Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Impel" Quotes from Famous Books



... truly, Arthur and Ibrahim Aga likewise felt it, to go to the rescue, since terror and jealousy might, it appeared, at any time impel ces barbares feroces, as Ibrahim called them, to slaughter their prisoners. To their great joy, the Marabout proved to be of the same opinion, in spite of his sickness, which, being an intermitting ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that God would abstain from impelling the wicked is, according to Luther, tantamount to wishing that He cease to be God. Luther: "There is still this question which some one may ask, 'Why does God not cease to impel by His omnipotence, in consequence of which the will of the wicked is moved to continue being wicked and even growing worse?' The answer is: This is equivalent to desiring that God cease to be God for the sake of the wicked, since one wishes His power and ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... truth has been discovered. Conscious of this, our seers tell us there is nothing now but 'eclecticism'! Ontology is old as human nature, yet the stone of Sisyphus continues to roll back upon the laboring few who strive to impel it upward. Oh, child, do you not see how matters stand? Why, how can the finite soul cope with Infinite Being? This is one form— the other, if we can take cognizance of the Eternal and Self- existing Being, underlying all phenomena, why, then, we are part and parcel of that ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for his horse and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... than usual of him, some feeling of reaction or some faint stirring of conscience would impel her—perhaps to convince herself of the harmlessness of it all—to make an especial effort to draw her husband out of his preoccupation into more human relations. She dressed with great care, earlier than usual; she gathered flowers for the vases, she fussed about lighting ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... not marry unless some superior interest shall impel you to do so. In that event, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... might You are our providence, O make us not go hence! O with a gracious nod Grant us the nigh despaired-of boon we crave? Hear us, O hear, But all that ye hold dear, Wife, children, homestead, hearth and God! Where will you find one, search ye ne'er so well. Who 'scapes perdition if a god impel! ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... nature and significance are by no means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling, and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other concepts of the sort? All this must remain very vague to one who has not submitted his ethical concepts to reflective analysis ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... joys. The law of change remains the same. The law of death remains the same. But the motives which direct and impel the godly man are beyond the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... merits, but of their sins." The instinctive love of property and power are thus addressed to overturn the present possessors of property and power; and the vices of men are unconsciously enlisted in the service of the regeneration of man. The motives which impel whole masses of the community are commonly different from the motives of those reformers who urge the community to revolt; and their fervent denunciations of injustice bring to their side thousands of men who, perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... "Highland Sports," mentions that if a wild cat, or fox, can be killed, and the body placed in the usual haunts of its kind, well surrounded with traps, curiosity or some such feeling will impel them to visit the "dear departed," and in walking round they often succeed in springing the traps, and remaining as mourners in a ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... with thee here, and censure thy language. Is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in evil, Takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow with others Knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel him? Rather than ever to-day would I make up my mind to be married: Many a worthy maiden is needing a husband's protection, And the man needs an inspiriting ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Representative. Nor will I undertake to scan over-captiously, either the object of his petition, or the language in which it is couched; nor will I stop to inquire how far the petitioners and I myself entertain the same opinions of the general subject-matter. And there are particular inducements, which impel me to make a stand at the present ...
— Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition, • Caleb Cushing

... nature gives her a presentiment of what the cost will be if she allows you the least opportunity to instruct her in a passion which she doubtless already shares. Women rarely inquire into the reasons which impel them to give themselves up or to resist; they do not even amuse themselves by trying to understand or explain them, but they have feelings, and sentiment with them is correct, it takes the place of intelligence and reflection. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... changed once more. We were again on board the ship, and in the power of the enraged mutineers, about to suffer whatever their vengeance might impel them to inflict. Poor Spot was swinging, a livid corpse, at one of the yard-arms. Browne was bound to the main-mast, while Luerson and his fiendish crew were exhausting their ingenuity in torturing him. The peculiar expression of his mild, open countenance, distorted ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a Bipinnaria, a Brachiolaria, a Pluteus, is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... trepidation that I present a paper on nut growing before a group so much more learned in the subject than I. But two things impel me to do so. First, the firm conviction that nut trees, carefully chosen, properly planted and intelligently cared for, have a place on many farms as a cash crop for the market and a food crop for the farm family and, second, the poor results from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... have done him none if she had been able. But it annoyed her that she could not do it. It is to fail in love for a woman not to leave her the illusion of her power for good or evil over her lover: to do that must inevitably be to impel her irresistibly to the test of it. Christophe paid no attention to it. When Ada asked ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... superiors, he sees his pretended rank fail; hence he strives to rival them, devoting all his energies to attain the enviable position. Clinging to external distinctions, his changing notions and unstable heart impel him to such ambition and render him dissatisfied with the Christ whom all men ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... the request, and of the merit and character of the applicant, before she would attend to either. Owing to this caution Her Highness scarcely ever after met with a negative. In cases of great importance, though the Queen's compassionate and good heart needed no stimulus to impel her to forward the means of justice, the Princess would call the influence of the Princesse Elizabeth to her aid; and Elizabeth never sued ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... dependent upon the wind, is absolutely at its mercy in a storm. When the gale increases beyond a certain limit, she can no longer make head at all against its fury, but must turn and fly—or be driven—wherever the fury of the tempest may impel her. In such cases, she goes bounding over the seas, away from her course, toward rocks, shoals, breakers, or any other dangers whatever which may lie in the way, without the least power or possibility of resistance. She goes howling on, in such a case, over the wide waste ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... hither and thither, vainly striving to restore equilibrium to the atmosphere, burden themselves with the moisture they absorb from the seas; and this moisture absorbs their heat, retards their motion, and slowly modifies the forces which impel them. Now when the saturated air, extending far above the surface of the earth, and carried in its movements still higher, is relieved of an incumbent weight of air, it becomes rarefied, and its temperature and capacity for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... salvation, but to adventure their lives and persons to lay the foundations of a better, of a more equitable and beneficial, social state than ever they knew. Certain it is that they were inspired by the highest motives that impel men to action; hence even those who may deem their views erroneous should not withhold from the men themselves their meed of respect, admiration, and sympathy. To those who deem their views true, ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... permanent danger from such shallow theories. The peril from confusion is greater than from denial. But even confusion at this point is not long necessary because in every soul there is a voice which men call conscience, which never fails to impel toward the true and the good. Conscience may be likened to a compass whose needle always points toward the north. When it is uninfluenced by distracting causes conscience always shows the way toward truth and right. The Spartans believed that lying was a virtue if it was sufficiently ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... you want to be a painter you must go to France—France is the only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live there, that I would become as ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... personal charms is finished, there remains no rational relaxation to fill the void of their days, and who seek by slander and treachery to console themselves for the loss of pleasures which they can no longer enjoy. Resist that inclination which seems to impel you to gloomy meditation, solitude, and melancholy. Devotion is only suited to inert and listless souls, while yours is formed for action. You should pursue the course I recommend for the sake of your husband, whose happiness depends upon you; you owe it to the children, who will ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... base of the column; let him ascend to the summit; thence let him leap with all his energy, in a direction at right angles with the shaft of the column, into the open air; and it will be found that, though the original impulsion would not probably impel the body more than ten or twelve feet, motion would continue until it had reached the earth. Corollary: hence it is proved that all bodies in which the vis inertia has been overcome will continue in motion, until they come in contact with some power ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... realised the enormity of his offence, something within her seemed to impel her to wind her arm about his neck and draw his lips to hers. Instead, she summoned all her resolution; striking him full in the face, she freed herself to run quickly from him. As she ran, she strove to hide from herself ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... to that amount, a house was chosen, and finally, application was made to the government, and the charter obtained, rehearsing formally the names of the subscribing members, the professors, and the officers. So far did the steam of their zeal impel them, but at this point it was let off; the affair stood still, and I never heard the academy of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, encompass. Increase, grow, enlarge, magnify, amplify, swell, augment. Indecent, indelicate, immodest, shameless, ribald, lewd, lustful, lascivious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... good purpose, not that we might shape our lives so as to get others to pat us on the back, and say, 'Well done!' but that, in addition to the other solemn and sovereign motives for following the paths of righteousness, we might have this highest ambition to impel us on the road. And it is the duty of all Christians to see to it that they discipline themselves so as, in their own feelings, to put high above all the approbation or censure of their fellows the approbation or censure of Jesus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... sounds of sadness came with sounds of joy. At first the music was but nature's own; Yet who will not in ready justice own That nature's notes in beauty far excel All sounds that art's production can impel? Who this can question, if they lend an ear Unto the lark that, pouring music clear, Makes all the sphere for many miles around With his gay song re-echo and resound; Or, pausing, marks the sweet, melodious lay The nightingale ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... fallen, and I could not but realize that the Government was stronger then than it had been in February of the same year, when it had a series of victories and peace with the Allies seemed for a moment to be in sight. A sort of fate seems to impel the Whites to neutralize with extraordinary rapidity any good will for themelves which they may find among the population. This is true of both sides, but seems to affect the Whites especially. Although General Baron Wrangel does indeed seem to have striven more successfully ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... eminence. With regard to what Pierantonio spoke to you in my praise, and those things of mine which you have seen, and which you say have aroused in you no small affection for me, I answer that they were insufficient to impel a man of such transcendent genius, without a second, not to speak of a peer, upon this earth, to address a youth who was born but yesterday, and therefore is as ignorant as it is possible to be. At the same time I cannot call you a liar. I rather think then, nay, am certain, that the love you ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... Murat, on seeing this, darted forward in front of a regiment of Polish lancers; and that the latter, excited by the presence of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish lances were ready couched and condensed ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... become the habit of confusing the use of manifold gifts with mere dexterity that men of quality and power often question the promptings which impel them to use different or diverse forms of expression; as if a man were born to use only one limb and enjoy only one resource ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... employed in these complicated apparatus are applied therefore for no other purpose than to effect a mutual communication between all the metallic pairs, each to each, ranged in such a manner as to impel the electric fluid in one direction, or in order to make them communicate, so that there may be no action in a direction contrary ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... afford a strong proof of the immortality of the soul and of a life to come, in which this difficulty will be reserved hereafter, it is certain that without this difficulty the human understanding would not for a long time, perhaps never, have arrived at better or firmer proofs. For what was to impel it to seek for ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... Australians that this was intended to be a German naval station and military post of great importance. Enough munition, and accommodation for troops were there to show that it was to be the jumping-off place for an attack on Australia. Such armament could never have been meant merely to impel Kultur on the poor, harmless blacks with their ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... none except in certain instances where it is obvious that honesty is the best policy. I think I am justified, however, in stating that, upon the whole, Japan has no national conscience in international affairs. Her brutal exploitation of China and her merciless and bloody conquest of Korea impel that point of view from an Anglo-Saxon. When, therefore, the Tokyo government says, in effect, to us: 'For one hundred and forty-four years you have proclaimed to the world that all men are equal. Very well. Accept us. We are a world-power. We are on a basis of equality with you,' and we lack ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... up into my blanket, filled with strange presentiments. Again the question came up: What is the source of the influence that this madman of the mountains, this wild hunter, this leader of the black wolf pack, had on me to impel me to trail him over the mountains? Was it mental telepathy? Could he really be my father? Somehow I felt convinced that soon I would be face to face with the riddle, soon I would know the facts and the truth about my parents. It seemed unthinkable that all these weeks of wilderness travel had ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... German influence a double power is more or less strongly at work: the creative power of the spirit ... and the creative power of the body, that is to say, fecundity.... Whither our spiritual and our bodily fecundity impel us, thither we must go—out over the world! (hin ueber die Welt!).—J.L. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... country, not because they are rendered helpless by the force of their location, nor because they have any traditional friendship for the whites, nor because they do not experience suffering enough to impel a warlike people to a struggle for life, but because they are not fighting Indians. Actual outrage might drive some of these tribes to resistance; but, under the slow wasting-away of their means of subsistence, and ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... not recognise your love, or that your love is but a trifling consideration with me, you will not believe. What else should impel me to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and the need of proving this devotion to my family ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... boat, long since out of range of the battery, and scudding with a speed that mocked the useless exertion of those on board of the second gun boat, who could with difficulty impel her through the powerful eddy, formed by the Island, had been gradually edging from her own shore into the centre of the stream. This movement, however, had the effect of rendering her more distinguishable to the eye, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... invested capital, and will thus prevent the accumulation of some capital which would have helped to find employment for some more working men. The immediate direct interests of a particular body of workmen and a particular company of employers may, and frequently will, impel them to a course directly opposed to the wider interests of their fellow- capitalists or fellow-workers. But it is evident that the smaller the industrial unit, the more frequent will these conflicts between the immediate special interest and the wider class ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... places. The gondolas were much larger than those commonly used, and each was manned by three watermen in the centre, directed by a fourth, who, standing on the little deck in the stern, steered, while he aided to impel the boat. There were light, low staffs in the bows, with flags, that bore the distinguishing colors of several noble families of the Republic, or which had such other simple devices as had been suggested ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... verdant shores; Though hunger press, yet fly the dangerous prey, The herds are sacred to the god of day, Who all surveys with his extensive eye, Above, below, on earth, and in the sky! Rob not the god; and so propitious gales Attend thy voyage, and impel thy sails: But, if his herds ye seize, beneath the waves I see thy friends o'erwhelm'd in liquid graves! The direful wreck Ulysses scarce survives! Ulysses at his country scarce arrives! Strangers thy guides! nor there thy labours end; New ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... wrath righteous and essential to the perfection of a man, is that there shall be in it no taint of malice. Anger may impel to punish and not be malicious, if its reason for punishment is the passionless impulse of justice or the reformation of the wrong-doer. Then it is pure and true and good. Such wrath is a part of the perfection of humanity, and such wrath was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... several ways Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit, Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root We set long since beneath the sundawn's rays, The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree, Friendship—this only and duly might impel My song to salutation of your own; More even than praise of one unseen of me And loved—the starry spirit of Dobell, To mine by light and music ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... prevent, hinder. imperar to rule. imperio empire, authority. imperioso imperious. imperterrito intrepid. impio impious. imponente imposing. imponer to impose. importancia importance. importar to import, matter. impropio improper, unfit. improvisar to extemporize. impulsar to impel, push. impunidad f. impunity. inaccion f. inaction. incendiar to kindle, set on fire. incentivo incentive, incitement. incesantemente continually. inclinar to incline, lean. incluso inclosed, included. incoar to begin. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... known by the name of Ferret, an old, rancorous, incorrigible instrument of sedition. Happy it is for him that he has never fallen in my way; for, notwithstanding the maxims of forbearance which I have adopted, the indignation which the character of that caitiff inspires, would probably impel me to some act of violence, and I should crush him like an ungrateful viper, that gnawed the bosom which ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... that word but ill describes what my heart ever was, what it now is, to you. Venetia! dearest, sweetest Venetia! can you doubt for a moment my feelings towards your home, and what influence must principally impel them? Am I so dull, or you so blind, Venetia? Can I not express, can you not discover how much, how ardently, how fondly, how devotedly, I, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... that He will show them mercy that is, show them pure goodness and blessing not only for themselves, but also to their children and children's children, even to the thousandth generation and beyond that. This ought certainly to move and impel us to risk our hearts in all confidence with God, if we wish all temporal and eternal good, since the Supreme Majesty makes such sublime offers and presents such cordial inducements ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... fling, hurl, throw, impel, pitch, sling; direct, turn, drop, deposit, place; exuviate, shed, molt, discard, shed, reflect, throw; compute, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... was not considerable, but they told him that to double his expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company. His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel the man to know more of woman—the processes of her mind, her capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... in making a sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we should never lose sight of the fact that all racial and national characteristics which operate towards the absorption of more land and impel to political expansion are of fundamental value. A ship of state manned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... motion of the animal spirits: further, that this gland is suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different manners, as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and, again, that as many different marks are impressed on the said gland, as there are different external objects which impel the animal spirits towards it; whence it follows, that if the will of the soul suspends the gland in a position, wherein it has already been suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way or another, the gland ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... had presented to them in this text the same divine and glorious Saviour, the same way of salvation, the same holy system of doctrines and duties, as we now find in the most carefully revised modern text. Nevertheless, a true reverence for the inspired word must impel us to the diligent use of all the means at our command for setting forth a pure text, that is, a text conformed as nearly as possible to that of the original autographs. Viewed in this light the modern critical editions of the New Testament must possess a deep interest for all who are able to ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... could not have told why; something seemed to impel her, some will outside her own. She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... these objectors that economic equality would cut the nerve of zeal by denying the individual the reward of his personal achievements, it was a complete misconception of the effects of the system. The assumption that there would be no incentives to impel individuals to excel one another in industry merely because these incentives would not take a money form was absurd. Every one is as directly and far more certainly the beneficiary of his own merits as in your day, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... his army. In fact, a young man who could leave his home and his father, and abandon the cause of his countrymen forever under such circumstances, must have had something besides generosity toward a fugitive enemy to impel him. Godwin was soon found to possess a large portion of that peculiar spirit which constitutes a soldier. He was ambitious, stern, energetic, and always successful. He rose rapidly in influence and ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... not for the rather unfortunate place which a "Y" man occupies back here, none of us would seek even an iota of praise, for in comparison with the rest of you, we deserve none; but I'm sure you understand the circumstances which impel me to insert the foregoing plea, 'Justice where justice ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... system of primary education fails on its moral side, and this in two ways. It seems unaware of the fact that all moral education is an endeavour to implant in the minds of the young desires that shall impel them hereafter to good rather than to evil, and that this end can only be attained in so far as the natural instinctive tendencies of the child's nature which make for good are cultivated and trained, and in so far as those other instinctive tendencies which make for social destruction ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... Scott looked up from his breakfast into the mirror the man redoubled his efforts to do a good job with the towel, hiding his face meantime well within its folds. The scout's curiosity was mildly enough aroused to impel him to watch the diligent rubbing with some interest. He saw, too, presently that the man was stealing glances out of his towel at him and yet between times intently ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow creatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers. But, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... rang loudly, defiantly. It was the kind of a ring which might impel the dead to answer it. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... Harvard College he wrote to his father, "I know that my peculiar habits of mind, imperfect as they are, strongly impel me to the path of intellectual effort; and if I am to be at any time of use to society or a satisfaction to myself or my friends, it will be in the way of some retired literary situation where a fondness for books will be more requisite than the busy, calculating ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... battle been ringing in his ears, his martial ardor might have endured to the end; but there, in the silence of that nearly untenanted blockhouse, with no sound to enliven him, no appeal to keep alive factitious sentiment, no hope of victory to impel, things began to appear in their true colors, and this state of being to be estimated at its just value. He would have given treasures for religious consolation, and yet he knew not where to turn to seek it. He thought of Pathfinder, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... led to become a Tory by the "graciousness" of any "marquises" or great folks of any kind. I am inclined to think that there was one great personage, whose (not graciousness, but) intellectual influence did impel her mind in a Conservative direction. And this was Metternich. She had more talk with him than her book on Vienna would lead a reader to suppose; and very far more of his mind and influence reached her through the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... disgusting affectation, of pretending to youth, to censorial importance, and to an exquisite sensibility. Finally, it is said, that they are notorious for envy, and ill-nature, being match-breakers, because themselves unmarried. Let these charges be destitute as they may of foundation, they doubtless impel many females to the determination that they must and will escape ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... reference to the objects within the field of our vision, to govern our conduct by what we hear, to take into our mouths only substances that are pleasing to the taste. Yet fright, temerity, or courage may impel us to incur dangers which we clearly see; opiniativeness or obstinacy may make us inwardly deaf to counsels or warnings which we hear; and motives of health may induce us to swallow the most nauseous drugs. In ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... was of a languorous, sumptuous type, built on generous proportions, with a mass of dark hair waving low on her forehead, with dark, straight-gazing, deep-searching eyes, the kind that impel and hold all truanting glances. She was slow in movement, suggesting a beautiful and commendable laziness. In public she talked very little, laughing never, but often smiling,—a curious smile that curved ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... simple materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them in action are so poor, so degrading ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... the naturalist as such, and quite exempt from the control of laws which determine the nature and history of the human individual in physical, mental, and social respects. Yet one reason alone would impel us onward: we cannot close the present examination into the basic facts of evolution and into the scope of the doctrine without asking to what extent a belief in its truth may affect our earlier formed conceptions of nature and supernature. Heretofore these possible effects upon ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... not quite so chary of his life as the latter, who never risks it except on the most imminent necessity. We take such matters easy. In regard to this invitation, I feel that I can honorably accept it, and there are many idle and curious motives that impel me to it. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mysterious '14' impose that will impel five such men out of twenty-one to commit suicide? The alternative is still more dreadful, Hale. In our criminal investigations, we have come across many instances of careless autopsies. We have come across many instances of loosely written reports ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... more my own fond wishes would impel My steps to you, sweet company of friends! Fortune with their free course the more contends, And elsewhere bids me roam, by snare and spell The heart, sent forth by me though it rebel, Is still with you where that ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... this place, which may well be called a gulf, since nothing ever returns from it, it is not possible for ships to get off when once they approach within a certain distance. If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current impel them; and if they come into it when a land-wind blows, which might seem to favour their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current carries them ashore: and what completes the misfortune is, that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... yearnings burn the human breast; What wild desires like prisoned birds Impel the heart from east to west; What urgings baffling words Beat up from nature unexpressed Till soul distinct stands manifest, On guard for heaven, or, wanton, hurled Toward ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... From the language sometimes used in speaking of sacrifices for the public good, it might almost be supposed that the making of them is simply painful, simply distressing. But is it so? Of course both instinct and duty impel us to look out for ourselves; but is it not equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help one another, and provide for the common weal? A generous and noble deed,—simply painful, simply distressing! I will not deny that a long ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker

... land, and bid the strangers eat; Their anger thus we haply may disarm." "O Dalica," the grateful queen replied, "Nurse of my childhood, soother of my cares, Preventer of my wishes, of my thoughts, Oh, pardon youth, oh, pardon royalty! If hastily to Dalica I sued, Fear might impel me, never could distrust. Go then, for wisdom guides thee, take my name, Issue what most imports and best beseems, And sovereignty shall sanction the decree." And now Charoba was alone, her heart Grew lighter; she sat down, and she arose, She felt voluptuous tenderness, but felt ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... well as their physical beings, which impressions, like an iron mould, fix and shape their subsequent destinies. Hysteria in the mother may develop insanity in the child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... afraid to tell the truth, for fear the improbability of it would infuriate Maternus and convince him of my treachery; or to take the obvious course, for fear some subtle shade of my tone or look might similarly impel him to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... back to what makes an orator. As I have said, his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic. He ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... inhuman cruelty. Slaves, who have regarded labour as an irksome task, can have little idea of liberty, except as an exemption from toil. To liberate them, without some arrangement for their subsistence, would produce starvation, or impel them to acts of lawless violence. Emancipation must, therefore, as those friends of the slaves contend, be gradual and prospective. The British Parliament have not decreed an immediate emancipation, in the West Indies; thus ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... one thing on earth of such interest as the study of the laws of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly and danger the being they rule. As a child, not old enough to give a definite name to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject. As she had grown older, she had ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... round, hover about; shift, slide, glide; roll, roll on; flow, stream, run, drift, sweep along; wander &c. (deviate) 279; walk &c. 266; change one's place, shift one's place, change one's quarters, shift one's quarters; dodge; keep going, keep moving;. put in motion, set in motion; move; impel &c. 276; propel &c. 284; render movable, mobilize. Adj. moving &c. v.; in motion; transitional; motory[obs3], motive; shifting, movable, mobile, mercurial, unquiet; restless &c. (changeable) 149; nomadic &c. 266; erratic &c. 279. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... lads, till we are close to them," cried the captain. "Now give it them." The broadsides of the brig were poured into the junks, which had ranged up on either beam, with terrible effect. One junk went down, and another was left without a scull to impel her, and with a third of her crew killed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into the motives which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the force, truth, and universality of the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... but sentimentalism at the earlier period naturally took the form of religious meditation upon death and judgment. Young and Hervey are religious sentimentalists, who have also an eye to literary elegance. Wesley was far too masculine and sensible to be a sentimentalist; his emotions impel him to vigorous action; and are much too serious to be cultivated for their own sakes or to be treated aesthetically. But the general sense that something is not in order in the general state of things, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... symptoms fell Which brawls impel, Historic data give us warning; The wretch who fights When full, of nights, Is bound to have a head next morning. I do not scorn A friendly horn, But noisy toots, I can't abide 'em! Your howling bat Is stale and flat To one who ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... incident to make them apprehensive. The maherry would not have gone off at such a gait, without some powerful motive to impel it. Up to that moment it had shown no particular penchant for rapid travelling, but had been going, under their guidance, with a steady, sober docility. Something must have attracted it towards the interior. What could that something be, if not the knowledge that its home, or its ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... courage still; keep my fatal secret a few days longer, till the end is reached. Jules is not an ordinary man, I know; but are we sure that his lofty character and his noble love may not impel him to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... my gracious queen, it cannot be! His heat and passion never could impel him To take so bold a step, to such rash guilt: Methinks his ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... weary way to another, only to be met with a similar refusal. Finally she thought of an acquaintance who had had a wretched experience with a bad husband and was now divorced, and she felt that sympathy would certainly impel this woman to give them shelter. When they reached the house they found her keeping boarders and she said all would leave if they learned she was "harboring a runaway wife." It was then midnight. They went in the cold arid darkness to a hotel on Broadway, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... originality!), were really his most inspired efforts. Though he never allowed the desire for popularity to influence his work, yet he occasionally craves appreciation. "I am willing to confess that I should be greatly pleased if I could succeed in composing something which would impel the public, after hearing you play it, to run against the walls in their delight; for vain we composers are, even though we have no reason to be so." It must have given him a strange shock when an amateur asked him, at one of his wife's concerts in Vienna, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... as must ever impel a knight to serve a lady in distress," said he, "and perhaps, too, the memory of the charity with which you tended my wounds ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... enters and explores this wonderful realm of personality he will find some persons more wonderful than others. Those instincts of which he is largely unconscious will impel him to make a selection. The same law is operative with the young woman. Mating is normally always first on the higher levels of personalities; it first calls itself friendship, nor does it think farther. But father and mother, if they have the least spiritual vision, stand in awe as they see their ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... likeness I have now tried to sketch. His was the most precious of combinations—a genius and a heart. An estimate of his literary gifts and performances lies altogether outside my scope, but the political circumstances of the present hour[4] impel me to conclude this paper with a quotation which, even if it stood alone, would, I think, justify Lord Beaconsfield's judgment quoted above—that "he was a poet, and a true poet." Here is the lyrical cry which, writing in 1843, he puts ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... the aid of instinct our social wisdom? I grant and avow it. But our social wisdom insists that we obey the choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinement, which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel us to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste for the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her," says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a heretic to your own breed, Herbert. It is you who would ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... Imperial fleet was transported five miles over land across the Isthmus of Corinth. [74] The principles of maritime tactics had not undergone any change since the time of Thucydides: a squadron of galleys still advanced in a crescent, charged to the front, and strove to impel their sharp beaks against the feeble sides of their antagonists. A machine for casting stones and darts was built of strong timbers, in the midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by a crane ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... but they were revolved in silence. To state them verbally was useless. They would not justify my conduct in his eyes. They would only exasperate dispute, and impel him to those acts of violence which I was desirous of preventing. The sooner this controversy should end, and I in any measure be freed from the obstruction of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... effort. The coarser motives, which no longer move us, have been replaced by higher motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of your age. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the worker as in your day they did the soldier. The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which animates ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... right, Swinton; nothing but what you have described could impel a man to pass a life of privation and danger among a savage race— leaving all, and following his Master in the true apostolic sense. Well, they ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... strife and bloodshed, to find himself in, and for the life of me I could see no way out of it. The king was clearly in no mood to listen to argument; indeed, he was evidently very much ruffled in temper, and in just that frame of mind which would impel him to insist the more strongly on having his own way should I attempt anything in the nature of dissuasion: therefore all I could see for it was to submit to his whim, and do my best to disarm my antagonist without ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... between himself and his base, nor halt with the great forest of Spotsylvania on his flank. In the second place, there could be no question but that the Northern Government and the Northern people would impel him forward. The tone of the press was unmistakable; and the very reason that Burnside had been appointed to command was because McClellan was so slow to move. In the third place, both Lee and Jackson saw the need of decisive victory. With them questions of strategic dispositions, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... foul conspiracy against the Negro, it is of great importance that we have among us persons whose knowledge of the facts, and whose intellectual and social standing with those whose good opinion we value enable and impel them to speak out in our behalf. I recall with much gratification several instances where white persons connected with Negro schools have used the superior opportunities afforded them by the accident of race to say good things ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... view is lacking, where the future is unforeseen or ignored and the past is forgotten, where desires arise and impel to action in relative independence of one another, the man seeks today what tomorrow he rejects. We can scarcely say that the man chooses. He is the scene of independent choices, varied and inconsistent. He is the victim of caprice, and appears to us largely ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... stream of hope and fear rushed in on me, as I read the sentence, as you would not permit yourself to feel! If there be anything yet undreamt of in our philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel thought out of the usual limit of a man's own skull and heart; if the cluster of ideas which constitute an identity, do ever connect and unite into a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... And quick should speed them to their native land;" But mem'ry doth recall the "pine-tree" wilds Where fate decreed that I should have my birth, Only to later bid me wander forth And seek asylum in the "Empire State." Indeed, it seems that in man dwells a force That doth impel adventure from the spot Where nature willed that he should ope an eye In childish wonder at God's handiwork: So here again I, like to hair spring gun In careless hand, went off, alas, "half cocked," And now ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... apart from the State carefully preserving the gothic pictures of their ancestors they were united only amongst themselves. They are excluded from all public functions. Honest artisans, now taken from all pursuits, impel the revolutionary cart with a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... allow that the professors of that art must be persons of intellectual capacity and personal endowments much superior to the common herd of mankind. The vivid intelligence, the high animal spirits, the aspiring temper, and the resolute intrepidity, which impel them to the stage and support them under its difficulties, are generally associated with an eccentricity of character and a giddy disregard of prudential considerations, which generate adventure and chequer ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... impel even a weak woman to face the worst peril, to look out, lean out, even try the terrible but impossible feat of climbing ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... of obdurate metal before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as a gossamer; and lift up a ship of war like a bauble in the air; it can embroider muslin and forge anchors; cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... are the forceful energies of Song, For they do swell the spring-tide of the heart With rosier currents, and impel along The life-blood freely:—O! they can impart Raptures ne'er dreamt of by the sordid throng Who barter human feeling at the mart Of pamper'd selfishness, and thus do wrong Imperial Nature of her prime desert.— SEWARD! thy strains, beyond the critic-praise ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated, it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few or negligent; for to say the truth, there are not the same interesting motives to impel us to fix the one which urge us to ascertain ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... afraid I am not half good enough. I have a hasty temper; you have frequently said so, mother. I often speak sharply, and am not always aware when I am doing it. I hurt people, as I hurt myself, without being able to help it—something seems to come over me and impel me to do it. Often I cannot resist making game of people. I am so silly and fond of fun, like a child, a great deal worse than 'little May' ever is, when the fit is upon me. Now, if I could think that I should ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... English, by rejecting the authority and sanction of custom, and by conducting the learner back to the original combinations, and the detached, disjointed, and barbarous constructions of our progenitors, both prudence and reason, as well as a due regard for correct philology, impel me to shun. Those modest writers who, by bringing to their aid a little sophistry, much duplicity, and a wholesale traffic in the swelling phrases, "philosophy, reason, and common sense," attempt to overthrow the wisdom ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... lay in his face an almost celestial clearness and joyfulness, which would impel one involuntarily to bow down before him, had he not been, as he was, the vicegerent of God upon earth, the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine to be his style, there is the home belief in fairies, ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a paltry riband ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... decline to suckle the infant recover from childbirth somewhat less rapidly than those who follow nature's plan. In this fact, therefore, is found a selfish motive, yet a very good one, which should impel mothers to perform ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new industries! But we shall never debase ourselves ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... to arouse her, the indignation caused by her calm relegation to the position of an inferior to inspire her with courage to fight for freedom, but a man, a man like Mr. Blackwell, had no such bitter sense of personal wrong to impel him. He entered the contest not for himself, for he had no wrongs to redress, but his great soul saw that woman had and he devoted life, means, energy, talents to redress them. It is a rarely high, unselfish record of a noble life that he has left ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... ferry-boats, and very frail they are, and require great nicety in their management; they are worked in the water with paddles, either kneeling or standing. The squaws are very expert in the management of the canoes, and preserve their balance with admirable skill, standing up while they impel the little bark with great ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... the object is not to make up one's mind respecting the principles and limits of beauty in painting and sculpture, to form a code of aesthetics while the great pictures and statues of the world are still unknown; yet if a natural curiosity impel us to the inquiry, there are Lessing and Winckelmann, still the first authorities, despite some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... reached a settlement. Manila court has found that the proceedings of which this Government has complained were unauthorized, and it is hoped that the Government of Spain will not withhold the speedy reparation which its sense of justice should impel it to offer for the unusual severity and unjust action of its subordinate colonial officers in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... my duty to my country. If sustained by my fellow-citizens, I shall be grateful and happy; if not, I shall find in the motives which impel me ample grounds for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... protected, every consideration of interest and safety impels them to consent to live under a Government which secures the blessings they desire. If, on the other hand, in their judgment, their most sacred rights are violated, interest and honor, and the instinct of self-preservation, all conspire to impel them to withhold their consent; which being withheld, the Government, as far as they are ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... fall is similar to the vibrations of a pendulum and subject to like laws. When a wave is at its height it descends by the force of gravity, and the momentum acquired in descending impels the neighbouring particles, which in their turn rise and impel others, and thus form a succession of waves. This is the case in the open sea; but when the swell approaches the shore and the depth of water is not in proportion to the size of the swell the subsiding wave, instead of pressing on a body of water, which might rise in equal ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting faithfully,—ay, and contentedly,—with book in hand, sturdily refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of dollars,—and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on God's command. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... coarseness, awkwardness, or violent and elaborate extravagance. No sooner has he said anything especially beautiful, pathetic, or sublime, than the evil genius must needs take his turn, exact as it were the forfeit of his bond, impel the poet into some sheer perversity, deface the flow and form of the verse with some preposterous crudity or flatulence of phrase which would discredit the most incapable or the most fantastic novice. And the worst of it all is that he limps ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... behind phenomena, the workings of which could be seen in the forms of animal life. And whether we find that proof in the growth of a flower, or in the moral sense of man, or in the creation of natural conditions that impel the development of life along a certain road, the distinction is not vital. We are still finding proofs of God in the structure of the world (where otherwise, indeed, are we to find it?) and we are still depending on the supposed likeness ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... motives which impel persons to buy and use patent medicines? The history of medicine offers a partial explanation. In somewhat remote times we find that the medicines in use by regular physicians were of the most vile, nauseating, and powerful nature. We read of "purging gently" with a teaspoonful of calomel. Then ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... allowed the desire for popularity to influence his work, yet he occasionally craves appreciation. "I am willing to confess that I should be greatly pleased if I could succeed in composing something which would impel the public, after hearing you play it, to run against the walls in their delight; for vain we composers are, even though we have no reason to be so." It must have given him a strange shock when an amateur ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... the cause, Hamersley is all the more eager to learn it. Still, his curiosity does not impel him to importunate inquiry. In the companionship of such kind friends he ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... of your mind impel you to its improvement; you are too strong to be defeated, save by yourselves. Refuse to live merely to sleep and eat. Brutes can do this; but you are men. Act the part of men. Prepare yourselves to endure toil. Resolve ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity in the maiden's manner to impel him to any risk. His only answer was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument. Holding the neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the steel twice or thrice around it. A faint rasping, scratching sound was all the wondering girl heard. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... that crushed the Roman Empire, without doubt the love of solitude, which is now held in check by the satisfactions of a comparatively pure and peaceful social life, will again arise in its old-time strength and impel men to seek in waste and lonely places the virtues they cannot ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that the natural bias of mankind is towards kindness to his neighbour, however much the brute in him may sometimes impel him to uncharitable words or actions. And certainly this natural bias is intensified and made into a binding law by the teachings of Christ. But there is the other point of view set forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche—if indeed such writings are worthy ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... want to be a painter you must go to France—France is the only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that, without an appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs. Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... earth at first With feeble force and lonely murmurs burst, From myriad unseen fountains draw the rills And curl contentious round their hundred hills, Meet, froth and foam, their dashing currents swell, O'er crags and rocks their furious course impel, Impetuous plunging plough the mounds of earth, And tear the fostering flanks that gave them birth; Mad with the strength they gain, they thicken deep Their muddy waves and slow and sullen creep, O'erspread whole regions in their lawless ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... and that the obedience of Eve and Adam to God's commands was impossible.' Still the same error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to him, but the love for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not so by any means: the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary. Finally, I say in effect what M. Bayle acknowledges here, 'that God resolved to create the world by a free motion of his goodness'; ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... his martial ardor might have endured to the end; but there, in the silence of that nearly untenanted blockhouse, with no sound to enliven him, no appeal to keep alive factitious sentiment, no hope of victory to impel, things began to appear in their true colors, and this state of being to be estimated at its just value. He would have given treasures for religious consolation, and yet he knew not where to turn to seek it. He thought of Pathfinder, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... confidence. He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger. He was a plain German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God; alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him, and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs. Yet his errand was no whit less perilous. And here we may notice the contrast between the mission settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... till we are close to them," cried the captain. "Now give it them." The broadsides of the brig were poured into the junks, which had ranged up on either beam, with terrible effect. One junk went down, and another was left without a scull to impel her, and with a third of her crew killed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... something shocking in the sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the marvellously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... that the latter, excited by the presence of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish lances were ready couched and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... necessarily very sympathetic. Whoever has watched the flight of wild geese must have remarked the beautiful way in which they arrange at once for close companionship and for safety in the violent movements which impel their heavy bodies at high speed through the air. In the order of their flight the alignment is more perfect than in the march of trained soldiers. Each bird keeps as near to his neighbor as possible; but manages always to preserve the interval which will insure against a collision ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... what makes an orator. As I have said, his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic. He must master the subject with which he has to deal, and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... fundamental conception is this, that a great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a 'Bipinnaria', a 'Brachialaria', a 'Pluteus', is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... intelligent men and women to call to the aid of instinct our social wisdom? I grant and avow it. But our social wisdom insists that we obey the choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinement, which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel us to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste for the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her," says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... would endure it within doors, because he has noticed that his tormentor gives place to another every hour, and pain may be borne when it is not monotonous; but he remembers that there is no limit to the time during which one human being may impel him along an open road, and he also remembers some very pretty friskings, delightful to himself, but disconcerting to his rider, and he may ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... impossible to conceive people worse off; it would be impossible to conceive these people better off. They were such a multitude that only they could save themselves—and they had no intelligence to appreciate, no desire to impel. If their miseries—miseries to which they had fallen heir at birth—had made them what they were, it was also true that they were what they were—hopeless, down to the babies playing in the filth. An unscalable cliff; at the top, in pleasant lands, lived the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... hidden whereabout. Insects are fluttering around. The cheerful, sunny hum of the flies is altogether summer-like, and so gladsome that you pardon them their intrusiveness and impertinence, which continually impel them to fly against your face, to alight upon your hands, and to buzz in your very ear, as if they wished to get into your head, among your most secret thoughts. In truth, a fly is the most impertinent and indelicate thing in creation,—the very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... whilst Rustem's made no impression, those of Isfendiyar's produced great effect on the champion and his horse. So severely was Rakush wounded, that Rustem, when he perceived how much his favorite horse was exhausted, dismounted, and continued to impel his arrows against the enemy from behind his shield. But Rakush brooked not the dreadful storm, and galloped off unconscious that his master himself was in as bad a plight. When Zuara saw the noble animal, riderless, crossing the plain, he gasped for breath, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... the vast city, fall again upon the hard pavement of life after the prodigious dream in which they had just indulged, until the day should come when their need of the consolation of a fresh dream would irresistibly impel them to start once more on the everlasting ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... drives the animal into the activities that evolve its physical body and sharpen its intelligence. If it had no desire it would lie inert and perish. But the desire for food, for drink, for association with its kind, impel it to action, and the result is the evolution of strength, skill and intelligence in proportion to the intensity of its desires. To gratify these desires it will accept battle no matter how great may be the odds against it and will unhesitatingly ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers

... of Historical Romance is, to group historical characters according to their internal natures, and thus to elucidate and illustrate history. This illustration then leads to the third task, which is the discovery and exposition of the motives which impel individual historical personages to the performance of great historical acts, and from outwardly, apparently insignificant events in their lives to deduce their inmost thoughts and natures, and represent them ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... realize that the Government was stronger then than it had been in February of the same year, when it had a series of victories and peace with the Allies seemed for a moment to be in sight. A sort of fate seems to impel the Whites to neutralize with extraordinary rapidity any good will for themelves which they may find among the population. This is true of both sides, but seems to affect the Whites especially. Although General Baron Wrangel does indeed seem to have ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... proceeded. "I should make them feel that we were one family fighting for all we hold dear against the invader. If our losses are heavy, if we have a setback, then the inspiration of the heroism of those who have fallen and the danger of their own homes feeling the foot of the invader next will impel the living to greater sacrifices. For the Grays are in the wrong. The moral and the legal ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... forceful energies of Song, For they do swell the spring-tide of the heart With rosier currents, and impel along The life-blood freely:—O! they can impart Raptures ne'er dreamt of by the sordid throng Who barter human feeling at the mart Of pamper'd selfishness, and thus do wrong Imperial Nature of her prime desert.— SEWARD! ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted nothing but inclination to rival Danby ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... forwarding of this moral growth of man, two things seemed to me necessary—an Ideal which should stir the emotions and impel to action, and a clear understanding of the sources of evil and of the methods by which they might be drained. Into the drawing of the first I threw all the passion of my nature, striving to paint the Ideal in colours which should enthral and fascinate, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... impressions alone influence the will, we should every moment of our lives be subject to the greatest calamities; because, though we foresaw their approach, we should not be provided by nature with any principle of action, which might impel us to avoid them. On the other hand, did every idea influence our actions, our condition would not be much mended. For such is the unsteadiness and activity of thought, that the images of every thing, especially ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... will show them mercy that is, show them pure goodness and blessing not only for themselves, but also to their children and children's children, even to the thousandth generation and beyond that. This ought certainly to move and impel us to risk our hearts in all confidence with God, if we wish all temporal and eternal good, since the Supreme Majesty makes such sublime offers and presents such cordial inducements and such ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... touching in passionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so difficult to act. The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the American stage has approached the performance that was given by Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of passion, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... along; 590 While to the music, from on high, The echoes make a glad reply.— But the sage Muse the revel heeds No farther than her story needs; Nor will she servilely attend 595 The loitering journey to its end. —Blithe spirits of her own impel The Muse, who scents the morning air, To take of this transported pair A brief and unreproved farewell; 600 To quit the slow-paced waggon's side, And wander down yon hawthorn dell, With murmuring Greta for her guide. —There doth she ken the awful form Of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... decidedly than anything in the book. That so much learning, benevolence, and almost unparalleled fairness of mind, should be in a great measure lost to the world, for want of earnestness of purpose, might impel us to attach to the latter attribute as much importance as does the wise uncle in ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... intended for use on land as well as at sea, against cities and great fortified structures, and Clewe believed that the automatic shell might be brought within fifty miles of a city, set up with its trough and ram, and projected in a level line towards its object, to which it would impel itself with irresistible power and velocity, through forests, hills, buildings, and everything, gaining strength from every opposition which stood in the direct line of its progress. Attacking fortifications ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... child whose life, she knew, depended upon her answer. Up to that moment she had been completely at a loss to know what to say or how to act, but that invisible something which until then had deprived her of speech, now seemed to impel her to answer ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... sanguine adventurers from attempts to settle in it: Were it for no other reason than the constant heavy rains, or rather torrents, which pour down here, and the vast sea and surf which the prevailing westerly winds impel upon this coast, it must be rendered inhospitable. All entrance into the woods is not only extremely difficult, but hazardous, not from any assaults you are likely to meet with from wild beasts, for even these could hardly find convenient harbour here, but from the deep swamp, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... Two men meeting under the same condition would mechanically draw away a few paces, out of the route of persons passing in or out of the shop. No particular play of the mental processes would actuate them in so doing; an instinctive impulse, operating mechanically and subconsciously, would impel them to remove themselves from the main path of foot travel. But this woman and her acquaintance take root right there. Persons dodge round them and glare at them. Other persons bump into them, and are glared at by the two traffic blockers. Where ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... deem impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the Dauphine ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... inclination toward the life of art, through which his 'Genius' moves, half hero and half picaro. Witla remains mediocre enough in all but his sexual unscrupulousness, but he is impelled by a driving force more or less like those forces which impel Cowperwood. The will to wealth, the will to love, the will to art—Mr. Dreiser conceives them all as blind energies with no goal except self-realization. So conceiving them he tends to see them as less conditioned than they ordinarily are in their earthly progress by the resistance of statute ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... His ire—proclaims his strong necessity; And that surprise or artifice he scorns. Unskill'd, alas! in philosophic lore, Unbless'd with scientific erudition; How can I sing of elemental War, Or the contending powers of opposite Attractions, that impel, and poize, and guide, The ever-rolling Spheres: Animal War, The flux of Life, devouring and devour'd, Ceaseless in every tribe, through Earth, and Air, And Ocean, transcends ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... a man of honor? Honor! The name now seemed a mockery. Which way would honor impel him? To give up Katie? What! when she had given up all for him? What! when he had fought a mortal quarrel with Ashby for her? Honor! Was not honor due to Ashby? and had he not been a traitor ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... its decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, and a nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fate offered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is what Germany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-defined forces that impel mankind, and subsequently, in these latter years, with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. She grasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, that she must take her chance and seize the opportunity that ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... would not be addressed to another being (viz. to an intelligent being—to which it actually is addressed). The term 'sstra' (scriptural injunction) moreover comes from ss, to command, and commanding means impelling to action. But scriptural injunctions impel to action through giving rise to a certain conception (in the mind of the being addressed), and the non-sentient Pradhna cannot be made to conceive anything. Scripture therefore has a sense only, if we admit that none but the intelligent enjoyer of the fruit of the action is at ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... rose—she could not have told why; something seemed to impel her, some will outside her own. She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... of the competing forms of government have nearly so effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical Minister to correct and impel the routine ones. There are but four important forms of government in the present state of the world—the Parliamentary, the Presidential, the Hereditary, and the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary. Of these I have ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... 'Les Paysans' because we have an account to settle. Otherwise I certainly should not publish it, and the success of 'La Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin' would certainly not impel me to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... move us, have been replaced by higher motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of your age. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the worker as in your day they did the soldier. The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... colleagues, was prevented. But the disputants could not long continue to act together. Townshend retired, and, with rare moderation and public spirit, refused to take any part in politics. He could not, he said, trust his temper. He feared that the recollection of his private wrongs might impel him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to oppose measures which he thought generally beneficial to the country. He therefore never visited London after his resignation, but passed the closing years of his life in dignity and repose among ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... that whereof each accused himself, such was the pity that overcame his heart for the innocence of the two friends that, moved by supreme compassion, he came before Varro and said, 'Praetor, my fates impel me to solve the grievous contention of these twain and I know not what God within me spurreth and importuneth me to discover to thee my sin. Know, then, that neither of these men is guilty of that whereof each accuseth himself. I am verily he who slew yonder man this morning towards daybreak and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and rejoiced,—shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my mother with me and in me to impel me into another course. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... results from them, which, all forming in reality the true complement of the world, were, without doubt made at the same time as the universe. By this silence history wishes to train the activity of our intelligence, giving it a weak point for starting, to impel it to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... since our old young years our several ways Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit, Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root We set long since beneath the sundawn's rays, The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree, Friendship—this only and duly might impel My song to salutation of your own; More even than praise of one unseen of me And loved—the starry spirit of Dobell, To mine by light ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... had to guard, than boldest hope had dared To breathe for years; but rougher grew the way; And soft Phraerion, shrinking back and scared At every whirling depth, wept for his flowers and day. Shivered, and pained, and shrieking, as the waves Wildly impel them 'gainst the jutting rocks; Not all the care and strength of Zophiel saves His tender guide from half the wildering shocks He bore. The calm, which favored their descent, And bade them look upon their task as o'er, Was past; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... mixed descent. And, though too proud to start a fight With every cur that looms in sight, None ever saw thee quail beneath A foeman worthy of thy teeth. Thou art, in brief, a model hound, Not so much beautiful as sound In heart and limb; not always strong When nose and eyes impel to wrong, Nor always doing just as bid, But sterling as the minted quid. And I have loved thee in my fashion, Shared with thy face my frugal ration, Squandered my balance at the bank When thou didst chew the postman's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... the description of this place, it is not possible for ships to get off when once they approach within a certain distance. If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current impel them; and if they come into it when a land wind blows, which might seem to favor their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current carries them ashore; and what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... speak for me, I know—that I have lived, since that time we all have bitter reason to remember, in unchanging devotion, and gratitude to this family. Heaven is my witness that go where I may, I shall preserve those feelings unimpaired. And it is my witness, too, that they alone impel me to the course I must take, and from which nothing now shall turn me, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... largely by instinct and emotion. These instincts and emotions are incident to every living machine and are the motor forces that impel the organism. They do not think. They act, and act at once. All the mind can do is to place some restraint on such instincts and emotions through experience, education and settled habits. If the actions are never inhibited, the machine will tear itself ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... letter it occurred to her that by some accident Julia might possibly get hold of it. "And then," thought she, "she will recognize my handwriting, and curiosity will impel her to open the letter, after which she wouldn't hesitate a moment ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... knowledge of the nature of sensual impressions, which find their way to the heart—the seat of joys and emotions—which overpower the opposition of reason; and whilst "all other qualities and natures" are subdued, incessantly impel the patient, in consequence of his original compliance, and his all-conquering imagination, to imitate what he has seen. On his treatment of the disease we cannot bestow any great praise, but must be content ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... acuteness has carried him so very far, I am amazed that it did not impel him to advance one step farther. Happiness is what I and all men desire, as certainly as you do: but that happiness is of a strange kind, and held by a frail and feeble tenure, that is agitated by innumerable fears: that, if the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... that the dead man would, in all probability, guide the bearers to the exact spot where they were to bury him; if they were going in the wrong direction he would impel them to stop. Michael had watched with interest to see if this would take place, if the bearers halted or altered their course. Evidently the saint was pleased with the spot they had selected, for they journeyed on unhaltingly until ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... smiles to please you, with a breaking heart! Neglect him not in his hill-climbing course, Nor treat him with less kindness than your horse: Up hill, indulge him—down the steep descent, Spare—and don't urge him when his strength is spent; Impel him briskly o'er the level earth, But in the stable don't forget his worth! So with the actor—while you work him hard, Be mindful of his ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... as they might involve others, and above all her husband, I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many centuries hereditary among a people in whom the fear of annihilation—and the absence of all the motives that impel men on earth to face danger and death with calmness, or even to enjoy the excitement of deadly peril—have ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... gases must be shooting upwards or downwards to produce these changes in the lines. The velocities indicated in observations of this class sometimes amount to as much as two or even three hundred miles per second. We find it difficult to conceive the enormous internal pressures which are required to impel such mighty masses of gases aloft from the photosphere with speeds so terrific, or the conditions which bring about the downrush of such gigantic masses of vapour from above. In the spectra of the prominences on the sun's limb also we often see the bright lines bent or shifted ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... hear! Not Mars himself, nor aught immortal, fear. Full on the god impel thy foaming horse: Pallas commands, and Pallas lends thee force. Rash, furious, blind, from these to those he flies, And every side of wavering combat tries; Large promise makes, and breaks the promise made: Now gives the Grecians, now ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... people. I don't know whether I shall find myself compelled to commit some violent action; but don't be alarmed, for the assault and the taking of the house is altogether a wild, feudal idea of your sister. Chance has placed me in an advantageous position. Rage, the passion that burns within me, will impel me to profit by it. I don't know ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... Motives and Acts. SECTION 1. Neither animosity nor mere personal attachment should impel the motives or acts of the members of The Mother Church. In Science, divine Love alone governs man; and a Christian Scientist reflects the sweet amenities of Love, in rebuking sin, in true brotherliness, charitableness, and forgiveness. The members of this Church should daily watch ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy

... her, and the effrontery in his eyes repelled the old, vanishing self in her, yet drew all her awakening sensuousness. He saw enough in her face to impel him to take her hand and hold it while he said his lingering ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... Safeguards.—We have continually referred to the need for safeguards instead of mere reliance on prohibition. Such views and facts as the above should be more generally known in order that very worthy sentiments may not impel us to adopt an unsound solution for future peace. However alarmed and revolted we may have been in 1915 and later during the war, it is essential to take a balanced view in the present critical period ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... as if it had come from an electric storage. He had known the professor long, but he had never before heard a quaver in his voice, and it was this little quaver that seemed to impel him to supreme disregard of the dangers which he looked upon as being the final dangers. His own ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... gives her a presentiment of what the cost will be if she allows you the least opportunity to instruct her in a passion which she doubtless already shares. Women rarely inquire into the reasons which impel them to give themselves up or to resist; they do not even amuse themselves by trying to understand or explain them, but they have feelings, and sentiment with them is correct, it takes the place of intelligence and reflection. It is a sort of instinct which warns them in case of danger, and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... shock the prejudices of the orthodox. His late niece and wife was dead, so that there was no inconvenience on that score, should the interests of his dynasty, his family, and, above all, of the Church, impel him, on mature reflection, to take for his fourth marriage one step farther within the forbidden degrees than he had done in his third. Here is the statement, which, if it have no other value, serves to show the hideous designs of which the enemies ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... eat; Their anger thus we haply may disarm." "O Dalica," the grateful queen replied, "Nurse of my childhood, soother of my cares, Preventer of my wishes, of my thoughts, Oh, pardon youth, oh, pardon royalty! If hastily to Dalica I sued, Fear might impel me, never could distrust. Go then, for wisdom guides thee, take my name, Issue what most imports and best beseems, And sovereignty shall sanction the decree." And now Charoba was alone, her heart Grew lighter; she sat down, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... thence let him leap with all his energy, in a direction at right angles with the shaft of the column, into the open air; and it will be found that, though the original impulsion would not probably impel the body more than ten or twelve feet, motion would continue until it had reached the earth. Corollary: hence it is proved that all bodies in which the vis inertia has been overcome will continue in motion, until they come in contact with some ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... have originated in a desire to escape from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for his acts as the mere "motive-hunting ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... God would abstain from impelling the wicked is, according to Luther, tantamount to wishing that He cease to be God. Luther: "There is still this question which some one may ask, 'Why does God not cease to impel by His omnipotence, in consequence of which the will of the wicked is moved to continue being wicked and even growing worse?' The answer is: This is equivalent to desiring that God cease to be God for the sake of the wicked, since one wishes His power and action to cease, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... your love, or that your love is but a trifling consideration with me, you will not believe. What else should impel me to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and the need of proving this devotion to my family and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... wise agree with thee here, and censure thy language. Is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in evil, Takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow with others Knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel him? Rather than ever to-day would I make up my mind to be married: Many a worthy maiden is needing a husband's protection, And the man needs an inspiriting wife ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... example, her instinctive admiration for Church and State, her instinctive theory that they rested on gentility and people who were nice, was never for a moment shaken when she saw a half-starved baby of the slums. Her heart would impel her to pity and feed the poor little baby if she could, but to correlate the creature with millions of other such babies, and those millions with the Church and State, would not occur to her. And if Felix ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a will to their oars, our genial mariners quickly impel our barque round the first jutting headland, so that the thickly populated Piano di Sorrento is at once lost to view. Making good headway over the clear water, it is not long before we find ourselves passing beneath the wave-washed precipices of the Salto, and well within ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... miles from the nearest settlement, her husband torn from her in a moment, and her babe smiling as though he would console his mother for her terrible loss. In her sad condition self-preservation would have been too feeble a motive to impel her to make any further effort to save herself; but maternal love—the strongest instinct in a woman's heart—buoyed her up and stimulated ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... ways the various purchasers That sally forth with this protecting spell, Employ the privilege this grant confers: Some, like myself, their lawyer's citadel Besiege, his speed long striving to impel; To take a dinner with a friend some go; In fashion's haunts some for an hour to swell; Some strive, what creditors intend, to know; And some the moments on ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... lingered, but some mysterious power seemed to impel him, and passing through the door he found himself in a spacious hall, whose ceiling, walls, and floor were covered with polished tiles carved all over with unknown figures. He gazed about, full of wonder, and was just preparing to walk out again when ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... all over the earth," said Bernhard. "When a mighty feeling shakes the heart, and seeks to impel onward, the world stains and tarnishes it, and fair things die, and lofty aims become ridiculous. So it is no better with ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them in action are so poor, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... the do-nothing: the truth is, as physiologists say, a ferment. It is intended to come into life, and into character, and into the inmost spirit of a man, and grip them, and mould them, and transform them, and animate them, and impel them. The truth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... names proudly borne on the chronicle of fame as martyrs to the universal spread of discovery and spirit of progress. But, the love of enterprise, and consequent expansion of civilisation and commercial venture, inaugurated by the brave old pioneers of Queen Elizabeth's day, have not ceased to impel similar seekers after something beyond ordinary humdrum life. The path of discovery, although narrowed through research, has not yet been entirely exhausted; for "fresh fields and pastures new," as hopeful as those about which Milton rhapsodised ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... maintain its own physical force, than if allied with those who would thus war upon its prosperity and domestic peace; and reason, pride, self-interest, and the apprehension of secret, constant danger would impel to separation. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... land-waves. It struck me that probably limestone outcropped at this spot, as indeed proved to be the case; also that such a patch of white would be a convenient guide for any who were travelling across that sea of bush. Further, some instinct within seemed to impel me to steer for it, although I had all but made up my mind to go in a totally different direction many more points to the east. It was almost as though a voice were calling to me to take this path and no other. Doubtless this was an effect produced by ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... induced by a persuasive orator, may appear wholly untenable a few hours later. Decisions which seemed warranted when we were in an angry mood, often appear unwise or unjust when we have become more calm. Motives which easily impel us to action when the world looks bright, fail to move us when the mood is somber. The feelings of impending peril and calamity which are an inevitable accompaniment of the "blues," are speedily dissipated when the sun breaks through the clouds and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... suppliant; he saw at once that the surest way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something. At Paris, if the first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege. Independence, vanity, and pride, all the young Count's better and worse feelings combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude. And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac









Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar