Impulse Quotes - Page 15

• From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.

  George Orwell

  Dying, Rebel, Generations

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.454, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Memories, Giving, Childhood

  Herbert Marcuse (2015). “Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud”, p.19, Beacon Press

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• He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.

  Stephen Crane

  Eye, Trying, Answers

  Stephen Crane (2014). “The Red Badge of Courage”, p.61, Broadview Press

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• My life and most people's lives are a series of little miracles -- strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique.

  Colin Clark

  Dream, Spring, Unique

  Colin Clark (2011). “My Week with Marilyn”, p.9, Weinstein Books

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• The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them.

  Holly Black

  Hard Times, Funny Things, Ideas

  Holly Black (2012). “Black Heart”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• To expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Heart, Grieving, Silence

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• Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.

  Jane Austen

  Feelings, Opinion, Reason

  Jane Austen (2016). “Pride and Prejudice (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• ...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes

  Thomas Hardy

  Strong, Judgement, Sometimes

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Diversion Classics)”, p.6, Diversion Books

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• A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Giving, Wish

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• That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Regret, Wish, Desire

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.269, University of Illinois Press

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• Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Lying, Believe

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• It is not enough to recognize what is right and true. One must control the impulse to do what is wrong and easy.

  Andy Andrews

  Easy, Enough, True Ones

  FaceBook post by Andy Andrews from Nov 11, 2016

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• I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Strong, Freedom, Men

  Speech to 140th Indiana regiment, 17 Mar. 1865

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• The first gift that Adam and Eve received was agency: ‘Thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee’ (Moses 3:17). You have that same agency. Use it wisely to deny acting on any impure impulse or unholy temptation that may come into your mind. Just do not go there, and if you are already there, come back out of it. ‘Deny yourselves of all ungodliness’ (Moroni 10:32).

  Boyd K. Packer

  Agency, Temptation, Mind

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• Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.

  Henri Nouwen

  Heart, Eye, Compassion

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• Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Silly, Heart, Character

  Edgar Allan Poe (2004). “The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.63, Wordsworth Editions

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• We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Ocean, Writing

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• Brother, stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose.

  Rumi

  Beauty, Brother, Pain

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• We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It's the reason... we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that continued beyond the very juncture at which they came the closest to ending.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Meaningful, Selfish, Reality

  "Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar". Book by Cheryl Strayed, July 10, 2012.

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• If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.

  Richard Dawkins

  Giving Up, Memories, Brain

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• It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Wall, Greatness, Steel

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• Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Caring, Thinking, Essence

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928”, Chatto & Windus

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• No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.

  Sigmund Freud

  Death, Suicide, Dying

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• If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469

  Hilary Mantel

  Joy, Degrees, Ifs

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• If there had been another female for him since we arrived in Salvation, I needed to cut off all her hair and beat her half to death. The strength of that impulse scared me, and I took a step back. Deuce the girl was every bit as vicious as the Huntress, it seemed

  Ann Aguirre

  Girl, Cutting, Hair

  Ann Aguirre (2012). “Outpost”, p.144, Macmillan

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