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Impulse   Listen
verb
Impulse  v. t.  To impel; to incite. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Impulse" Quotes from Famous Books



... destroyer; he doesn't think, he spurts out words. His words and arguments are simply parrot mimicry and void of intellectual impulse, as are the movements ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... estimable father the great and priceless dowry of a true, tender, and lovin' 'art! ALEXIS (coldly) I do not question it. After all, a faithful love is the true source of every earthly joy. SIR M. I knew that my boy would not blame his poor father for acting on the impulse of a heart that has never yet misled him. Zorah is not perhaps what the world calls beautiful— DR. D. Still she is comely—distinctly comely. (Sighs) ALINE Zorah is very good, and very clean, and honest, and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... emerging. More than four years of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being published under another. My first impulse, therefore, was to ask whether the change which has rendered so much of the old world obsolete had not invalidated also the conclusions here arrived at. But reflection has simply confirmed me in the desire to complete the arrangements for publication. Self-government is the keynote ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... 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 ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... so cold and immovable; you are not a bit like me. I am all sensitiveness and impulse. Well, if it is not raining cats and dogs I will go into that awful City ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... keeping with the characteristics of his art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard, with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed, speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Ireland in 1056, and after some wanderings established himself at Mainz in 1069. He compiled a chronicle, which is of considerable value.[11] Hereafter I shall have to mention other Irish men of travel; and it will be seen that from some of them, who returned home, came the main impulse to the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... my hand, then came a mental struggle; my first impulse was to get cold water, the next to look at her cunt. I went towards the door, turned round to look at her. Her calves were visible, I ran back, and lifted her clothes, so that I could just see her cunt-hair, gave her thighs a kiss, and then rushed downstairs, got water, and as ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... Princess drew near to Phyllis the brown eyes of the one met the blue-green eyes of the other. There was almost an exclamation on Phyllis's lips; there was almost a question on Gretchen's; both paled. Phyllis understood, but Gretchen did not, why the impulse to speak came. Then the brown eyes of Phyllis turned their penetrating gaze to my own eyes, which I was compelled to shift. I bowed, and the Princess and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... importance in the history of poetical careers. Mr Arnold lived more than twenty years after the date of their publication; but his poetical production during that time filled no more than a few pages. At this date he was a man of forty-five—an age at which the poetical impulse has been supposed to run low, but perhaps with no sufficient reason. Poets of such very different types as Dryden and Tennyson have produced work equal to their best, if not actually their best, at that age and later. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... scorn that had kindled in Blandford's eyes, darkened with a swift shadow of compassion as he glanced at Demorest's hard, ashen face. He held out his hand with a sudden impulse. "Enough, I accept your offer, and shall put it to the test this very night. I know—if you do not—that Rosita is to leave here for Los Osos an hour from now in a private carriage, which your wife has ordered especially for her. The same information ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... uncertain what to do or say. His impulse was to turn and go back, but he did not ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... scrape an acquaintance; I knew that he had approached me and was loitering in my neighbourhood for that specific purpose. I don't know, I have studied the psychology of the moment in vain to understand, why I felt a perverse impulse to put him off. I was interested in him, I was curious about him; and there he stood, testifying that the interest was reciprocal, ready to make the advances, only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... refluent flood, l. 262. The force of the arterial impulse appears to cease, after having propelled the blood through the capillary vessels; whence the venous circulation is owing to the extremities of the veins absorbing the blood, as those of the lymphatics absorb the fluids. The great force ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... upon her face. Moreover, there was justice in the sense of wrong discernible upon her features when the very self looked forth from them. All through his life John Hewett had suffered from the same impulse of revolt; less sensitively constructed than his daughter, uncalculating, inarticulate, he fumed and fretted away his energies in a conflict with forces ludicrously personified. In the matter of his second marriage he was seen at his best, generously defiant ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... the face of any possible temptation, William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by certain appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which determined all his after life. He spent but a scant two years in college; and the work of the lecture rooms must have suffered seriously during that time from the contention and confusion of the changes then in progress; so that academically the college could not ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... her violence of grief might disturb her father. All was still below. She looked on the face so changed, and yet so strangely like. She bent down to kiss it. The cold unyielding flesh struck a shudder to her heart, and hastily obeying her impulse, she grasped the candle, and opened the door. Then she heard the sobs of her father's grief; and quickly, quietly stealing down the steps, she knelt by him, and kissed his hand. He took no notice at first; ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... boundary of the farm Mr. Preston met Maurice. Some impulse, for he was not a softhearted man himself, made him stop, call the pretty boy to his side, and give him half ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... son — that I verily believe; but I know not what Llewelyn may say or do at any time. He never speaks to me of what is in his head. Lady Gertrude, you know the king and his ways. Will he visit this rash deed upon my brother's head? Will Llewelyn suffer for what he did in an impulse of mad rage, provoked to it by yon haughty youth, whose words and bearing are hard for ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... boyish impulse on John Ellison's part, and an innocent purchaser of the mill would have laughed at him; but he stepped nearer to Colonel Witham and said, earnestly, "You'll have to let me in here some day, Colonel Witham. The mill isn't ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... The impulse to revolutionize the system comes from the belief that it is irreclaimably bad. The first thing to be done is to see how much reclaiming the system is capable of; and the only sure way to test this question is to use all our power in the effort to improve it. When all such efforts shall have ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark

... water supply, and general organization; while the country, as the acreage of vines and oranges, wheat and barley, grain and corn, and the shipments by rail testify, has improved more than at any other period, and commerce is beginning to feel the impulse of a genuine prosperity, based upon the intelligent cultivation of the ground. School-houses have multiplied; libraries have been founded; many "boom" hotels, built in order to sell city lots in the sage-brush, have been turned into schools ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... is a sheer impossibility, and to lay our plans as though it were feasible and soon to be realized, is to embark on the body of a sleeping whale in the belief that it is an island in the sea. And to negotiate peace abroad and give an impulse to politics at home, with that comforting prospect in mind, is to lead the nation into a Serbonian bog whence no escape is possible. The leaders of Great Britain are so permeated with the duties, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... more brilliant, arose from the absence of the PRESS. Their intellectual state was that of men talked to, not written to. Their imagination was perpetually called forth—their deliberative reason rarely;—they were the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective in proportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. Nor must it be forgotten that the representative system, which is the proper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown to the Greeks [160], and if unconsciously practised in the Spartan ephoralty, was at least never existent ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... time, and there was a pause in the pulling, the boat still driving through the water with the impulse which had been given her, as if she ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the halves of the torn card between her fingers for some moments, looking at them. Then, sighing deeply, she rose with sudden impulse and, crossing the room, took up a box of matches. Striking one, she applied it to the corners of the half cards and held the latter until the blue flame crept ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... impulse of the moment, he suddenly seized Madame by the hand, and hurried her through the swinging door into ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... adjoining room came the sound of Cavendish's breathing, but now it was more raucous, more like groan following groan. The Lieutenant-Governor strove in vain to put off the foreboding which lay heavy upon him, until, finally, unable to resist the impulse, he rose, slid his feet into his slippers, and going noiselessly into the drawing-room, stepped to the windows and put the curtains softly aside. What first met his eye as he turned was the door of his little wine-closet ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... ladies was not quite so elaborate as she had planned. There came to her an impulse to tell her morning's experience. She shrank from doing it. It seemed a sacred thing. They might not understand. But the impulse remained and she obeyed it, and quietly told them. And as they listened there seemed to come a touch of the Spirit's presence upon them all. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... eagerly into the conflict, pouring out their blood like water and their wealth without measure, for a sentiment, a principle, that may be summed up in the one word—"nationality." "The great uprising" was not the movement of a blind, unreasoning impulse. A fire had been smoldering in the North for years. The first cannon shot, that hurtled around the old flag as it floated over the walls of Fort Sumter shook down the barriers that confined it, and the free winds of liberty fanned it to ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... conceivable, this will be all the more the case in matters of Strategy. It is not so much a question then of handling the corps as a closed unit, for instance, on a single road, but of assigning within a certain sphere a united impulse to the constituent parts of the Command in such directions that in all cases they should reach the ground in force superior to anything the enemy can oppose to them. According to circumstances, different tasks ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... that suffers from proctitis, etc., have a natural stool? Unnatural conditions require preternatural aids, as we all know. The injected water dilates the constricted portion of the gut and arouses a revulsive impulse to expel the invading water. In obeying this impulse the imprisoned feces, gases, etc., are ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... not wish this young man to know my position in the house. Was it possible he did not wholly trust him? My hands trembled from the machine and I was about to turn and give my full thought to what I had to say. But pride checked the impulse. "No," I muttered in quick dissuasion, to myself. "He must see that I can do two things at once and do both well." And so I went ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... impulse to care for the girls who come to large cities to obtain work, and to provide them a home where they can have respectable surroundings, came from Pastor Vermeil, the founder of the deaconess house at Paris. When Fliedner visited the Paris house his heart was touched by what he saw. He thought ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... tribute to his memory in a dedication (which was not, however, printed) to the second edition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. "That I could make use of and cultivate in a right direction the powers which nature gave me," he concludes, "that I could follow my natural impulse and think and work for countless others without the help of any one; for that I thank thee, my father, thank thy activity, thy cleverness, thy thrift and care for the future. Therefore I praise thee, my noble father. And every one who from my work derives any pleasure, consolation, or instruction ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the girdle at her waist, her naked, ivory arms and even the slippers on her feet. As she approached in her royal-looking beauty all the guests at that strange feast stared first at her and next at each other. Then as though by a single impulse they rose and bowed. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... the terror, the terror! The darkness seemed alive with fearful presences. The lurid glare of her own eyeballs flashed backwards into her brain. She tried one more match; it kindled as it should, and she lighted another lamp. Her first impulse was to assure herself that nothing was changed in the familiar objects around her. She held the lamp up to the picture of Judith Pride. The beauty looked at her, it seemed as if with a kind of lofty recognition in her eyes; but there she was, as always. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel.... It seems that the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... you, my Lord, on the impulse of the moment, dictated by desperation, and adopted without reflection. No, my Lord; I had, or, at least, I thought I had, better reasons. I remembered that you had once condescended to address me 'candidly, not critically,' that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... of the masses; they are the highest manifestations of spiritual life. The thinker's flights beyond the confines of reality, the inventor's gift to join old materials in new combinations, the artist's creative impulse, the poet's inspiration, the seer's prophetic vision—every emanation from man's ideal nature clothes itself with sinews, flesh, and skin, and lives in a people's legends, the repositories of its art, poetry, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... out from the bag, and as the two boys began to eat Fred's hunger returned with such a force that he could not resist the impulse to ask for food. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... something supernatural; the designation daimonion itself seems to be his own. I think that we must seek for the origin of Socrates's peculiar mode of life in this direction, strange as it may be that a purely mystic element should have given the impulse to the most rationalistic philosophy the world has ever produced. It is impossible to enter more deeply into this problem here; but, if my conjecture is correct, we have an additional explanation of the fact that Socrates was disposed to anything rather than ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... and fell like a drowsy tune. On the highest peaks the after-glow still lingered, and from one of the little cottages deep in the shadow across the stream a light appeared like a signal, an invitation, and, the blood in him being young, accepted the lure. He rose with the impulse. "I'm going! Why not? 'Tis a night for adventure. There's no need of involving myself in any wise with their future. I'm an outsider, and will take precious good care to stay so." His face was impassive, but his heart was quick within him as he set foot on the bridge. "Perhaps this is my Rubicon?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... went on, "the space co-ordinates with great precision. That is how we have been able to select the destination for this carrier now. You cannot travel upon impulse by this method. Our engineers, as you might call them, must go in advance with recording apparatus. Nothing can ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... mother away. The thought of poor dead Annie Coulson flashed into Philip's mind. Could he be playing the same game with Sylvia? Philip set his teeth and tightened his lips at the thought of it. They had stopped talking; they had seen him already, or his impulse would have been to dodge behind the wall and avoid them; even though one of his purposes in going to Haytersbank had been to bid ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... SOCRATES: And the impulse which leads him to the opposite of what he is experiencing proves that he has a memory ...
— Philebus • Plato

... Knowledge of Ruth's affection being revealed, Which, if he stayed to let it feed on him, Vine-like might wreathe and wind about his life, Lifting all shade and sweetness out of reach Of Robert, so long his friend—honor, and hopes He would not name, kindled a torch for war Of various impulse in him. Reuben wedded; Yet Jerry lingered. Then, swift whisperings Along reverberant walls of gossips' ears Hummed loud and louder a love for Ruth. Grace, too, Involved him in a web of soft surmise With Ruth; and Reuben questioned ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... University. We went together in the Cambray Coach, and after a short stay at Doway, we proceeded on to the Army, which then was under that expert and resolute General the Duke of Luxembourg. It was certainly a kind impulse of Heaven that gave me my Brother for a Companion upon this Occasion; for an Action happening soon after, viz. the famous Battle of Launden, where it was my Misfortune to be dangerously wounded. I had the Satisfaction of my Brother's Company and ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... on the work with no idea of being paid for his services, although if oil was found, and he had needed any small amount of money, he would not have hesitated to ask for it. The work had been begun by him upon the impulse of the moment, and this making him an equal owner in the well, simply because of what he had done, surprised him even more than it did any ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... kissing me," he continued, presently, in a calm voice—"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely to see again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her than kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it as soon as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... however, that for the sake of the cause I might conquer my inclination a little and in my own way exert myself. It is just this point which I have made clear to myself: my faculties, taken separately, are not great, and I can only be and do something good when I concentrate all those faculties on one impulse and recklessly consume them and myself for its sake. Whatever part that impulse leads me to adopt, that I am as long as necessary, be it musician, poet, conductor, author, reciter, or what not. In that manner I at one time became ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... not delay to pass here in review the damage which the criticism of choice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the contrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and critical exigencies. It is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, by assisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... at the first tinkle, and was at the shutter watching for them before ever they rounded the angle of the Ponte della Morte. There they came! colour of dust, with the straggling goats following after in a cloud of it. Her impulse was to fling wide the casement, hold out both her arms, call to them with all her might, "Ha! help, in the name of the Trinity! Take me with you to the green hills. I am weary of life in this place!" Then, knowing she could not, she would hold herself back by ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... degree of what is moving and passionate. He recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut up in books as in reliquaries—peris et mises en ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... he had written about me and my whole ancestry. I had fought hard to educate myself and had been helpful to others. My self-respect revolted under this editor's malicious goading. I happened to see him in his front office, and on a sudden impulse, I went in, took hold of his collar, and gave him a ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... have some music, Miss Sedley—Amelia," said George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time, I should perhaps ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... feudal times. The town still retains the moderate dimensions and the quiet air of one that has grown up under the protection of the castle, and of the great family of the castle. Other towns, that arose under the same circumstances, have caught the impulse of modern commerce and manufacture, and have grown into huge, bustling, and noisy cities, in which the old fortified walls and the old castle have either vanished, or have been swallowed up, and stand, as if in superannuated wonder, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... was now at an end, and we imagined that Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, thenceforth, until the second Sunday in May, 1852, President of the Republic, would descend from the tribune. But he did not; he felt a magnanimous impulse to bind himself still more rigorously, if possible; to add something to the oath which the Constitution demanded from him, in order to show how largely the oath was free and spontaneous. He asked permission to address ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... Europe with North America. telefax-facsimile service between subscriber stations via the public switched telephone network or the international Datel network. telegraph-a telecommunications system designed for unmodulated electric impulse transmission. telex-a communication service involving teletypewriters connected by wire through automatic exchanges. tropospheric scatter-a form of microwave radio transmission in which the troposphere is used ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... shields, stout and light for fighting. The lion begins to quiver as soon as he sees them, for he sees the arms they have, and perceives that they come to fight his master. He is aroused, and bristles up at once, and, trembling with rage and bold impulse, he thrashes the earth with his tail, desiring to rescue his master before they kill him. And when they see him they say: "Vassal, remove the lion from here that he may not do us harm. Either surrender to us at once, or else, we adjure you, that lion must be put where he can ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... of so long a journey before me I had to resist the impulse to share my provisions with them; but before we left, George carried a few ounces of tea up the hill. There was a merry chase as each tried to possess herself of the treasure. They were like children in their delight. A pair of moccasins was offered in ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... yours, and his faith trusts you, and his heart upon a vague impulse is laid bare to you, it always has seemed to me the basest treachery the world can hold to pass the gold of confidence which he pours out to you from hand to hand as common coin ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... of this Atman, which they hold to be the most precious thing (in the world), they are subject to the Three Poisons Of lust,[FN338] anger,[FN339] and folly,[FN340] which (in their turn) give impulse to the will and bring forth Karma of all kinds through speech and action. Karma being thus produced, no one can evade its effects. Consequently all must be born[FN341] in the Five States of Existence either to suffer pain or to enjoy pleasure; ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... face beams upon us with serenity, but he looks in one direction, and rows in the opposite course. Even thus it was three centuries ago. Was it to be wondered at that many did not see the precipice towards which the bark which held their all was gliding under the same impulse? ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... which puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam-engine, the caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, etc., or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of water, the windmill from wind, etc. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... will of a judge, who may be corrupted or swayed by his own passions, interests, or the impulse of such as support him and may advance him to greater honours, the God of mercy and of justice ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... XIV., with a sudden impulse, and raising his head, "it is a million you require, or two hundred gentlemen, I think ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... woman at the bottom of it?" Siegenthal said tentatively. "You acted on impulse, in a fit ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... true. Blakely early discovered this in treating with the natives, and it did not take long to make them understand that by working together for the common defense they could be made far more effective than by permitting each to do as his own impulse dictated. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay

... Otard brandy, and poured out half a tumblerful, and offered it to Ishmael. It was a dose that might have been swallowed with impunity by a seasoned old toper like Wiseman; but certainly not by an abstinent young man like Ishmael, who, yielding to the fatal impulse to get rid of present suffering by any means, at any cost, or any risk, took the tumbler ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... pilgrimage to Mekka has not nourished sufficient fanaticism to prevent these good people from allowing an infidel doctor to make free with their crowns, and expatiate on their passions and propensities. There is no calculating on the strength of the impulse of curiosity. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... Advancement of the Deaf. Like our Ohio cousins, who have already established a similar home, we pride ourselves upon our ability to own and control such a responsible institution. The home owes its existence entirely to the charitable impulse of the deaf themselves, aided by the generosity of their hearing friends. It exists because of the desire to provide a home of rest for the infirm of our class during their declining years, so that they may find here comfort and happiness in ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... Theophorus, the 'God-bearer,' which Ignatius himself adopted. But he had in his company several Ephesian delegates when he wrote; and the newly-discovered inscriptions inform us that the practice which supplies the metaphor had received a fresh impulse at Ephesus shortly before this letter was written. The most important inscriptions in Mr Wood's collection relate to a gift of numerous valuable statues, images, and other treasures to the temple of Artemis, by one C. Vibius Salutaris, with an endowment for their custody. In ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... he 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. The Crimson Hand, which at first had been strongly ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... she couldn't deny there was something reasonable in his argument. She really had given him little chance; impulse and instinct had worked upon her, causing her to jump at conclusions which, however well founded in fact, were without excuse in act. If he had kissed her, it wasn't without provocation, nor against ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... of projecting mental states; in the case of the desired development of the receiving power, the person should develop receptiveness and passivity, and a certain recognition of an actual telepathic impulse which is impossible to describe in words but which comes to every investigator, and which when once experienced is ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... so young, nay, so childlike, as she thus spoke, that Kenelm felt a parental inclination to draw her on his lap and kiss away her tears. But he prudently conquered that impulse, and said, with ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that the man was running away from him, not towards him. His first impulse was to give chase, but prudence restrained him. Catching burglars is an exhilarating sport, but it is best to indulge in it when one is not on a ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... she was carried back to the day whereon she had reproached her with hazarding the eternal welfare of her child. Throwing herself upon her knees, she prayed for strength—and her prayer was heard. Suddenly, as if struck with some impulse, she hurried from the window, through the hall, passed the long suite of apartments, and reached her husband's. Entering, she closed the door behind her, and rushed forward to M. de Vaissiere's chair with such passionate rapidity, that one might have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... Icelandic literature in prose outside of the sagas—the great law code (Gragas or Greygoose), religious books in the usual plenty, scientific books of a kind, and others. But the saga, the story, was so emphatically the natural mould into which Icelandic literary impulse threw itself, that it is even more difficult here than elsewhere at the time to separate story and history, fiction and fact. Indeed the stricter critics would, I believe, maintain that every saga which deserves the name is actually founded ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... came the picture now in the National Gallery, called the Madonna della Cesta, from the basket that lies on the ground. It is a domestic scene in the outer air: the mother is dressing her babe, and smilingly arrests his hand, which, on a sudden impulse, he has stretched towards some coveted object. The same face is almost exactly repeated in the Madonna of the Hermitage Gallery (St. Petersburg), who offers her breast to her boy, at that moment turning about to receive some fruit ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but, with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It was in a cemetery, by some strange chance immured within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone memorials, and green ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sudden impulse to write poetry—he did so sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott—and when he had taken his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls, and shaded by a whip of a tree that was ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... word to you this afternoon—at five or six o'clock," said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added: "I will tell you why I want to wait. I am engaged to be married. I think I should tell my fiance, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... sections, both 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 and more energetic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... that pass. I found the Otard, and drank there-of; finding it, moreover, most pleasant to the palate, and right cheering to the soul. My next impulse was to share my prize with my shipmates. But here a judicious reflection obtruded. From the sea-monarchs, his ancestors, my Viking had inherited one of their cardinal virtues, a detestation and abhorrence of all vinous and spirituous beverages; insomuch, that he never could see any, but he ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... Coxeter felt a strong impulse to refuse. He never mixed himself up with other people's affairs; he always refused to do so ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... he could not check an impulse to raise his arm and wipe her eyes, but Lin Tai-yue speedily withdrew several steps backwards. "Are you again bent," she said, "upon compassing your own death! Then why do you knock your hands and kick your feet ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the house. The act of tumbling seems to be one over which they have no control, an involuntary movement which they seem to try to prevent. I have seen a bird sometimes in his struggles fly a yard or two straight upwards, the impulse forcing him backwards while he struggles to go forwards. If suddenly startled, or in a strange place, they seem less able to fly than if quiet in their accustomed loft." These House-tumblers differ from the Lotan or Ground {152} Tumbler of India, in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... "show-off stuff" in Trevison. His feat of riding down the wall of the cut had not been performed to impress anyone; the look of reckless abandon in the otherwise serene eyes that held Murphy's steadily, convinced the engineer that the man had merely responded to a dare-devil impulse. There was something in Trevison's appearance that suggested an entire disregard of fear. The engineer had watched the face of a brother of his craft one night when the latter had been driving a roaring monster down a grade at record-breaking speed into a wall of rain-soaked darkness out of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Iroquois understood his defiance could not be determined. With a wild shout they pressed upon him. Borne struggling and stumbling by the impulse of a dozen hands, Pembroke half walked and half was carried over the distance between the village and the brink of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... to account for it either by the action of certain vortices, as Kepler and Descartes, or by some other principle of impulse or attraction, for it is most certain that these effects must proceed from the action of some force or other. This we will call by the general name of a centripetal force, as it is a force which is directed to some centre; and, as it regards more particularly ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... fatal enemies to his spiritual elevation. I do not believe it was the ascetic ideas imported from India, such as marked the Brahmins, nor the visionary ideas of the Sufis and the Buddhists, and of other Oriental religionists, which gave the impulse to monastic life and led to the austerities of the Church in the second and third centuries, so much as the practical evils with which every one was conversant, and which were plainly antagonistic to the doctrine that the life is more than meat. The triumph of the mind over the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... acting by reason now. His head seemed a ball of fire. Only his hands and feet responded mechanically to the dim impulse of his bewildered brain. Once more the battling through the surf, this time against it and threefold harder. Only the man whose strength had borne the giant Spartan down could have breasted the billows that ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... as good as the Nixie," she said, on a sudden impulse. He swung round, staring at ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... my forehead, and a veil seemed to come before my eyes. I trembled; I flushed; and, without being able to speak, I felt a sudden impulse to cry out at the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... into the abyss. He had said his last good-by to it. But what belonged to her, that he meant to save. Only a little money. He would take it to her in his own hands—this last gift of a man that had lasted too long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the very passion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of his worthless life in a ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... as she proposed. There was clearly no need for those prepared words. There had been one embrace,—an embrace that was objectionable because, had either his wife seen it or Mr. Houghton, he would have been forced to own himself wrong; but that had come from sudden impulse, and need not be repeated. This that was now proposed to him was friendship, and not love. "You shall have all observance," he said with his ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... no saying how long this state of things would have gone on, if it had not been for the exuberant spirits of Otto, who, under an impulse of maternal affection, sprang to his mother's side with intent to embrace her, and unwittingly planted his foot on the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... impressed the company with gloom. Maria Antoinette rode in the carriage with her husband, and with one or two other members of the royal family. For some time they rode in silence, Maria, a child of impulse, weeping profusely from the emotions which moved her soul. But, ere long, the morning dawned. The sun rose bright and clear over the hills of France, and the whole beautiful landscape glittered in the light of the most ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... increased facilities of transportation have brought distant markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital, but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from the basin of the Mississippi, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... in the tortured body drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. Probably most people have experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, a thought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering by flinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into—what? Simply life in a changed environment, with exactly the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the same causes of their miseries, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... If he loved her slavishly, it was generously. The wild thing he said was one of the frantic leaps of generosity in a heart that was gone to impulse: 'I see it, they have martyrized you. I know you so well, Clotilde! So, then, come to me, come with me, let me cherish you. I will take you and rescue you from your people, and should it be your positive wish to meet Alvan again, I myself will take you to him, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Imagists:—Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell, F.S. Flint, D.H. Lawrence, and others. They are gathering followers and imitators. To these followers I would say: the Imagist impulse need not be confined to verse. Why would you be imitators of these leaders when you might be creators in a new medium? There is a clear parallelism between their point of view in verse and the Intimate-and-friendly Photoplay, especially when it is developed from the standpoint of the last part ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... the study of crime as a natural and social phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... hung in the 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

... and recovering from the first confusion and astonishment of her situation, Hetty perceived a cub, of the common American brown bear, balancing itself on its hinder legs, and still looking towards her, as if doubtful whether it would be safe to trust itself near her person again. The first impulse of Hetty, who had been mistress of several of these cubs, was to run and seize the little creature as a prize, but a loud growl warned her of the danger of such a procedure. Recoiling a few steps, the girl looked hurriedly round, and perceived the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... to be reminded every minute of all the sins they've repented of. Oh, but I've no patience with it!" As Hetty was walking slowly back to the house after this injudicious outburst, she met Dr. Eben Williams coming down the avenue. Her first impulse was to plunge into the shrubbery, on the right hand or the left, and escape him. The baby was now four weeks old, and yet Hetty had never till to-day seen the doctor. It had been a very sore point between her and Sally, that Sally would persist in having this young Dr. Williams from the "Corners," ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... wife into a covered boat, which was soon flying along under the impulse of his muscular arms. The child rejoiced aloud at the rocking of the boat, he fancied it was the motion of his cradle. The eyes of the woman were fixed now upon the sky and now upon the unruffled surface of the watery mirror. A star smiled down upon her wheresoever she gazed. The evening ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... his wife he was almost a stranger, he had paid her the compliment of letting her know the date and hour of his return; not from any impulse towards friendliness, but from an instinctive pride of race, which made it impossible for him to slight a white woman in the eyes of the natives. However far apart their lives were sundered, his servants, at least, would have to respect her as the Memsahib and the mistress of his house; ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... don't know what made me call after him. "I say! Wait a minute." Perhaps it was the sidelong glance he gave me; or possibly I was yet under the influence of Captain Giles' mysterious earnestness. Well, it was an impulse of some sort; an effect of that force somewhere within our lives which shapes them this way or that. For if these words had not escaped from my lips (my will had nothing to do with that) my existence would, to be sure, have been still ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... obvious that what Rossetti meant by being racked and tortured, was that his subject possessed him; that he was enslaved by his own "shaping imagination." Assuredly he was the reverse of a costive poet: impulse was, to use his own phrase, fully developed in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... the sharp crack of the rifle that had sent a bullet through his body. Our heroine did not shriek—did not even tremble; for the occurrence was too sudden, too awful, and too unexpected for that exhibition of weakness; on the contrary, she stepped hastily forward, with a natural impulse to aid her companion. There was just enough of life left in M'Nab to betray his entire consciousness of all that had passed. His countenance had the wild look of one who had been overtaken by death by surprise; and Mabel, in her cooler moments, fancied ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no agreeable diversion but what had something or other of this in it; so that my wife, who saw my mind so wholly bent upon it, told me very seriously one night, that she believed there was some secret powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again; and that she found nothing hindered my going, but my being engaged to a wife and children. She told me, that it was true she could not think of parting with me; but as she was assured, that if she was dead it would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... to relinquish all hope. When, in 1645, M. de Longueville went as minister-plenipotentiary to the Congress of Muenster, the young Duchess remained in Paris, her element being still the social sphere of the Court solely—a taste for political life not having yet been developed through the impulse of her affections. Let us here add that, notwithstanding the almost unanimous assertion of contemporaries at this period that even women could not behold Madame de Longueville without admiration, the heart of this preeminently gifted creature seems amidst the universal homage ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... of the step and stood there, peering out into the darkness as though looking for some one. Varney, from his dark retreat stared back at her. There they stood unexpectedly face to face, the kidnapper and his quarry. A sudden wild impulse seized the young man to act immediately: to make a dash from his cover, bind the girl's mouth with his handkerchief, toss her over his shoulder, and fly with her to the yacht. That was the way these things ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... to board with one whose face recalled that of my dear dead mother," thought Phil, and on the impulse of the moment, just after the woman had ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... "Hah! my lady's falcon!" cried Halbert alarmed, doubly, for the fate of his master. A sudden agitation of the branches having excited an indefinite suspicion in a body of archers who stood near, with one impulse they had discharged their arrows to the spot. Halbert's ready excuse, both for the disturbance in the tree and his lady's shriek, was prompted and warranted true by the appearance of a large bird, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is a sign ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy

... On a sudden impulse, Tom snatched up the telephone. His two companions listened as he put through a call to the FBI in Washington. Within moments, a friend at the Bureau, Wes Norris, came on ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... companion for a few seconds, and then, as if actuated by a sudden impulse, complied with his request. 'How,' said Job Trotter, as they walked away, 'how is your dear, good master? Oh, he is a worthy gentleman, Mr. Weller! I hope he didn't catch cold, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... impatience which may be reasonably supposed to take possession of a man who flies from perpetual imprisonment. Such was the tumult of his agitation, that his faculty of thinking was for the present utterly overwhelmed, and he saw no object but his conductor, whom he followed by a sort of instinctive impulse, without regarding the keepers and sentinels, who, as he passed with his clothes under one arm, and his chamber-pot brandished above his head, were confounded, and even dismayed, at the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... a purely generous impulse that I continued to look at the view. The surroundings were, in truth, in conspiracy with the sentimentalists on the front seat; the extreme beauty of the road would have made any but sentimental egotists ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... the Contessa as one of those inscrutable women of the stage, the Sirens who beguile everybody. She had some design upon Montjoie, he felt, and it was only the youth's impertinence which prevented Mr. Derwentwater from interfering. He watched with the natural instinct of his profession and a strong impulse to write to the lad's parents and have him taken away. But Montjoie had no parents. He had attained his majority, and was supposed by the law capable of taking care of himself. What did that woman mean to do with the boy? She had some ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... Buck hesitated. Then, moved by an involuntary impulse he did not even pause to analyze, he shrugged his ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... went wide of the mark. I soon forgot him on reaching Felicita, as she lay with an ugly cut on her head caused by striking the carriage step when she fell. There lay my child-friend, unconscious. She was dressed for retiring, her other clothes being in the carriage. My first impulse was to pursue the accursed scoundrel and avenge the insult to Felicita, but I could not leave her there. I took her in my arms and carried her to a near-by Indian hut where, after some parley with the poor, superstitious Indians, the door was opened, and I laid my burden on ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... In every tingling nerve of her she was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... for me to go to the boy. My unrest was further aggravated by a letter which I had just received from the boy's mother in answer to my first to her. It was not a very dreadful letter; but I only trusted that no evil impulse had caused Catherine to write in anything like the same strain to Bob; for neither was it a very charitable letter, nor one that a man could be glad to get from the woman whom he had set out on an enduring pinnacle. There was only this to be said for it, that years ago I had sought in vain ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... by the admixture of a variety of elements, already found the claims of esprit developing themselves within them. This is an explanation which explains nothing—least of all, the problem: why the lively strangers should have required the contact with insular phlegm in order to receive the creative impulse—why, in other words, Norman-French literature should have derived so enormous an advantage from the transplantation of Normans to English ground. But the evil days when the literary labours of Englishmen had been little better than bond-service to the tastes of their foreign ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... one minute his impulse was to take her in his arms and forget the ingratitude and desertion and deceit, like the father in the parable whose heart went out to the poor prodigal while he was yet a long way off; but the next moment the cold, bitter, ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... she came, with white, fearful face and trembling body, I could not withhold a shudder of apprehension. It was the young woman who had come to my office—Margot Vernee. Evidently, at last, she had yielded to the horrible impulse that had drawn her back to Michael Strange, an impulse which, I now understood, had originated from the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... 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 Baron, ...
— Candide • Voltaire

... always named me, Madam, the 'daredevil,' and will you not accept me for your cherishing?" I spoke those words to her from an impulse that I could not understand but I saw them soothe a hurt in her eyes as she laughed and kissed my cheek as I raised my head ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... until he stood over her, looking down into her raised face. He felt no end of pity for her, she looked so small and helpless and hopeless. Big gray eyes pleaded with him and he read and understood that she asked only that he go and leave her. An impulse which was utterly new to him surged over him now, the impulse to gather her up into his arms as one would a child and comfort her. Not that she was just a child. She had done her shining brown hair ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... things; and it cannot be understood by a mere inductive study of aesthetic experiences—the mind plus the object—just as they come; because, as we have just stated, they are changeful and subject to correction, therefore uncertain and often misleading. The aesthetic impulse may falter and go astray like any other impulse; a description of it in this condition would lead to a very false conception. No, we must employ a different method of investigation—the Socratic method of self-scrutiny, the conscious attempt to become clear and consistent ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... upon which his hand rested quiver, as if pressure was applied from without. His first impulse was to say, "Is that you?" but Mr. Welch had told him that he would give a low whistle as he approached the gate; he therefore stood quiet, with his whole attention absorbed in listening. Without making the least stir he peered through the bars and made ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... myself should first commit them. Then the third and last point is, That perhaps I erred in giving Too implicit a belief To the facts foreseen so dimly; For although his inclination Well might find its precipices, He might possibly escape them: For the fate the most fastidious, For the impulse the most powerful. Even the planets most malicious Only make free will incline, But can force not human wishes. And thus 'twist these different causes Vacillating and unfixed, I a remedy have thought of Which will with new wonder fill you. I to-morrow morning purpose, Without letting ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... themselves; the Greeks flocked to Italy. Out of the plundered libraries came a number of manuscripts, with which Nicholas V. and Bessarion enriched Rome and Venice. The result of the disaster was, for intellectual Europe, a new impulse given to ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... completely by surprise. But he was a vigorous, athletic man, and his first impulse was to shake himself loose, to knock down two of his assailants next to him and make a run for it. His next glance, however, showed him the nature of the group of young men. They were not professional robbers, ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... Devil's Hill from the side on which lay the new home adopted by the Padre and himself. Hitherto this point of approach had been accepted as inaccessible for a horseman, nor, until now, had Buck seen reason to dispute the verdict. But, to-day, a sudden impulse had constrained him to make the attempt, not from any vainglorious reason, or from the recklessness which was so much a part of his nature, but simply that somewhere high up on the great table-land at the summit of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... He may show Himself to you." At these words they rejoiced greatly, for through them they knew that God was now completely reconciled to them, and they hastened to bring the offerings to the sanctuary. Moses admonished them with the words: "See to it now that you drive evil impulse from your hearts, that you now have but one thought and one resolution, to serve God; and that your undivided services are devoted singly and solely to the one God, for He is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. If you will ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their conversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he borrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he had locked himself ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... to antagonize her, however, and she was almost sorry that she had said so much; but she was a creature of impulse when her will was thwarted, and did not always stop to choose ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... this way." Barry gave way to the impulse to confide in his friend, to whom all his boyish confidences had been given. "Rose is a real good sort, and wouldn't for the world let Toni suspect that he knows he's married beneath him, as the world ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... on the untoward destiny of Clithero. Part of his calamity consisted in the consciousness of having killed his patroness; but it now appeared, though by some infatuation I had not previously suspected, that the first impulse of sorrow in the lady had been weakened by reflection and by time; that the prejudice persuading her that her life and that of her brother were to endure and to terminate together was conquered by experience or by argument. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... idea occurred to me, and I acted instantly upon its impulse. There was a second entrance through the morning room; and I dashed round to the other door, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... When the volumes of Algic Researches, in 1839, were published, the book-trade had hardly awakened to that wide and diffusive impulse which it has since received. No attention had been given to topics so obscure as inquiries into the character of the Indian mind—if, indeed, it was thought the Indian had any mind at all. It was still ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... beat a heart capable of quick extempore warmth—a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success of her agent in obtaining what she ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... a sweet resignation to her own sad lot, which made her the victim of a slow and incurable disease. So long as she lived, her brother threw himself into his work with intensity and ardour; but when she died that impulse withered, as it were, at its very root. The world became empty for him, and he felt that from henceforth he would be utterly companionless. For what he had seen of modern women, modern marriage and modern ways of life, did not tempt him to rashly seek refuge for his heart's solitude in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... chair, stirred by an impulse whose unwisdom he could not doubt. Duncan had assuredly done his case no good by painting his shortcomings in colours so vivid; yet, somehow strangely, Spaulding liked him the better for his ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... the same sort of impulse that had moved her to write to Basil Ransom, in the spring, after hearing accidentally that he had come to the North and intended, in New York, to practise his profession. It was her nature to look out for duties, to appeal to her conscience for tasks. This attentive organ, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... untimely ending. All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... This much Bobby noted from the depths of a laurel bush in which he had taken refuge. He thought himself well hidden, and certainly his uncle was unaware of his close presence. Suddenly, as he was passing him, close enough to touch had he so wished, an impulse ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre

... cares whether it has any plot at all. 'Sentimental Tommy' is a study of a sensitive mobile boy, a born poseur, who passes his life in cloud-castles where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne's scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... homeliness, and as the moonlight has streamed in at the window and fell upon the handsome and placid features of my little brother slumbering at my side, Heaven forgive me for the wicked thought, but I have felt an almost unconquerable impulse to forever disfigure and mar that sweet upturned innocent face that smiled and looked so beautiful in sleep, for it was ever reminding me of the curse I was doomed to carry about me. Many and many a night have I got up in my nightdress, and lighting my little ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... stir in the world, being merely external, mean little or nothing apart from the impulse that started them, and the poet alone is powerful to stir the impulse of reform in humanity. "To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves," said Longinus, "but genius brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer." [Footnote: On the Sublime.] The ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... I could see the heaven above me. A time passed—only a few minutes, as I thought—and the child became visible to me again; walking hand-in-hand with her father. I approached them; I was close enough to see that they were looking at me with pity and surprise. My impulse was to ask if they saw anything strange in my face or my manner. Before I could speak, the horrible wonder happened again. They ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... times, the cloud unhappily clearing from his mental vision had left him for a short space fearfully cognisant of the transactions he was then doomed to witness. On that night to which our history refers a sudden providential gleam of intelligence flashed upon him, and an unknown impulse prompted his interference in behalf of the unfortunate, and, as he thought, unsuspecting victims. Ere leaving the country they saw him comfortably provided for; and, as far as the nature of his malady would permit, his mind was soothed, and his darkest moments partly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... him to close his eyes and to know that his conscience was in repose when opposite his sister? He knew all, however. The proof of it was in his shudder when Dorsenne announced to him the clandestine arrival in Rome of Madame Steno's other lover, and one proof still more certain, the impulse which had precipitated him upon Boleslas, who was parleying with the servant, and now it was he who had accepted the duel which an exasperated rival had certainly come to propose to his dear Lincoln, and he thought ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget



Words linked to "Impulse" :   driving force, pulsation, drive, impulse explosive, force, thrust, impetus, pulsing, adience, wave, whim, electronics, impulse-buy, itchy feet, forcefulness, desire, death instinct, irrational impulse, impulsion, momentum, impulse turbine, strength, motivation, motive, undulation, electrical discharge, irresistible impulse, nervous impulse, Thanatos, abience, need, urge, action potential, caprice



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