"Impel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boat, long since out of range of the battery, and scudding with a speed that mocked the useless exertion of those on board of the second gun boat, who could with difficulty impel her through the powerful eddy, formed by the Island, had been gradually edging from her own shore into the centre of the stream. This movement, however, had the effect of rendering her more distinguishable to the eye, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... behind phenomena, the workings of which could be seen in the forms of animal life. And whether we find that proof in the growth of a flower, or in the moral sense of man, or in the creation of natural conditions that impel the development of life along a certain road, the distinction is not vital. We are still finding proofs of God in the structure of the world (where otherwise, indeed, are we to find it?) and we are still depending on the supposed likeness ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... motives which impel persons to buy and use patent medicines? The history of medicine offers a partial explanation. In somewhat remote times we find that the medicines in use by regular physicians were of the most vile, nauseating, and powerful nature. We read of "purging gently" with a teaspoonful of calomel. Then ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... allowed the desire for popularity to influence his work, yet he occasionally craves appreciation. "I am willing to confess that I should be greatly pleased if I could succeed in composing something which would impel the public, after hearing you play it, to run against the walls in their delight; for vain we composers are, even though we have no reason to be so." It must have given him a strange shock when an amateur ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the cause, Hamersley is all the more eager to learn it. Still, his curiosity does not impel him to importunate inquiry. In the companionship of such kind friends he ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of your mind impel you to its improvement; you are too strong to be defeated, save by yourselves. Refuse to live merely to sleep and eat. Brutes can do this; but you are men. Act the part of men. Prepare yourselves to endure toil. Resolve ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity in the maiden's manner to impel him to any risk. His only answer was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument. Holding the neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the steel twice or thrice around it. A faint rasping, scratching sound was all the wondering girl heard. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that crushed the Roman Empire, without doubt the love of solitude, which is now held in check by the satisfactions of a comparatively pure and peaceful social life, will again arise in its old-time strength and impel men to seek in waste and lonely places the virtues they cannot ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that the natural bias of mankind is towards kindness to his neighbour, however much the brute in him may sometimes impel him to uncharitable words or actions. And certainly this natural bias is intensified and made into a binding law by the teachings of Christ. But there is the other point of view set forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche—if indeed such writings are worthy ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... want to be a painter you must go to France—France is the only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that, without an appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs. Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... changed once more. We were again on board the ship, and in the power of the enraged mutineers, about to suffer whatever their vengeance might impel them to inflict. Poor Spot was swinging, a livid corpse, at one of the yard-arms. Browne was bound to the main-mast, while Luerson and his fiendish crew were exhausting their ingenuity in torturing him. The peculiar expression of his mild, open countenance, distorted by pain, went to my heart, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... earth at first With feeble force and lonely murmurs burst, From myriad unseen fountains draw the rills And curl contentious round their hundred hills, Meet, froth and foam, their dashing currents swell, O'er crags and rocks their furious course impel, Impetuous plunging plough the mounds of earth, And tear the fostering flanks that gave them birth; Mad with the strength they gain, they thicken deep Their muddy waves and slow and sullen creep, O'erspread whole regions in their lawless ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and that the obedience of Eve and Adam to God's commands was impossible.' Still the same error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to him, but the love for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not so by any means: the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary. Finally, I say in effect what M. Bayle acknowledges here, 'that God resolved to create the world by a free motion of his goodness'; ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... his martial ardor might have endured to the end; but there, in the silence of that nearly untenanted blockhouse, with no sound to enliven him, no appeal to keep alive factitious sentiment, no hope of victory to impel, things began to appear in their true colors, and this state of being to be estimated at its just value. He would have given treasures for religious consolation, and yet he knew not where to turn to seek it. He thought of Pathfinder, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... confidence. He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger. He was a plain German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God; alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him, and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs. Yet his errand was no whit less perilous. And here we may notice the contrast between the mission settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... till we are close to them," cried the captain. "Now give it them." The broadsides of the brig were poured into the junks, which had ranged up on either beam, with terrible effect. One junk went down, and another was left without a scull to impel her, and with a third of her crew killed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... something shocking in the sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the marvellously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... that the latter, excited by the presence of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish lances were ready couched and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... necessarily very sympathetic. Whoever has watched the flight of wild geese must have remarked the beautiful way in which they arrange at once for close companionship and for safety in the violent movements which impel their heavy bodies at high speed through the air. In the order of their flight the alignment is more perfect than in the march of trained soldiers. Each bird keeps as near to his neighbor as possible; but manages always to preserve the interval which will insure against a collision ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... what makes an orator. As I have said, his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic. He must master the subject with which he has to deal, and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... fundamental conception is this, that a great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a 'Bipinnaria', a 'Brachialaria', a 'Pluteus', is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... intelligent men and women to call to the aid of instinct our social wisdom? I grant and avow it. But our social wisdom insists that we obey the choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinement, which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel us to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste for the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her," says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... would endure it within doors, because he has noticed that his tormentor gives place to another every hour, and pain may be borne when it is not monotonous; but he remembers that there is no limit to the time during which one human being may impel him along an open road, and he also remembers some very pretty friskings, delightful to himself, but disconcerting to his rider, and he may ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... impossible to conceive people worse off; it would be impossible to conceive these people better off. They were such a multitude that only they could save themselves—and they had no intelligence to appreciate, no desire to impel. If their miseries—miseries to which they had fallen heir at birth—had made them what they were, it was also true that they were what they were—hopeless, down to the babies playing in the filth. An unscalable cliff; at the top, in pleasant lands, lived the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hidden whereabout. Insects are fluttering around. The cheerful, sunny hum of the flies is altogether summer-like, and so gladsome that you pardon them their intrusiveness and impertinence, which continually impel them to fly against your face, to alight upon your hands, and to buzz in your very ear, as if they wished to get into your head, among your most secret thoughts. In truth, a fly is the most impertinent and indelicate thing in creation,—the very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... whilst Rustem's made no impression, those of Isfendiyar's produced great effect on the champion and his horse. So severely was Rakush wounded, that Rustem, when he perceived how much his favorite horse was exhausted, dismounted, and continued to impel his arrows against the enemy from behind his shield. But Rakush brooked not the dreadful storm, and galloped off unconscious that his master himself was in as bad a plight. When Zuara saw the noble animal, riderless, crossing the plain, he gasped for breath, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the vast city, fall again upon the hard pavement of life after the prodigious dream in which they had just indulged, until the day should come when their need of the consolation of a fresh dream would irresistibly impel them to start once more on the everlasting ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... drives the animal into the activities that evolve its physical body and sharpen its intelligence. If it had no desire it would lie inert and perish. But the desire for food, for drink, for association with its kind, impel it to action, and the result is the evolution of strength, skill and intelligence in proportion to the intensity of its desires. To gratify these desires it will accept battle no matter how great may be the odds against it and will unhesitatingly ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... of Historical Romance is, to group historical characters according to their internal natures, and thus to elucidate and illustrate history. This illustration then leads to the third task, which is the discovery and exposition of the motives which impel individual historical personages to the performance of great historical acts, and from outwardly, apparently insignificant events in their lives to deduce their inmost thoughts and natures, and represent them ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... realize that the Government was stronger then than it had been in February of the same year, when it had a series of victories and peace with the Allies seemed for a moment to be in sight. A sort of fate seems to impel the Whites to neutralize with extraordinary rapidity any good will for themelves which they may find among the population. This is true of both sides, but seems to affect the Whites especially. Although General Baron Wrangel does indeed seem to have ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... proceeded. "I should make them feel that we were one family fighting for all we hold dear against the invader. If our losses are heavy, if we have a setback, then the inspiration of the heroism of those who have fallen and the danger of their own homes feeling the foot of the invader next will impel the living to greater sacrifices. For the Grays are in the wrong. The moral and the legal ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... forceful energies of Song, For they do swell the spring-tide of the heart With rosier currents, and impel along The life-blood freely:—O! they can impart Raptures ne'er dreamt of by the sordid throng Who barter human feeling at the mart Of pamper'd selfishness, and thus do wrong Imperial Nature of her prime desert.— SEWARD! ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted nothing but inclination to rival Danby ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forwarding of this moral growth of man, two things seemed to me necessary—an Ideal which should stir the emotions and impel to action, and a clear understanding of the sources of evil and of the methods by which they might be drained. Into the drawing of the first I threw all the passion of my nature, striving to paint the Ideal in colours which should enthral and fascinate, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... impressions alone influence the will, we should every moment of our lives be subject to the greatest calamities; because, though we foresaw their approach, we should not be provided by nature with any principle of action, which might impel us to avoid them. On the other hand, did every idea influence our actions, our condition would not be much mended. For such is the unsteadiness and activity of thought, that the images of every thing, especially ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... will show them mercy that is, show them pure goodness and blessing not only for themselves, but also to their children and children's children, even to the thousandth generation and beyond that. This ought certainly to move and impel us to risk our hearts in all confidence with God, if we wish all temporal and eternal good, since the Supreme Majesty makes such sublime offers and presents such cordial inducements and such ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... touching in passionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so difficult to act. The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the American stage has approached the performance that was given by Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of passion, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... along; 590 While to the music, from on high, The echoes make a glad reply.— But the sage Muse the revel heeds No farther than her story needs; Nor will she servilely attend 595 The loitering journey to its end. —Blithe spirits of her own impel The Muse, who scents the morning air, To take of this transported pair A brief and unreproved farewell; 600 To quit the slow-paced waggon's side, And wander down yon hawthorn dell, With murmuring Greta for her guide. —There doth she ken the awful form Of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... decidedly than anything in the book. That so much learning, benevolence, and almost unparalleled fairness of mind, should be in a great measure lost to the world, for want of earnestness of purpose, might impel us to attach to the latter attribute as much importance as does the wise uncle in ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... intended for use on land as well as at sea, against cities and great fortified structures, and Clewe believed that the automatic shell might be brought within fifty miles of a city, set up with its trough and ram, and projected in a level line towards its object, to which it would impel itself with irresistible power and velocity, through forests, hills, buildings, and everything, gaining strength from every opposition which stood in the direct line of its progress. Attacking fortifications ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... child whose life, she knew, depended upon her answer. Up to that moment she had been completely at a loss to know what to say or how to act, but that invisible something which until then had deprived her of speech, now seemed to impel her to answer ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... sanguine adventurers from attempts to settle in it: Were it for no other reason than the constant heavy rains, or rather torrents, which pour down here, and the vast sea and surf which the prevailing westerly winds impel upon this coast, it must be rendered inhospitable. All entrance into the woods is not only extremely difficult, but hazardous, not from any assaults you are likely to meet with from wild beasts, for even these could hardly find convenient harbour here, but from the deep swamp, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Two men meeting under the same condition would mechanically draw away a few paces, out of the route of persons passing in or out of the shop. No particular play of the mental processes would actuate them in so doing; an instinctive impulse, operating mechanically and subconsciously, would impel them to remove themselves from the main path of foot travel. But this woman and her acquaintance take root right there. Persons dodge round them and glare at them. Other persons bump into them, and are glared at by the two traffic blockers. Where ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... deem impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the Dauphine ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... inclination toward the life of art, through which his 'Genius' moves, half hero and half picaro. Witla remains mediocre enough in all but his sexual unscrupulousness, but he is impelled by a driving force more or less like those forces which impel Cowperwood. The will to wealth, the will to love, the will to art—Mr. Dreiser conceives them all as blind energies with no goal except self-realization. So conceiving them he tends to see them as less conditioned than they ordinarily are in their earthly progress by the resistance of statute ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... His ire—proclaims his strong necessity; And that surprise or artifice he scorns. Unskill'd, alas! in philosophic lore, Unbless'd with scientific erudition; How can I sing of elemental War, Or the contending powers of opposite Attractions, that impel, and poize, and guide, The ever-rolling Spheres: Animal War, The flux of Life, devouring and devour'd, Ceaseless in every tribe, through Earth, and Air, And Ocean, transcends ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... a man of honor? Honor! The name now seemed a mockery. Which way would honor impel him? To give up Katie? What! when she had given up all for him? What! when he had fought a mortal quarrel with Ashby for her? Honor! Was not honor due to Ashby? and had he not been a traitor ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... its decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, and a nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fate offered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is what Germany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-defined forces that impel mankind, and subsequently, in these latter years, with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. She grasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, that she must take her chance and seize the opportunity that ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... would not be addressed to another being (viz. to an intelligent being—to which it actually is addressed). The term 'sstra' (scriptural injunction) moreover comes from ss, to command, and commanding means impelling to action. But scriptural injunctions impel to action through giving rise to a certain conception (in the mind of the being addressed), and the non-sentient Pradhna cannot be made to conceive anything. Scripture therefore has a sense only, if we admit that none but the intelligent enjoyer of the fruit of the action is at ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... rose—she could not have told why; something seemed to impel her, some will outside her own. She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... of the competing forms of government have nearly so effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical Minister to correct and impel the routine ones. There are but four important forms of government in the present state of the world—the Parliamentary, the Presidential, the Hereditary, and the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary. Of these I have ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... my gracious queen, it cannot be! His heat and passion never could impel him To take so bold a step, to such rash guilt: Methinks his very honour ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... 'Les Paysans' because we have an account to settle. Otherwise I certainly should not publish it, and the success of 'La Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin' would certainly not impel me to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... might You are our providence, O make us not go hence! O with a gracious nod Grant us the nigh despaired-of boon we crave? Hear us, O hear, But all that ye hold dear, Wife, children, homestead, hearth and God! Where will you find one, search ye ne'er so well. Who 'scapes perdition if a god impel! ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... move us, have been replaced by higher motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of your age. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the worker as in your day they did the soldier. The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... colleagues, was prevented. But the disputants could not long continue to act together. Townshend retired, and, with rare moderation and public spirit, refused to take any part in politics. He could not, he said, trust his temper. He feared that the recollection of his private wrongs might impel him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to oppose measures which he thought generally beneficial to the country. He therefore never visited London after his resignation, but passed the closing years of his life in dignity and repose among ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... that whereof each accused himself, such was the pity that overcame his heart for the innocence of the two friends that, moved by supreme compassion, he came before Varro and said, 'Praetor, my fates impel me to solve the grievous contention of these twain and I know not what God within me spurreth and importuneth me to discover to thee my sin. Know, then, that neither of these men is guilty of that whereof each accuseth himself. I am verily he who slew yonder man this morning towards daybreak and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and rejoiced,—shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my mother with me and in me to impel me into another course. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... results from them, which, all forming in reality the true complement of the world, were, without doubt made at the same time as the universe. By this silence history wishes to train the activity of our intelligence, giving it a weak point for starting, to impel it to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... since our old young years our several ways Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit, Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root We set long since beneath the sundawn's rays, The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree, Friendship—this only and duly might impel My song to salutation of your own; More even than praise of one unseen of me And loved—the starry spirit of Dobell, To mine by light ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had to guard, than boldest hope had dared To breathe for years; but rougher grew the way; And soft Phraerion, shrinking back and scared At every whirling depth, wept for his flowers and day. Shivered, and pained, and shrieking, as the waves Wildly impel them 'gainst the jutting rocks; Not all the care and strength of Zophiel saves His tender guide from half the wildering shocks He bore. The calm, which favored their descent, And bade them look upon their task as o'er, Was past; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... mixed descent. And, though too proud to start a fight With every cur that looms in sight, None ever saw thee quail beneath A foeman worthy of thy teeth. Thou art, in brief, a model hound, Not so much beautiful as sound In heart and limb; not always strong When nose and eyes impel to wrong, Nor always doing just as bid, But sterling as the minted quid. And I have loved thee in my fashion, Shared with thy face my frugal ration, Squandered my balance at the bank When thou didst chew the postman's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... the description of this place, it is not possible for ships to get off when once they approach within a certain distance. If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current impel them; and if they come into it when a land wind blows, which might seem to favor their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current carries them ashore; and what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... speak for me, I know—that I have lived, since that time we all have bitter reason to remember, in unchanging devotion, and gratitude to this family. Heaven is my witness that go where I may, I shall preserve those feelings unimpaired. And it is my witness, too, that they alone impel me to the course I must take, and from which nothing now shall turn me, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... largely by instinct and emotion. These instincts and emotions are incident to every living machine and are the motor forces that impel the organism. They do not think. They act, and act at once. All the mind can do is to place some restraint on such instincts and emotions through experience, education and settled habits. If the actions are never inhibited, the machine will tear itself ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... letter it occurred to her that by some accident Julia might possibly get hold of it. "And then," thought she, "she will recognize my handwriting, and curiosity will impel her to open the letter, after which she wouldn't hesitate a moment ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... knowledge of the nature of sensual impressions, which find their way to the heart—the seat of joys and emotions—which overpower the opposition of reason; and whilst "all other qualities and natures" are subdued, incessantly impel the patient, in consequence of his original compliance, and his all-conquering imagination, to imitate what he has seen. On his treatment of the disease we cannot bestow any great praise, but must be content ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... acuteness has carried him so very far, I am amazed that it did not impel him to advance one step farther. Happiness is what I and all men desire, as certainly as you do: but that happiness is of a strange kind, and held by a frail and feeble tenure, that is agitated by innumerable fears: that, if the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... that the dead man would, in all probability, guide the bearers to the exact spot where they were to bury him; if they were going in the wrong direction he would impel them to stop. Michael had watched with interest to see if this would take place, if the bearers halted or altered their course. Evidently the saint was pleased with the spot they had selected, for they journeyed on unhaltingly until ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... smiles to please you, with a breaking heart! Neglect him not in his hill-climbing course, Nor treat him with less kindness than your horse: Up hill, indulge him—down the steep descent, Spare—and don't urge him when his strength is spent; Impel him briskly o'er the level earth, But in the stable don't forget his worth! So with the actor—while you work him hard, Be mindful of his ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... as they might involve others, and above all her husband, I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many centuries hereditary among a people in whom the fear of annihilation—and the absence of all the motives that impel men on earth to face danger and death with calmness, or even to enjoy the excitement of deadly peril—have ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... gases must be shooting upwards or downwards to produce these changes in the lines. The velocities indicated in observations of this class sometimes amount to as much as two or even three hundred miles per second. We find it difficult to conceive the enormous internal pressures which are required to impel such mighty masses of gases aloft from the photosphere with speeds so terrific, or the conditions which bring about the downrush of such gigantic masses of vapour from above. In the spectra of the prominences on the sun's limb also we often see the bright lines bent or shifted ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... hear! Not Mars himself, nor aught immortal, fear. Full on the god impel thy foaming horse: Pallas commands, and Pallas lends thee force. Rash, furious, blind, from these to those he flies, And every side of wavering combat tries; Large promise makes, and breaks the promise made: Now gives the Grecians, now ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... people. I don't know whether I shall find myself compelled to commit some violent action; but don't be alarmed, for the assault and the taking of the house is altogether a wild, feudal idea of your sister. Chance has placed me in an advantageous position. Rage, the passion that burns within me, will impel me to profit by it. I don't know ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Motives and Acts. SECTION 1. Neither animosity nor mere personal attachment should impel the motives or acts of the members of The Mother Church. In Science, divine Love alone governs man; and a Christian Scientist reflects the sweet amenities of Love, in rebuking sin, in true brotherliness, charitableness, and forgiveness. The members of this Church should daily watch ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... her, and the effrontery in his eyes repelled the old, vanishing self in her, yet drew all her awakening sensuousness. He saw enough in her face to impel him to take her hand and hold it while he said his lingering ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Safeguards.—We have continually referred to the need for safeguards instead of mere reliance on prohibition. Such views and facts as the above should be more generally known in order that very worthy sentiments may not impel us to adopt an unsound solution for future peace. However alarmed and revolted we may have been in 1915 and later during the war, it is essential to take a balanced view in the present critical period ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... as if it had come from an electric storage. He had known the professor long, but he had never before heard a quaver in his voice, and it was this little quaver that seemed to impel him to supreme disregard of the dangers which he looked upon as being the final dangers. His own ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... gives her a presentiment of what the cost will be if she allows you the least opportunity to instruct her in a passion which she doubtless already shares. Women rarely inquire into the reasons which impel them to give themselves up or to resist; they do not even amuse themselves by trying to understand or explain them, but they have feelings, and sentiment with them is correct, it takes the place of intelligence and reflection. It is a sort of instinct which warns them in case of danger, and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... shock the prejudices of the orthodox. His late niece and wife was dead, so that there was no inconvenience on that score, should the interests of his dynasty, his family, and, above all, of the Church, impel him, on mature reflection, to take for his fourth marriage one step farther within the forbidden degrees than he had done in his third. Here is the statement, which, if it have no other value, serves to show the hideous designs of which the enemies ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... eat; Their anger thus we haply may disarm." "O Dalica," the grateful queen replied, "Nurse of my childhood, soother of my cares, Preventer of my wishes, of my thoughts, Oh, pardon youth, oh, pardon royalty! If hastily to Dalica I sued, Fear might impel me, never could distrust. Go then, for wisdom guides thee, take my name, Issue what most imports and best beseems, And sovereignty shall sanction the decree." And now Charoba was alone, her heart Grew lighter; she sat down, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... thence let him leap with all his energy, in a direction at right angles with the shaft of the column, into the open air; and it will be found that, though the original impulsion would not probably impel the body more than ten or twelve feet, motion would continue until it had reached the earth. Corollary: hence it is proved that all bodies in which the vis inertia has been overcome will continue in motion, until they come in contact with some ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... have originated in a desire to escape from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for his acts as the mere "motive-hunting ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... God would abstain from impelling the wicked is, according to Luther, tantamount to wishing that He cease to be God. Luther: "There is still this question which some one may ask, 'Why does God not cease to impel by His omnipotence, in consequence of which the will of the wicked is moved to continue being wicked and even growing worse?' The answer is: This is equivalent to desiring that God cease to be God for the sake of the wicked, since one wishes His power and action to cease, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... your love, or that your love is but a trifling consideration with me, you will not believe. What else should impel me to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and the need of proving this devotion to my family and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... wise agree with thee here, and censure thy language. Is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in evil, Takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow with others Knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel him? Rather than ever to-day would I make up my mind to be married: Many a worthy maiden is needing a husband's protection, And the man needs an inspiriting wife ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... example, her instinctive admiration for Church and State, her instinctive theory that they rested on gentility and people who were nice, was never for a moment shaken when she saw a half-starved baby of the slums. Her heart would impel her to pity and feed the poor little baby if she could, but to correlate the creature with millions of other such babies, and those millions with the Church and State, would not occur to her. And if Felix ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a will to their oars, our genial mariners quickly impel our barque round the first jutting headland, so that the thickly populated Piano di Sorrento is at once lost to view. Making good headway over the clear water, it is not long before we find ourselves passing beneath the wave-washed precipices of the Salto, and well within ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... miles from the nearest settlement, her husband torn from her in a moment, and her babe smiling as though he would console his mother for her terrible loss. In her sad condition self-preservation would have been too feeble a motive to impel her to make any further effort to save herself; but maternal love—the strongest instinct in a woman's heart—buoyed her up and stimulated ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... ways the various purchasers That sally forth with this protecting spell, Employ the privilege this grant confers: Some, like myself, their lawyer's citadel Besiege, his speed long striving to impel; To take a dinner with a friend some go; In fashion's haunts some for an hour to swell; Some strive, what creditors intend, to know; And some the moments on ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... lingered, but some mysterious power seemed to impel him, and passing through the door he found himself in a spacious hall, whose ceiling, walls, and floor were covered with polished tiles carved all over with unknown figures. He gazed about, full of wonder, and was just preparing to walk out again when ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... all over the earth," said Bernhard. "When a mighty feeling shakes the heart, and seeks to impel onward, the world stains and tarnishes it, and fair things die, and lofty aims become ridiculous. So it is no better with ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them in action are so poor, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the do-nothing: the truth is, as physiologists say, a ferment. It is intended to come into life, and into character, and into the inmost spirit of a man, and grip them, and mould them, and transform them, and animate them, and impel them. The truth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... names proudly borne on the chronicle of fame as martyrs to the universal spread of discovery and spirit of progress. But, the love of enterprise, and consequent expansion of civilisation and commercial venture, inaugurated by the brave old pioneers of Queen Elizabeth's day, have not ceased to impel similar seekers after something beyond ordinary humdrum life. The path of discovery, although narrowed through research, has not yet been entirely exhausted; for "fresh fields and pastures new," as hopeful as those about which Milton rhapsodised ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... maintain its own physical force, than if allied with those who would thus war upon its prosperity and domestic peace; and reason, pride, self-interest, and the apprehension of secret, constant danger would impel to separation. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... land-waves. It struck me that probably limestone outcropped at this spot, as indeed proved to be the case; also that such a patch of white would be a convenient guide for any who were travelling across that sea of bush. Further, some instinct within seemed to impel me to steer for it, although I had all but made up my mind to go in a totally different direction many more points to the east. It was almost as though a voice were calling to me to take this path and no other. Doubtless this was an effect produced by ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... induced by a persuasive orator, may appear wholly untenable a few hours later. Decisions which seemed warranted when we were in an angry mood, often appear unwise or unjust when we have become more calm. Motives which easily impel us to action when the world looks bright, fail to move us when the mood is somber. The feelings of impending peril and calamity which are an inevitable accompaniment of the "blues," are speedily dissipated when the sun breaks through the clouds and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... suppliant; he saw at once that the surest way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something. At Paris, if the first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege. Independence, vanity, and pride, all the young Count's better and worse feelings combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude. And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac |
