"Impelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remains is adopted by the majority of men. That Degeneration is easy only half accounts for it. Why is it easy? Why but that already in each man's very nature this principle is supreme? He feels within his soul a silent drifting motion impelling him downward with irresistible force. Instead of aspiring to Conversion to a higher Type he submits by a law of his nature to Reversion to a lower. This is Degeneration—that principle by which the organism, failing to develop itself, failing even to keep what it has got, deteriorates, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... three distinct passions impelling him to the stern threat— three reasons, any of them sufficient to ensure his keeping it. First, his own wrongs. True the attempt at assassinating him had failed; still the criminality remained the same. But the second had succeeded. His ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... occasion. As one who had his own subsistence to earn, with no capital but his hands, he accepted the proposition made him. Perhaps there was something of his inherited and acquired fondness for exciting adventure impelling him to this decision. With him were also employed his former fellow-laborer, John Hanks, and a son of his step-mother named John Johnston. In the spring of 1831 Lincoln set out to fulfil his engagement. The floods had so swollen ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain more than a few moments. In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we hardly feel, which at most we brush lightly as it passes. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... that the true beauty, the abiding lesson, and the great success of his life consist. And this he has enabled us to do. In a private, not an official, letter to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, the Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, he indicates his actions and the motives that were impelling him so to act, during the summer of 1886. Differences of opinion arose with his fellow missionaries as to the wisdom of his methods and the soundness of his judgment. Those who differed most strongly from him knew little or nothing by personal observation and experience ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... application of force, builds wheels and mills; his head is full of cogs and levers and eccentrics; and after he has gone out to his engineering in the great machine-shop of a modern world, the old corn-chamber at home is lumbered with his mysterious contrivances, studies for a self-impelling or gravitating machine and perpetual motion. Another boy is fired with the mystery of form. He will draw the cat and dog; his chalk and charcoal are on all our elbows; he carves a ram's head on his bat, an eagle on a walking-stick, perches a cock on top of the barn, puts an eye and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... how far it is an evidence of singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... fraud. It was not until he had experienced the intoxication of litigation that he felt, somehow, that he was a wronged and defrauded man, but with the obstinacy of defrauded men, preferred to arraign some one fact or individual as the impelling cause of his wrong, rather than the various circumstances that led to it. To his simple mind it was made patent that the "Blue Mass Company" were making money out of a mine which he claimed, and which was not yet adjudged to them. Every dollar they took out ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness—that fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The physical brain is a limitation ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... persuaded, acknowledge the justice of this observation. Some expositors of the parables, especially in more ancient times, remind one of the Great Eastern in the Atlantic when her rudder was disabled. There is plenty of impelling force, but this force, for want of a director, only makes the ship go round and round in a weltering sea. From the pages of those commentators, whose imaginations have broken loose, you may cull fancies as manifold, as beautiful, and as useless as the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... stern assembly a wave of sympathy surged irresistibly, impelling them to comfort this lovely, grieving lady, distraught by anguished brooding. Scarcely knowing that their emotion expressed itself in words, they caught up the Patriarch's answer and echoed it from group to group—from gallery to gallery—until it gathered impetus and rolled ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... before whom so many portentous events and figures have passed—find it hard to realize the tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead, or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life. The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct intercourse—personality—is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular climax of national affairs and won ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... is not much mystery, emigrating to Wallachia in such large numbers, proves to my mind that there was a greater power behind them and before them than is usually supposed to be the case, and than that attending wandering minstrels, impelling them forward. Mohammedism, soldiers, and death would not be looked upon by the Gipsies as pleasant companions. By fleeing for their lives they escaped death, and Wallachia was to the Gipsies, for some time, what America has been to the Fenians—an ark of safety and the land of Nod. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whose impelling he ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had stared at his new friend in this solemnity, turned a serious face toward the clawlike branches of his linden in its gauntness of late autumn-tide. This meaning of the animus that was impelling his odd and yet so normal German household, he began to see, was substantiated by a score of acts and attitudes in its daily life. He scarcely deemed it ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... that the sudden and total dispersion of the rioters, when their vindictive purpose was accomplished, seemed not the least remarkable feature of this singular affair. In general, whatever may be the impelling motive by which a mob is at first raised, the attainment of their object has usually been only found to lead the way to farther excesses. But not so in the present case. They seemed completely satiated with the vengeance they had prosecuted with such stanch and sagacious activity. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... possible; for they knew how pertinaciously and invariably they had persecuted the Lombard princes. These considerations caused the new duke willingly to join the Florentines, and united the Venetians and King Alfonso against their common enemies; impelling them at the same time to hostilities, the king against the Florentines, and the Venetians against the duke, who, being fresh in the government, would, they imagined, be unable to resist them, even with all the aid ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... hawk pursuing, The trembling dove thus flies, To shun impelling ruin Awhile her pinions tries: Till of escape despairing, No shelter or retreat, She trusts the ruthless falconer, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without falling into some degree of bewilderment. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... come to the animal life, you find the same thing. The swift foot, the flashing wing, the beauty of color, all the wonders of animal life have simply been developed in accordance with this method and under this impelling force which we call evolution, which is only a name for the working ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... to get out of Peters just how he made the leap—whether with the legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling force; but it was no use. I believe that he does not himself know—he did it by an animal instinct, and that is all there is to be said. The old fellow does not really know his age, but I should place it, at the present time, at from seventy-eight to eighty years, which, if correct, would indicate ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... have been so afraid, I should have lost my senses, all alone in a house at your age," said Mrs. Anderson, all the time gently impelling the girl along with her. "Of course there is nothing to be afraid of, but one imagines things; and you came here all alone at ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... civil discipline, and to maintain this, He has given laws, letters, doctrine, magistrates, penalties. And this righteousness reason, by its own strength, can, to a certain extent, work, although it is often overcome by natural weakness, and by the devil impelling it to manifest crimes. Now, although we cheerfully assign this righteousness of reason the praises that are due it (for this corrupt nature has no greater good [in this life and in a worldly nature, nothing is ever better than uprightness and virtue], and Aristotle says aright: Neither ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... into action and reality? Was there something in the background, which did not insist or drive or interfere with one's inclinations, because it knew that it would be obeyed and yielded to some time? Was it just biding its time, waiting, impelling but not forcing one to change? It gave him an impulse to look closer at his own views and aims, to consider what his motives really were, how far he could choose, how much he could prevail, to what extent he could really do as he hoped and desired. He was often haunted by ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... places of ungodly resort—amid such scenes as these, did he waste his precious time and squander away much of his hard earned money. But though a wild and reckless sailor, his warm and generous heart was ever impelling him to noble and generous deeds. If he sometimes became the dupe of the designing, and indulged in the wild revelry of passion, at other times he gave way to an outburst of generosity bordering on prodigality, relieving the necessities of the poor, or true to the instincts ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at the behest of this vagabundo who impeached his English? The man, however, had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling. He decided to take the note ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... of will as a world-principle—not in Schopenhauer's sense of a blind force impelling from within, but as the determination of a conscious Mind—lifts us at once out of Pantheism.[184] It sets up the distinction between what is and what ought to be, which Pantheism cannot find room for, and at the same time implies that the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... yet I was advised to remain until the weather became more mild. I had a severe cough that followed an attack of pneumonia, and physicians had advised me to spend the Winter in a milder climate. But this bereavement seemed impelling me to return to my afflicted children. But more than all other considerations was to learn the state of that dear child's mind as he was about leaving the land of the dying for the spirit world of the living. He had been a living Christian, but during the year past had become more inactive, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... of course follows in the wake of its great neighbour,) of seeing any traveller arise of lasting celebrity, or book of travels written which shall attain to durable fame. The native vigour and courage, indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon race, is perpetually impelling numbers of energetic young men into the most distant parts of the earth, and immense is the addition which they are annually making to the sum-total of geographical knowledge. We have only to look at one of our recent maps, as compared to those which were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... engine the steam, after having pushed the piston to the end of the stroke, escapes into the atmosphere, and the impelling force is therefore that due to the difference between the pressure of the steam and the pressure of the atmosphere. In the condensing engine the steam, after having pressed the piston to the end of the stroke, passes into the condenser, in which a vacuum is ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... intimately connected with this, if not the same argument in a more general form, I adduce the high spiritual instinct of the human being impelling us to seek unity by harmonious adjustment, and thus establishing the principle, that all the parts of an organized whole must be assimilated to the more important and essential parts. This and the preceding arguments may be strengthened ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... weaken the foundation. And yet all this seems as nothing when I recall a sin of greater magnitude-a sin that is upon me-a hideous blot, goading my very soul, rising up against me like a mountain, over which I can see no pass. Again the impelling force of conscience incites me to make a desperate effort; but conscience rebukes me for not preparing the way in time. I could translate my feelings further, but, in doing so, the remedy ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... know," said Patty slowly. She felt herself forced by his impelling gaze to raise her eyes to his, and for the first time it occurred to her that Mr. Hepworth felt more interest in her than she had ever suspected. "I don't know why I wouldn't own up to it, I'm sure," she went on; "in fact, ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... with strain and fret Of hopes delayed, or perished quite, For kisses that I did not get On many a love impelling night, Time owes me such a heavy debt; How can he ever ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... ominous silence of the returned manuscript is a severe disappointment even to those who from safe and happy homes have sought to gain the public ear, and whose impelling motive toward literature is scarcely more than an impulse of vanity. But to Haldane the letter, which in giving the editorial estimate of one of his stories revealed the fate of all the others, brought far more than a mere disappointment. It brought ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Doge finished his reading, and he finished it with the page of the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edge of the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong with Mary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had become impelling under the influence of her father's unusually long ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of her. Yes, she was pretty. But it didn't dawn on me at first. I—I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but didn't think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before Jean, eager ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... back again, his hands clasped behind his neck The excitement of what he had just gone through was still quivering in him and impelling him to speak, dreamily, a little as if intoxicated. "Oh really, nobody thinks of that!—what sort of people are you?—I thought of it the moment you suggested that we go swimming; after all, we don't have the catechism in our bodies by way of a soul. Doing, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... midst of a people, there riseth a man Who voices the life of its life, the dreams of its soul, The Nation's Ideal takes shape, on Nature's old plan, Expressing, informing, impelling, the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... a cotton tree; a many-tined antler was stuck in the prow, and dried legs and haunches of venison lay in the fore part of the boat; towards the stern sat a young girl, partially enveloped in a striped blanket, but naked from the waist upwards, impelling the boat in the direction of the deer by long graceful sweeps of her oar; in front of her was a squaw of maturer age, performing a like labour. In the centre of the canoe were two children, queer guinea-pig-looking little devils, and near these lay a man in all the lazy apathy of a redskin on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of the head, the torso and the limbs. As in the vocal apparatus, we have the lever, the impelling force, and the fulcrum. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... about these two questions were not the only motives impelling the United States to take up arms. There were two deeply rooted national desires urging them on in the same direction. A good many Americans were ready to seize any chance of venting their anti-British feeling; and most Americans thought they would ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... at Frank Halton's last graceful touches. "A romantic gratitude to a retired British officer, who had once befriended the Prince's august father, was the one impelling cause of a visit, in which the strictest retirement would be guarded by the dweller on the Roof of the World," etc., etc. So read out Madame Delavigne, closing with the remark that the "Moonshee had already visited the Royal Victoria Hotel ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... afraid, now. Come on. There isn't any danger," said Bobby, with impelling enthusiasm. "We can get enough ice to keep the meat fresh until it's all ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... is extremely dense, so is that of the kidney; the lungs, however, are of a much looser texture, and if compared with the kidneys are absolutely spongy. In the liver there is no forcing, no impelling power; in the lungs the blood is forced on by the pulse of the right ventricle, the necessary effect of whose impulse is the distension of the vessels and the pores of the lungs. And then the lungs, in respiration, are perpetually ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... of great length, with more fully developed characters and more of dramatic action, were required by a beauty loving and pleasure seeking race; and the leisure of peace and the demands of refined luxury furnished the occasion and the impelling motive to this more extended species of epic song." From the highly esteemed work of Dr. Felton we transcribe some observations on the beauties of the Ionian dialect, and on the poetical taste and ingenuity that finally developed the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... were the terror of all honest laborers and tradesmen. Skulking along the coast, pushing up rivers and creeks, landing anywhere and every where without warning, they mercilessly destroyed the native villages and swept the inhabitants into captivity. Or else, impelling with the force of fifty men their snaky craft, which were swift as race-boats and noiseless as beasts of prey, they would surprise at dead of night some defenceless merchantman, overwhelm their victims with showers of spears, and with morning light a plundered boat, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... that organs are located farther backward in proportion to the energy and impelling power of the faculty, and farther forward in proportion to their delicacy and intellectuality—the extreme front being ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... Mark asserts, Jesus was constrained by the promptings of the Spirit to withdraw from men and the distractions of community life, by retiring into the wilderness where He would be free to commune with His God. So strong was the influence of the impelling force that He was led thereby, or, as stated by the evangelist, driven, into solitary seclusion, in which He remained during forty days, "with the wild beasts" of the desert. This remarkable episode in our Lord's life is described, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... stealthy unremitting efforts. Yes! it's the lion conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the infinitely great; the train-bearer—whose proper part is to sit at his cardinal's feet like a faithful hound—in reality reigning over him, and impelling him in whatsoever direction he chooses. Ah! the Jesuit! the Jesuit! Mistrust him when you see him gliding by in his shabby old cassock, with the flabby wrinkled face of a devout old maid. And make sure that he isn't behind the doors, or in the cupboards, or under the beds. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... being. Fierce battles take place between the adherents of the idea and the opponents. Blind prejudice and hatred are encountered. Martyrs are made. The crusade is hallowed by suffering and sacrifice. It becomes an impelling spiritual necessity, an expression of religion. Gradually the forces of the opposition are weakened. Concessions and compromises are offered. There are signs of the contagiousness of the idea even in the house of the adversaries. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the proffered hand with his own, and as he had recoiled from Snap Naab so now he received another shock, different indeed but impelling in its power, instinctive of some great portent. Hare was impressed by an indefinable subtlety, a nameless distrust, as colorless as the clear penetrating amber lightness of the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... his musical life was now beginning to open itself before him, and the longing to do great things had taken possession of his soul. There were no more tears at being forced to work, for the greatest incentives to work—love and ambition—were now swaying him and impelling him onwards at a speed which nothing could check. Neefe's confidence and praise were more than justified, and before he had completed his thirteenth year Beethoven received his first official appointment ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... confidence, uneasiness at times, fear and almost terror, but also love: he was convinced of that. His companion in adventures which she shared with a good fellowship that excluded any awkwardness between them, she had suddenly taken fright; and a sort of modesty, mingled with a certain coquetry; was impelling ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... would you call the work of these padres impressionless, when it has permeated all California? The open-hearted hospitality of the Spaniards is a canonical law throughout the West, and their exuberant spirit of festivity still remains, impelling us to celebrate every possible ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... were not less so. These, in many parts of the country, were equally numerous and influential. They possessed, indeed, certain advantages in the discussion, which, in some degree, served to counterbalance the impelling and stimulating influences which always belong to a 'mouvement' party. They carried with them the PRESTIGE of authority, of the venerable power which time and custom seemed to hallow; they appealed to the loyalty of the subject; they dwelt upon the dangers which came with innovation; ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the quiet repose of night. The forests gave up no song, or cry, or even murmur, but looked down from the hills on the lovely basin they encircled, in solemn stillness; and the only sound that was audible was the regular dip of the sweeps, at which Hurry and Deerslayer lazily pushed, impelling the ark towards the castle. Hutter had withdrawn to the stern of the scow, in order to steer, but, finding that the young men kept even strokes, and held the desired course by their own skill, he permitted the oar to drag in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... him some assistance; the similarity of their accounts, though destitute of so many wonders, corroborating the probability of his. The three narratives are quite in keeping. We find in each the same restlessness, the same blind passion impelling to deeds of vice and desperation, and the same proofs of treachery amongst their companions. Each, too, has furnished so many means of detection, by names of persons, dates, and places, that,—no attempt at refutation having been made by persons implicated,—we are to believe that they ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... often that He lets us have a glimpse into the innermost chambers of His heart, in so far as the impelling motives of His course are concerned. But here He lays them bare. 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... turned her luminous eyes upon me with a sort of wide dazzling wonder. Some strange impelling force bore me onward, and before I could realize it I was alone. Alone, in a vast area of light through which I floated, serene and conscious of power. A sound falling from a great height reached me; it was first like a grand ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the vibration of the propeller became a sub-conscious murmur; over the placid water astern a rippling phosphorescence was stirred and subsided. A motion, increasing by imperceptible degrees, affected the deck; there was a rise and fall, regular and sleep-impelling: the uneasiness of the Gulf Stream. Havana floated into their waking vision, a city of white marble set in lustrous green, profound indigo, against the rosy veil of a ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... speak by that Word who has called Himself the Light of men; and who has said, 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' He 'teaches sinners in the way,' by Jesus Christ; for we have Him for our Pattern and Example. We have His love for our impelling motive. We have His Spirit to speak in our hearts, and to 'guide us into all truth.' And this Shepherd, 'when He putteth forth His own sheep, goeth before them; and the sheep follow Him and know His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... causes especially have excited our discontent; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future — the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shows his antipathy by his love of life, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... become seriously religious, who had been in the habit of considering that the service of God was only a fitting employment for Sunday. In fine, the spirit of God which breathed on the waters at the commencement is now passing over the British nation and impelling it ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... apply in the last resort to life. The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to be and to act. Beneath all man's activities, as their source and spring, there is ever some dim perception of an end to be attained. 'The ultimate end,' says Paulsen, 'impelling men to meditate upon the nature of the universe, will always be the desire to reach some conclusion concerning the meaning of the source and goal of their lives.' The origin and aim of all philosophy is consequently to be ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Amory has indeed all my sympathy, so badgered is she by Mr. ONIONS, so relentlessly forced into ignominious positions; and I cannot feel, as I should do, that she would have achieved those ignominies without Mr. ONIONS' impelling hand behind her. I have myself considerable sympathy for cranks, and perhaps that is why I regard Mr. ONIONS' satire as a dry, gritty business. His humour is, of course, always a delightful thing, but here I fancy that he has not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... intellectually higher than his compeers. It was not so much the man she had cared for, as the sight of herself in a superior setting; a sure proof whereof might have been found in a certain wilful pleasure which she had drawn from constantly impelling him to acts and admissions which she knew to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... came the tortures of initiation. A man, he journeyed in strange lands beneath a scorching sun, or felt the biting winter blasts. Again his heart beat high with hope, only to be cast down by the crushing defeat of his plans. But still, upborne by almost superhuman strength, urged by some strange, impelling power, he must battle for his race. The restless river, as it fretted the sides of the little island placed so protectingly against the Canadian shore, sang of battle, whose outcome none might guess. Suddenly he was aroused from his waking dream by shouts of joy and ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... considering that it is their object to burst, and considering the number of scientific persons who have devoted their time to make them burst, it is very strange how very few do burst. I am told that one reason for this is the following:—when they lose the velocity of the impelling force they turn over in the air, and as the percussion cap is on the lighter end, the heavier one strikes the ground. Many of these, too, which have fallen in the town, and which have burst, have done no mischief, because the lead ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... inherited habit, that is from instinct? This instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimau dog, may have acquired an instinct impelling them not to attack their prey in a close ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... again, and stood. He was a great man, and full of expedients, but the position was novel. Yet, after a minute's thought, he had an idea. He started off again, taking Bazan's arm, and impelling him onwards, with the same haste and violence. "To Simon's! to Simon's!" he cried as before. "Courage, my friend, I will play him for you and win you: I will redeem you. After all, it is simple, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the South; and they become doubly imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be saved now. The motives for home and foreign missions are thus combined, and impelling us for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, and for our country's sake, to give ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... he talked he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation; he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation; yet the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... campaign against the frontier of Virginia, threatening to involve the whole country west of the Alleghany mountains in destruction and death, was thus happily frustrated; and he, who had been mainly instrumental in impelling the savages to war, and in permitting, if not instigating them to the commission of the most atrocious barbarities, was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. So justly obnoxious had he [191] rendered himself by his conduct, that a more than ordinary rigor was practised upon him; and by the orders ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... an empress. Only see how happy they all are, and it is I alone who make them so; for out of these common soldiers I have created respectable officers, and have converted serfs into barons and gentlemen! I thank you, Alexis, for impelling me to become an empress. It is a noble pleasure, and I should now be unwilling to return to that still and uneventful life that formerly pleased me so well! I will so manage that the Empress Elizabeth shall be as little troubled with labor and business as the princess, and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... matter in further detail. It must here suffice to suggest that this conception of instinct as a primary form of experience lends itself better to natural history treatment than Darwin's conception of an impelling force, and that it is in line with the main ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... word did he speak. Even between the verses, when he might have striven against the pianos and the snare-drum, he maintained his terrible silence. But as he fixed his ardent eyes upon space, as he moved those impelling arms, a man would rise here, a woman start up there—reluctantly, or eagerly, the unsaved would press their way to the group kneeling at the front. Prayers and groans rose louder. Jubilant shouts of religious victory were more frequent. One could, now hardly ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... line of defence. Cut out of English fiction all that which has owed its birth more or less to a desire of earning money honourably, and the residue would be painfully small. The truth, indeed, seems to be simple. No good work is done when the one impelling motive is the desire of making a little money; but some of the best work that has ever been done has been indirectly due to the impecuniosity of the labourers. When a man is empty he makes a very poor job of it, in straining colourless trash from his hardbound brains; but when ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... conducted the case during the past two days and a half. Some great change had passed over him. There was no longer abstraction, indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdain, or distant stare. He was human, intimate and eager, yet concentrated and impelling: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... torch against the blackness of the stockade. He strained his hearing for a possible volley of musketry fire but no sound came to him over the broad surface of the lagoon. Over there the man with the torch, the other paddler, and Jaffir himself impelling with a gentle motion of his paddle the canoe toward the shore, had the glistening eyeballs and the tense faces of silent excitement. The ruddy glare smote Mrs. Travers' closed eyelids but she didn't open her eyes ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... frank and simple conditions. It has seemed to me that the boy approaches life from an entirely different direction from a girl and that our system of education should recognize that. Both are primarily guided by sex, their femaleness or their maleness is always their impelling force. I'm talking now on the matter of the spiritual and moral training, not ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that crisis of healthy disgust. His instinct was impelling him to eliminate from his life all the undigested elements ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... exhibiting it. Hardly ever does there appear any delicate, convincing analysis of the mysterious behavior of true genius. Mr. Dreiser's artists are hardly persons at all; they are creatures driven, and the wonder lies primarily in the impelling energy. The cosmic philosopher in him sees the beginning and the end of the artistic process better than the novelist in him sees its methods. And the peasant in him, though it knows the world of art as vivid and ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... withdrawn the fierce earth-shaking power, Jove's daughter Pallas watch'd the favouring hour. Back to their caves she bade the winds to fly; And hush'd the blustering brethren of the sky. The drier blasts alone of Boreas away, And bear him soft on broken waves away; With gentle force impelling to that shore, Where fate has destined he shall toil no more. And now, two nights, and now two days were pass'd, Since wide he wander'd on the watery waste; Heaved on the surge with intermitting breath, And hourly panting in the arms of death. The ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... water—rose nearly a hundred feet into the air. From its sides, resplendent with prismatic colors and reflected light, flashed more than one cascade of pure fresh water, and the light breeze, as it blew against its vertical walls, or perhaps some currents deep down below the surface, was impelling the huge mass, and the line of floes pushed before it, down the lane of open water, which led to the floating ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... event at sea is the sighting of a distant ship. To-day we signalled the 'Maitland,' of London, a fine ship, though she was rolling a great deal, beating up against the wind that was impelling us so prosperously forward. I hope she will report us on arrival, to let friends at home know we are so far all right ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they had been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had been an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or impelling habits. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... slaughtering animals, if the trachea was cut, scarcely any haemorrhage resulted; while, if that was left untouched, full haemorrhage occurred. By the Willardian theory, the fact is readily susceptible of explanation. The blood, filling the trachea, suspended respiration, and of course the impelling power of the blood was suspended, and the haemorrhage ceased. The engine could not work without steam. When the trachea was not cut, respiration went on, and kept up the circulation, until the animal was nearly exsanguineous, and the powers of life gave way." ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... beehive activity of these Rhenish-Westphalian cities and towns which crowd one another for space that impresses the traveller in this workshop section of Germany. He knows that the sea of smoke, the clirr and crash of countless foundries are the impelling force behind Germany's soldier millions, whether they are holding far-thrown lines in Russia, or smashing through the Near East, or desperately counter-attacking ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... slopes of Rhineland and the fair plains of Lorraine with blood and fire, making havoc everywhere. Now, however, looking back on all the events of that terrible struggle and duly weighing the surroundings and impelling forces leading up to it, allowing also for all temporary excuses and pretexts, and admitting all that can be said for partisanship on either side, there can be no use in blinking at the pregnant fact that the real cause of the war arose from a desire to settle whether the French or ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fire burning within the heart of Jeremiah, impelling him to prophesy. He could not help himself! He would ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... carefully minded her own business and tried to be nice to every one that the titter which went round at her expense hurt her with a wound impelling her to reply, "No; I ordered it at Margot's. You look as if you got your things there too, don't you?" Nevertheless, she was so stung by the sarcasm that the commendation she overheard later, that the Gravely kid had a tongue, didn't ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... land, attempting to find through fasting and contemplation the truth that must lie behind the changing forms of life, for he knew well that there must be some deep cause for all the things that he had witnessed and some impelling force behind the universe. Otherwise the whole earth and all that was in it and all things that breathed upon its bosom would be idle and wicked delusions. And the Prince knew too that in him lay the power to discover the truth if he should search for it diligently and ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... secure the fulfilment of laws, never the reasons for the laws, nor the motives to action. It is easy and necessary sometimes to praise and justify eudemonism, but, as Lazarus adds, 'Not a state to be reached, not a good to be won, not an evil to be warded off, is the impelling force of morality, but itself furnishes the creative impulse, the supreme commanding authority' (Ethics of Judaism, I. chap, ii.). And so the Rabbi of the third century B.C., Antigonos of Socho, put it in the memorable saying: 'Be not like servants who minister to their ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... the window and looked out a moment, and presently, when he turned toward Bo, he seemed a stronger, loftier, more impelling man, with all ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... There was something impelling in his voice; but likewise she felt that there was sufficient strength in those hands that grasped her wrists, to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... motives are, ex hypothesi, not so closely related to utility as the social motives, and the dissocial motives manifestly stand at the bottom of the scale. In respect to any particular action there may be a conflict of motives, some impelling towards it, others restraining from it; and any motive may come in conflict with any other motive. It will be found hereafter that in the case of some offences the motive is material in the highest degree, and in others ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the shadows, assuming by instinct the best conspirators' style, and glued his eyes upon the impelling sight. Not that the girl herself was peculiarly fascinating to the eye. The porch-light revealed her perfectly: a small, dark, nondescript child, not above thirteen years old, rather badly dressed and, to say truth, not attractive-looking in any way. But to Varney, at the moment, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the writing of "The Eyes of the World," the sense of duty stood highest. The modern trend in books and music and art and drama had so incensed the author that "The Eyes of the World" was the result of his all impelling desire for cleaner living and thinking. As is true of all writers, there are sometimes those who fail to catch the message in Mr. Wright's books. He is occasionally misunderstood, and that was especially true with "The Eyes of the World." To the great majority of people, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... autumn, I determined to start for the Confederate States as soon as necessary preparations could be completed, I had listened, not only to my own curiosity, impelling me at least to see one campaign of a war, the like of which this world has never known, but also to the suggestions of those who thought that I might find materials there for a book that would interest many here in England. My intention, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... whether in the family or the State. How an elder came to be associated with religion was in this wise. Every philosopher and anthropologist has been constrained to admit the presence in man of an instinct of unity, impelling him not merely to society or intercourse with his fellows, but to communion with a power unseen. This instinct, as already defined in a former chapter, is religion. Now the initiatory development of this aboriginal instinct was very humble, and if we wish to know what ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the value of steam as a locomotive power. Benjamin H. Latrobe, the most eminent engineer in America, did not hesitate to overwhelm such inventions with objections that, in his opinion, could never be overcome. "There are indeed general objections to the use of the steam engine for impelling boats," he wrote, in 1803, "from which no particular mode of application can be free. These are, first, the weight of the engine and of the fuel; second, the large space it occupies; third, the tendency of its action to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... The urgency impelling them was equally recognized by the ships and larger vessels out in the channel. Anchors were going down, sails furling, and oars drawing in. Above them, moreover, much beyond their usual levels of flight troops of gulls were circling on ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... has done honour and rendered service to his mighty predecessor—truer honour and better service—not by superseding, but by guiding and impelling towards the knowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... assistance as can be conceived, I never once thought of it, nor of the Object of it, nor returned thanks for my being delivered, till the lioness had just left me; and then I felt near the same force urging me to return thanks for my escape, as I had impelling me to prayer before; and I think I did so ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... expectations confirmed. In Cleopatra, however, as he surveyed her then, he discerned a degree of nobility and pride, which were apparent neither in her mother nor her sister, and which lent a singular queenliness to her impelling charms. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... rowlocks to impel the whole. Sale Taylor took the canoe and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he went inshore, and passed us a little after, with his arms folded, and two strong Samoans impelling him Apia-ward. This was too much for Belle, who hailed, taunted him, and made him return to the boat with one of the Samoans, setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our torment, Sale and the Samoan took the oars, sat on the same thwart (where they could get no swing on the boat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she could have touched him. She was conscious of the same strange feeling, and impelling sense of power, which had come upon her so strongly at first sight of him. More than that, a lively interest had been aroused in her. This borderman was to her a new and novel character. She was amused at learning that here was a young man absolutely indifferent to the charms of the opposite sex, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... noble feeling each step impelling, They gained the home of their Father soon. That ample city shall be their dwelling, Whose light depends not on sun and moon: For greater light, Than the sun containeth, Has He, whose might From the throne there reigneth, With grace to all in that city ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... writhed and lifted into ugly wrinkles, exposing the flesh-tearing fangs, cruel and menacing. Their very noses serrulated and shook in brute passion, and they snarled as the wolves snarl, with all the hatred and malignity of the breed impelling them to spring upon the woman and ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... fleetness of his horse, and partly to a most extraordinary sort of accident, colonel Gainey made his escape from our Scotsman. The chase was towards Georgetown, distant little more than two miles. Never on earth did two horses or horsemen make greater exertions. Fear impelling the one, fury urging the other. Macdonald declared, that in the chase he had passed several tories whom he could easily have cut down, but like the lion in pursuit of a favorite buffalo, he took no notice of them. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... God-consciousness is the one impelling cause of those moral struggles, sacrifices and purifications, those costing and heroic activities, to which all greatly spiritual souls find themselves drawn. We note that these souls experience it even when it conflicts with ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... that stage in the Church revival of this century which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use its nickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences and conditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but the impelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which these pages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associated with Oxford, from which it received some of its most marked characteristics. Oxford men started ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... chapter lix 4 SQUID > Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... is huge, Hollingsworth," she argued, insistently, an eager, impelling light in her eyes. "We would be as far apart as if ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... unity and symmetry of all existence. I am alluding to the sense of cloying and restlessness which comes to most of us (save when tired or convalescent) after a very few days or even hours shut up in quite the finest real gardens; and to that instinct, impelling some of us to inquire about the lodges and the ways out, the very first thing on coming down into some private park. Of course they are quite exquisite, those flowery terraces cut in the green turf, and bowling greens set ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... is shown by the significant fact that, by lulling emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit the sense of modesty. In other words, we are here in the presence of a fear—to a large extent a sex-fear—impelling to concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it becomes apparent that there is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Whether it be owing to the natural progression of trade extending itself from its origin to its acme, or ne plus ultra, or to the encouragement given by the administration to monied men of all denominations; or to necessity, impelling those who can no longer live on small incomes to risk their capitals in traffic, that they may have a chance for bettering their fortunes; or lastly, to a concurrence of all these causes; certain it is, the national exports ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... their neighbors for their energy and vehemence of character, their mental and physical superiority, and for the wild and daring expeditions to which their spirit of enterprise and activity were continually impelling them. They built vessels, in which they boldly put forth on the waters of the German Ocean or of the Baltic Sea on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like their present posterity on the British isles and on the shores of the Atlantic, they cared not, in these ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ever since Augustus had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the furious instinct that the world legally belonged to it, and that its mission was to conquer it again. This idea had intoxicated all the children of that historic soil, impelling all of them to make their city The City, the one which had reigned and which would reign again in splendour when the days predicted by the oracles should arrive. And Pierre remembered the four fatidical ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... distinguished men that would have been ready to join him—could have made them available, to the extent of their talents, in bringing advanced ideas before the public—could have used the House of Commons as a rostra or a teacher's chair for instructing and impelling the public mind; and would either have forced the Whigs to receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead of the Reform party out of their hands. Such a leader there would have been, if my father had been in Parliament. For want of such a man, the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... utterance. The thread of argument slipped from her. He frightened her, and at the same time it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon. Her training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... warmth, owing to the heat the sea had by that time acquired, which would soon begin to divert the current of air towards it when it had first overcome the vis inertiae that preserves motion in a body after the impelling power has ceased to operate. I have likewise been sensible of a degree of warmth on passing, within two hours after sunset, to leeward of a lake of fresh water; which proves the assertion of water imbibing a more permanent heat than earth. In the daytime the breeze would be rendered ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is often asked where the ravens got the cooked meat and bread for the prophet. Knowing their impelling instinct to steal, the Creator felt safe in trusting his prophet to their care, and they proved themselves worthy his confidence. Their rookeries were near the cave where Elijah was sequestered. Having keen olfactories, they smelt the cooking ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had not been productive of her impelling design. Mr. Hamilton had not gone, but had remained, and called upon them that very evening. "I've thought of a plan, Joey dear," said Mrs. Decker, when he had departed. "Poor Mr. Oakhurst has a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... wonderful matter is the getting along. You find it hard work to row yourself at anything like speed, though your impulse-stroke is given in a heavy element, and your return-stroke in a light one. But both in birds and fishes, the impelling stroke and its return are in the same element; and if, for the bird, that medium yields easily to its impulses, it secedes as easily from the blow that gives it. And if you think what an effort you ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... no Supreme Being. From this it might be inferred that they who adopt such a creed cannot be pantheists, but must be atheists. It is a rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that of Force. If it admits the existence of God, it declines him as a Creator. It asserts an impelling power in the universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It rejects inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and considers that ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... assuming this position can command not only the respect and belief of other nations in the integrity and the honesty of its purpose, but can also receive the respect and approval of humanity's peace loving sentiment, that will go far towards impelling the balance of the civilized world to accept the proffered ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... is operated the impelling diaphragm is rapidly vibrated, and through the medium of the air contained in the flexible tube it communicates motion to the pen diaphragm and consequently to the needle bar and needle. If, while the needle is reciprocated in this way, the pen is moved over the surface of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... here, Bultitude," said the Doctor, impelling the unwilling Paul towards the group. "You know Tipping, of course; Coker, too, you've met before—and Coggs. How are you, Siggers? You're looking well. Ah, by the way, I see a new face—Kiffin, I think? Kiffin, this is Bultitude, who will make himself your ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... alone, but was not afraid, although I had never before seen the sea, either in my visions or in real life; yet I knew at once what it was. While I gazed at the water, and watched the waves rushing up to my feet, I felt, all at once, as though an unseen power was impelling me to look up. I raised my head and gazed out over the water, and there I saw, far away, a great white object that looked like an immense bird. I knew, as I know all things that occur in my ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... who is the real radical, the real menace to this existing order. {146} He is not the sceptic, but the man with a purpose; the man who believes in the possibility of better things, and so has a motive impelling him to abolish and reconstruct the present things. The sceptic, who holds all order to be conventional and arbitrary, is as well satisfied with one system as another. His natural course is a cynical acquiescence in the inveterate folly of mankind. Or, finding order convenient, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... own weight, and exactly in proportion to the muscular power exerted by the jockey, the muscular system of the horse would be relieved. At the same time no additional task is thrown on the bony frame of the horse, since, if the jockey had not used his muscular power on it in impelling his own weight, the muscular system of the horse must have been so employed. It is true, that not much is done after all with a prodigious exertion, but if that little gains six inches in a hardly contested race it may make the difference of its ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... am falling backwards. . . ." Tell him that he must have no thought but this in his mind, that he must not reflect or wonder if he is going to fall or not, or think that if he falls he may hurt himself, etc., or fall back purposely to please you, but that if he really feels something impelling him to fall backwards, he must not resist but ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... working are seldom found in musical art. Men seem to become musicians because of the inspiration born within them. This impelling ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rather humidity, was the origin of all things, though he allowed mind or intellect (nous) to be the impelling principle. And one of his arguments in favour of humidity, as rendered to us by Plutarch and Stobaeus, is pretty nearly as follows: —"Because fire, even in the sun and the stars, is nourished by vapours proceeding from humidity,—and therefore ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... may be carried to excess. Mr. James L. Hughes, discussing "The Educational Value of Play and the Recent Play-Movement in Germany," remarks: "The Germans had the philosophy of play, the English had an intuitive love of play, and love is a greater impelling force than philosophy. English young men never played in order to expand their lungs, to increase their circulation, to develop their muscles in power and agility, to improve their figures, to add grace to their bearing, to awaken and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... crushing his punishment would be. The correspondents forgot to write, and, like the audience, hung upon every word and gesture of Jimmy Grayson, as he made his great denunciatory speech; they felt that he was stirred by something unusual, that some great and extraordinary motive was impelling him, and they followed eagerly ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the matter aside as impossible. But I know now that the thing was of God. As months, even years, passed, the impelling sense that the record of answers to prayer must be written ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... how the first beams of the rising sun smote his eyes like the cut of a whip till he was almost forced to cry out in his pain. He remembered how it seemed to him as if he were in the grip of some mysterious force impelling him onward in that unending, relentless lope. Another pause at sunrise to give the horses breath, and then on again they rode through that terrible red light of the rising sun, till at length in the still early forenoon ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement of dinner-tables, was brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessive laughter at Rose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... considered but today it is becoming clear that the cause of suffrage is more valuable to the individual woman than she is to the cause. The reason is that this movement has the great though silent force of evolution behind it, impelling it slowly forward; whereas the individual is largely dependent for her development on her own powers and especially on those expressions of life with which she brings herself into contact. The woman suffrage movement offers the broadest field for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... rebuke in the world of business affairs, this revelation of trickery on the part of her husband's enemies filled her with a disgusted horror. There was in the girl-wife a strong quality of the protecting maternal love in her attitude toward her husband. It was in obedience to its impelling force that she had followed so steadfastly her ambition to help him in his business, to be his partner. It was the dominance of this feeling that had caused her to stay on in her husband's house to comfort him, and if possible to save him, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... and gloom with which she had made her first preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, however imperfect,—a power that represents at once the impelling and the rewarding God,—that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the force to repeat itself? Personally such a point of view meant little to him, nor did his mind dwell upon it long. All that he knew was that some angel had stirred the pool—that old ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delight at the very thought; in truth, besides his remorse, and that inward and impelling voice which, in all the annals of murder, seems to urge the criminal onwards to the last expiation of his guilt—besides these, there mingled in his mind a sentiment of bitter, yet cowardly, vengeance, against his inhuman accomplice; and perhaps he found consolation for his own fate, in the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rarely involves a single people even at the start. It becomes contagious either by example or by the subjection of several neighboring tribes to the same impelling force, by reason of which all start at or near the same time. We find the Cimbri and Teutons combined with Celts from the island of Batavia[143] in the first Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire. Jutes, Saxons and Angles started in close ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... dandles him, kisses Him, flatters him, wooes him imperceptibly onwards. Now he is far from shore, and the multitudinous feet of the current are hurrying him away. The slow-moving boat is much nearer than it was a minute ago,—seems to be rasping towards him, in spite of the laziness of the impelling breeze. The boy, as yet unconscious of his peril, now glances shorewards, and sees the banks wheel past. The crowd of bathers is already far beyond hearing yet, frightened and tired, he wastes his remaining strength in fruitless shouts. Now the deceitful eddies, once so soft and friendly, whirl ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... thus congratulating himself, he sees what causes his heart again to go down within him, bringing back keenest apprehensions. The strange vessel is still a far distance off, and the breeze impelling her, light all along, has suddenly died down—not a ripple showing on the sea's surface—while her sails now hang loose and limp. Beyond ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... that when he had told Mr. Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary. In fact, it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her, his conscience would have been much less active both in previously urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... they may pass into each other by insensible gradations. Still, practically, and in reference to our treatment of any intelligent nature which is in course of gradual development under our influence, the difference is wide. The dog has an instinct impelling him to attach himself to and follow his master; but he has no instinct leading him to draw his master's cart. He requires no teaching for the one. It comes, of course, from the connate impulses of his nature. For the other he requires ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of the moral principle of Conscience which discriminates between right and wrong, and acts, therefore, as an impartial judge, or watches everything like an uninterested spectator? European moralists generally attribute two other functions to the Conscience, viz., impelling us to do the right and avoid the wrong, and approving when right is done and wrong avoided. But these functions may easily be attributed to some other principle. At any rate, when the question is one of nomenclature only, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... exertions to repair the engine, and when they found their labour in vain, endeavoured, by hoisting the sails, and by practising all possible manoeuvres, to preserve the ship from impending destruction; but all was of no avail, we were hard on a lee shore, to which the howling tempest was impelling us. About this time I was standing near the helm, and I asked the steersman if there was any hope of saving the vessel, or our lives. He replied, "Sir, it is a bad affair, no boat could live for a minute in this sea, and in less than an ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... discontent and ambition. Certainly this doctrine is the basis of the rebellion, and without it no successful movement could have been made to secure cooperation from any of the States. Nevertheless, it cannot be considered one of the impelling causes which moved the rebellious States to action, for it is not of itself an active principle. It rather served to smooth the way, by removing obstacles which opposed the operation of real motives. Veneration for the work of the fathers ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her place on the edge of the couch, where with her forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie to see her ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... dreams of fortune realized—nay, surpassed—and in the consciousness of liberty which she now enjoyed, elevated by the success gained by the person she loved best, she again followed her lover's motto. With the impelling "More, farther" before her eyes, she took care that she did not lack the admiration for which she had never ceased to long, and to which, in better days, she had possessed so well-founded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... killed in a mine disaster. In speaking of this period in his life Mr. Mitchell says: "The poverty and hardships that followed were marked by one circumstance that is imprinted indelibly upon my memory and which has had an impelling influence upon my whole life. My father had served a full term of enlistment as a volunteer in the Civil War. When he was discharged from the army he brought home with him his soldier's clothes, and I remember so well that when we had not sufficient bed clothing to keep us warm ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford |
