frankly united in all that concerns ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... through which the forces from within play on the world without. You have read, too, in The Secret Doctrine, Professor Crooke's theory, endorsed by H.P. Blavatsky, as to how the chemical elements were deposited by a spiral evolutive force, a creative impulse working outward in the form of a caduceus or lemniscate, or figure '8.' Now suppose we should discover that just as that force deposited in space, in its spiral down-working, what Crookes calls the seeds of potassium, beryllium, boron, and the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the bayonet came out, and immediately crawled to the subaltern. "There'll be another with him, sir, for a cert." The two peered over the bank towards the German lines, while drawn by an irresistible impulse Samuel crept towards the dead man. He peered into the distorted face, he looked at the still twitching body, and an uncontrollable fit of shuddering took him and gripped him. His knees knocked together; his tongue ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... failed not to gaze often at the fatal Hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again, Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... allowed myself to be dragged off like this. My natural impulse has always been to do the opposite thing when ordered by any one but grandmamma. But here I found myself walking meekly beside my kinsman down a yew-bordered path, holding a mauve silk parasol over my head which did not belong ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... both sides of the architrave imports, that it was dedicated "to the Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantine Augustus, the greatest, pious, and the happy; because by a divine impulse, the greatness of his courage, and the aid of his army, he avenged the republic by his just arms, and, at the same time, rescued it from the tyrant and his whole faction." On one side of the arch are the words, "Liberatori urbis," to the deliverer of the city; and on the other, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... sought to base learning on reason and investigation, rather than on authority. In this we find the first impulse of that movement which later led to ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... discussion of Lance's projects when a hail was heard from aloft. They did not quite catch the words, but the gruff voice of the brig's chief mate ordering the crew to make sail caused them to surmise that a ship had just been sighted. The first impulse of the males in the party was to rush on deck, but Captain Staunton immediately resumed his seat again and requested the others to do so likewise, pointing out that too eager a curiosity on their parts respecting the movements ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... His impulse was to refuse, at all costs to refuse. The voice, the glance, the phrases jarred upon him, shocked him. Already he had begun "I am afraid"—when a hurried, vehement ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... on the impulse of the moment. They had seen that the girl wanted the two dudish young men to leave her alone, and stepping into the kitchen, Dick had tackled Dudd Flockley while Tom and Sam had given their attention ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer |
