"Impelled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorance is most complete, the science of politics has hardly yet even begun to be studied. Hence our forlorn paralysis of doubt whenever we pause to reflect; and hence the kind of blind desperation with which earnest people are impelled to rush incontinently into practice. The position of MacCarthy is very intelligible, however much it be, to my mind—what shall I say?—regrettable. There is, in fact, hardly a question that has been raised to-night that is at present capable of scientific determination. And ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... unusually still, following the stranger's words—caught by his self-reliance and impressed by his personality. Now, as he ceased to speak, he moved quickly forward, impelled by a nervous curiosity. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... wrote fine things in other veins, in different scenes, and she conceived other characters and new situations. But for all practical purposes Adam Bede was the typical romance, which everything she had thought or known impelled her to write, in which she told the best of what she had seen and the most important of what she had to say. Had she never written anything but Adam Bede, she would have had a special place of her own in English romance:—and I am not sure that ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... "Impelled by honourable admiration—honourable to myself, honourable to you—I write, magnificent Marian, in the interests of your tranquillity, to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... instead of diminishing, greatly increased. Peasants from the hills around, who, having had no wedding garments, had forborne to appear at the feast, now came in their tattered plaids, impelled by an eager curiosity to gaze upon the walls of the castle, and see and hear all they could concerning the mysterious murder that had ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... applications make little appeal to the French mind, and mainly, no doubt, because women throughout the eighteenth century enjoyed such high social consideration and exerted so much influence that they were not impelled to rise in any rebellious protest. But when the seed was brought over to England, especially in the representative form of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, it fell in virgin ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of Donne and Cowley, who had spent serious and sequestered lives in acquiring the knowledge and learning which they squandered in their poetry. Necessity, therefore and perhaps a dawning of more simple taste, impelled these courtly poets to seek another and more natural mode of pleasing. The melody of verse was a province unoccupied, and Waller, forming his rhythm upon the modulation of Fairfax, and other poets of the maiden reign, exhibited in his very first ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... own ability did not satisfy her. She had always felt that the Hutchingses and the society to which they belonged, persons who had been well educated for generations, and who had always been more or less well off, formed a higher class. It was the longing to become one of them that had impelled her to study with might and main. Even in her school-days she had recognized that this was the road to social eminence. The struggle had been arduous. In the Puritan surroundings of middle-class life her want of religious training and belief had almost made a pariah of the proud, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... influences, their straight paths are deflected into curves concave to each other, and corresponding with one of the sections of a cone, according to the velocity of the revolving body. If the velocity with which the revolving body is impelled be equal to what it would acquire by falling through half the radius of a circle described from the centre of deflection, its orbit will be circular; but if it be less than that ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... populace famished for news— Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and 320 shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth— 325 Not so much, but I saw ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... impelled to it by the cheers of his audience, he shouted, for lack of anything better to say, all he could remember of his English history ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the mind to marry her! He marry HER! On matrimony he had never once said a word. And what if he had? How a convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to answer him she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little knew her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was unusual in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... here an additional section to the Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. The result of long experience convinced him that if he possessed a spark of grace which impelled him to groan after God, all the powers of earth and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... impelled him instantly to fall upon the ground in search of enlightening footprints, but there were none and this puzzled him greatly. He felt sure that the man had not been strangled, but had been killed by impact with some heavier branch higher up in the tree; but he must have made footprints ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... began to sing their final song; and Dale observed that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled to ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... seeing the enlightened Christian so distanced in the race of humanity by the untutored savage, who has hitherto been the object of his pity and contempt? But sorry am I to recollect, and as a faithful narrator to be impelled to relate, one particular in their customs that is wholly irreconcilable with the humane duties which they have prescribed to themselves in the above instance; duties which relate only to those children who, in the event of losing the mother, could live without her ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... just the fact that General Li Yuan-hung was a national hero which impelled the Dictator to action. In the election which had been carried out in October, 1913, by the National Assembly sitting as a National Convention, in spite of every effort to destroy his influence, the personal ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... simplicity of language was the perfection of style. Singularly enough, he was confirmed in these notions by the very writer of the day whose own natural genius, more than any of his contemporaries, impelled him to revel in great, wild, supernatural conceptions; and to give utterance to them in gorgeous language. Coleridge was perhaps the only contemporary from whom Wordsworth ever took an opinion; and that he did so from him, is mainly attributable to the fact ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... an hour elapsed. When the boat appeared at the other side of the point, it was so far off that our bullets could not reach it. Hearne had already had the sail set, and the boat, impelled by wind and current jointly, was soon no more than a white speck on the face of the waters, ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... movable body to the action of water converted into steam, at the moment that we relieve the other side from the like pressure by reconverting the steam which acts upon it into water, the movable body will be impelled by the unresisted pressure of the steam on one side. When it has moved a certain distance in obedience to this force, let us suppose that the effects are reversed. Let the steam which pressed it forwards be now reconverted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... even the loss of his own pet pastime, were to be laid at this man's door. While donning his surplice, Dr. Upround revolved these things with gentle indignation, quickened, as soon as he found himself in white, by clerical and theological zeal. These feelings impelled him to produce a creaking of the heavy vestry door, a well-known signal for his daughter to slip out of the chancel ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on the wall—these letters forming the word "Zabern"—the actions of the Social Democrats and their growing boldness, all were warnings to the autocracy of its waning power, and impelled that autocracy towards war as a bloodletting cure ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... in the carriage with the Princesse de Lamballe, when a lady drove by, who saluted my benefactress with marked attention and respect. There was something in the manner of the Princess, after receiving the salute, which impelled me, spite of myself, to ask who ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... them to be true. I have told you, Philip, that I fully believe in your communion with the other world—that I credit the history of your father, and the lawfulness of your mission; for that we are surrounded, impelled, and worked upon by beings different in their nature from ourselves, I have had full evidence, as you will acknowledge, when I state what has occurred in my own family. Why such malevolent beings as I am about to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Homo, Priests Unmasked, &c., &c., all printed anonymously or pseudonymously at his own expense, without a possibility of pecuniary advantage, and with such extraordinary secrecy as to show that he was actuated by no desire of literary fame. It was love of truth alone that impelled d'Holbach to write. Brilliant, profound, eloquent and excellent as were his writings, attracting notice as they did from the civil and religious powers, commented upon as they were by such men as Voltaire and Frederick the Great, admired as they were by that class who felt ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... sometimes attacked other members of it. His furious energy was always disturbing the world, and Felix had no doubt he was now at war with some one or other, and that the war-ship he had seen was on its way to assist him or his enemies. One of the possibilities which had impelled him to this voyage was that of taking service with some king or commander, and so perhaps gradually rising ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... rejoining them after having spoken the Dutchmen. Two capital ships and a thirty-six gun frigate had at first left the fleet to overhaul me; but, on seeing what I was doing, the ships returned to their stations; the frigate—impelled by her unlucky fate—persisted in endeavoring to speak the two prizes, and I saw that she was rapidly coming up ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... not exactly know by what motive I was impelled, but I suppose the same that governed me on several other occasions; that is, a general one belonging to almost all human beings, and, indeed, to most animals, that is, to chase whatever runs away, and to run away from ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... been narrated with some fullness, though in less detail than he told it, in order that the reader may understand its real bearings on MY story. Without it, the motives which impelled the strange pertinacity of my pursuit would have been unintelligible. I have said that a very disagreeable impression remained on my mind respecting certain aspects of his character, and I felt somewhat ashamed of my imperfect sagacity in having up to this period been entirely blind to those ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... me while I was in Munich, and at the same time I heard that Stage had been arrested in Augsburg. Impelled by my first terror, I fled from the capital and hastened to Erlangen, which is situated on Prussian soil, and where neither the Bavarian police nor the French gens d'armes could lay hands on me. But in Erlangen I reflected ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... himself, early in 1851, in the practice of medicine in Cleveland. Here he remained till 1855, when his professional business became so engrossing as to leave him no time for the scientific study to which he had been devoted from his boyhood. To escape from too great professional occupation, and impelled by an unconquerable passion for a scientific career, in May, 1855, he accepted an appointment from the War Department, and became connected with the army as acting assistant surgeon and geologist to the party which, under Lieutenant R. S. Williamson, U.S.A., made an exploration of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... lifted to mine—almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candour, her warm beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit darkness—all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt impelled to a sudden ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... him luck. But the terrible affair which unhinged him once more was an all-invading theory respecting the complementary colours. Gagniere had been the first to speak to him on the subject, being himself equally inclined to technical speculation. After which Claude, impelled by the exuberance of his passion, took to exaggerating the scientific principles whereby, from the three primitive colours, yellow, red, and blue, one derives the three secondary ones, orange, green, and violet, and, further, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... up of three mystical elements: (1) Every artist, as a creator, has something in him which calls for expression (this is the element of personality). (2) Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the element of style)—dictated by the period and particular country to which the artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction will continue to exist). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... she could insure Max's return by telling him that she was the Princess of Burgundy. But she did not want this man whom she loved so dearly, and who, she knew, loved her, if she must win him as princess. She was strangely impelled to reject a reprieve from a life of wretchedness, unless it came through the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... crowd you see men with matted hair and body bedaubed with ashes, who have broken away from all domestic and social duties, and devote themselves to what is called a religious life. Some of these ascetics are no doubt impelled to follow the life they lead by a superstitious feeling, but many are idle vagabonds ready for the practice of every villainy, who find it more pleasant to roam about the land and live on others than support themselves by honest labour. The ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Truth, who does not usually reveal herself to followers thus inflamed. His ornate style appears fatal to the cautious and precise method of statement, suitable to matter which is not known at all unless it is known distinctly. Yet the natural ardour which impelled Burke to clothe his judgments in glowing and exaggerated phrases, is one secret of his power over us, because it kindles in those who are capable of that generous infection a respondent interest and sympathy. But more than this, the reader is speedily conscious of the precedence in Burke ...
— Burke • John Morley
... me, and would have withdrawn quietly, but that horrible fascination which causes the murderer to revisit the scene of his crime, impelled him toward my window. I smoked calmly, and gazed at him without speaking. He walked several times up and down the court with a half-rigid, half-belligerent expression of eye and shoulder, intended to represent the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... writers, and postage comes to be expensive—a great deal too expensive for us at Blackfaulds; but the doctor is a kind man, and he 'favours' our letters. And Mr. Spottiswoode," she said, warming with her subject and impelled to a bit of confidence, "do you know, Dr. Stark thinks my mother will be about again in a few months. You are aware her knee-joint has been affected. We were even afraid she would never put down her foot again. It would have been a dreadful trial for ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... diet, and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But with the mugger, the boach, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his career is ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... from her, and carried it to the shed, where Gladys dosed and fed her sick cow so very tenderly, that Owen was impelled to say,— ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... of Peruvian llamas. If the culprit was one who thieved and murdered for gain, he could scarcely sell the mummy without being arrested, since all England was ringing with the news of its disappearance; if a scientist, impelled to robbery by an archaeological mania, he could not possibly keep possession of the mummy without someone learning that he possessed it. Meanwhile the thief and his plunder had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed both. Great was the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Angus McRae's son could step. He had learned, in the year Roderick had spent in Algonquin, that the young man was not vitally interested in the things that are eternal. His outlook on life was not his father's. The minister felt impelled to speak plainly. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... always make some flimsy excuse for going to war. The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over which they have no control. ...
— Disturbing Sun • Robert Shirley Richardson
... impelled Robert H. Norcross to his mysterious operations in L.D. and M. during the past two days, it looks rather like stock manipulation than the larger financing which has hitherto marked his career. When, on Wednesday, the directors ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... confessed to lighting the fire, and leaving it unattended, he wished the Judge to realize that it was the act of God in sending the wind that spread the flames that caused the destructive fire which ensued. The Judge agreed with him, and then grimly said it was a similar act of God which impelled him to levy a fine of $500.00 and one month in jail for leaving his campfire subject to the influence of the wind. The humorist began to smile "on the left," and expressed an earnest desire to argue the matter out with the Judge, but with a curt "Next Case!" Mark was dismissed in charge of an officer ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Bauer we heard nothing for a fortnight. Time after time I felt impelled to warn the doomed man, but I feared lest Rasputin should suspect me of treachery, the other plots having failed. One night, while at the palace, I was informed by a flunkey that someone wished to ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... in that bitter winter Kosciuszko came out on furlough through the wild snowbound land to Trenton, impelled by desire to see the Pole whom he knew well by repute, and by the craving to hear news of his country from the first compatriot who had come across his path in the New World. They had not known each other in Poland, for Kosciuszko had been a youth engaged in his studies ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their pointed, black heads, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... opinions, or at least the councils, of the Queen." Lord Durham, up to this time, was regarded by most people merely as a Radical of a very advanced order, burning with strong political ambitions, fitfully impelled with passionate likings and dislikings, and capable of proving a serious trouble to the quiet of the new reign. We know now that Durham was soon drawn away almost altogether from home politics, disappointing ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... most heartily for this long digression. The Captain's gig, impelled by the "might of England's pride," was cleverly beached alongside of the other boat, and the Captain stepped out and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... own door, but a sudden purpose impelled her to keep on and go straight by, without even a pause or a look ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... well be questioned. It was in the very desperation of his hope, perhaps, that his energies became at once equally well-ordered and intense. He prompted to their utmost the energies of others. He impelled all his agencies to their best exertions. Oar and sail were busy without intermission, and soon the efforts of the pursuers were rewarded. A gondola, bearing a single man, drifted along their path. He was a fugitive from Olivolo, who gave them the first definite idea of the foray ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... word, as I see many people are."[44:2] And so that neither he nor others should "rest longer upon words without knowledge, but hereafter may look upon that spiritual power, and know what it is that rules them, which doth rule in and over all," he felt himself impelled to conceive of and to refer to this spiritual power, which is God, as "Reason." He contends that "though men may esteem the word Reason to be too mean a name to set forth the Father by, yet it is the highest name that can be given ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... of the clouded dusk, with his half-shut eyes watching the grey gleam of the river; but his mind's eye saw the shadowy mead behind him, and a girlish figure crossing it with feet that seemed to faint, holding her back from doom, yet to be impelled against their will. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... turning the talk to what might be done in a town like that, I threw myself into outlining utopian projects, and defending them with more warmth than it is reasonable to express in a conversation with unknown persons. The woman's mocking smile stirred me up and impelled me ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... frantically up the slope that gave him little footing; and he came back, no longer with poorly attempted simulation of ferocity, but impelled by the first flickerings of real ferocity. He did not know this. If he thought at all, he was under the impression that he was playing the game as he had played it with Skipper. In short, he was taking an interest in the game, although a radically different interest ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... following day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte (the best, perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... no degree softened the ire of the Count; who, enchanted at having discovered an opportunity of annoying and harassing M. de Guise during the first week of his marriage, retorted in a manner which impelled the Queen to request that each would retire to his hotel; and to express at the same time her earnest hope that a little calm reflection would induce the disputants to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... up and ran blindly, impelled by terror pursued by the fear of something far more ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the heroines of a novel, possessing the charms of the three Graces and the virtues of the seven sages of Greece, who when they fall, fall in spite of themselves, impelled by a fatal concurrence of circumstances, but with so much candour and innocence, that we cannot do otherwise than pardon their fall and even fail to comprehend that they have fallen, we are completely ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... and Light, goes on, the aptitudes or tastes are awakened, and this first birth of desire in Mars carries the spirits off from their ivory seats in the Chorus Halls to the City, where like an animal ferreting its purpose by intuition, they seem impelled whither their needs ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... * Deigneth to grant His slave's petition wherewithal he came. If I, to eyes of men be that and only that they see, * And this my body show itself so full of grief and grame, And have I naught of food that shall supply me to the place * Where crowds unto my Lord resort impelled by single aim, I have a high Creating Lord whose mercies aye are hid; * A Lord who hath none equal and no fear is known to Him. So fare thee safe and leave me lone in strangerhood to wone * For He, the only One, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that it should, and from that time, when it was not in her hands undergoing admiration, it lay in secure repose among the treasured notes, faded flowers, and sweet-smelling rose-leaves in her writing-case. Not many days later she felt impelled to acknowledge its receipt, and, taking her materials in this precious box to a shaded corner of the pine wood, spread them out before her and was soon deep in her pleasant task. She was necessarily obliged to draw heavily upon imagination in tracing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... youngest son of a miller of Leyden, turned his face, too, from the old toward the new. They sought liberty to live and to worship according to the bright light in their hearts: he, too, sought liberty to follow in a no less divinely appointed path, impelled thereto by an irresistible force which, after half a century, retained all its early vigor. They broke from the ways of their fathers and bore an important part in the development of the great American nation; he emancipated himself and his art from the thraldom of tradition and conventionality and ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... I," added the fairy, "who impelled you to take the beans, who made the bean-stalk grow, and inspired you with the desire to climb up it to this strange country; for it is here the wicked giant lives who was your father's destroyer. It is you who must avenge him, and rid the world of a monster who never will do anything but ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... or alacrity of mind;—his state of dependence, his temper of accommodation, and his activity, must fall in precisely with the indulgence of his humours; that is, he must thrive best and flatter most, by being extravagantly incongruous; and his own tendency, impelled by so much activity, will carry him with perfect ease and freedom to all the necessary excesses. But why, it may be asked, should incongruities recommend Falstaff to the favour of the Prince?—Because the Prince is supposed to possess a high ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of the Polish National Government, January 22d, 1863, only to be deceived and in the end deprived of that for which they had fought? By what right can bad faith be imputed to land owners whom experience, a sense of justice, and even interest, had already impelled to get rid of a useless and burdensome relation? These land owners, even under the Rossian Government (in 1818), had solemnly begged the uncle of the present czar, Alexander I., to allow them to be freed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Teresa de Leon, it was jealousy that impelled her to follow Jose Barrios from Cuba to New York. The murderer, in his scheming, knew it, saw a chance to use her, to encourage her, perhaps throw suspicion on her, if necessary. When I came uncomfortably close to him ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... I assumed an air of mirth, but hardly had I re-entered my cave than an irresistible feeling of melancholy weighed down every faculty of my mind. In vain I attempted to engage in some literary composition; I was involuntarily impelled to write upon other topics. I thought of my family, and wrote letters after letters, in which I poured forth all my burdened spirit, all I had felt and enjoyed of home, in far happier days, surrounded ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed, the sight, he exclaimed, which had discovered navigation, which had impelled men to seek the West, was the noblest of all the senses. Painting spoke only by what it accomplished, poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises. If, then, poets called painting dumb poetry, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... days ago I found a pot of light paint in Mac's workshop, and, impelled by heaven only knows what unconscious process, I painted my bicycle blue. This morning, the paint being dry, I rode forth into an unsympathetic world. Women came to their doors to stare at my machine, and as they stared ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... love. With what a zeal did I attempt to follow in my patron's steps—with what enthusiasm did I begin the course which his sanction had legalized and rendered holy—and how, without a doubt as to my title, or a reflection on the propriety of the step, impelled by religious fervour, did I assume the tone and authority of a teacher, and arrogate to myself the right of determining the designs of the Omnipotent, and of appointing the degree of holy warmth below which no believer could be sure of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... speed, and I might be able to reach the castle in time to enable John and Mary to escape. I considered the question a moment. My own life certainly would pay the forfeit in case of failure; but my love for John and, I confess it with shame, the memory of my old tenderness for Mary impelled me to take the risk. I explained the plan upon which I was thinking, and told them of my determination. When I did so, Madge grasped me by the arm to detain me, and Dorothy fell upon her knees and kissed ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... most fatal retreat recorded in history, all sensible persons concurred in the opinion that the Emperor ought to have passed the winter of 1812-13 in Poland, and have resumed his vast enterprises in the spring. But his natural impatience impelled him forward as it were unconsciously, and he seemed to be under the influence of an invisible demon stronger than even his own strong will. This demon was ambition. He who knew so well the value of time, never sufficiently understood ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... whose underlying object is opportunistic—to obtain immediate results in legislation no matter how unrelated they may be to Socialism. Others are impelled either by an inactive idealism, or by attachment to abstract dogma for its own sake. Their custom is in the one instance to make the doctrine so rigid that it has no immediate application, and in the other to "elevate the ideal" so high, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Impelled by such a sense of duty, we wended our way to the "royal property," to take a last look at the long-expiring gardens. It was a wet night—the lamps burnt dimly—the military band played in the minor key—the waiters stalked about with so silent, melancholy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... walls. The narrator has just "burst out" of it. He never meant to go in. But the rain had forced him to take shelter in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again—where we find him—out in ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... smiling and intent. The Judge was a crack tennis player. He loathed the game, but he had made himself proficient in it, because it is one of the things that people expect of a man. He was impelled to challenge Capper, and the answer ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... impulse he impelled it into more natural paths, and at the same time he discovered ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... smoking ruins and rescued refugees left Mademoiselle almost speechless. She in her turn felt impelled to seek a confidante, and imparted the wonderful revelations ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the day, I made arrangements for a little luncheon to be served that evening in my rooms. There was something about this Bainbridge that impelled me to know him better. I had already made up my mind that I should like him: his were those clear blue eyes that calmly seemed to understand the world around—truth-loving eyes. He had to my mind the appearance ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... tracked the element and followed it up, as a terrier will pursue a rabbit in its burrow, planting trees in proportion as they laid bare its once subterranean bed. Thus, the supply of liquid being constant, the oasis is impelled to wander in the direction of its springs; the more you add to the head, the shorter grows the tail. In prehistoric days, maybe, the water gushed out somewhere near the Chott; the charming depression of the "corbeille" is perhaps ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... going up the Indus to Raval Pindi, I ran over the Pendjab—the land of the five rivers; visited the Golden Temple of Amritsa—the tomb of the King of Pendjab, Randjid Singh, near Lahore; and turned toward Kachmyr, "The Valley of Eternal Bliss." Thence I directed my peregrinations as my curiosity impelled me, until I arrived in Ladak, whence I intended returning to Russia by way of Karakoroum and ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... four months later, after a period of having run away twice for several days at a time. On inquiry she maintains she was impelled to do it by her own feelings of restlessness and general dissatisfaction. She thought the people with whom she lived were very nice and only strict as they should be. There was some question raised about this time about the periodicity of her impulsions, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... for instance, would have been a very commonplace man in the common ranks of life; but it has done him good to be a nobleman. Not that his tact is quite perfect. In going up to breakfast, he made me precede him; in returning to the library, he did the same, although I drew back, till he impelled me up the first stair, with gentle persistence. By insisting upon it, he showed his sense of condescension much more than if, when he saw me unwilling to take precedence, he had passed forward, as if the point were ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Hester. And I do truly love her, but in the intellectual sense and not the sense you fanatically demand. I am not seized with a loutish vertigo when I look upon her and touch her hand. Nor do I feel impelled to leave her presence if I would live, as did Dante the presence of Beatrice; nor the painful confusion of Rousseau, when, in the same room with Madame Goton, he seemed impelled to leap into the flaming fireplace. But ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... for that," John answered. "But her surroundings will not influence Helen now. Impelled by my grief, she must search ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... his letters to the Germans (East Franks), he at the same time warned them against the influence of those enthusiasts who strove to inflame the fanaticism of the people. He declaimed against the false zeal, without knowledge, which impelled them to murder the Jews, a people who ought to be allowed to live in peace in ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... boulder or a log of drift-wood from the surface on which it rests. He still remains a part of the universal soul, the multiform, all-embracing God, who is himself not a self-conscious, freely willing being, but impelled by necessity in all his parts and members, and, no less than in all else, in those human members through which alone he attains ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... she regarded the proper thing in the way of farewell speech. She supposed it was hard for a man to go shopping alone; she could see how hard it would be for her own father; indeed it was seeing how difficult it would be for her father had impelled her to go with him, a stranger. She trusted his wife would like the lace; she thought it very nice, and a bargain. She was glad to have been of service to a fellow countryman who seemed in so ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Impelled by the strength of her love, from time to time she casts a furtive glance upon the face of her lover. It is a glance of strange significance; its object being to discover whether upon his features the tortures of long absence have not ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... bankruptcies, its civic commotions, and its social unhappiness, do not make us discontented with our own condition. Before the Evolution we had completed the round of your inventions and discoveries, impelled by the force that drives you on; and we have since disused most of them as idle and unfit. But we profit, now and then, by the advances you make in science, for we are passionately devoted to the study of the natural laws, open or occult, under which all men have their being. Occasionally ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. Thus, though these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them; and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there. The same ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... not superior to the foibles which beset humanity. If it had been his conception of duty which impelled him to take a high line with Beaumaroy, there was now in his feelings, although he did not realize the fact, an alloy of less precious metal. He had demanded an ordeal, a test—that he should see Mr. Saffron and ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... too flagrant neglect of this most essential part of our duty that I have been impelled to write in confidence to your lordship on the subject, with the hope that proper means will be adopted ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... marked abilities in church and social service lines. They had dinner together, and Mr. Nelson outlined the plans for the new parish house. Though a relative had advised Bacon "to cut-out the soul-saving business," the avenues of service under Frank Nelson's leadership impelled him to abandon his planned career. No agreement was made about salary until much later when Mr. Nelson said, "We cannot give you much. Will you come for a hundred dollars a month and live in the parish house?" At the annual meeting of the church ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... how, in the first place, twelve of the converts of George Fox, the first Quaker in the world, had come over from England. They seemed to be impelled by an earnest love for the souls of men, and a pure desire to make known what they considered a revelation from Heaven. But the rulers looked upon them as plotting the downfall of all government and religion. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of my shipmates were some redeeming qualities; but about M'Gee, there was nothing of the kind; and forced to consort with him, I could not help regretting, a thousand times, that the gallows had been so tardy. As if impelled, against her will, to send him into the world, Nature had done all she could to insure his being taken for what he was. About the eyes there was no mistaking him; with a villainous cast in one, they seemed suspicious of ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... where else, owing to the unalterable ethnical laws of his character. The white man can not endure toil under the burning sun of the cane and cotton field, and live to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The African will starve rather than engage in a regular system of agricultural labor, unless impelled by the stronger will of the white man. When thus impelled, experience proves that he is much happier, during the hours of labor in the sunny fields, than when dozing in his native woods and jungles. He is also eminently ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... She was impelled to say what she said next by his words, which excited her. "I can't tell you—and perhaps I ought not—how happy you make me by loving Lancelot. I love him so very much—and James never has. I can't make out why; but it was so from the beginning. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... found to be true; and I finally saw that the blood, forced by the action of the left ventricle into the arteries, was distributed to the body at large, and its several parts, in the same manner as it is sent through the lungs, impelled by the right ventricle into the pulmonary artery; and that it then passed through the veins and along the vena cava, and so round to the left ventricle in the manner already indicated; which motion we may be allowed to call circular, in the same way as Aristotle says that the air and the rain emulate ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... though a man's volitions were thrown out, not by himself, but by some irresistible power working within his mind, say the power of the Almighty, yet he would be free, provided there were no impediments to prevent the external effects of his volitions. This is the liberty which water, impelled by the power of gravity, possesses in descending the channel of a river. It is the liberty of the winds and waves of the sea, which, by a sort of metaphor, is supposed to reign over the dominions of a mechanical and materialistic fate. It is the most ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... all was well; but on more closely examining the ground his heart misgave him, for it appeared to him as if the soil had been moved. With anxious haste he began to dig, and soon his spade struck the lid of one of the chests. For a moment he breathed again; but he was impelled to carry his search farther. He uncovered the chest and raised the lid—it was empty! In a wild fear and fury he dug again and again, and with the same result. Every chest or box was in its place, but every one was empty! The treasure had been spirited away by some ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "The motive which impelled me towards Texas," he resumed, "was one which was natural for me to feel, thus ancestrally connected. I had heired my father's business,—the deacon, who had died full of honors, ripe in years, and in ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... thought much of the old woman in the hut, and of Paw's worse than inferior cooking. Though he did not realize the change in himself, six months of close companionship with the Little Woman had changed Casey Ryan considerably. Time was when even his soft-heartedness would not have impelled him to patient scheming that he might help an old woman whose sole claim upon his sympathy consisted of four rock walls and a look of calm despair in her eyes. Now, Casey was thinking and planning for the old woman more than ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Revolution. Events were therefore now favourable to a return from the methods of Rousseau to those of Richelieu; and the genius who was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was now at hand. Though Bonaparte desired at once to attack the Austrians in Northern Italy, yet a sure instinct impelled him to remain at Paris, for, as he said to Marmont: "When the house is crumbling, is it the time to busy oneself with the garden? A change ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... insecurity in which they live; the fear lest by an overabundance in the supply of labor, or by the disability of the laborer, they should be unable to get the means of living for themselves and their families. The writer of this article was impelled, by the duties of his profession, to spend his entire time, save the hours of sleep, during the days of the riot and the two weeks subsequent, among the active insurgents, in the neighborhood of the conflicts, and in other situations, which gave ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have had difficulty to explain. It was like the echo of some far distant past seeming to recall to life a sleeping spirit, which with great exultation was throwing off the fetters of its long slumbers. He seemed to be impelled by an almost irresistible force to rush into their midst and take his ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... his conviction, felt a pulse of sympathy for the first rider. It was that emotion which impelled him to keep going cautiously forward when, by all the rules of life in that country, he should have stood at a distance to allow the men to ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wealth creation which has become an institutional part of an economic system has been impelled and sustained by the material interests of people who at the time held the strategic position in the community. The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... voyage out: the one comprising the financiers, which strove to attain its ends by manifesto and public meeting, with the hint of sterner measures to follow; and the other impatient of delay, and thus impelled to seek the help of those who undoubtedly became freebooters the moment they crossed the Transvaal border. Certainly Dr. Jameson's reported words seemed to echo with reproach and disappointment—the reproach of a man who has ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... round our world, behold the chain of love. Combining all below and all above; See plastic nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend; Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace, See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one center still the gen'ral good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving, vegetate again; All forms that perish, other forms supply, (By turns we ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the same time a terrible and most lamentable fact, that the practice of medicine—an art of daily necessity and application, most nearly affecting the dearest interests and well being of mankind, and to the improvement of which we are encouraged and impelled by the strongest motives of interest and humanity, of love for our neighbor and emulous zeal for professional skill and superiority therein—should, after a probation of so long a period, and recorded experience of at least ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... this evening," continued the stranger, "that I felt impelled to come and have a chat with you for a short time. So I hope you will take my visit in good part, and allow me to sit in your boat until it is time for ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... Impelled by curiosity, I went to the railings, and I stood where she stood. I looked down. How deep and fathomless it seemed, this running sea! What was it she had dropped there? In my mind's eye I saw a most pathetic little bundle made of love-letters; I pictured them tied with a pretty faded ribbon; ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... was very preposterous, that even though his mood was so prosaic and paternal a one, he was absurdly, vacantly sensible of feeling some uneasiness at the brightness of her upturned face. For pity's sake, why was it that he was impelled to such a puerile weakness—such a vanity, as he sternly ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... impalpable power that moves us, against God. The play, seen in this light, pictures a deep-reaching spiritual change, leading us step by step from the soul adrift on the waters of life to the state where it is definitely oriented and impelled. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg |
