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More "Impulse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was equal to and of the same quality as her desire to be a successful debutante. It would make her family so happy to have her both. These somewhat widely diverging aims were all a part of the current of her life, the impulse to be what those she loved would like to have her. It was not that she was willing to give up her own individuality to gratify the impulse, but rather that she did not for an instant conceive of the necessity for such a sacrifice. It was part of her immense happiness that she had always loved ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... His new resolves had not changed his old impulses. If any one flung a taunt at him his impulse would be to fling back a blow. His determination would have to be just a little quicker than his impulse. Meantime he found lots of pleasure in the companionship of Apple and Chick-chick and several others. There was a new bond of fellowship between them, a bond ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... afresh to my mind. How in youth your wild minstrelsy ravished my soul Till I became daily to musings inclined, And strong, gushing impulse that scarce brooked control. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the injunction in every tone,—anger, furious anger, the drunkenness of blood demanding blood enveloped him. His first impulse was to stop a cab and hurl himself into it, in order to escape the irritating street, to rid his body of the necessity of walking and choosing a path—to stop a cab as for a wounded man. But at that hour of general home-coming the square ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... his hand on the sword placed on the table; then, with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met the foreigner at the threshold with all the profuse and respectful ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension. Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that all appearance of diligence would deduct something from the reputation of genius; and hoped that he should appear to attain, amidst all the ease of carelessness, and all the tumult of diversion, that knowledge and those accomplishments which mortals of the common fabrick obtain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... impulse was to acquaint the Queen with these astounding revelations, but it soon struck me that, to tackle a man of such importance as the Count, we could not do without the King. I at once sent my secretary with a note, imploring his Majesty to return, but giving no reason for my ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... showed how the theories of Comenius and Rousseau could be applied. By this a decided impulse was given to educational reform, and the way was prepared for the wonderful educational revival of the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... the final aera might be fixed at my own choice; and I long hesitated whether I should be content with the three volumes, the fall of the Western empire, which fulfilled my first engagement with the public. In this interval of suspense, nearly a twelvemonth, I returned by a natural impulse to the Greek authors of antiquity; I read with new pleasure the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, a large portion of the tragic and comic theatre of Athens, and many interesting ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... General Hood. Poor fellow, I loved him, not as a General, but as a good man. I knew when that army order was read, that General Hood had been deceived, and that the poor fellow was only trying to encourage his men. Every impulse of his nature was but to do good, and to serve his country as best he could. Ah! reader, some day ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... poor fishermen from an obscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the divine mission, the spiritual authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and the Dart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seas fighting, discovering, colonizing, and grayed out the channels, and at last paved them with their bones, through which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out over all ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... when she looked up from the boiling chocolate and espied him standing in an attitude of waiting near the door. Ellen at first wondered how that thought should have come into her head just then; the next moment, from a sudden impulse, she raised her eyes to search for the cause, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... said that Dora must be moved as soon as it could be managed, for in that London attic she could have no impulse towards recovery; and while it still seemed a fearful risk, he sent us off to St. Clement's, a little village on the south coast, where he knew of rooms in a great old manor-house which had sunk to farmer's use, and had a master and ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wretched calamities must come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our generation—that we do not help to poison the nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We know well enough that oppressors have sinned ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the emperor triumphed at Rome for his various successes. He gave a donation of eight pieces of gold to every citizen, and made his son Commodus his colleague. In the mean time the barbarians in the interior of Europe, moved by a general impulse, began to press upon the frontiers of the empire, and from this time seem never to have ceased their inroads until the final destruction of the Roman power. Aurelius marched, A.D. 177, to the frontier, defeated the barbarians in various engagements, and had perhaps proved the savior ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... grave professionally, had its comic side. When reflecting upon it, he still felt that he would like to wring Lieut. Feraud's neck for him. But this formula was figurative rather than precise, and expressed more a state of mind than an actual physical impulse. At the same time, there was in that young man a feeling of comradeship and kindness which made him unwilling to make the position of Lieut. Feraud worse than it was. He did not want to talk at large about ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... carrying only a 12-pounder gun, were it all enlarged in such ratio as might appear to suit for a 10-inch 25-tun rifled gun of the British type, the almost proverbial relations, between weight, velocity of impulse, and brittleness of cast iron, would show themselves, in the whole machine going to pieces ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... moment off their guard. The company was constantly diminishing as they journeyed on, for the dangers were so many that death in various forms was constantly cutting them off. The survivors, full of sadness, and hurried on by some irresistible impulse, could not stop long in the way. All they could do was to give those who had fallen a hasty burial and then join in the ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... spring only from the reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious soul equalled its darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered agonies of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined spite of an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there can be neither pity nor pardon. Our knowledge that it is committed by one of the most powerful intellects our island ever ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with sadness and respect. A hum of sympathy accompanied her. Sizov silently put the people out of her way, and they silently moved aside, obeying a blind impulse to follow her. They walked after her slowly, exchanging brief, subdued remarks on the way. Arrived at the gate of her house, she turned to them, leaning on the fragment of the flag pole, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... through epidemics before, but never one like this, and now his energy was gone. For the first time in his life the impulse had come upon him to own defeat and surrender. Other men, younger doctors than he, should take up the fight. As for him, he could not battle against such odds. He would give it up; he would go away. He would take this little boy with him ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... it takes a dead game sport to do a trick like that. Any cheap skate can whiz past and give his enemy in trouble the hard-boiled eye, but it takes a fine soul to be generous when the natural impulse calls for spite work. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... quick impulse, "I cannot preach, but may I tell your people something about their boys and how splendid ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Philadelphia, have a talk with Mr. Curtis, and look over his business plant. He did this, and found Mr. Curtis even more desirous than before to have him consider the position. Bok's instinct was strongly in favor of an acceptance. A natural impulse moved him, without reasoning, to action. Reasoning led only to a cautious mental state, and caution is a strong factor in the Dutch character. The longer he pursued a conscious process of reasoning, the farther he got from the ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... the two officers pays any attention to their demonstrations; and the movement aft is not made for them. Both lieutenant and midshipman seem excited by other thoughts—some strong impulse urging them on. Alone is the coxswain mystified by the hairy men, and not a little alarmed; but, without speaking, he ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... which her father had spoken had loosened the heavy chain that tied me down—my limbs were conscious of their freedom—my spirit felt its liberty—what hindered instant flight? In the midst of my reverie Dr Mayhew entered the room—and I remember distinctly that my immediate impulse was to leave the two friends together, and to run as fast as love could urge and feet could carry me—to the favoured spot which held all that I cared for now on earth. The plans, however, of Doctor Mayhew interfered with this desire. He had done much for me, more than I knew, and he was not the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... nourished sufficient fanaticism to prevent these good people from allowing an infidel doctor to make free with their crowns, and expatiate on their passions and propensities. There is no calculating on the strength of the impulse of curiosity. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... fared the poor creature who had fled, driven forth by her first wild impulse to escape from a false and terrible position? With every step she took down the dimly lighted street, the abyss into which she had fallen seemed to grow deeper and darker. She was overwhelmed with the magnitude of her misfortune. She shunned the illumined ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... and Sixteenth), a few men from the Seventy-first New York under Captain Rafferty, and perhaps squads or fragments of three or four other commands, suddenly broke from cover, as if moved by a general spontaneous impulse, and, with Colonel Roosevelt and General Hawkins as their most conspicuous, if not their foremost, leaders, charged "Kettle Hill" and the heights of San Juan. The advancing line, at first, looked very weak and thin; but it was equal to its task. In less than fifteen minutes it had ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... squatting thus in brute immobility for a half-hour, one of them would purchase a few pounds of flour or a half-pound of tea. Then she would take her place again with the others. At the end of another half-hour another, moved by some sudden and mysterious impulse, would in turn make her purchases. The interior of the store proved to be no different from the general country store anywhere. The proprietor was very busy and occupied and important and interested ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... weeks, she had been filled with vague, restless longings to have a share in the vast work of social reform; most of all, her warm young heart turned to the neglected children. It was the same impulse of protection which had first roused her interest in Billy Farrington, the helpless invalid; and now, had Billy been a less well-tried friend, he might have found himself forsaken to make room for this new hobby of Theodora. As it was, she merely used him for a safety-valve, and poured into his ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... are treacherous and inconstant, being liable to change their minds at every breeze of every fresh hope which presents itself, giving themselves up wholly to the impulse and inclination of the moment; and, like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express themselves with great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition whatever; are immoderately covetous of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... thinkers and soldiers. Taking with a catholic enthusiasm the hot winds and driving white dust of summer, the deforming rains of winter, and the bright splendour of sky and earth at the advent of spring, they had tramped hither and yon, light-hearted in the vigour of youth, reverent in the impulse of pilgrimage. Mountain fastnesses where the clarion winds still trumpeted the victory of freedom and of Thrasybulus; upland caves where Plato had been taken as a child to worship Pan; long, white roads leading to the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... affecting not to notice that his guests' glasses had been emptied. With all his soul he repented the impulse that had led to his predicament. Amid the throes of his mental arithmetic he recognised that he had been deceived in himself, that he had no abiding passion for bohemia. How much more pleasing than to board and lodge this disreputable collection ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... accord with wisdom. Of which if you expect proofs, consider first that boys, old men, women, and fools are more delighted with religious and sacred things than others, and to that purpose are ever next the altars; and this they do by mere impulse of nature. And in the next place, you see that those first founders of it were plain, simple persons and most bitter enemies of learning. Lastly there are no sort of fools seem more out of the way than are these whom the zeal ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of this event, Chili must give a new impulse to her maritime affairs, especially as an expedition is about to sail from Cadiz, composed of two ships of the line, to restore ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... aggravation. But it was marked by an aggravation of its own, not less culpable, and unfortunately only too frequently characteristic of the homicides perpetrated by Europeans on natives in this country. It was committed in wanton recklessness, almost without provocation, under an impulse which would have been resisted if the life of the victim had been estimated at the value of that of a dog. Any action on my part which would have seemed to sanction this estimate of the value of native life, would have been attended ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... proportionate for God to inflict as to punish sin with sin." It would seem as if the poet had not as yet fixed the situation of his local hell, but remained suspended between rival theories. The other idea, of the Divine permission and impulse given to hardened sinners, finds a conspicuous place in the poem. In one instance, at least, a figure drawn from the story of the Creation is violently handled to serve strange uses. The evolution of the four elements ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the speech sent a glow of delight to Joan's face, but the end of it quenched it and she looked sad, and the tears gathered in her eyes. After a moment she spoke out with what seemed a sort of terrified impulse, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Though gigantic, they were neither beyond his strength to execute, nor beyond the demands of his age and country. They were not like those works, which, forced into being by whim, or transitory impulse, perish with the breath that made them; but, taking deep root, were cherished and invigorated by the national sentiment, so as to bear rich fruit for posterity. This was particularly the case with ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... reflected on the subject for a fortnight from September 25 to October 7, when he was to speak on the occasion of a great dinner at Newcastle. He decided to announce the Government's policy with all the force his personal and official authority could give it. This decision was no sudden impulse; it was the result of deep reflection pursued to the last moment. On the morning of October 7, he entered in his diary: "Reflected further on what I should say about Lancashire and America, for both these subjects are critical." That evening at dinner, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... attitude. And yet there was visible on the part of the child a painful anxiety for his reply, and consciousness of his power to render it disagreeable or distressing, which was strongly at variance with this impulse and restrained it more effectually than she could possibly have done by any ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... hear more; but, fired with a generous impulse to aid the unfortunate, whoever they might be, gave one backward look, threw up his hand as a signal, shouted "Help, boys!" ran to a length of fence which the wind had thrown down, bounded over like a ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... commendable impulse, bought another doll and gave it to M'liss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The master, on looking at it one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident before ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... year the Christian Association was organized. Its history, bound up as it is with the student life, will be given more fully in a later chapter, but we must not forget that Miss Freeman gave the association its initial impulse and ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Chinese towns to Hong-Kong, and indissolubly connected with ourselves. From this town it is that the insults to our flag, and the attempts at poisoning, wholesale and retail, have collectively emanated; and all under the original impulse of Yeh. Surely, in speculating on the conduct of the war, either as probable or as reasonable, the old oracular sentence of Cato the Elder and of the Roman senate (Delenda est Carthago) begins to murmur in our ears—not in this ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... principle that all must yield to the work. Perhaps he hardly knew how much he betrayed of the longing, even while deciding against its gratification; but his sisters were wise enough to act on his judgment, and not on their own impulse; and the events of the next season proved that he had been right. To Sir John ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... viewing the city, they again repaired to the beach, and saw the sultan sitting with his children, as before. While they were admiring the beauty of the strufture, the younger prince, impelled by an unaccountable impulse, came up to them, gazed eagerly at them, and when they retired followed them to their lodging, which they did not perceive till he had entered with them and sat down. The old sultan was astonished at the child's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... his reason. The chief conspirator had so often and so lightly used the language of the League, about "falling overboard accidentally," that he had become familiar with the idea; and, perhaps, the deed seemed less terrible to him than it really was. When the act was done, on the impulse of the moment, he realized his own situation, and that of his victim. He would have given anything at that instant, as he looked down upon the dark waves, to have recalled the deed; but it was too late. Self-reproach and ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... yet knowing how to despise it in favour of the needs of the State and the care of affairs, this minister concentrated in his own person all the other ministries, which moved only by his impulse ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... silent town. Eventually they saw a very placid and prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around the low arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By an impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island or Reed House. The prosperous man's smile grew slightly more expansive, and he simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Pennsylvania Society for the Advancement of the Deaf. Like our Ohio cousins, who have already established a similar home, we pride ourselves upon our ability to own and control such a responsible institution. The home owes its existence entirely to the charitable impulse of the deaf themselves, aided by the generosity of their hearing friends. It exists because of the desire to provide a home of rest for the infirm of our class during their declining years, so that they may ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... word was lost in the report of my pistol, which went off at the instant. For a second the flash and smoke obstructed my view; but the moment after I saw Trevyllian stretched upon the ground, with his friend kneeling beside him. My first impulse was to rush over, for now all feeling of enmity was buried in most heartfelt anxiety for his fate; but as I was stepping forward, O'Shaughnessy called out, "Stand fast, boy, he's only wounded!" and the same moment he rose slowly from the ground, with ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... every material for shipbuilding and every commodity for gainful commerce, and filled with a population active, intelligent, well-informed, and fearless of danger. These advantages are not neglected, and an impulse has lately been given to commercial enterprise, which fills our shipyards with new constructions, encourages all the arts and branches of industry connected with them, crowds the wharves of our cities with vessels, and covers the most distant ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... with magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet none to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoes of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that were thus evolved and eventually bound up with the original impulse, compose the streams of tradition that feed our modern world in this matter and determine the ideas of ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... need not do it. His being certain that the theft will take place does not necessitate the theft. It (the certainty) exercises no controlling agency upon the wrong-doer. Dr. W. Cooke remarks, "What is involved in necessity? It is a resistless impulse exerted for a given end. What is freedom? It involves a self-determining power to will and to act. What is prescience? It is simply knowledge of an event before it happens. Such being, we conceive, a correct representation of the terms, we have to inquire, where lies the alleged incompatibility of ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... and began to move forward at first slowly. Waverley felt his heart at that moment throb as it would have burst his bosom. It was not fear, it was not ardour—it was a compound of both, a new and deeply energetic impulse, that with its first emotion chilled and astounded, then fevered and maddened his mind. The sounds around him combined to exalt his enthusiasm; the pipes played, and the clans rushed forward, each in its own dark column. As they advanced they mended their pace, and the muttering ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... oils of the best-known model in DAYsseldorf, this time rigged out as a Roman peasant. The girl looked at the picture with a frown; she seized it as though she would dash it on the floor in scorn, but, checking the impulse, she carried it to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either this invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it would not have come at all. And ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... wanted to tell Mary Bransford that he was not her brother; that he had assumed the role merely for the purpose of defeating Dale's aim. His sole purpose had been to help Mary Bransford out of a difficult situation; he had acted on impulse—an impulse resulting from the pleading look she had given him, together with the knowledge that she had ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nodded; then, moved by a sudden impulse, pointed to the money, and said, "Does Pete see this? It's ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... had laid a red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to throw ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a part of him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he was going to follow was not at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she was holding him tight by the arm, and her dimpled face, alive with mirth and malice, was so close to his that a moment's wild impulse flashed through him to kiss her there and then. But the impulse passed. He and Letty Sewell had known each other for about three weeks. They were not engaged—far from it. And these—the hand on the arm, and the rest—were Letty ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the parish of St. Bartholomew, London, the son of a low tradesman, who bound him to a mean engraver of arms on plate; but before his time was expired he felt the impulse of genius, and felt it directed him to painting, tho little apprized at that time of the mode nature had intended he should pursue. His apprenticeship was no sooner expired than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and studied drawing from the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... What the gentleman said as acted in the prosecution was true as gospel. It won't do for us to be soft heads and let our wives think they can massacre us with impunity. Women ain't reasonin' creatures, they're hanimals of impulse, and if one of us comes 'ome with a drop too much, or grumbles at the children bein' spoiled, then, I say, if our wives think they can do it and get let off they'll up wi' the flat iron and brain us. I say guilty. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... With the impulse to reach it instantly, they started on a run, hand in hand, but the fierceness of the gale prevented them. Out of breath before they had gone a dozen yards, there was nothing to do but stop and recover breath and start again at a pace more in keeping ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... her father bearing upon this case, should make a better attempt than he made at its solution. Her father had seen Herbert Courtland since he had agreed to go on the cruise, and was therefore in the better position to arrive at a reasonable conclusion in regard to the source of the impulse upon which Mr. Courtland had acted; so much she thought certain. And yet her father had suggested the profitless nature of such an investigation, and her ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... runway and along the embankment stood the silent miners, their hands in their trousers pockets, staring stolidly at the closed door of the mine. Among them was no impulse toward concerted action. Like animals at the door of a slaughter-house they stood as though waiting their turn to be driven in at the door. An old crone with bent back and a huge stick in her hand went from ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... "My first impulse, on coming to myself, was to feel under my pillow for the knife I had not been able to reach; if it had not been useful for defense, it might at least serve ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... know nothing of the policy of the new commander. If General Butler were still in authority, I should not hesitate a moment to grant your request; for, even if I should commit an error of judgment, I am perfectly certain he would overlook it, and applaud the humane impulse that prompted the act; but General Banks might be less indulgent, and make very serious trouble with me for taking a step he ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... ardent and ambitious mind is once dazzled with the fascination of some lofty pursuit, where gold is the object, or fame the impulse, it is difficult to pause in a doubtful career, and to make a voluntary shipwreck of the reputation which has been staked. Hope still cheers the aspirant from failure to failure, till the loss of fortune and the decay of credit disturb the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... together with the incomplete character of the religious training given him, made him at first look on politics as a possible and probable means to this desirable end. But he was too sensibly impelled by the Divine impulse toward personal perfection, and too inflexibly honest with himself, not to come early to a thorough realization, on one hand of the fact that man cannot, unaided, rise above his natural level, and, on the other, that no conceivable amelioration of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... time being. Like the rest, Fritz felt the "war fever" upon him. A red mist hovered before his eyes. He smelt blood and longed to spill more. The fumes of brimstone acted on his senses like hasheesh to narcotic smokers. An irresistible impulse urged him forwards. A voice kept crying in his ears, "Kill and ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... soldier, this hard and haughty personage, who was wont to blame his august parents for their bourgeois amiability and their frequent excursions? He carries out everything that his father planned, but he does it under impulse from without and he does it badly, without forethought, without the sincerity or the natural quality which is revealed in a man by a course of skilful action legitimate ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... affected by a slight stammer, which, in my opinion, but added piquancy to her epigrammatic sayings. She once remarked to me, "I shall never be c-c-cold until I'm dead." An impulse took possession of me which somehow, in spite of the great difference in our ages, I seemed unable to resist, and I retorted, "We are not all assured of our temperatures at that period." She regarded me for a few moments with unfeigned astonishment, but said ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... God who made us, by repenting of what He has done. We might as well repent of the tiger and the snake, the earthquake and the tempest in nature." [7] What are we to say of this attempt to make God answerable, not merely for the presence, but for the action, of whatever impulse to "revolt" of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... spake, but Ancaeus quickly undertook to guide the swift ship; for he was stirred by the impulse of the goddess. And after him Erginus and Nauplius and Euphemus started up, eager to steer. But the others held them back, and many of his comrades ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... All at once a great clarity seemed to take possession of his mind. Here, in these dark forests, were the stimuli of which Forest, the alienist, had spoken; and his brain seemed to leap, as in one impulse, to the truth. Suddenly he knew the answer to all the questions and problems that had troubled ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... fresh impulse gave to Pallas' zeal, And from Olympus' heights in haste she sped; Like to a meteor, that, of grave portent To warring armies or sea-faring men, The son of deep-designing Saturn sends, Bright-flashing, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... that it was all right, and that she had thought better of it, and had got over her mad impulse to obey the voice. But a few minutes later she made a sudden dash for one of the doors, opened it and darted out, followed by her husband. He caught her by the fur coat, and begged and implored her not to go, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... with the memory of the noble Roman lady—a sky serenely blue, sunshine on fountain and temple ruin, the atmosphere golden with autumn's richness of coloring. The adjacent narrow streets were deserted, swept by one of those waves of popular impulse so characteristic of Italian cities; files of priestly students from the colleges passed through the gateway, this band clad in black, that one in scarlet or purple, and formed lines of wavering color in their transition across the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... was wrong in this. Watching the young birds at their ungainly hopping, the impulse to dance seemed uncontrollable; yet they were immensely dignified about it at times; and again they appeared to get some fun out of it—as much, perhaps, as we do out of some of our peculiar dances, of which a visiting Chinaman once asked innocently: ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... years this gathering impulse to creative work must have struggled in man against the limitations imposed upon him by his social ineptitude. It was a long smouldering fire that flamed out at last in all these things. The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually thwarted urgency ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... brutal as he was, full of ungoverned impulse and unbridled passion, felt, though he knew not wherefore, this ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of Mrs. Hilmer, taken in a bygone day, very plump and blond and youthful in a soft, tranquil way. And by its side, in a little ridiculously-blue glass vase, some spring wild flowers languished, pallidly white and withered by the heat of captivity. She checked an impulse to rise when he came in. For a moment his virility had overwhelmed her into a feeling of deference, but she recovered herself sufficiently to droop nonchalantly into her seat as he gave her his hand. He was not in the least put out of ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... flying down through the massed people; she cleared the parapet at a bound, and sped towards that riderless horse, who staggered forward towards the remembered sound; but his strength failed, and he fell at her feet, she lavishing kisses upon him and sobbing, the house rising with one impulse, and white with horror! Before help could reach her the bull ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in great excitement at the sudden appearance of these singular-looking people in their equally singular boats, and no wonder! Years and the ages had slipped away and never yet had any people but their own kind appeared on their horizon. Opposition was the natural impulse, and they signed for the Spaniards to go back, threatening attack. The effect of this on Alarcon was a command to anchor the boats out of reach in the middle of the river, though the rapidly augmenting ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... moment she hid her face in her hands and wept; but resisting the strong impulse which evidently moved her to reply, opened the door—no wider than was sufficient for the passage of his body—and motioned him away. As the locksmith stood upon the step, it was chained and locked behind ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the Revolution were the spontaneous impulses of the people: on one side was the king, the court and the nobility; on the other the nation. These two parties clashed by the mere impulse of conflicting ideas and interests. A word—a gesture—a chance—the assembling a body of troops—a day's scarcity—the vehement address of an orator in the Palais Royal, sufficed to excite the populace to revolt, or to march on Versailles. The spirit of sedition was confounded with ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a woman, young, perhaps Untouched as yet of this too poisonous air. Were she told all, would she not pity us? For if she love you, as I think she must, Would not some generous impulse stir in her, Some latent, unsuspected spark illume? How love thrills even commonest girl-clay, Ennobling it an instant, if no more! You said that she is proud; then touch her pride, And turn her into marble with the touch. But yet the gentler passion is the stronger. Go to her, tell her, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... not infer from all this that friend Theophilus is a social wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the domestic hearth. By no means. Nature has gifted him with that vein of humor and that impulse to friendly joviality which are frequent developments in sad-natured men, and often deceive superficial observers as to their real character. He who laughs well and makes you laugh is often called a man of cheerful disposition, yet in many cases nothing ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it is as good as the Nixie," she said, on a sudden impulse. He swung round, staring ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... nearly a hundred yards wide. The plain was studded over with houses, the inhabitants of which appeared to live on the ample productions of their country. Happy as the people appeared to be, it was evident that they were mere children of impulse, scarcely knowing right from wrong. The greater number were pertinacious thieves, and addicted besides to many vices. Though not apparently bloodthirsty, they were accustomed to offer up human sacrifices. But little insight at that time was ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... in divine matters, or a personal attraction affecting the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence. So a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of Descartes, in Paris, or it may be a little walk uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a modern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to see something ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the first sincere word that had been spoken, where every tone had been wrong, every gesture false, and it fell on the company like a thunderclap. John Storm drew his breath hard, looked up at Lord Robert by a strange impulse, and felt himself avenged. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... refluent flood, l. 262. The force of the arterial impulse appears to cease, after having propelled the blood through the capillary vessels; whence the venous circulation is owing to the extremities of the veins absorbing the blood, as those of the lymphatics ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Suddenly she became aware of two forms coming down the walk. They issued from Major Waldron's quarters, and the door closed behind them. One was a young officer; the other, she speedily made out, a Chinese servant, who was guiding his master. She knew the pair in an instant, and her first impulse was to retire. Then she reflected that he could not see, and she wanted to look: so she stayed. They had almost reached her gate, when a wild blast whirled the officer's cape about his ears and sent some sheets ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... possible to me has lost its savor, while all that I could still desire escapes me, and will always escape me. Every impulse ends in weariness and disappointment. Discouragement, depression, weakness, apathy; there is the dismal series which must be forever begun and re-begun, while we are still rolling up the Sisyphean rock of life. Is it not simpler and shorter to plunge ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was so taken by surprise, that she had not a word to say. None were needed; her telltale face answered for her, as well as the impulse which made her hide her head in the sofa cushion, like a foolish ostrich when the hunters are ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Clinton," he answered as, by a common impulse, they began walking toward Hamilton Gregory's house. "Bob Clinton's sister, and my landlady." The more Abbott thought of his adventure, the darker it grew; before they, reached their destination, it ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... I did! People doubtless noticed us; but I was carried away by an uncontrollable impulse; I saw no one but him, I wished to hear him talk, and he talked with me, and told me his age. He is twenty-three, the same ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... involved quantities in a Christian. The moment the new life of the risen Christ is wrought in a believer and he is linked up by the Holy Ghost to the glorified body of the Son of God he has in him all the impulse and power of the highest morality, the most exalted purity, the rarest spirituality and the discernment of spiritual things. All that is self-evident—but the Son of God came into this world and went through the amazing tragedy and ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... the cowboys as they made a rush for Morgan, who stood his ground, back to the bar, regretting now the foolish impulse that had led him into this pack of wolves. Peden stepped in front of Morgan, authority in his very calmness, and restrained the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... either incarnated as a new man or usurping all the faculties of one already in the flesh, and it is marvellous how subtilely and with what truth to as much of human nature as is included in a diseased consciousness he traces all the finest nerves of impulse and motive, how he compels every trivial circumstance into an accomplice of his art, and makes the sky flame with foreboding or the landscape chill and darken with remorse. It is impossible to think of Hawthorne without at the same time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... at the cowardly treatment they had been according this once powerful comrade because he had fallen from the favour of Issus. I had no love for Xodar, but I cannot stand the sight of cowardly injustice and persecution without seeing red as through a haze of bloody mist, and doing things on the impulse of the moment that I presume I never should do after ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... passionate. He recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut up in books as in reliquaries—peris et mises en reliquaires de livres. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... led to the formation of this Association in 1841, almost half a century had elapsed since the epoch (1792) which I may call the renaissance of the humane treatment of the insane, when the Bicetre in France, and the York Retreat in England, originated by their example an impulse still unspent, destined in the course of years to triumph, as we witness to-day. This triumph was secured, in large measure, by the efforts of two men who, forty years ago, shortly after the well-known experiment at Lincoln, by the late Mr. Robert Gardiner Hill, were actively ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... still kept his gaze riveted on the peculiar actions of the men outside Poussette's. The running to and fro continued, but now suddenly an impulse prompted them to go in one direction; they pointed, gesticulated, and then with startling rapidity disappeared around the corner of the bridge. By this time the priest was convinced that something was transpiring of serious and uncommon import, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... post-marks—provided he could have done so honestly—he would have read every one of them.' There is the true Boswell in this characteristic confession, the Boswell that read in the private diaries of Johnson, and, with an eye to biographical materials, had admitted an impulse to carry them off, and never see him more. 'Why, sir,' said the doctor, 'I do not think you could have ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the extraordinary consent sometimes observable among the members of an animal community—how a flock of 500 birds (e. g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight—the light on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we favor—whether ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Spanish seems to have been his earlier love. His translation of Calderon, due to obedience to the guiding impulse of Professor Cowell, showed him to the world as a master of the rarest of arts, that of conveying to an English audience the lights and shades of a poem first fashioned in a ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his feelings, and explained: "Up to a certain point every art is mechanical; the outlines of my acting are fixed, but within those limits I am guided by impulse. Even if I dared to rely on the inspiration of the moment my support cannot; they must know what I am going to do. I sincerely wish now that you had left us to our struggle; and yet we've had a good time, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... momentary impulse to follow to the end of that aisle and see where it led to, but he checked it. He gathered himself together and lazily strolled along in search of the counter he wanted. Quiet had descended upon the store. It was almost deserted of shoppers and the yellow light came streaming ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... her face grew crimson,—it was as much as she could do to restrain the impulse to raise her hand, and strike Dent. But then she recollected herself. After all, she did belong to this man, and Will's liberty was the price. "You know my terms," she said, when she could find her voice to speak. "Is my lad free? Ef my lad's not free as the air—I'll—! Tell me that afore ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... English Ambassador in his dominions use the English Communion Service; and the Council went so far as to propose making the Princess personally and alone exempt from Conformity: fortunately, however, for them, affairs in Italy took a turn which gave fresh impulse to the anti-Imperialists in France. The Protestant city of Magdeburg was still holding out against the Imperial troops which were under the command of Maurice of Saxony, and the French King was becoming inclined to give active support ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... that nothing could stop that sound, for it would continue to all eternity, was almost impossible to bear, and, as though his strength were a match for the ruthless forces of nature, he had an insane impulse to do some violent thing. He felt he must cling to his self-control or he would go mad. And now, looking out of the window at the lagoon and the strip of foam which marked the reef, he shuddered with hatred of the brilliant scene. The cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl that ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... first to discuss the laws of money intelligently,(10) but a number of acute Englishmen enriched the literature of the subject,(11) and it may be said that any modern study of political economy received its first definite impulse from England ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that his mere personal presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue, felt an incongruously good-natured impulse to help him ...
— The American • Henry James
... he had been disturbed in his mind, and that the morning he committed the robbery he took the club out of his own house, being an instrument made use of by his wife in the trade of a silk-throwster, and from a sudden impulse of mind attacked the man in the manner which ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... OVER THE LOFTY MOUNTAINS. "Really Bjrnson's first patriotic song. ... Describes one of the main motive forces in all the history of the Norwegian people, the inner impulse to expansion and the adventurous longing for what is great and distant. ... Written in the narrow, hemmed-in Eikis valley." ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... time she reached the fourth flight of stairs she began to feel ashamed of the impulse which brought her, and to argue with herself against it; but at the same time her ears were open and listening for any unusual sound in the rooms above. There was no such sound until she had mounted half-way up the sixth flight, when she ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sight of such new ventures, all the hardships they had themselves endured in subduing the wilderness. At last, on March 1, 1830, when Abraham was just twenty-one years old, the Lincolns, yielding to this overmastering frontier impulse to "move" westward, left the old farm in Indiana to make a new home in Illinois. "Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams," Mr. Lincoln wrote in 1860; "and Abraham drove one of the teams." They settled ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... champions of my Cid, there those of Carrion; Each with his gaze intent and fixed upon his chosen foe, Their bucklers braced before their breasts, their lances pointing low, Their heads bent down, as each man leans above his saddle-bow. Then with one impulse every spur is in the charger's side, And earth itself is felt to shake beneath their furious stride; Till, midway meeting, three with three, in struggle fierce they lock, While all account them dead who hear the echo of the shock. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... followed by the crash and sound of an engagement. The man who would conduct this imagined spectacle satisfactorily would therefore be dependent rather on the timely uprush of the spirit than on the mechanical certainty of the mind. He would need to act by inspiration and impulse, rather than by cold thought. Quite obviously some other and less resplendent being would have to time the rise of his curtain in the theatre of war. He would be the last man whom one would figure, like Kipling's successful General, "worrying himself bald" over a ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... in Greece. The gay Provencal singers were harbingers of Dante, even as unknown poets prepared the way for Homer. And as Homer was the creator of Grecian literature, so Dante, by his immortal comedy, gave the first great impulse to Italian thought. Hence poets are great benefactors, and we will not let them die in our memories or hearts. We crown them, when alive, with laurels and praises; and when they die, we erect monuments ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... much more, intimate enough to inspire me with a keen interest in the writer, yet not sufficiently so to make my perusal a painful indiscretion. I yielded to the impulse of the moment, took out my pencil, and wrote a dozen lines on one of the blank pages. They ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... boasted reformation will end but in fresh offence, fresh disgrace, and fresh contrition! Adieu, madam!—and may all prosperity attend you! That will be ever my darling wish, however long my absence, however distant the climates which may part us!" He was then hurrying away, but Cecilia, from an impulse of surprise too sudden to be restrained, exclaimed "The climates?—do you, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... with him until a few days ago. In our conversation he told me that on reading a certain passage—he quoted the passage—be was so overpowered that he fell backward in a kind of swoon or trance. Then he was struck by something like a spark of fire. His impulse was to cry out, but he restrained himself, and had such a vision of the love of God that he wept, and wept, and wept, in an ecstasy of joy. Indeed he was overcome when he told me the story. And this man is no weakling, by any means. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... minute and individual structural differences in instruments as in the vocal organs of individuals—differences that each individual can multiply ad infinitum by the subtle and delicate play of muscles acting in response to mental suggestion, art sense, inspiration, temperament, psychic impulse, or by whatever cognate term one ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... seated in the stem of the canoe, gave no evidence that he saw the stubby figure of the German lad who stepped close to the water and hailed him by name. One powerful impulse of the paddle sent the bark structure far up the bank, like the snout of some aquatic monster plunging ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... first impulse was to look round for my companions. I at once perceived Lawless, Mullins, and Oaklands, who were apparently uninjured, though the latter held his hand pressed against his forehead, as if in pain; but Coleman was nowhere to be seen. "Where is ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to and fro, are Molly and Philip Shadwell, evidently in earnest conversation. Philip at least seems painfully intent and eager. They have stopped, as if by one impulse, and now he has taken her hand. She hardly rebukes him; her hand lies passive within his; and now,—now, with a sudden movement, he has placed his arm ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... e.g. 'all sins are burned'—declare the fruits of knowledge to be the same in all cases; and the fact of the body continuing to exist subsequently to the rise of knowledge may be accounted for by the force of an impulse once imparted, just as in the case of the revolution of a potter's wheel.—This view the Stra sets aside. Only those previous works perish the effects of which have not yet begun to operate; for the text 'For him there is delay as long as he ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... is the passion by which nature is most exalted and refined; and as substances, refined and subtilized, easily obey any impulse, or follow any attraction, some part of nature, so purified and refined, flies off after the attracting object, after the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... thought there was nobody in the street. Then I caught sight of a policeman a hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling past on the other side. Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the loafer passed he looked up, and I fancied a signal ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... weakness; and he knew, moreover, that, if his hostess should become aware of his sympathy, her victim would fare all the worse for it. Still, it was not in his nature to repel the affection that yearned toward him with so overwhelming an impulse. He placed his hand tenderly on her head, and said, in a soothing voice, "Be quiet now, my little girl. I hear somebody coming; and you know your mistress expects you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... covered with bushes, through which a few good-sized trees rose. The two men had dug through two feet of alluvial soil, and about five feet of sand. Altogether, it was a place which seemed to afford no promise whatever; and although, at the first impulse, some miners who were doing badly had marked out claims next to those staked out by Frank and his party, no steps ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... remarkable things in the wanderings of species," he observed, "is the sudden impulse to trek and migrate that breaks out now and again, for no apparent reason, in communities of hitherto ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... equally mingled feelings, complicated by astonishment, that he learned a week or so later that Dom Diego had been acquitted of Judaism and set free. Impulse drove him to seek speech with the sufferer. He crossed the river to the physician's house, but only by extreme insistence did he procure access to the high vaulted room in which the old man lay abed, surrounded by huge ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... exhausted. He was sad, too; very depressed. Alone, and no longer surrounded with that splendour which had hitherto made solitude precious, life seemed stripped of all its ennobling spirit. His energy vanished. He repented his rashness; and the impulse of the previous night, which had gathered fresh power from the dewy moon, vanished. He felt alone, and without a friend, and night passed without a moment's slumber, watching ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... served in various Government offices, spending the greater part of the day in complete idleness, and I was told that was intellectual work. My activity in the scholastic and official sphere had required neither mental application nor talent, nor special qualifications, nor creative impulse; it was mechanical. Such intellectual work I put on a lower level than physical toil; I despise it, and I don't think that for one moment it could serve as a justification for an idle, careless life, as it is indeed nothing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nuncia the youngest was left, and she was quite paralytic. From the armchair to the bed, and from the bed to the armchair was all that she could manage with great difficulty. She was also deprived of moral support, as in her sister she lost her protector from impulse. Since she was buried there was no one to keep her in order. With the sudden promotion to the category of persons sui juris, the poor "child" was a prey to great distress, everything worried her, everything was an insuperable difficulty. Those sharp scoldings had been less overwhelming to ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... your pleasure, sir,' answered the young man, with a quick change in his manner to sullen disappointment: 'since it is your pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must submit.' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... that the ceremony was now at an end, and we imagined that Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, thenceforth, until the second Sunday in May, 1852, President of the Republic, would descend from the tribune. But he did not; he felt a magnanimous impulse to bind himself still more rigorously, if possible; to add something to the oath which the Constitution demanded from him, in order to show how largely the oath was free and spontaneous. He asked permission to address the Assembly. "You have ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... she might have caught sight of Gilbert's figure walking steadily with bent head across the plain, away from the river and from the camp, out to the broad solitude beyond. He had acted under an impulse, foolishly, almost unconsciously, being guided by something he ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... blue, or blue-black, and underneath bright chestnut. When close at hand and in the bright sunshine, the aerial gambols of a flock were beautiful to witness, as the birds wheeled about and displayed in turn, as if moved by one impulse, first the rich blue, then the bright chestnut surfaces to the eye. The charming effect was increased by the bell-like, chirping notes they all uttered together, and as they swept round or doubled in the air at intervals ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... hear her clap her hands with delight, and he felt glad that he had followed his impulse to ask just this question instead of one more personal and more in line with ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... of Perugino, and to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some pictures in the neighbouring town of Citta di Castello. With all the features of the Umbrian School, they already show the freer impulse of his own mind,—a decided effort to individualize. The most excellent of these, and the most interesting example of this first period of Raphael's development, is the Marriage of the Virgin (Lo Sposalizio), inscribed with his name and the date 1504, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... in these latter days, put a curb on generous impulse. There were no more niggers underfoot, and hospitality was necessarily curtailed. The people who at the time of the August Horse Show had once packed great hampers with delicious foods, and who had feasted under the trees amid all the loveliness ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment, and where the relations between officers and men are fairly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of a style is reached a change is sure to come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... out in a chattering voice, and from the huts six others, naked as herself, came, stared at the whites, and then, as if driven by the same impulse, and just like rabbits, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was saluting a queen, Nino leaned towards her, and then with a sudden impulse, caught her in his arms, and kissed her heartily. That was the seal of their affection, and from that time Nino assumed all a brother's pride, care, and tenderness. After he had recovered, they were constantly together, and their mother was never so content as ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... self-pleasing limits Ann had always been a good-natured and generous person, and she experienced a strong impulse of this good nature and generosity just now, but it was only for a moment, and she stifled it as a thing that was quite absurd. Her father must be relieved, of course, from his horrid situation; and, after all, Bart could help him quite easily, ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... motionless. Once, when Helen had first yielded to her emotion, she had made a sudden movement forward, and a sweet, sympathetic light had flashed for a moment over her pale features. But something had seemed to restrain her, some chilling memory which had checked her first impulse, and made her resume her former attitude of quiet reserve. She stood there and waited. By and by Helen looked up and started ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the little cockle of a boat is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of lasts but a moment; yet, as the impulse and the upraising of the spirit were vehement, and though the other faculties bestir themselves again, the will continues absorbed, and causes this operation in the body, as if it were the absolute mistress; for now that the two other faculties are restless, and attempt to disturb ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... to try the experiment took possession of the boy as he sat on the topmost rail with the glossy back temptingly near him. Never thinking of danger, he obeyed the impulse, and while Charlie unsuspectingly nibbled at the apple he held, Dan quickly and quietly took his seat. He did not keep it long, however, for with an astonished snort, Charlie reared straight up, and deposited Dan on the ground. The fall did not hurt him, for the turf was ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... sentimental or priggish or Jesuitical. He would just leave the impression that he was mildly interested in Windlow, but that his heart was in his work. He felt sustained by his delicate consideration, and by his judicious chilliness. And so he turned and left her, though an unreasonable impulse seized him to take the child in his arms, and tell her how sweet and delicious she was. She had held the little book in her hand as they sate, as if she had hoped he would ask to look at it; and as he closed the door, he saw ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I thought there was nobody in the street. Then I caught sight of a policeman a hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling past on the other side. Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the loafer passed he looked up, and I fancied a ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... the second floor of the inn. And I, down below startled and bewildered by mysterious words from everyone, watched his blue garments vanishing upwards, and like a man driven by irresistible necessity, muttered incoherent excuses to my amazed companions, and in a blind, unreasoning, unconquerable impulse rushed after him. But I wish I had not. There were several ladies, who, all more or less en deshabille, scampered around with their bundles of gear—sewing, babies' clothes, tin pots, hair ornaments, boxes of powder and scented ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the impulse of a moment. There were too many things to see in this marvelous train. And Kit was demanding her attention from one side and Enid Breckenridge from ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... lady how we ought to feel at such a demonstration. She said, "I presume I know how you gentlemen would be likely to feel and act under the impulse of the moment; but the true way to regard and treat it, as it seems to me, is, with pertinacious forgetfulness." She would not let it disturb her feelings; and she ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... so wonderful that Democritus hath written a whole book of its figure and anatomy, as also of its virtue and propriety in magic. This I can affirm, that I have seen it change its colour, not only at the approach of things that have a colour, but by its own voluntary impulse, according to its fear or other affections; as, for example, upon a green carpet I have certainly seen it become green; but having remained there some time, it turned yellow, blue, tanned, and purple in course, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... pervaded and quickened by the presence of the promised Comforter. On the side of the apostles, we see a boldness and ardor that no persecution can check, united with simplicity and godly sincerity. On the side of the brethren, we see a whole-hearted devotion to the Saviour, under the mighty impulse of faith and love, which opens their hearts in liberality and causes them to have all things in common. On the side of both the apostles and the brethren, we see untiring activity and patient endurance in the Master's service, such as make the primitive church a bright illustration ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine; also how different she would become if wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this life as they are termed: then you would see ...
— The Republic • Plato
... no more than a sub-conscious product of my observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder. But whatever the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it. Therefore, I merely nodded, turned on my heel and went ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... His first impulse was to show the Lady Marcia that he was not to be dismissed and sent for—much less ordered back at the caprice of a girl. His next was to humour the whim of a child, and his third was to obey humbly and thankfully, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... light in her eyes shone on him through the quivering dusk of her lashes. Even when she looked away from him, she could still see his expression of tender gaiety, as though he were trying in vain to laugh himself free from an impulse that was fast growing too strong for him. What she did not know was that the spring was calling to him through her youth and sex as it was calling through the scented winds and the young buds on the trees. She was as ignorant that she offered ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the table, and stood before her, with the one wholly absorbing love of his life glowing in his face. She dared not meet the gaze that thrilled her with an exquisite happiness, and involuntarily rose. Had she not strangled the impulse, her fluttering heart would have prompted her to lean forward, rest her head against his arm, and tell him all; but close as they stood, and realizing that she reigned supreme in his affection, one seemed to rise reproachfully between ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... as solid as a rock, and the bolts are steel, but nothing could withstand that ramming for long." Gentleman Geoff had rallied his waning strength to meet that new note of quickened impulse. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... will cool down to contempt and blame the feelings of a company. People are always eager to pick holes in conduct which they uneasily feel to be above their own reach. Poor Mary! she had but yielded to the uncalculating impulse of her great love, and she finds herself charged with imprudence, waste, and unfeeling neglect of the poor. No wonder that her gentle heart was 'troubled.' But Jesus threw the shield of His approval over her, and that was enough. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the human mind towards any object of laudable pursuit, may be compared to the progress of a body driven by a blow. It moves, for a time, with great velocity and vigour, but the force of the first impulse is perpetually decreasing, and though it should encounter no obstacle capable of quelling it by a sudden stop, the resistance of the medium through which it passes, and the latent inequalities of the smoothest surface, will, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the people have adopted the opinion that under the Constitution slavery has not a legal existence in the Territories. The triumph of this opinion is not the result of any sudden impulse. A President has been elected, and a Government will soon be organized, whose duty it will be to respect and observe the opinions of the people. You are now seeking, by the adoption of a single section, to change these opinions and this policy. Do not ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... music, Miss Sedley—Amelia," said George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that single ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Cassino, the party paid for the refreshments they had taken, and departed. The young man was the last to leave the saloon, and I remarked him glancing behind him in the same way, just as he passed out at the door. I could not resist the impulse to rise and follow him; for I was at an age when a romantic feeling of curiosity is easily awakened. The party walked slowly down the Arcades, talking and laughing as they went. They crossed the Piazzetta, but paused in the middle of it to enjoy the scene. It was one of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... began searching for indications of a favorable point of approach to the river, that hinted at a bridge or a ford. While engaged in this she heard voices approaching. A moment's listening to teh mingling of tones convinced her that it was another crowd of stragglers, and she obeyed her first impulse, which was to leap her horse over a low stone wall to her right. Taking her head again, the mare did not stop until she galloped down to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... toward extreme dinginess rampant about ten years ago, resulting from an obsession to antique everything. The reaction from this, a flaming rainbow of colours, struck a blow to the artistic sense, drew attention back to the value of colour and started the creative impulse along the line ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... little embarrassment, and I could perceive an impulse in Julia to press nearer to her rival, as if impelled by a generous wish to manifest her sympathy. But Tom's protest soon silenced every thing else, and we alighted, and soon ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... has been occupied with care for your safety, dear mother, and that must be my excuse. Now, however, there is an appearance of security which gives one a breathing-time, and my gratitude receives a sudden impulse. As for you, Maud, I regret to be compelled to say that you stand convicted of laziness; not a single thing do I owe to your ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... in that direction can reasonably expect no material recompense, though the experience of Dante, Cervantes, Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not always escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be expected is the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse, which impels one to the task with equal force, whether the ultimate result be affluence ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... king, "the people did not annoy me. They did me the honor of bidding me welcome, and this was the more generous, as I am not one of those who are favored by Fortune. But the German people yield sometimes to generous impulse, and show thereby how little they know of the etiquette and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... became grave and excessively ceremonious. He bowed low over Sophia's hand and kissed it. Her impulse was to laugh, but the gravity of the young man's deference stopped her. She glanced at Gerald, blushing, as if to say: "This comedy is not my fault." Gerald said something, the young man turned to him and his face ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... their slaves, no regular exports of cotton to Europe had yet commenced; and the year New Hampshire set hers free, only 138,328 lbs. of that article were shipped from the country. Simultaneously with the action of Vermont, in the year following, the cotton gin was invented, and an unparalleled impulse given to the cultivation of cotton. At the same time, Louisiana, with her immense territory, was added to the Union, and room for the extension of slavery vastly increased. New York lagged behind Vermont ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... guard. Though dressed in male attire underneath, this sudden freak sent all the ladies—and many of the gentlemen out of the room in double—quick time. The Chevalier, however, instantly recovering from the first impulse, quietly pat down his, upper garment, and begged pardon in, a gentlemanly manner for having for a moment deviated from the forma of his imposed situation. All, the gossips of Paris were presently amused with the story, which, of coarse, reached the Court, with every droll particular of the pulling ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... that Bjornstjerne Bjornson spent the first six years of his life; and the sturdy independence of his nature may have owed something to the unaccommodating life of his earliest days, just as the poetical impulse that was so strong in his developed character probably had its beginnings in the impressions of beauty he received in the years that immediately followed. For, when he was six, a welcome change came. His father was transferred to the tranquil pastorate of Naes, at the mouth of the Romsdal, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... but Ancaeus quickly undertook to guide the swift ship; for he was stirred by the impulse of the goddess. And after him Erginus and Nauplius and Euphemus started up, eager to steer. But the others held them back, and many of his comrades granted it ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... not profoundly convinced of this truth, I should not communicate my resolution to you; but my family is one that has a really German heart, and that would consider me as a coward and an unworthy son if I did not follow this impulse. I certainly feel the greatness of the sacrifice; it costs me something, believe me, to leave my beautiful studies and go to put myself under the orders of vulgar, uneducated people, but this only increases my courage in going to secure the liberty of my ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... deliberation of manner, Mr. Williams drew sabre and easily gave the various orders for the showy manual of arms, the white-gloved hands moving like clockwork in response to his command until, with simultaneous thud, the battalion resumed the "order," certain spectators with difficulty repressing the impulse to applaud. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... by a spontaneous impulse, replete with the most touching grace, joined hands, raised their innocent looks to heaven, and exclaimed, with that beautiful faith natural to their age: "Is it not so, mother?—thou seest ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... labourer is held up to ridicule, and in all the proverbs and popular sayings where the clergy are mentioned it is always with derision. The people shun the clergy, and have recourse to them not from the inner impulse of conscience, but from necessity. . . . And why do the people not respect the clergy? Because it forms a class apart; because, having received a false kind of education, it does not introduce into the life of the people the teaching ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... is ever true, as Faust concludes, that "In the beginning was the deed." The laws of composition are the products of compositions; and, being such, they cannot remain unalterable so long as the impulse freshly to create remains. All great men are ahead of their time, and in all great music, no matter when written, you shall find instances of profounder meaning and deeper or newer feeling than marked the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Dauphin, was dead, and she was pledged by her dying father's command to marry her cousin, whom she detested, Duke John of Brabant. But how much better, so she reasoned, that the name and might of her house as rulers of Holland should be upheld by a brave and fearless knight. On the impulse of this thought she summoned a loyal and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd;' he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and in the second he will propose to himself, upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {373} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable doctor of medicine, who was engaged in conversation with the master of the house at the upper and further end of the table, the writer being a poor ignorant lad, sitting, of course, at the bottom. The doctor, who had ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to youth, transported by some magic spell to the happy days of early girlhood, she forgot her royal dignity and the hundreds of eyes which rested upon him as if spell-bound; and, obedient to an irresistible impulse of the heart, she sank upon the broad, heaving breast of the kneeling hero. Laughing joyously in the clear, silvery tones which are usually heard only in youth, he clasped her in his strong arms, raised her slender figure in its floating royal mantle from the ground, kissed her lips and eyes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... special geological work as a whole, Professor Geikie, while pointing out that it was not "of the same epoch-making kind as his biological researches," remarks that he "gave a powerful impulse to" the general reception of Lyell's teaching "by the way in which he gathered from all parts of the world facts in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... morning papers having gone to press, the boys came down into the office with the night-gang of reporters to spend the dog-watch, according to their wont, in a game of ungodly poker. They were flush, for it had been pay-day in the afternoon, and under the reckless impulse of the holiday the jack-pot, ordinarily modest enough for cause, grew to unheard-of proportions. It contained nearly fifteen dollars when Rudie opened it at last. Amid breathless silence, he then and there made the only public ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either this invasion would not have made the ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... as the shadow extended, there might also the body that cast it reach in its fall, for fall it obviously must; and as the danger was pressing, he deemed it unwise to discuss which of the four cardinal points the tower might feel a leaning toward, whenever, under the impulse of the subterranean scourge, it would "look around and choose its ground." Don Marzio was gifted with animal courage, and even nerve, proportionate to the might of his stalwart frame. But then his was merely a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... a powerful impulse to do violence upon the person of his comrade-in-arms. The emotion that prompted this impulse was so primitive and straightforward that it almost resulted in action; but Sam had a vague sense that he must control it as long as ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... labour, or trade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitive passions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who have no economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate. But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men must divide their labour, which means that they must put some sort of reliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and the attitude towards it changes. And as this life ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... my resources would be small, on account of the proportion of women and children. I do not know whether I am right, for I speak from impulse, and have not reasoned upon the matter. I say, altho' my plan is at once to give freedom to the negroes, and gain soldiers to the states; in case of concurrence, I should sacrifice the former interest, and therefore we change the women and children for able-bodied men. The more of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... loyal pal Patricia Templeton, who gave him the first impulse toward the game again. To her pleading he had yielded so far as to coach, on a Saturday afternoon, her team of High School girls to victory. But it was the Reverend Murdo Matheson who furnished the spur to conscience that resulted in the ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke out clapping as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes's pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that for ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, in these latter days, put a curb on generous impulse. There were no more niggers underfoot, and hospitality was necessarily curtailed. The people who at the time of the August Horse Show had once packed great hampers with delicious foods, and who had feasted under the trees ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... cover, but they contended in open fight. What just cause can 193 be found for the encounter of so many nations, or what hatred inspired them all to take arms against each other? It is proof that the human race lives for its kings, for it is at the mad impulse of one mind a slaughter of nations takes place, and at the whim of a haughty ruler that which nature has taken ages to ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... fire awaiting their return, when what was our dismay to see two huge wolves approaching the camp, followed by a number of cubs! Our first impulse was to fly; and while the wolves stopped to eat up our provisions, we were able to escape to a distance. We took refuge in the hollow of a tree, which afforded us sufficient shelter, and the aperture being some way up, we felt sure the wolves could not make their way in. But Maysotta has been ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... a blind, primeval impulse that urged me on. This Mr. Indiman had chosen to fish in muddy waters, and his rashness but matched my necessity. A host must expect to entertain his guests. I walked up the steps ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... hope and aspiration. As a race, we are struggling for life. Our hopes and fears are trembling in the balance against might, power, and moss-covered prejudices. A continuous pounding, directed by the impulse of a will to do, dare and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... imagined and was obviously sincere, since she did not know Jim would be rich, but he doubted if she could keep it up. Jim was rude and tempestuous, and she would not be satisfied with him long. The trouble was the romantic impulse might sustain her until it was too late, for Jim would, no doubt, urge an ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of a bullet going into thick flesh, and the soldier sprang to his feet—the impulse seemed uncontrollable for the wounded to spring to their feet—and dropped with a groan—dead. Crittenden straightened him out sadly—putting his hat over his face and drawing his arms to his sides. Above, he saw with sudden nausea, buzzards circling—little cared ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... still speaking on impulse.] How is she! Cynthia K? How's Planet II and the colt and Golden Rod? How's the whole stable? Are ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... somewhere." Upon these two prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... wrapped in fatty tissue that should be saturated with acetylcholine. Every time a nerve impulse is transmitted from one nerve cell to the next, a molecule of acetylcholine is consumed. Thus acetylcholine has to be constantly replaced. As the body ages, levels of acetylcholine surrounding the nerves drop and in consequence, the nerves begin ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The Girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... wrong, you know. She was not tall, even for her age, and just a little too plump for the immediate suggestion of grace. Yet every motion of the child would have been graceful, except for the fact that impulse was always predominant, giving a certain jerkiness, like the hopping of a bird, instead of the gliding of one motion into another, such as you might see in the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a shriek of pain shot through Mrs. Grapp's ears, and sent her out of her dreams and out of her bed, and with one single impulse into the kitchen, with her own bare feet, and in ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... subdivided into justice and charity. Of justice one of the Heathen sages has shown, with great acuteness, that it was impressed upon mankind only by the inconveniencies which injustice had produced. "In the first ages," says he, "men acted without any rule but the impulse of desire; they practised injustice upon others, and suffered it from others in their turn; but in time it was discovered, that the pain of suffering wrong was greater than the pleasure of doing it; and mankind, by a general compact, submitted to the restraint of laws, and resigned ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the employer of capital takes the place of interest. This form of capitalism can never lead to over-production, for under it—as in the pre-capitalistic epoch—it is the demand for capital that gives the first impulse to the creation of capital. But that this kind of capitalisation is impracticable in an exploiting society needs no proof. For such a society there is no other means of making the spontaneously accumulating capital serviceable to production ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... describe creation as a purely physical, generative process. They taught the evolution of the more complex from the simpler forms. Plato and Aristotle believed in a transcendental deity and found in the world indications of a vital impulse toward a higher manifestation ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... the last injunction of Neale, I could think of no excuse, no explanation. The girl, still staring blankly at me, must have perceived how I instinctively shrank back, my lips moving in an impotent effort at speech. Some sudden impulse changed her fright into sympathy. However it was the officer who impatiently broke the silence, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... distinction, however, must be noted between the coming of the exalted Beings from the Venus scheme and that of those described as the highly evolved humanity of some previous system of evolution. The former, as we have seen, were under no karmic impulse. They came as men to live and work among them, but they were not required to assume their physical limitations, being in a position to provide appropriate vehicles ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... plunge in—to plunge in with one last backward look to the more exquisite joys he must leave behind—and tell her that his strength and loyalty were hers to dispose of as she would when she herself unwittingly balked the impulse. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... had dismissed as impossible or highly impractical his impulse to investigate the eleven-year-old scandal on Flora Hackett, who was now Flora Miles, as told him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course—he had ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to argue this thing is before Judge Stillman," said Struve—but with little notion of the conflict going on within Glenister. The youth yearned to fight—not with words nor quibbles nor legal phrases, but with steel and blows. And he felt that the impulse was as righteous as it was natural, for he knew this process was unjust, an outrage. Mexico Mullins's warning recurred to him. And yet—. He shifted slowly as he talked till his back was to the door of the big tent. They ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... turn it towards Him, and even to your enemy the fashion of your countenance will be changed. Whatever you then do, one thing you will find you could not do—you could not write that letter. Your first impulse may be the same, your judgement may be unchanged, but if you try it the ink will dry on your pen, and you will rise from your desk an unavenged, but greater and more Christian man. Throughout the whole day your actions, down ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... go upstairs she looked into the parlor, and saw Alice sitting with her head bowed upon her hand. Her first impulse was to go in and try to justify herself in the eyes of this girl, with whom she knew that Mr. Sawyer was in love; but no, she was but a waif, with no name, no birthright, no heritage; that woman had ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both became suddenly silent as they gazed. Godolphin was the first to speak: it brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the page. With his own ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fresh contrition! Adieu, madam!—and may all prosperity attend you! That will be ever my darling wish, however long my absence, however distant the climates which may part us!" He was then hurrying away, but Cecilia, from an impulse of surprise too sudden to be restrained, exclaimed "The climates?—do you, then, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... who had no other fund, was ready to lose courage, when Xavier, by a certain impulse of spirit, suddenly began to embrace seven sea captains there present, who were of the council of war. He begged of them to divide the business amongst them, and each of them apart to take care of fitting ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... communication with Charlotte Kunz's signature, although there are the strongest marks in the communication, that she could not write it, but that a deluding and destroying guardian of J. V. Mansfield wrote it, partly according to her wishes, partly according to his own impulse, partly according to the dictation of our leader who controlled him, that he inserted the characteristic notes given by our leader. This is the epitome of that treatise, which was to be given in this treatise as a peculiar preparation to my epistle to ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... tastes, so temperate in his likings, had entered certain devious paths, where hidden pitfalls and thorny enclosures warn the unwary traveller of unknown dangers, and in which he was walking, not blindfold, but by strongest will and intent, led by impulse like a mere boy, and not daring to raise his eyes to the future. "And what Grace would have said!" And for the first time in his life Archie felt that in this case he could not ask Grace's advice. He was loath to turn in at his own gate; but Mattie was standing ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Simply to have had the sensation would have for him been enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... one end to which, in all living beings, the formative impulse is tending—the one scheme which the Archaeus of the old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. It is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the bureau he found refreshment that was continually renewed. He experienced again, and with a far more violent impulse, the enthusiasm that had attended the writing of his book a year or two before, and so, perhaps, passed from one drug to another. It was, indeed, with something of rapture that he imagined the great procession of years all to be devoted to the intimate analysis ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... The impulse to revolutionize the system comes from the belief that it is irreclaimably bad. The first thing to be done is to see how much reclaiming the system is capable of; and the only sure way to test this question is to use all our power in the ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... with metempsychosis, though it frequently exists apart from it. I doubt if there is sufficient reason for attributing the doctrine of the Logos[1110] to India, but it is possible that asceticism and the belief in metempsychosis received their first impulse thence. They appear late and, like the phraseology of the Hermetic books, they do not grow naturally out of antecedent ideas and practices in Egypt and Palestine. The life followed by such communities as the Therapeutae ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... heard the words, "That retreat from Norfolk was badly conducted." I looked up, and saw before me a rather good-looking man covered with the greatest profusion of gold cloth and buttons, for which I intuitively despised him. The impulse seized me, so I spoke. "Were you there?" "No; but near by. I was there with the First Louisiana for 'most a year." "Do you know George Morgan?" "Know George? Yes, indeed! You are his sister." This was an assertion; but I bowed assent, and he went on, "Thought so, from the resemblance. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... darkness mistakes the Count for her lover, who however comes up just in time to claim her. The Count is full of rage, and there follows a duel in which Manrico is wounded, but though it is in his power to kill his enemy, he spares his life, without however being able to account for the impulse. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... there was no need of further restraint. The silence, the stress, most of all the burning liquor flung a wild and devastating flame through his veins, a dreadful madness seized his brain. There was no saving grace, no impulse of manhood, no memory of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... studying the girl's soft profile, now flashing out in a sudden sharp light, now melting back again into the vagueness of the shadows. What was there about this girl, Corinna asked herself, which appealed so strongly to the protective impulse in her heart? Was it because this undisciplined child, with that curious sporting instinct which supplied the place of Victorian morality, represented for her, as well as for Stephen, some inarticulate longing for the unknown, for the adventurous? ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty there ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Max was so deeply impressed by the girl's words, her looks, her manner, by the gloom of the cold, dark passage, by the desolate appearance of the two deserted buildings before which they stood, that his first impulse was an overpowering desire to run away. Acting upon it he even took a couple of rapid steps in the direction of the street he had left, passing the girl and getting clear of the uncanny boarded-up front ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... result of special experience, either incarnated as a new man or usurping all the faculties of one already in the flesh, and it is marvellous how subtilely and with what truth to as much of human nature as is included in a diseased consciousness he traces all the finest nerves of impulse and motive, how he compels every trivial circumstance into an accomplice of his art, and makes the sky flame with foreboding or the landscape chill and darken with remorse. It is impossible to think of Hawthorne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the devil once lived in or haunted these parts: now my hill-top fancy tells me that once upon a time a better being, a wandering angel, flew over the country, and looking down and seeing it so dark-hued and desolate, a compassionate impulse took him, and unclasping his light mantle he threw it down, so that the human inhabitants should not be without that sacred green colour that elsewhere beautifies the earth. There to this day it lies where it fell—a mantle of moist ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... it was not that she did not know that she had the Friend who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever;" it was simply that she could not feel it, and joy in it as she had done only yesterday; and her religious life was too recent not to be swayed by feeling and impulse. ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker, cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his character many good lessons of plain commonsense—a rather unusual equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Great Britain and Ireland, which Ministers were now preparing, was recommended to the consideration of Parliament in a message from the King on the 22nd of January. The Rebellion had given a decisive impulse to the project by effectually demonstrating the want of power, energy, and influence of the local Parliament to control the insubordinate spirit of the country, or to provide adequate remedies for existing and acknowledged evils. It was considerably accelerated also by the despair of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... what his heart would have had him do; but for interests whose claim upon him is in his estimation greater than that of affection (einer Welt zu Liebe: for the sake of a world), he had elected not to follow his heart's impulse. And this delinquent, daughter at once and his own will, must not only be punished for the example of all the disobedient, but cut off from himself, to provide absolutely against any possible repetition of the so lovable ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... moment no one moved; then as by one impulse, and without a word, Dona Modeste Castro and her guests rose and ran through the streets to the Custom-house on the edge of ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... that she knew very little about it, and set herself to get some definite information. The head of the committee, pleased with Mary's sudden enthusiasm, sent her to one of the faculty trustees, and for a few days Mary, who was entirely a creature of impulse, could talk of nothing but the splendid work of the Harding Aid Society in helping the poorer members of the college ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Thanks to the efforts of the vaccinateur, the Dayaks, who were very friendly, submitted to the novel experience of the camera and kept me busy the day that we remained there. A great number of women whom I photographed in a group, as soon as I gave the signal that it was all over, rushed with one impulse to the river to cleanse themselves from the evil effects ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... We have further found that this aesthetic human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in different countries and even in the same country at different periods, by a tendency, prompted by a sexual impulse which is not necessarily in harmony with aesthetic cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or other of the prominent secondary sexual characters of the body. We now come to another tendency which is apt to an even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had repudiated selfish love. Kurt Dorn was in France in the land of the trenches! Strife possessed her and had a moment of raw, bitter triumph. She bit her lips and clenched her fists, to restrain the impulse to rush madly around the room, to scream out her fear and hate. With forcing her thought, with hard return to old well-learned arguments, there came back the nobler emotions. But when she took up the letter again, with trembling hands, her heart fluttered high and sick, and she saw the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... of my friend Leonidas have been proved true within a few minutes," said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. "In doubt we turned at once and with involuntary impulse to Stonewall Jackson to think of a way. He has impressed us, as he has impressed the privates, ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a choice of joy, but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease to see before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes? Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must forever sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had let go the clue of life,—that clue which once in the far-off years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within her ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... biography of the famous tallow-chandler who would not appreciate the Watchman. The real events of Coleridge's life are not his gig excursions and his walking tours; they are his thoughts, dreams and passions, his moments of creative impulse, their source and secret, his moods of imaginative joy, their marvel and their meaning, and not his moods merely but the music and the melancholy that they brought him; the lyric loveliness of his voice when he sang, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... his soldiers from dispersing to their several cities, and encouraged them to stay with Sulla and to despise their opponents, though many times more numerous than themselves. At Silvium,[270] as Sulla says, a slave of one Pontius, moved by a divine impulse, met him and declared that he brought from Bellona assurance of superiority in war and victory, but that if he did not make haste the Capitol would be burnt; and this is said to have happened on the very day which the man foretold, being the day before ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... proposed Constitution. The vassalage of the poor has ever been the favorite offspring of Aristocracy. And What is the proposed compensation to the Northern States for a sacrifice of every principle of right, of every impulse of humanity. They are to bind themselves to march their militia for the defence of the S. States; for their defence agst those very slaves of whom they complain. They must supply vessels & seamen, in case of foreign Attack. The Legislature will have indefinite power to tax them by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... the Gr. [Greek: ballein], to throw), the science of throwing warlike missiles or projectiles. It is now divided into two parts:—Exterior Ballistics, in which the motion of the projectile is considered after it has received its initial impulse, when the projectile is moving freely under the influence of gravity and the resistance of the air, and it is required to determine the circumstances so as to hit a certain object, with a view to its destruction or perforation; and Interior Ballistics, in which the pressure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... a young man whom she called Albert, who had often been employed by Mrs. Bell, at work about the farm and garden. Albert was a very sedate and industrious young man, of frank and open and manly countenance, and of an erect and athletic form. Mary Erskine liked Albert very well, and yet the first impulse was, when she saw him coming, to cross over to the other side of the road, and thus pass him at a little distance. She did in fact take one or two steps in that direction, but thinking almost immediately ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... color rioted about him, submerged him, fatigued him. He had a strong impulse to sleep, but ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... My first impulse was one of despair, but my second was towards joy. Round she came, till she was broadside on to me—round still till she had covered a half, and then two-thirds, and then three-quarters of the distance that separated us. I could see the waves boiling white ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Previous understanding—or what he thought was understanding—has been invalidated, destroyed. The drive to keep living, that was present in that first moment of awareness, has weakened. The strongest impulse is to escape the terror that follows awareness without understanding. Death ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... separation from God, who can have no fellowship with evil, for sin is the abominable thing which He hates, and on which He cannot even look. A breach, altogether irreparable on man's part, was made between man and his Creator when the first transgression of the law of God took place. The impulse of every sinner, which only Divine power can overcome, is to flee from God. Hence arises the necessity for reconciliation, and for the intervention of God to effect it. That the unity thus broken may be restored, expiation ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... saw amid a dazzling collection of jewelled articles for travellers and letter-writers and diary-keepers, a sublime gold handbag, or, as the French say, hand-sack. Its clasp was set with a sapphire. Impulse sent her gliding right into the shop, with the words already on her lips: "How much is that gold hand-sack in the window?" But when she reached the hushed and shadowed interior, which was furnished like a ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of affairs may come about more easily than logical, statistical-minded people may be disposed to think. Our first impulse, when we discuss the League of Nations idea, is to think of some very elaborate and definite scheme of members on the model of existing legislative bodies, called together one hardly knows how, and sitting ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... on life, beyond an occasional impulse to commit suicide, or to get drunk, and drifted down the street, semi-conscious, walking apparently on air, in the light-headedness of grief. I had money in my pocket, whether mine or my creditors' I had no means ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... building on Broadway near Leonard Street was secured, and the club moved into it, there to remain for three years. Then, for seven years, it was in a house on the other side of Broadway, and in 1847, obeying the prevalent impulse up-townward, it shifted its quarters to the spot from which it was later to remove to the Twenty-first Street home. That structure at Broadway and Fourth Street was the property of the Stuyvesant family, and ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... same instant. It seems as if they drew it in with the air they breathed. It is something like community of mind, or unity of mind. Of course it is not an intellectual process, but an emotional process; not a thought, as with us, but an impulse. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... melt into charity at the eloquent persuasion of silent sorrow. When he sees the widow's tear, and hears the orphan's sigh, every one will act with a sudden uniform rectitude, because he acts from the divine impulse of 'free love dealt equally ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... more abundantly for ever." This attitude, where it concerns religion, involves two corollaries: first, what in accordance with Hebrew precedent may be called symbolically faith in God, that is, confidence in one's own impulse and destiny, a confidence which the world in the end is sure to reward; and second, abomination of all contrary religious tenets and practices—of asceticism, for instance, because it denies the will; of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... wandered further than the others, perhaps, and came suddenly on a hole in the side of the rock. Not a natural fissure, but evidently a man-made doorway; oval, with carved pillars at the sides, and an inscription over the door. Kavanagh's first impulse was to go in, his second one not to. Why, there might be an army inside! But by the time the risk occurred to him he was through the portals, and he was afraid of turning, not knowing what was behind him. So he took a pace to his rear, still looking into the interior, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... been obtained by the protection of the Gods. The triumphal arch, which was erected about three years after the event, proclaims, in ambiguous language, that by the greatness of his own mind, and by an instinct or impulse of the Divinity, he had saved and avenged the Roman republic. The Pagan orator, who had seized an earlier opportunity of celebrating the virtues of the conqueror, supposes that he alone enjoyed a secret and intimate commerce with the Supreme Being, who delegated ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... could not wholly despise him now. He was willing to admit that Houck had been right when he called it a fluke. The chance might not have come to him, or he might not have taken it. The scream of little Maggie Wiggins had saved the day for him. If he had had time to think—but fortunately impulse had swept him into action before he could let ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... the world as a sucking child; whimsical, impatient, and so impetuous, that he could not help breaking in upon the conversation, whatever it might be, with repeated interruptions, that seemed to burst from him by involuntary impulse. When he himself attempted to speak he never finished his period; but made such a number of abrupt transitions, that his discourse seemed to be an unconnected series of unfinished sentences, the meaning of which it was not easy ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the very midst of it, crowded together, leaning over, stretching necks and breathing quickly with excitement, when Marco lifted his head. Some mysterious impulse made him do it in ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Erskine![91] thou couldst and wouldst have told me. I must consult J.B., who is as honest as was W.E. But then, though he has good taste too, there is a little of Big Bow-wow about it. Can't say what made me take a frisk so uncommon of late years, as to write verses of freewill. I suppose the same impulse which makes birds sing when the storm ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the result of a passing impulse," he thought, "sooner or later she will come to me. Nature, however, tolerates no fitful, half-hearted scholars, and should she prove one, she will be contented with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of the people in the day and hour, under the impulse of sudden caprice or passion, is anything but the voice of God: it is much more apt to be the voice of all the powers of darkness. It is common thought, sifted through uncommon thought, that approaches ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... our hearts had awakened on the threshold and accused us. The crypt has long been used as a charnel house, the guide-book tells you, but maybe it is not any memory of the unremembered and countless dead that has stirred in your heart, but some stranger impulse urging you to a dislike of the darkness, that dim mysterious light that is part of the north and has nothing to do with Italy. How full of twilight it is, yet once in this place a temple to Apollo stood, full of the sun, almost within sound of the sea, when, we know not how,[74] the Pisans ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... great throb of admiration beat through me. Her attitude as she waited by the door, one hand clasping the handle, her face turned towards me, was so perfect, the acquiescence so graceful and dignified; but it was only for a moment, the anger closed over the impulse of love again, and I walked up and down the room full ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... discovery, my first impulse was to fling myself back into the waves from which I had been saved; my second was to seize my sword and fly at the first man I saw, and so die for my country then ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... result of her own observation of life, had prepared her to cope with this. Outrageous as were his words and tone, she could only show that she resented them by implicitly accusing him of making love to her; and her flurried impulse was to ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... twenty-four years in the service of the people of Ohio, in the Legislature, and as Canal Commissioner, and Fund Commissioner. His history would be almost a complete financial and political history of Ohio. He gave a greater impulse to the physical development of Ohio, and left upon its statute books higher proofs of wisdom and forecast than any who had preceded him. Indeed, few persons have ever lived who, merely by personal exertions, have left behind them more numerous and lasting ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the desert, the bellowing of bulls—no, it was a noise which can be compared to no known cry. And yet, mingling with this horrible and ominous roar, we could hear a woman's feeble scream. We all looked round, seized by I know not what impulse of terror; we no longer saw the house, but a huge bonfire. The farmhouse had been barricaded, and was in flames. Swirls of smoke borne on the wind brought us hoarse cries and an indescribable pungent ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... on. Up and down the stone-paved courtyard he paced, much to the perturbation of the sentry at the gateway, who found the form of madness with which the Sahib must be afflicted difficult to classify. Gerrard was wrestling with himself and with the impulse to throw up political employment altogether and go back to the routine work of his profession. When he and Charteris left Ranjitgarh together, he had envied his friend, and wished that his work also lay in the open air and among unsophisticated children ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... countenance of the proposed Constitution. The vassalage of the poor has ever been the favorite offspring of aristocracy. And what is the proposed compensation to the Northern States for a sacrifice of every principle of right, of every impulse of humanity? They are to bind themselves to march their militia for the defence of the Southern States, for their defence against those very slaves of whom they complain. They must supply vessels and seamen in case of foreign attack. The Legislature will have ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... weeks' struggle between life and death, there glowed such love in every look and gesture and impulse of the soul of the pious creature, that each effusion of her feelings seemed like the expression of a lifetime. The mother thought only of her son; she herself counted for nothing; sustained by love, she was unaware of her sufferings. D'Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, Pierre ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... destroyer; he doesn't think, he spurts out words. His words and arguments are simply parrot mimicry and void of intellectual impulse, as are the movements ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... estimable father the great and priceless dowry of a true, tender, and lovin' 'art! ALEXIS (coldly) I do not question it. After all, a faithful love is the true source of every earthly joy. SIR M. I knew that my boy would not blame his poor father for acting on the impulse of a heart that has never yet misled him. Zorah is not perhaps what the world calls beautiful— DR. D. Still she is comely—distinctly comely. (Sighs) ALINE Zorah is very good, and very clean, and honest, and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... emerging. More than four years of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being published under another. My first impulse, therefore, was to ask whether the change which has rendered so much of the old world obsolete had not invalidated also the conclusions here arrived at. But reflection has simply confirmed me in the desire to complete the arrangements for publication. Self-government is the keynote ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has ALL the marks of a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the same order and together take the same length of time. The memory of each several reading, on the contrary, has NONE of the marks of ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... so cold and immovable; you are not a bit like me. I am all sensitiveness and impulse. Well, if it is not raining cats and dogs I will go into that awful City ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... keeping with the characteristics of his art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard, with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed, speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Ireland in 1056, and after some wanderings established himself at Mainz in 1069. He compiled a chronicle, which is of considerable value.[11] Hereafter I shall have to mention other Irish men of travel; and it will be seen that from some of them, who returned home, came the main impulse to the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... my hand, then came a mental struggle; my first impulse was to get cold water, the next to look at her cunt. I went towards the door, turned round to look at her. Her calves were visible, I ran back, and lifted her clothes, so that I could just see her cunt-hair, gave her thighs a kiss, and then rushed downstairs, got water, and as ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Princess drew near to Phyllis the brown eyes of the one met the blue-green eyes of the other. There was almost an exclamation on Phyllis's lips; there was almost a question on Gretchen's; both paled. Phyllis understood, but Gretchen did not, why the impulse to speak came. Then the brown eyes of Phyllis turned their penetrating gaze to my own eyes, which I was compelled to shift. I bowed, and the Princess and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... importance in the history of poetical careers. Mr Arnold lived more than twenty years after the date of their publication; but his poetical production during that time filled no more than a few pages. At this date he was a man of forty-five—an age at which the poetical impulse has been supposed to run low, but perhaps with no sufficient reason. Poets of such very different types as Dryden and Tennyson have produced work equal to their best, if not actually their best, at that age and later. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... scorn that had kindled in Blandford's eyes, darkened with a swift shadow of compassion as he glanced at Demorest's hard, ashen face. He held out his hand with a sudden impulse. "Enough, I accept your offer, and shall put it to the test this very night. I know—if you do not—that Rosita is to leave here for Los Osos an hour from now in a private carriage, which your wife has ordered especially for her. The same information ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... uncertain what to do or say. His impulse was to turn and go back, but he did not ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... scrape an acquaintance; I knew that he had approached me and was loitering in my neighbourhood for that specific purpose. I don't know, I have studied the psychology of the moment in vain to understand, why I felt a perverse impulse to put him off. I was interested in him, I was curious about him; and there he stood, testifying that the interest was reciprocal, ready to make the advances, only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... upon her face. Moreover, there was justice in the sense of wrong discernible upon her features when the very self looked forth from them. All through his life John Hewett had suffered from the same impulse of revolt; less sensitively constructed than his daughter, uncalculating, inarticulate, he fumed and fretted away his energies in a conflict with forces ludicrously personified. In the matter of his second marriage he was seen at his best, generously defiant ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the face of any possible temptation, William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by certain appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which determined all his after life. He spent but a scant two years in college; and the work of the lecture rooms must have suffered seriously during that time from the contention and confusion of the changes then in progress; so that academically the college could not ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... her violence of grief might disturb her father. All was still below. She looked on the face so changed, and yet so strangely like. She bent down to kiss it. The cold unyielding flesh struck a shudder to her heart, and hastily obeying her impulse, she grasped the candle, and opened the door. Then she heard the sobs of her father's grief; and quickly, quietly stealing down the steps, she knelt by him, and kissed his hand. He took no notice at first; ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... boundary of the farm Mr. Preston met Maurice. Some impulse, for he was not a softhearted man himself, made him stop, call the pretty boy to his side, and give him half ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... son — that I verily believe; but I know not what Llewelyn may say or do at any time. He never speaks to me of what is in his head. Lady Gertrude, you know the king and his ways. Will he visit this rash deed upon my brother's head? Will Llewelyn suffer for what he did in an impulse of mad rage, provoked to it by yon haughty youth, whose words and bearing are hard for ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... boyish impulse on John Ellison's part, and an innocent purchaser of the mill would have laughed at him; but he stepped nearer to Colonel Witham and said, earnestly, "You'll have to let me in here some day, Colonel Witham. The mill isn't ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... water supply, and general organization; while the country, as the acreage of vines and oranges, wheat and barley, grain and corn, and the shipments by rail testify, has improved more than at any other period, and commerce is beginning to feel the impulse of a genuine prosperity, based upon the intelligent cultivation of the ground. School-houses have multiplied; libraries have been founded; many "boom" hotels, built in order to sell city lots in the sage-brush, have been turned into schools ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... is a sheer impossibility, and to lay our plans as though it were feasible and soon to be realized, is to embark on the body of a sleeping whale in the belief that it is an island in the sea. And to negotiate peace abroad and give an impulse to politics at home, with that comforting prospect in mind, is to lead the nation into a Serbonian bog whence no escape is possible. The leaders of Great Britain are so permeated with the duties, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... more brilliant, arose from the absence of the PRESS. Their intellectual state was that of men talked to, not written to. Their imagination was perpetually called forth—their deliberative reason rarely;—they were the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective in proportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. Nor must it be forgotten that the representative system, which is the proper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown to the Greeks [160], and if unconsciously practised in the Spartan ephoralty, was at least never existent ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time, and there was a pause in the pulling, the boat still driving through the water with the impulse which had been given her, as if she ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the halves of the torn card between her fingers for some moments, looking at them. Then, sighing deeply, she rose with sudden impulse and, crossing the room, took up a box of matches. Striking one, she applied it to the corners of the half cards and held the latter until the blue flame crept ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... adjoining room came the sound of Cavendish's breathing, but now it was more raucous, more like groan following groan. The Lieutenant-Governor strove in vain to put off the foreboding which lay heavy upon him, until, finally, unable to resist the impulse, he rose, slid his feet into his slippers, and going noiselessly into the drawing-room, stepped to the windows and put the curtains softly aside. What first met his eye as he turned was the door of his little wine-closet ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... ladies was not quite so elaborate as she had planned. There came to her an impulse to tell her morning's experience. She shrank from doing it. It seemed a sacred thing. They might not understand. But the impulse remained and she obeyed it, and quietly told them. And as they listened there seemed to come a touch of the Spirit's presence upon them all. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... eagerly into the conflict, pouring out their blood like water and their wealth without measure, for a sentiment, a principle, that may be summed up in the one word—"nationality." "The great uprising" was not the movement of a blind, unreasoning impulse. A fire had been smoldering in the North for years. The first cannon shot, that hurtled around the old flag as it floated over the walls of Fort Sumter shook down the barriers that confined it, and the free winds of liberty fanned it to ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... conceivable, this will be all the more the case in matters of Strategy. It is not so much a question then of handling the corps as a closed unit, for instance, on a single road, but of assigning within a certain sphere a united impulse to the constituent parts of the Command in such directions that in all cases they should reach the ground in force superior to anything the enemy can oppose to them. According to circumstances, different tasks ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... that suffers from proctitis, etc., have a natural stool? Unnatural conditions require preternatural aids, as we all know. The injected water dilates the constricted portion of the gut and arouses a revulsive impulse to expel the invading water. In obeying this impulse the imprisoned feces, gases, etc., are ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... not wish this young man to know my position in the house. Was it possible he did not wholly trust him? My hands trembled from the machine and I was about to turn and give my full thought to what I had to say. But pride checked the impulse. "No," I muttered in quick dissuasion, to myself. "He must see that I can do two things at once and do both well." And so I went ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... tribute to his memory in a dedication (which was not, however, printed) to the second edition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. "That I could make use of and cultivate in a right direction the powers which nature gave me," he concludes, "that I could follow my natural impulse and think and work for countless others without the help of any one; for that I thank thee, my father, thank thy activity, thy cleverness, thy thrift and care for the future. Therefore I praise thee, my noble father. And every one who from my work derives any pleasure, consolation, or instruction ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the girdle at her waist, her naked, ivory arms and even the slippers on her feet. As she approached in her royal-looking beauty all the guests at that strange feast stared first at her and next at each other. Then as though by a single impulse they rose and bowed. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the terror, the terror! The darkness seemed alive with fearful presences. The lurid glare of her own eyeballs flashed backwards into her brain. She tried one more match; it kindled as it should, and she lighted another lamp. Her first impulse was to assure herself that nothing was changed in the familiar objects around her. She held the lamp up to the picture of Judith Pride. The beauty looked at her, it seemed as if with a kind of lofty recognition in her eyes; but there she was, as always. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel.... It seems that the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... you, my Lord, on the impulse of the moment, dictated by desperation, and adopted without reflection. No, my Lord; I had, or, at least, I thought I had, better reasons. I remembered that you had once condescended to address me 'candidly, not critically,' that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... of the masses; they are the highest manifestations of spiritual life. The thinker's flights beyond the confines of reality, the inventor's gift to join old materials in new combinations, the artist's creative impulse, the poet's inspiration, the seer's prophetic vision—every emanation from man's ideal nature clothes itself with sinews, flesh, and skin, and lives in a people's legends, the repositories of its art, poetry, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... out from the bag, and as the two boys began to eat Fred's hunger returned with such a force that he could not resist the impulse to ask for food. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... something supernatural; the designation daimonion itself seems to be his own. I think that we must seek for the origin of Socrates's peculiar mode of life in this direction, strange as it may be that a purely mystic element should have given the impulse to the most rationalistic philosophy the world has ever produced. It is impossible to enter more deeply into this problem here; but, if my conjecture is correct, we have an additional explanation of the fact that Socrates was disposed to anything rather than ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... and fell like a drowsy tune. On the highest peaks the after-glow still lingered, and from one of the little cottages deep in the shadow across the stream a light appeared like a signal, an invitation, and, the blood in him being young, accepted the lure. He rose with the impulse. "I'm going! Why not? 'Tis a night for adventure. There's no need of involving myself in any wise with their future. I'm an outsider, and will take precious good care to stay so." His face was impassive, but his heart was quick within him as he set foot on the bridge. "Perhaps this is my Rubicon?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... went on, "the space co-ordinates with great precision. That is how we have been able to select the destination for this carrier now. You cannot travel upon impulse by this method. Our engineers, as you might call them, must go in advance with recording apparatus. Nothing can ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... mother away. The thought of poor dead Annie Coulson flashed into Philip's mind. Could he be playing the same game with Sylvia? Philip set his teeth and tightened his lips at the thought of it. They had stopped talking; they had seen him already, or his impulse would have been to dodge behind the wall and avoid them; even though one of his purposes in going to Haytersbank had been to bid ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... SOCRATES: And the impulse which leads him to the opposite of what he is experiencing proves that he has a memory ...
— Philebus • Plato
... Knowledge of Ruth's affection being revealed, Which, if he stayed to let it feed on him, Vine-like might wreathe and wind about his life, Lifting all shade and sweetness out of reach Of Robert, so long his friend—honor, and hopes He would not name, kindled a torch for war Of various impulse in him. Reuben wedded; Yet Jerry lingered. Then, swift whisperings Along reverberant walls of gossips' ears Hummed loud and louder a love for Ruth. Grace, too, Involved him in a web of soft surmise With Ruth; and Reuben questioned ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... University. We went together in the Cambray Coach, and after a short stay at Doway, we proceeded on to the Army, which then was under that expert and resolute General the Duke of Luxembourg. It was certainly a kind impulse of Heaven that gave me my Brother for a Companion upon this Occasion; for an Action happening soon after, viz. the famous Battle of Launden, where it was my Misfortune to be dangerously wounded. I had the Satisfaction of my Brother's Company and ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... on the work with no idea of being paid for his services, although if oil was found, and he had needed any small amount of money, he would not have hesitated to ask for it. The work had been begun by him upon the impulse of the moment, and this making him an equal owner in the well, simply because of what he had done, surprised him even more than it did any ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... kissing me," he continued, presently, in a calm voice—"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely to see again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her than kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it as soon as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... however, that for the sake of the cause I might conquer my inclination a little and in my own way exert myself. It is just this point which I have made clear to myself: my faculties, taken separately, are not great, and I can only be and do something good when I concentrate all those faculties on one impulse and recklessly consume them and myself for its sake. Whatever part that impulse leads me to adopt, that I am as long as necessary, be it musician, poet, conductor, author, reciter, or what not. In that manner I at one time became ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... not delay to pass here in review the damage which the criticism of choice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the contrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and critical exigencies. It is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, by assisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... at the first tinkle, and was at the shutter watching for them before ever they rounded the angle of the Ponte della Morte. There they came! colour of dust, with the straggling goats following after in a cloud of it. Her impulse was to fling wide the casement, hold out both her arms, call to them with all her might, "Ha! help, in the name of the Trinity! Take me with you to the green hills. I am weary of life in this place!" Then, knowing she could not, she would hold herself back by ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... degree of what is moving and passionate. He recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut up in books as in reliquaries—peris et mises en ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... he had written about me and my whole ancestry. I had fought hard to educate myself and had been helpful to others. My self-respect revolted under this editor's malicious goading. I happened to see him in his front office, and on a sudden impulse, I went in, took hold of his collar, and gave him a ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... have some music, Miss Sedley—Amelia," said George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time, I should perhaps ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feudal times. The town still retains the moderate dimensions and the quiet air of one that has grown up under the protection of the castle, and of the great family of the castle. Other towns, that arose under the same circumstances, have caught the impulse of modern commerce and manufacture, and have grown into huge, bustling, and noisy cities, in which the old fortified walls and the old castle have either vanished, or have been swallowed up, and stand, as if in superannuated wonder, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... was now at an end, and we imagined that Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, thenceforth, until the second Sunday in May, 1852, President of the Republic, would descend from the tribune. But he did not; he felt a magnanimous impulse to bind himself still more rigorously, if possible; to add something to the oath which the Constitution demanded from him, in order to show how largely the oath was free and spontaneous. He asked permission to address ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Europe with North America. telefax-facsimile service between subscriber stations via the public switched telephone network or the international Datel network. telegraph-a telecommunications system designed for unmodulated electric impulse transmission. telex-a communication service involving teletypewriters connected by wire through automatic exchanges. tropospheric scatter-a form of microwave radio transmission in which the troposphere is used ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... shields, stout and light for fighting. The lion begins to quiver as soon as he sees them, for he sees the arms they have, and perceives that they come to fight his master. He is aroused, and bristles up at once, and, trembling with rage and bold impulse, he thrashes the earth with his tail, desiring to rescue his master before they kill him. And when they see him they say: "Vassal, remove the lion from here that he may not do us harm. Either surrender to us at once, or else, we adjure you, that lion must be put where he can ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... of so long a journey before me I had to resist the impulse to share my provisions with them; but before we left, George carried a few ounces of tea up the hill. There was a merry chase as each tried to possess herself of the treasure. They were like children in their delight. A pair of moccasins was offered in ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... yours, and his faith trusts you, and his heart upon a vague impulse is laid bare to you, it always has seemed to me the basest treachery the world can hold to pass the gold of confidence which he pours out to you from hand to hand as common coin ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of this Atman, which they hold to be the most precious thing (in the world), they are subject to the Three Poisons Of lust,[FN338] anger,[FN339] and folly,[FN340] which (in their turn) give impulse to the will and bring forth Karma of all kinds through speech and action. Karma being thus produced, no one can evade its effects. Consequently all must be born[FN341] in the Five States of Existence either to suffer pain or to enjoy pleasure; ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... face beams upon us with serenity, but he looks in one direction, and rows in the opposite course. Even thus it was three centuries ago. Was it to be wondered at that many did not see the precipice towards which the bark which held their all was gliding under the same impulse? ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam-engine, the caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, etc., or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of water, the windmill from wind, etc. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... will of a judge, who may be corrupted or swayed by his own passions, interests, or the impulse of such as support him and may advance him to greater honours, the God of mercy and of justice ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... XIV., with a sudden impulse, and raising his head, "it is a million you require, or two hundred gentlemen, I think ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... woman at the bottom of it?" Siegenthal said tentatively. "You acted on impulse, in a fit ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... true. Blakely early discovered this in treating with the natives, and it did not take long to make them understand that by working together for the common defense they could be made far more effective than by permitting each to do as his own impulse dictated. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Otard brandy, and poured out half a tumblerful, and offered it to Ishmael. It was a dose that might have been swallowed with impunity by a seasoned old toper like Wiseman; but certainly not by an abstinent young man like Ishmael, who, yielding to the fatal impulse to get rid of present suffering by any means, at any cost, or any risk, took the tumbler ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pilgrimage to Mekka has not nourished sufficient fanaticism to prevent these good people from allowing an infidel doctor to make free with their crowns, and expatiate on their passions and propensities. There is no calculating on the strength of the impulse of curiosity. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Advancement of the Deaf. Like our Ohio cousins, who have already established a similar home, we pride ourselves upon our ability to own and control such a responsible institution. The home owes its existence entirely to the charitable impulse of the deaf themselves, aided by the generosity of their hearing friends. It exists because of the desire to provide a home of rest for the infirm of our class during their declining years, so that they may find here comfort and happiness in ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... Theophorus, the 'God-bearer,' which Ignatius himself adopted. But he had in his company several Ephesian delegates when he wrote; and the newly-discovered inscriptions inform us that the practice which supplies the metaphor had received a fresh impulse at Ephesus shortly before this letter was written. The most important inscriptions in Mr Wood's collection relate to a gift of numerous valuable statues, images, and other treasures to the temple of Artemis, by one C. Vibius Salutaris, with an endowment for their custody. In ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... he failed not to gaze often at the fatal Hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again, Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The Crimson Hand, which at first had been strongly ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... she couldn't deny there was something reasonable in his argument. She really had given him little chance; impulse and instinct had worked upon her, causing her to jump at conclusions which, however well founded in fact, were without excuse in act. If he had kissed her, it wasn't without provocation, nor against ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... of projecting mental states; in the case of the desired development of the receiving power, the person should develop receptiveness and passivity, and a certain recognition of an actual telepathic impulse which is impossible to describe in words but which comes to every investigator, and which when once experienced is ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... so young, nay, so childlike, as she thus spoke, that Kenelm felt a parental inclination to draw her on his lap and kiss away her tears. But he prudently conquered that impulse, and said, with ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the man was running away from him, not towards him. His first impulse was to give chase, but prudence restrained him. Catching burglars is an exhilarating sport, but it is best to indulge in it when one is not on a ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... she was carried back to the day whereon she had reproached her with hazarding the eternal welfare of her child. Throwing herself upon her knees, she prayed for strength—and her prayer was heard. Suddenly, as if struck with some impulse, she hurried from the window, through the hall, passed the long suite of apartments, and reached her husband's. Entering, she closed the door behind her, and rushed forward to M. de Vaissiere's chair with such passionate rapidity, that one might have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Icelandic literature in prose outside of the sagas—the great law code (Gragas or Greygoose), religious books in the usual plenty, scientific books of a kind, and others. But the saga, the story, was so emphatically the natural mould into which Icelandic literary impulse threw itself, that it is even more difficult here than elsewhere at the time to separate story and history, fiction and fact. Indeed the stricter critics would, I believe, maintain that every saga which deserves the name is actually founded ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... came the picture now in the National Gallery, called the Madonna della Cesta, from the basket that lies on the ground. It is a domestic scene in the outer air: the mother is dressing her babe, and smilingly arrests his hand, which, on a sudden impulse, he has stretched towards some coveted object. The same face is almost exactly repeated in the Madonna of the Hermitage Gallery (St. Petersburg), who offers her breast to her boy, at that moment turning about to receive some fruit ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but, with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It was in a cemetery, by some strange chance immured within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone memorials, and green ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sudden impulse to write poetry—he did so sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott—and when he had taken his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls, and shaded by a whip of a tree that was ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word to you this afternoon—at five or six o'clock," said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added: "I will tell you why I want to wait. I am engaged to be married. I think I should tell my fiance, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sections, both here and there, on questions of discipline, and even on questions of belief; but in its leading characteristics it has been faithful to the main purpose of its founder. Its success did not consist mainly in what it accomplished for its own people; it achieved a great work also by the impulse it gave to the Church of England. That Church for a while seemed to be filled with a reviving spiritual and ministerial activity. It appeared to take shame to itself that it had remained so long apathetic and perfunctory, and it flung itself into competition with the younger and more energetic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... that pass. I found the Otard, and drank there-of; finding it, moreover, most pleasant to the palate, and right cheering to the soul. My next impulse was to share my prize with my shipmates. But here a judicious reflection obtruded. From the sea-monarchs, his ancestors, my Viking had inherited one of their cardinal virtues, a detestation and abhorrence of all vinous and spirituous beverages; insomuch, that he never could see any, but he ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Coxeter felt a strong impulse to refuse. He never mixed himself up with other people's affairs; he always refused to do so ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... he could not check an impulse to raise his arm and wipe her eyes, but Lin Tai-yue speedily withdrew several steps backwards. "Are you again bent," she said, "upon compassing your own death! Then why do you knock your hands and kick your feet ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the house. The act of tumbling seems to be one over which they have no control, an involuntary movement which they seem to try to prevent. I have seen a bird sometimes in his struggles fly a yard or two straight upwards, the impulse forcing him backwards while he struggles to go forwards. If suddenly startled, or in a strange place, they seem less able to fly than if quiet in their accustomed loft." These House-tumblers differ from the Lotan or Ground {152} Tumbler of India, in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... "show-off stuff" in Trevison. His feat of riding down the wall of the cut had not been performed to impress anyone; the look of reckless abandon in the otherwise serene eyes that held Murphy's steadily, convinced the engineer that the man had merely responded to a dare-devil impulse. There was something in Trevison's appearance that suggested an entire disregard of fear. The engineer had watched the face of a brother of his craft one night when the latter had been driving a roaring monster down a grade at record-breaking speed into a wall of rain-soaked darkness out of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Iroquois understood his defiance could not be determined. With a wild shout they pressed upon him. Borne struggling and stumbling by the impulse of a dozen hands, Pembroke half walked and half was carried over the distance between the village and the brink of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to account for it either by the action of certain vortices, as Kepler and Descartes, or by some other principle of impulse or attraction, for it is most certain that these effects must proceed from the action of some force or other. This we will call by the general name of a centripetal force, as it is a force which is directed to some centre; and, as it regards more particularly ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... fatal enemies to his spiritual elevation. I do not believe it was the ascetic ideas imported from India, such as marked the Brahmins, nor the visionary ideas of the Sufis and the Buddhists, and of other Oriental religionists, which gave the impulse to monastic life and led to the austerities of the Church in the second and third centuries, so much as the practical evils with which every one was conversant, and which were plainly antagonistic to the doctrine that the life is more than meat. The triumph of the mind over the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... acting by reason now. His head seemed a ball of fire. Only his hands and feet responded mechanically to the dim impulse of his bewildered brain. Once more the battling through the surf, this time against it and threefold harder. Only the man whose strength had borne the giant Spartan down could have breasted the billows that ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... as good as the Nixie," she said, on a sudden impulse. He swung round, staring at ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... my forehead, and a veil seemed to come before my eyes. I trembled; I flushed; and, without being able to speak, I felt a sudden impulse to cry out at the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... into the abyss. He had said his last good-by to it. But what belonged to her, that he meant to save. Only a little money. He would take it to her in his own hands—this last gift of a man that had lasted too long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the very passion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of his worthless life in a ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... as she proposed. There was clearly no need for those prepared words. There had been one embrace,—an embrace that was objectionable because, had either his wife seen it or Mr. Houghton, he would have been forced to own himself wrong; but that had come from sudden impulse, and need not be repeated. This that was now proposed to him was friendship, and not love. "You shall have all observance," he said with his ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... no saying how long this state of things would have gone on, if it had not been for the exuberant spirits of Otto, who, under an impulse of maternal affection, sprang to his mother's side with intent to embrace her, and unwittingly planted his foot on the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... impressed the company with gloom. Maria Antoinette rode in the carriage with her husband, and with one or two other members of the royal family. For some time they rode in silence, Maria, a child of impulse, weeping profusely from the emotions which moved her soul. But, ere long, the morning dawned. The sun rose bright and clear over the hills of France, and the whole beautiful landscape glittered in the light of the most ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... increased facilities of transportation have brought distant markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital, but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from the basin of the Mississippi, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... in the tortured body drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. Probably most people have experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, a thought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering by flinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into—what? Simply life in a changed environment, with exactly the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the same causes of their miseries, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... If he loved her slavishly, it was generously. The wild thing he said was one of the frantic leaps of generosity in a heart that was gone to impulse: 'I see it, they have martyrized you. I know you so well, Clotilde! So, then, come to me, come with me, let me cherish you. I will take you and rescue you from your people, and should it be your positive wish to meet Alvan again, I myself will take you to him, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Imagists:—Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell, F.S. Flint, D.H. Lawrence, and others. They are gathering followers and imitators. To these followers I would say: the Imagist impulse need not be confined to verse. Why would you be imitators of these leaders when you might be creators in a new medium? There is a clear parallelism between their point of view in verse and the Intimate-and-friendly Photoplay, especially when it is developed from the standpoint of the last part ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the study of crime as a natural and social phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... hung in the hall, and the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into the house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcock appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if it were the most natural thing ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and recovering from the first confusion and astonishment of her situation, Hetty perceived a cub, of the common American brown bear, balancing itself on its hinder legs, and still looking towards her, as if doubtful whether it would be safe to trust itself near her person again. The first impulse of Hetty, who had been mistress of several of these cubs, was to run and seize the little creature as a prize, but a loud growl warned her of the danger of such a procedure. Recoiling a few steps, the girl looked hurriedly round, and perceived the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be reminded every minute of all the sins they've repented of. Oh, but I've no patience with it!" As Hetty was walking slowly back to the house after this injudicious outburst, she met Dr. Eben Williams coming down the avenue. Her first impulse was to plunge into the shrubbery, on the right hand or the left, and escape him. The baby was now four weeks old, and yet Hetty had never till to-day seen the doctor. It had been a very sore point between her and Sally, that Sally would persist in having this young Dr. Williams from the "Corners," ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... wife into a covered boat, which was soon flying along under the impulse of his muscular arms. The child rejoiced aloud at the rocking of the boat, he fancied it was the motion of his cradle. The eyes of the woman were fixed now upon the sky and now upon the unruffled surface of the watery mirror. A star smiled down upon her wheresoever she gazed. The evening ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... his wife he was almost a stranger, he had paid her the compliment of letting her know the date and hour of his return; not from any impulse towards friendliness, but from an instinctive pride of race, which made it impossible for him to slight a white woman in the eyes of the natives. However far apart their lives were sundered, his servants, at least, would have to respect her as the Memsahib and the mistress of his house; ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... don't know what made me call after him. "I say! Wait a minute." Perhaps it was the sidelong glance he gave me; or possibly I was yet under the influence of Captain Giles' mysterious earnestness. Well, it was an impulse of some sort; an effect of that force somewhere within our lives which shapes them this way or that. For if these words had not escaped from my lips (my will had nothing to do with that) my existence would, to be sure, have been still ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... obvious that what Rossetti meant by being racked and tortured, was that his subject possessed him; that he was enslaved by his own "shaping imagination." Assuredly he was the reverse of a costive poet: impulse was, to use his own phrase, fully developed in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the sharp crack of the rifle that had sent a bullet through his body. Our heroine did not shriek—did not even tremble; for the occurrence was too sudden, too awful, and too unexpected for that exhibition of weakness; on the contrary, she stepped hastily forward, with a natural impulse to aid her companion. There was just enough of life left in M'Nab to betray his entire consciousness of all that had passed. His countenance had the wild look of one who had been overtaken by death by surprise; and Mabel, in her cooler moments, fancied ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no agreeable diversion but what had something or other of this in it; so that my wife, who saw my mind so wholly bent upon it, told me very seriously one night, that she believed there was some secret powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again; and that she found nothing hindered my going, but my being engaged to a wife and children. She told me, that it was true she could not think of parting with me; but as she was assured, that if she was dead it would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... to relinquish all hope. When, in 1645, M. de Longueville went as minister-plenipotentiary to the Congress of Muenster, the young Duchess remained in Paris, her element being still the social sphere of the Court solely—a taste for political life not having yet been developed through the impulse of her affections. Let us here add that, notwithstanding the almost unanimous assertion of contemporaries at this period that even women could not behold Madame de Longueville without admiration, the heart of this preeminently gifted creature seems amidst the universal homage ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of the step and stood there, peering out into the darkness as though looking for some one. Varney, from his dark retreat stared back at her. There they stood unexpectedly face to face, the kidnapper and his quarry. A sudden wild impulse seized the young man to act immediately: to make a dash from his cover, bind the girl's mouth with his handkerchief, toss her over his shoulder, and fly with her to the yacht. That was the way these things ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to board with one whose face recalled that of my dear dead mother," thought Phil, and on the impulse of the moment, just after the woman had ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... "Hah! my lady's falcon!" cried Halbert alarmed, doubly, for the fate of his master. A sudden agitation of the branches having excited an indefinite suspicion in a body of archers who stood near, with one impulse they had discharged their arrows to the spot. Halbert's ready excuse, both for the disturbance in the tree and his lady's shriek, was prompted and warranted true by the appearance of a large bird, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is a sign ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... On a sudden impulse, Tom snatched up the telephone. His two companions listened as he put through a call to the FBI in Washington. Within moments, a friend at the Bureau, Wes Norris, came on ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... companion for a few seconds, and then, as if actuated by a sudden impulse, complied with his request. 'How,' said Job Trotter, as they walked away, 'how is your dear, good master? Oh, he is a worthy gentleman, Mr. Weller! I hope he didn't catch cold, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... impatience which may be reasonably supposed to take possession of a man who flies from perpetual imprisonment. Such was the tumult of his agitation, that his faculty of thinking was for the present utterly overwhelmed, and he saw no object but his conductor, whom he followed by a sort of instinctive impulse, without regarding the keepers and sentinels, who, as he passed with his clothes under one arm, and his chamber-pot brandished above his head, were confounded, and even dismayed, at the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... a purely generous impulse that I continued to look at the view. The surroundings were, in truth, in conspiracy with the sentimentalists on the front seat; the extreme beauty of the road would have made any but sentimental egotists ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the Contessa as one of those inscrutable women of the stage, the Sirens who beguile everybody. She had some design upon Montjoie, he felt, and it was only the youth's impertinence which prevented Mr. Derwentwater from interfering. He watched with the natural instinct of his profession and a strong impulse to write to the lad's parents and have him taken away. But Montjoie had no parents. He had attained his majority, and was supposed by the law capable of taking care of himself. What did that woman mean to do with the boy? She had some ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Buck hesitated. Then, moved by an involuntary impulse he did not even pause to analyze, he shrugged his ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... went wide of the mark. I soon forgot him on reaching Felicita, as she lay with an ugly cut on her head caused by striking the carriage step when she fell. There lay my child-friend, unconscious. She was dressed for retiring, her other clothes being in the carriage. My first impulse was to pursue the accursed scoundrel and avenge the insult to Felicita, but I could not leave her there. I took her in my arms and carried her to a near-by Indian hut where, after some parley with the poor, superstitious Indians, the door was opened, and I laid my burden on ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... In every tingling nerve of her she was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... for me to go to the boy. My unrest was further aggravated by a letter which I had just received from the boy's mother in answer to my first to her. It was not a very dreadful letter; but I only trusted that no evil impulse had caused Catherine to write in anything like the same strain to Bob; for neither was it a very charitable letter, nor one that a man could be glad to get from the woman whom he had set out on an enduring pinnacle. There was only this to be said for it, that years ago I had sought in vain ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... by the admixture of a variety of elements, already found the claims of esprit developing themselves within them. This is an explanation which explains nothing—least of all, the problem: why the lively strangers should have required the contact with insular phlegm in order to receive the creative impulse—why, in other words, Norman-French literature should have derived so enormous an advantage from the transplantation of Normans to English ground. But the evil days when the literary labours of Englishmen had been little better than bond-service to the tastes of their foreign ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... one minute his impulse was to take her in his arms and forget the ingratitude and desertion and deceit, like the father in the parable whose heart went out to the poor prodigal while he was yet a long way off; but the next moment the cold, bitter, ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... she came, with white, fearful face and trembling body, I could not withhold a shudder of apprehension. It was the young woman who had come to my office—Margot Vernee. Evidently, at last, she had yielded to the horrible impulse that had drawn her back to Michael Strange, an impulse which, I now understood, had originated from the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... were two slaves who rowed very badly, and to whose bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from a bull's pizzle. Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them with pity. Their features though greatly disfigured, had a slight resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Jesuit and Westphalian Baron, ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... always named me, Madam, the 'daredevil,' and will you not accept me for your cherishing?" I spoke those words to her from an impulse that I could not understand but I saw them soothe a hurt in her eyes as she laughed and kissed my cheek as I raised my head ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... until he stood over her, looking down into her raised face. He felt no end of pity for her, she looked so small and helpless and hopeless. Big gray eyes pleaded with him and he read and understood that she asked only that he go and leave her. An impulse which was utterly new to him surged over him now, the impulse to gather her up into his arms as one would a child and comfort her. Not that she was just a child. She had done her shining brown hair ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... things; and it cannot be understood by a mere inductive study of aesthetic experiences—the mind plus the object—just as they come; because, as we have just stated, they are changeful and subject to correction, therefore uncertain and often misleading. The aesthetic impulse may falter and go astray like any other impulse; a description of it in this condition would lead to a very false conception. No, we must employ a different method of investigation—the Socratic method of self-scrutiny, the conscious attempt to become clear and consistent ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... upon which his hand rested quiver, as if pressure was applied from without. His first impulse was to say, "Is that you?" but Mr. Welch had told him that he would give a low whistle as he approached the gate; he therefore stood quiet, with his whole attention absorbed in listening. Without making the least stir he peered through the bars and made ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... myself should first commit them. Then the third and last point is, That perhaps I erred in giving Too implicit a belief To the facts foreseen so dimly; For although his inclination Well might find its precipices, He might possibly escape them: For the fate the most fastidious, For the impulse the most powerful. Even the planets most malicious Only make free will incline, But can force not human wishes. And thus 'twist these different causes Vacillating and unfixed, I a remedy have thought of Which will with new wonder fill you. I to-morrow morning purpose, Without letting ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... themselves; the Greeks flocked to Italy. Out of the plundered libraries came a number of manuscripts, with which Nicholas V. and Bessarion enriched Rome and Venice. The result of the disaster was, for intellectual Europe, a new impulse given to ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... completely by surprise. But he was a vigorous, athletic man, and his first impulse was to shake himself loose, to knock down two of his assailants next to him and make a run for it. His next glance, however, showed him the nature of the group of young men. They were not professional robbers, ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... Devil's Hill from the side on which lay the new home adopted by the Padre and himself. Hitherto this point of approach had been accepted as inaccessible for a horseman, nor, until now, had Buck seen reason to dispute the verdict. But, to-day, a sudden impulse had constrained him to make the attempt, not from any vainglorious reason, or from the recklessness which was so much a part of his nature, but simply that somewhere high up on the great table-land at the summit of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... He may show Himself to you." At these words they rejoiced greatly, for through them they knew that God was now completely reconciled to them, and they hastened to bring the offerings to the sanctuary. Moses admonished them with the words: "See to it now that you drive evil impulse from your hearts, that you now have but one thought and one resolution, to serve God; and that your undivided services are devoted singly and solely to the one God, for He is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. If you will ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their conversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he borrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he had locked himself ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... to antagonize her, however, and she was almost sorry that she had said so much; but she was a creature of impulse when her will was thwarted, and did not always stop to choose ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... this way." Barry gave way to the impulse to confide in his friend, to whom all his boyish confidences had been given. "Rose is a real good sort, and wouldn't for the world let Toni suspect that he knows he's married beneath him, as the world ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... on the untoward destiny of Clithero. Part of his calamity consisted in the consciousness of having killed his patroness; but it now appeared, though by some infatuation I had not previously suspected, that the first impulse of sorrow in the lady had been weakened by reflection and by time; that the prejudice persuading her that her life and that of her brother were to endure and to terminate together was conquered by experience or by argument. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... idea occurred to me, and I acted instantly upon its impulse. There was a second entrance through the morning room; and I dashed round to the other door, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... When the volumes of Algic Researches, in 1839, were published, the book-trade had hardly awakened to that wide and diffusive impulse which it has since received. No attention had been given to topics so obscure as inquiries into the character of the Indian mind—if, indeed, it was thought the Indian had any mind at all. It was still ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... beat a heart capable of quick extempore warmth—a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success of her agent in obtaining what she ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... a sweet resignation to her own sad lot, which made her the victim of a slow and incurable disease. So long as she lived, her brother threw himself into his work with intensity and ardour; but when she died that impulse withered, as it were, at its very root. The world became empty for him, and he felt that from henceforth he would be utterly companionless. For what he had seen of modern women, modern marriage and modern ways of life, did not tempt him to rashly seek refuge for his heart's solitude in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... chair, stirred by an impulse whose unwisdom he could not doubt. Duncan had assuredly done his case no good by painting his shortcomings in colours so vivid; yet, somehow strangely, Spaulding liked him the better for his ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the same sort of impulse that had moved her to write to Basil Ransom, in the spring, after hearing accidentally that he had come to the North and intended, in New York, to practise his profession. It was her nature to look out for duties, to appeal to her conscience for tasks. This attentive organ, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... untimely ending. All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This much Bobby noted from the depths of a laurel bush in which he had taken refuge. He thought himself well hidden, and certainly his uncle was unaware of his close presence. Suddenly, as he was passing him, close enough to touch had he so wished, an impulse ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... cares whether it has any plot at all. 'Sentimental Tommy' is a study of a sensitive mobile boy, a born poseur, who passes his life in cloud-castles where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne's scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... homeliness, and as the moonlight has streamed in at the window and fell upon the handsome and placid features of my little brother slumbering at my side, Heaven forgive me for the wicked thought, but I have felt an almost unconquerable impulse to forever disfigure and mar that sweet upturned innocent face that smiled and looked so beautiful in sleep, for it was ever reminding me of the curse I was doomed to carry about me. Many and many a night have I got up in my nightdress, and lighting my little ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... stir in the world, being merely external, mean little or nothing apart from the impulse that started them, and the poet alone is powerful to stir the impulse of reform in humanity. "To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves," said Longinus, "but genius brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer." [Footnote: On the Sublime.] The ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... I could see the heaven above me. A time passed—only a few minutes, as I thought—and the child became visible to me again; walking hand-in-hand with her father. I approached them; I was close enough to see that they were looking at me with pity and surprise. My impulse was to ask if they saw anything strange in my face or my manner. Before I could speak, the horrible wonder happened again. They ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... times, the cloud unhappily clearing from his mental vision had left him for a short space fearfully cognisant of the transactions he was then doomed to witness. On that night to which our history refers a sudden providential gleam of intelligence flashed upon him, and an unknown impulse prompted his interference in behalf of the unfortunate, and, as he thought, unsuspecting victims. Ere leaving the country they saw him comfortably provided for; and, as far as the nature of his malady would permit, his mind was soothed, and his darkest moments partly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... him to close his eyes and to know that his conscience was in repose when opposite his sister? He knew all, however. The proof of it was in his shudder when Dorsenne announced to him the clandestine arrival in Rome of Madame Steno's other lover, and one proof still more certain, the impulse which had precipitated him upon Boleslas, who was parleying with the servant, and now it was he who had accepted the duel which an exasperated rival had certainly come to propose to his dear Lincoln, and he thought ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
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