"Impulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I see. Well, as I said, ordinary friends could not be admitted. Lady Ingleby went, in her sweet impulsive way, without letting them know she was coming; travelled all the way up from Shenstone with no maid, and nothing but a handbag, and arrived at the door in a fly. Robert Mackenzie, the local medical man, who is an inveterate misogynist, feared at first she was an unsuspected ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... she answered, instinctively suppressing a sigh. She began to realize a little what a strange being she had married. With an impulsive need of protection she held him close, hiding her face in his neck. The reality of his arms ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... so nice to have a new mamma! such a sweet, kind one," Lulu exclaimed with impulsive warmth, setting down her candle and throwing her arms ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... they at once resort to comminatory messages. Compare the methods of the Emperor William with those of Edward VII. Nothing illustrates better the differences between the characteristics of English and German diplomacy than the dramatic contrast between the bragging, indiscreet, impulsive, explosive manner of the Kaiser and the quiet, courteous manner of the English monarch. Nothing explains better the striking success which has attended English policy and the no less striking failure which has attended German policy. For in international as well as in private relations, intellectual ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... unchanged, she artfully added that her father had so modified his opinions of foreigners as to press a suit between her and a Spanish Count, of whom it was said that he possessed estates in Arragon. This news seriously affected Leon, who was of an impulsive temper, and quick to give himself up to grief; for he knew what strange changes time and distance works in the mind of a young, ardent girl like Linda. He knew, too, how difficult a thing it was to resist the fascinating manners of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... I looked bewildered but said nothing. At length Umslopogaas, whose nature, for a Zulu, was impulsive and lacking in the ordinary ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... delighted with my news, and said that all I had to do was to write an act introducing my characters, and that I ought, for the sake of contrast, to give her a mother. Some impish spirit suggested to me the idea of making a mother much younger than her daughter, that is, a very flighty ordinary woman, impulsive and feather-brained, with a mania for attending sales and collecting odds and ends at bargain prices. Full of this idea I wrote the first ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Loring. "He's so interested in the impulsive attempt to make his million dollars that I think I could persuade him. He seems to be really serious ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... exclamation was accompanied by such a look of dismay and wounded sensibilities that O'Moy, meeting this, and noting the honest manliness of Tremayne's bearing and countenance; was there and then the victim of reaction. His warm-hearted and impulsive nature made him at once profoundly ashamed of himself. He stood up, a tall, martial figure, and his ruggedly handsome, shaven countenance reddened under its tan. He held out ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen. But whether the influences that make for further progress, or those that threaten to undo what has already been accomplished, will ultimately prevail; whether the impulsive energy of the minority or the dead weight of the majority of mankind will prove the stronger force to carry us up to higher heights or to sink us into lower depths, are questions rather for the sage, the moralist, and the statesman, whose eagle ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... "Idiot!" the impulsive Frenchman told him. "Haven't you heard of Germans hiding up in a hayrick—hiding as spies? It's a chance; let's take ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... beginning to be appreciated by the farmers. In August of 1824 he was united in marriage with Clarissa Beecher, a woman of remarkable strength of character and kindness of disposition, and one who in after years was of the greatest assistance to the impulsive inventor. Two years later he removed again to Philadelphia, and there opened a hardware store. His specialties were the valuable agricultural implements that his firm had been manufacturing, and after the first distrust of home made goods had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... not GO IN for what they counted scholarship, they could hardly believe him interested. Cosmo regarded everything from amidst associations of which they had none. In his instinctive reach after life, he assimilated all food that came in his way. His growing life was his sole impulsive after knowledge. And already he saw a glimmer here and there in regions of mathematics from which had never fallen a ray into the corner of an eye of those grinding men. That was because he read books of poetry and philosophy of which they had never heard. For the rest, he passed his examinations ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... he had hoped that his eloquence might persuade the marabout to a more impulsive agreement. "I will do what thou askest," he answered, "though it means delay, and delay is hard to bear. When I passed through the douar, my father's chief caids were on the point of leaving for Algiers, to do honour to the Governor ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... head of his class?" she finished triumphantly. "And it's smarter than ever you'll be yourself with your little books. Oh, childy!" She caught the little girl, doll and all, into an impulsive embrace. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... impulsive," said Lucia speaking very rapidly. "I daresay I'm impulsive, and if my impulses lie in the direction of extending such poor hospitality as I can offer to my friends, and their friends, I am not ashamed of them. Far otherwise. But when I see and observe ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... his home. But Eugene generally declined his invitations, as he preferred spending his vacations at the watering places in the North, with their fashionable and not always innocent gayeties. Young, vivacious, impulsive, and undisciplined, without the restraining influence of a mother's love or the guidance of a father's hand, Leroy found himself, when his college days were over, in the dangerous position of a young man with vast possessions, abundant leisure, unsettled principles, and uncontrolled desires. He had ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... An explosion of impulsive gratitude responded to the hint. There was a new "saloon" just opened in Main Street,—Betty should stop there and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... free lump empty liberty rational capital impotent reason Capitol impetuosity irrationality grave impulsive ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... cruel, boastingly impious, and a scoffer at matters religious, his later descendants were generally tender of heart, soft of manner, and of great piety. Whereas, in early manhood he had been fiery and impulsive, quick of decision and immovable of opinion, his progeny were increasingly inclined to be deliberate in judgment and vacillating of purpose. So many of his descendants entered the priesthood that the family was threatened with extinction, for in the course of time it had become a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Louise was high-spirited, impulsive, courageous, imaginative—the very foil of her slow-going Frederick, with his church restorations forevermore. The Queen, always for an aggressive policy, by her sympathy encouraged the Prussian war party; patriots, restive under the indecision ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... may take you, Scrooge—this Spirit of Democracy—to some of the charity organizations I know about. I realize that you are prejudiced against that sort of thing, it seems so cold and calculating, compared with your impulsive way of doing good. And you will ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... girl had electrified Cornelia Vertessy; indeed, she, the gentler, calmer of the two, was quite carried away by Maria's courage, energy, readiness of resource and impulsive enthusiasm, so that she considered the most fantastic projects which the Polish lady elaborated on the spur of the moment with the rapidity of cloud formation, as perfectly ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of sprites upon the sward. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the crumbling steps to the soft sward and looked about her with a little murmured note of happy expectation. She loved the place at once, and gave up to the ecstasy of loving it "good and hard," she would have said. These impulsive passions of her nature had always made her greatest joys. They were like robust bewildering playmates. She took them to her heart, and into her bed at night to help her dream. There was nothing ever more warm and grateful than Lydia's acceptances ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... intelligent women is better than their characters. Goodness in a woman, as we understand it, seems to imply necessarily a certain imaginative fixity. Miss Grammont has an impulsive and adventurous character. And as I have been saying she was a spoilt child, with no discipline.... You also are a person of high intelligence and defective controls. She is very much at loose ends. You—on account ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... self-respectful smile, that said, as plainly as words could say: "Oh! I know women: they are amiably impulsive, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... up in a second," laughed Marjorie, making a dive for the stairs. The next instant she had caught the immovable little figure at the landing in an impulsive embrace. "Poor old Lieutenant, I'm so sorry," was her contrite cry. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Listen, dear. I'm going over to see Connie this afternoon after school and ask her to let me tell you everything you wished to know about ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... belongs. The reader will remember that Lohengrin in his final address declares himself son of Parsifal, the King of the Grail; and it is with this Parsifal that Wagner's last work is concerned. Parsifal, like Siegfried, represents free human nature in its spontaneous, impulsive action. He is styled in the text, "Der reine Thor" (the guileless fool), who, in consonance with the old mythological idea, overcomes the evil principle and gains the crown by dint of pure natural impulse. The opera differs ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... virtue of conjugal fidelity. When followed out to the better end what is the good of it—where does it lead? Why should a man be tied to one woman when he has love enough for twenty? The pretty slender girl whom he chose as a partner in his impulsive youth may become a fat, coarse, red-faced female horror by the time he has attained to the full vigor of manhood—and yet, as long as she lives, the law insists that the full tide of passion shall flow ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... from hunting he was faint from hunger, and cast a greedy eye on some pottage that Jacob had prepared. But Jacob would not give his hungry brother the food until he had promised, by a solemn oath, to surrender his birthright to him. The clever man of enterprise, impulsive and passionate, thought more, for the moment, of the pangs of hunger than of his future prospects, and the quiet, plain, and cunning man of tents availed ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... drowsiness that would not come, and she arose at once and wrote a brief and businesslike letter to the landlord of the little New Hampshire inn where she had been delayed for a couple of hours in the fall. In the morning, true to her impulsive nature, she besieged her father until he gave his permission for her to take her maid and a quiet elderly cousin of his and go away for a complete rest before the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... Keap is only twenty-three. Why, she hardly knew her husband, even! It was one of those sudden, impulsive affairs that would overwhelm any girl who hadn't seen a man for four years. And then he enlisted in the Spanish War, and ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... this to herself when out upon the sunny stillness rang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in an extremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horror upon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsive step out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. And then she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speak to a ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... her Poems, which, though somewhat impulsive and overwrought, met with remarkable public favor. Such poems as "The Cry of the Children," which voices the protest of humanity against child labor, appealed tremendously to the readers of the age, and this young woman's fame as a poet ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... yield; and the soft zephyr of freedom will then fan the fair fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas; Louisiana will feel its refreshing influence; and the Lone Star, (Texas), cannot long stand alone, in her opposition, to the rights of man, and the impulsive calls of humanity. The shades of Washington and Clay will then hover over the states of Virginia and Kentucky, and around them will cluster, a convoy of angels, and the spirits of the fathers of American freedom; all watching with intense interest ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... rested not with him but with her parents. What right had he to point it out to them, and above all how was he to do it? He halted irresolutely at what he believed was his sober second thought, but which, like most reflections that take that flattering title, was only a reaction as impulsive and illogical as the emotion ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... The impulsive boy caught up the paddle, and rose to his feet; but it was like unto him who first puts on skates. It flashed from beneath him, and he was precipitated headlong into the water. The others, as a matter of ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... fellow inbound and with a Red flag up, but again the gen'ral said, "Paysheeons, paysheeons, senor admiral," and raises one hand to restrain my impulsive motions. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... was eminently social in his nature, and frank to a fault; his opinions were never concealed of men or measures; and these were, though apparently hasty, the honest convictions of his judgment, notwithstanding their apparent impulsive and hasty character. Like his tutor, Mr. Crawford, he cared little for ceremony or show; and in every thing he was the kernel without the shell: his character was marked before his company in five ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... captain. If young master will take a poor mariner's gift, there it is, for the sake of his love to the calling, and Heaven send him luck therein." And the good fellow, with the impulsive generosity of a true sailor, thrust the horn into the boy's hands, and walked ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... I can, my dear," said the other, eagerly. "At least I can tell you what is best and safest. Is it not for a girl to go by her father's advice—her father's wishes? Then she is safe. Anything else is wild, dangerous. My dear, you are far too impulsive. You do not think of consequences. It is all the affair of the moment with you, and how you can do some one you love a kindness at the instant. Your heart is warm, and you are quick to act. All the more reason, I say, that you should go by ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when they ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... high sentiment, is tranquil, without aggressiveness, the voice has more of the wavelike rise and fall, and at the pausing places the tone is gradually diminished, rather than abruptly broken off. In the case of quickly impulsive, passionate feeling, the speech is likely to be much varied in pitch, broken by frequent abrupt stops, and decisive inflections. In the case of the expression of tenderness or pathos, there is a lingering tone, with the quality and inflection ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... awkward and rather jolly girlhood into a peculiarly determined new kind of womanhood over night. Her adventurous spirit worried him. One day he had sat in his office reading a letter announcing her homecoming. The letter seemed no more than a characteristic outburst from an impulsive girl who had but yesterday fallen asleep at evening in his arms. It confused him to think that an honest ploughmaker should have a letter from his little girl talking of the kind of living that he believed could only lead a woman ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... The first class could only guess. No cadet knew, unless it were Holmes, what Prescott's intentions were about quitting the corps in the near future. And Greg, usually both chatty and impulsive, could be as cold and silent as a sphinx where his chum's secrets ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... always to be calm, oracular, weighty; always to be sure of himself; but his temperament was incurably nervous, restless, and impulsive. He could not be still, he could not wait. Instinct drove him to action for the sake of action, instinct made him seek continually for notice, prominence, comment. These fundamental appetites had urged him into public life—to the Borough Council and the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... joy, Bearing the Grail within the covered shrine, While bells were chiming in the lofty dome. And then the lad—for he was Parsifal— Tight clutched his heart in sorrowful distress As King Amfortas groaned in bitter woe. He stood in utter anguish overcome, Breathing impulsive with deep sympathy, But spake no single word, nor gave one sign That he had understood the solemn feast, Or seen the glory of the Holy Grail. And when the last knight left the festal hall And all the doors were closed, then Gurnemanz Came ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... was thinking how I might use her, and the thought was not agreeable. She was so lovely in her fresh young womanhood, so impulsive and yet so self-possessed, so utterly ignorant of what was passing in this war-racked land of mine, that I hesitated to go gleaning here for ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... and shake her crutch at Godolphus, who, perceiving his mistress's line of action, at once, in his impulsive Irish way, barked defiance at ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as a rule that a friendship formed on this stop-gap principle, and too rapidly, is not likely to endure. Such a friendship is not a sane or a wise relation, for friendship is like scholarship: if it is worth anything at all it comes slowly. Impulsive, quickly forced friendships are not wise investments; the very fact that they come so quickly implies an unbalanced state of idealizing, or lack of self-control. This does not mean that one is ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... he cried, running up and hugging her in his boyish, impulsive way. Jefferson had always been devoted to his mother, and while he deplored her weakness in permitting herself to be so completely under the domination of his father, she had always found him ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Ballads was withdrawn, though they were reissued in the same year, when Mr. Swinburne published a reply to his critics. Nevertheless, although the graver and, we may say, the higher judges of what was admissible to a nineteenth-century poet were entirely against him, it cannot be denied that the impulsive youth of that generation felt the enchantment of Mr. Swinburne's intoxicating love-potions—were sorely tempted to dash down Tennyson on the drawing-room table, and to join the wild dance round the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... on ahead of him over these grand old mountains," added the princess, with enthusiasm, her cheeks glowing in pleased anticipation. "And we have to thank you, Mr. Adorjan, for the suggestion." With an impulsive movement she extended her hand to the young artist, who scarcely ventured to touch ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... book without sending its author to prison. "Necessary" to murder a sweetheart because she has changed her mind during a man's long absence! The wildest anarchist plot never included a more diabolical idea. Brainless, selfish, impulsive young idiots are only too apt to act on that principle if their proposals are not accepted; the papers contain cases nearly every week of poor girls murdered for refusing an unwelcome suitor; but the world is beginning to understand that it is illogical and monstrous to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in his stead. This, it soon turned out, was a great mistake. Fages and Serra did not work well together, and, at the time of the founding of San Luis Obispo, relations between them were strained almost to breaking. Serra undoubtedly had just cause for complaint. The enthusiastic, impulsive missionary, desirous of furthering his important religious work, believed himself to be restrained by a cold-blooded, official-minded soldier, to whom routine was more important than the salvation of the Indians. Serra complained that Fages opened his letters and those of his fellow missionaries; ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... published a story Described by The Leadenhall News as "too gory." One governess after another was tried, But none of them stopped and one suddenly died. Then she went for a while to a wonderful school Which was run on the plan of the late Mrs. BOOLE; But no "ethical safeguards" could ever restrain So impulsive a heart and so fertile a brain; And a fire, for the kindling of which she was held Responsible, led to her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... finds its way into the lymphatic vessels is probably as follows:—I have already mentioned the inconceivable delicacy of the capillary vessels, those last ramifications of our arteries and veins. It needs all the impulsive power of the heart to enable the blood to force its way through these narrow passages; and minute as are the globules, it would seem that they have but just room to pass, for in examining under the microscope a corner ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... life, spending the early spring-times in the maple-sugar camp, the later weeks in gardening and gathering stove-wood, the summers in picking and spinning wool, and the autumns in drying apples, I found little opportunity, and that only in winter, for books or play. My father was a generous-hearted, impulsive, talented, but uneducated man; my mother was a conscientious, self-sacrificing, intelligent, but uneducated woman. Both were devotedly religious, and both believed implicitly that self-abnegation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... word. Posthumus, then, is presented to us in the beginning of the play as perfect, a model to young and old, of irreproachable virtue and of all wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to musing; a poet—ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the point of demanding the heaviest punishment ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of the wary and elusive moonshiner. Nevertheless, it was impossible, on either of these obvious bases, to account for the fact of something withheld in the stranger's manner, some secret exultant knowledge of the phenomenon which baffled the mountaineer's speculation. Hite, all unaware that in his impulsive speech he had disclosed the fact of his hazardous occupation, began to feel that, considering his liability to the Federal law for making brush whiskey, he had somewhat transcended the limit of his wonted ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... more impetuous would have started to rush out on the bridge, in order to tell Max what they thought of him; only that several cool-headed men kept these impulsive ones back. ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was led into that unreasoning attack upon property and authority to which Thackeray deprecatingly alludes. Because the poor are unhappy, according to his philosophy, therefore are the rich, most of them, their direct oppressors, and ruling bodies, tyrants. Fiercely upright and aggressively impulsive in his championship of the lowly, he was anything but sound and thorough in his premisses; and had he the power he might have wielded later, his defects as a political economist would infallibly have brought about disaster. "His Radicalism," his son has told us, "was that of a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... from her chair, and dismayed at the astonishing swiftness of her changed mood, Halloway took an impulsive step toward her. His arms were still receptively outstretched, but suddenly he felt that attitude to have become absurd. An altered light shone in her eyes now, and it was unpleasantly suggestive of contempt. She turned, absent-mindedly carrying ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... himself analyzing her character. Refined—yes. Intelligent—beyond a doubt. She talked with her father in a quiet, authoritative way which left no doubt on that score. Graceful, tender, sincere, too—her tones to her impulsive brother and her younger sister proved that. And a will of her own she had. The firmly set, full lips were eloquent of character. He liked that above all things in a woman. He ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... excessive delight upon the night air. Neighbors clasped hands and embraced each other to express their gladness. Many were too full for utterance; they broke down in tears with their first attempt to join in the general acclaim. Such a varied, impulsive, uncontrollable expression of joy was never before ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... "at that name of Merridy, that ring, and all. Why—why, I thought you might be the missing girl I told you of—you remember, that day up on Lee's Creek—so I had to see; but, dear me, I should have been more considerate—I should have explained. The trouble is I'm a nervous man, and I get impulsive streaks on me sometimes that I can't control. I'm sorry I spoiled your dress, but I'll get ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... boy, active, quick, strong of limb and of body. He had earnest, serious eyes of gray-blue, like those of his father. His mouth and chin were delicate, like his mother's. And he was thoughtful, rather than impulsive. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... Howard's presence in the room. On the threshold of a terrible deed, his thoughts were leagues away. Like a man who is drowning, and close to death, he saw with surprising distinctness a kaleidoscopic view of his past life. He saw himself an innocent, impulsive school boy, the pride of a devoted mother, the happy home where he spent his childhood. Then came the association with bad companions, the first step in wrongdoing, stealing out of a comrade's pocket in school, the death of his mother, leaving home—with downward progress ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... She tossed off his thanks with a little shrug. "They are so impulsive, my boys ... like children, you know.... I was ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... was just a trifle uneasy concerning that member of the little party. There was a shadow of a reason why he should feel that way, too. He could only too easily remember how impulsive Jerry had hinted that he felt a great temptation to try to find out what the secret of the hermit's house was. At the time he expressed this longing Frank had taken him severely to task; and Jerry had promised faithfully to forego all effort to pry into matters that ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ordinary revolutionists whose fiercest hatred for Diaz and his tyranny after all was only that of honest and ordinary patriots. Here was something else, they knew not what. But Vera, always the most impulsive, the quickest to ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... special care was bestowed upon the young men of the University, who had gathered about him, in the spirit of a most enthusiastic discipleship, out of all Germany, and indeed out of nearly all Christendom. To the last he continued to be a young man himself, as fresh, impulsive and eager, and with as entire a freedom from all appearance of assumption and authority, as though his pupils and he were merely peers. There was at once a warmth, a blandness and a child-like simplicity of manners, which made him the idol of every heart. ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... between the visit of the royal children to Rhuddlan and this present visit to Carnarvon, Joanna had grown from a child to a woman, and was no longer able to run about with her brothers at will, though she still retained her old fearless, independent spirit and impulsive generosity of temperament, and was a universal favourite, despite the fact that she gave more trouble than any of her ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... for Comrade Nat Scott," suggested impulsive Red; and they were given with such a vim that many of the big bullfrogs along the farther bank jumped into the ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... upon the wrack, and stood before him with downcast and averted head, but he could still see the tears falling like diamond-drops in the clear moonlight. He turned irresolutely away, but he had made only a single step before he was vividly back again with an impulsive and imploring hand ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... enough to win all the prizes in my class at the Treguier College. The palmares happened to be seen by one of the enlightened men whom M. Dupanloup employed to recruit his youthful army. My fate was settled in a twinkling, and "Have him sent for" was the order of the impulsive Superior. I was fifteen and a half years old, and we had no time to reflect. I was spending the holidays with a friend in a village near Treguier, and in the afternoon of the 4th of September I was sent for in haste. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But Billy's impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is neither. Anyway, Billy's at the age now when she can't think of anything but herself. Her frocks, her parties, her friends—that's all ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... in the following terms: "O Cais, do not let your wrath be stirred up against Hadifah, for he is verily a man headstrong and unjust in his actions. O Cais, if you persist in holding to the bet, great disasters will follow. Both you and he are impulsive and passionate, and this is what causes me to feel anxiety about you, Cais. Put aside your private feelings, be kind and generous, and it will come to pass that the oppressor himself will become ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... of the age was hospitality. There were no public inns in those times, hence a sort of gentle necessity compelled the entertainment of wayfarers. The hospitality accorded was the same free and impulsive welcome that the Arab sheik of to-day extends to the traveller whom chance brings to his tent. But while hospitable, the nobles of the heroic age were often cruel, violent, and treacherous. Homer represents his heroes as committing without ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... His artist pleasure in the theater was indulged without his father's knowledge. He would go to the play, come home for nine o'clock prayers, go up to bed, and climb out of his bed-room window, and run back and see the after-piece. So come evasions of undue restraint. But with all this impulsive liveliness, young Washington Irving's life appeared, as he grew up, to be in grave danger. When he was nineteen, and taken by a brother-in-law to Ballston springs, it was determined by those who heard his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... To believe that it did is the error of an impulsive and uninformed scepticism. But priestcraft developed it, systematised it, enforced it, and perpetuated it. This could not be effected, however, except in alliance with the temporal power; and accordingly, in every country—savage, barbaric, or civilised—the priests ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... patiently. "It isn't the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that Freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart. And if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future—in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness. The very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... as a lady. He hesitated only a second, then followed her, overtook her at the entrance to her room. She, hearing him coming, did not face about and put him back in his place with one haughty look. Instead, she in impulsive, most ill-timed panic, quickened her step. When the woman flees, the man, if there be any manhood in him, pursues. He caught ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... prepared for this. He feared that he had offended her, and her impulsive declaration swept him from his feet. He watched her face eagerly, hungrily, as she went on, talking very rapidly, and making no effort to disengage her hands, which he held clasped ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... Borrow came into conflict with this impulsive missionary free-lance was in March 1838, when he heard from the Rev. W. H. Rule that Graydon was on his way to Andalusia. Borrow immediately wrote to Mr Brandram that he, acting on the advice of Sir George ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... not mad, but rash and impulsive, and just now had done a very foolish thing, and put me into a most awkward position. Ai! Ai! what trouble and vexation I had through ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... he feels—to presume upon this semi-confidence of an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty in that last glory of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But he has no right, and there's an end on't! "I will tie Achilles up," he says. "I should not like ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to greet his visitor; but stopped short on, seeing how pale, haggard, and feeble the old man looked. And his impulsive exclamation of: "Oh, judge, I am so glad to see you," changed at once to the commiserating words—"How sorry I feel to see you so indisposed! Have you been ill long?" he inquired, as he placed his easiest chair ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... report. We were adopted recently by a magpie. He was a gentle creature of impulsive habits and strong woodpecking instincts. Arsene we called him. For some days he gladdened us with his soft bright eye. But when we came to know him well and I relied on him to break the shells of my eggs every morning ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... life than about his work. His work has the mystery which belongs to the complex; his life the much greater mystery which belongs to the simple. He was clever enough to understand his own poetry; and if he understood it, we can understand it. But he was also entirely unconscious and impulsive, and he was never clever enough to understand his own character; consequently we may be excused if that part of him which was hidden from him is partly hidden from us. The subtle man is always immeasurably easier to understand than ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... from the gentle "Unknown," I find that the question, "What advantage has the stage over other occupations for women?" is asked by a Mrs. Some One more often than by the more impulsive and less thoughtful girl writer, and it is ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... treated with the creative skill of genius; but also in the etudes, the preludes, nocturnes, scherzos, ballads, etc., with which he so enriched musical literature. His genius could never confine itself within classic bonds, but, fantastic and impulsive, swayed and bent itself with easy grace to inspirations that were always novel and startling, though his boldness was chastened by deep study ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... this, a deep, significant, impulsive world had already interested me. Through my adventure with Gretchen and its consequences, I had early looked into the strange labyrinths by which civil society is undermined. Religion, morals, law, rank, connections, custom, all rule only the surface of city existence. The streets, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... time and every way; feels, I say, that something new, something unexpected is really about to happen: something that will surely leave a deep mark on his imagination, and last through all his life. I mean that peculiar radiation of impulsive energy issueing from anything really great, vibrating and palpitating from afar, fitting the soul to emotion ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the artist to the subject. He divined the kind of man the first John Wingfield was; divined it almost as written in the chronicle which Jack kept in his room in hallowed fraternity. Only he bore hard on the unremitting, callous, impulsive aggressiveness of a fierce past age, with its survival of the fittest swordsmen and buccaneers, which had no heroes for him except the painters, poets, and thinkers ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... him the door in his glorious Paris. My solemn asseverations that my patroness—no doubt only in fun—was deliberately distorting my account of my former visit to him, apparently pacified him so far as I was concerned, and, on the other hand, he had no doubt already formed his own opinion of the impulsive singer. He certainly regretted that he could not remember my visit in Paris, but it nevertheless shocked and alarmed him to learn that any one should have had reason to complain of such treatment at his hands. The ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... longer she stood there, as though a light—a long-hidden truth—were slowly forcing itself upon her mind. Then, with impulsive movement, she hurried through the dining-room, threw open the kitchen door, and startled the domestics ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle's again and again; they invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of the East Seventies. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, nee Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... began to listen. The clatter of crockery did not cease in the adjoining room. People were still eating there with that impulsive voracity which had spread from one to the other end of Lourdes. And all at once a voice was ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and soon after he left the table and went into the library. Florence sat for a moment abstractedly; then with her old impulsive ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... of the armies of Christendom, as he was entitled to do as sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire, and lead them to recover the holy places. But while most princes delayed and waited to know what others would do, the impulsive and emotional Richard took the cross the next morning, men said, after he had learned the news. This he did without the knowledge of his father who was shocked to learn of it, and shut himself up for days, understanding ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... an arm of succor, the artillery serves, 1st, to give impulsive force to the attacking columns; 2d, to assist in arresting, or at least in retarding, the offensive movements of an enemy; 3d, to protect the avenues of approach, and to defend obstacles that cover a position; and, 4th, to ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... each blinded to the other. "Forgive me," he decided to say at last, and his voice had a little quiver of emotion, and he laid his hand on hers upon her knee. "I am the most foolish of men. I was stupid—stupid and impulsive beyond measure to burst upon you in this way. I—I am a love-sick idiot, and not accountable for my actions. Will you forgive me—if I say ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... prejudicial to the race, as I have pointed out in Hereditary Genius, but may be permitted to do so again. The doctrine would only be followed by the prudent and self-denying; it would be neglected by the impulsive and self-seeking. Those whose race we especially want to have, would leave few descendants, while those whose race we especially want to be quit of, would crowd the vacant space with their progeny, and the strain of population would thenceforward be just as pressing as before. There would ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... was so different. By which he meant so dangerously, so disastrously feminine and innocent and pretty. He knew now (she had "jolly well shown him") that Winny could take care of herself; but Violet, no; she was too impulsive, too helpless, too confiding. To think of her waiting for him like that—for a fellow she'd never met before—in Oxford Street at closing-time! How did she know that he wasn't a blackguard? Supposing it had been some other fellow? Ranny's muscles ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... kept our places at a safe distance from his chain. My aunt, with a woman's impulsive contempt of danger when her compassion is strongly moved, stepped forward to him. The superintendent caught her by the arm and checked her. "Take care," he said. "You don't know him ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins |
