Impulse Quotes

• Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Inspirational, Life, Imagination

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

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• The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest.

  Emile Souvestre

  Spring, Selfishness, Spurs

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• Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Life, Giving, Vision

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

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• There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

  Daniel Goleman

  Skills, Fundamentals, Psychological

  Daniel Goleman (2012). “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ”, p.137, Bantam

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• Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

  Eric Hoffer

  God, Stars, Airplane

  www.nytimes.com. July 21, 1969.

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• He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Lying, Wind

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• The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Sex, Actors

  Dell' Anatomia Fogli B (transl. Edward MacCurdy in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. 1, Ch. III)

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• I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.

  Angelina Jolie

  Inspirational, Positive, Hurt

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• Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.

  Brian Aldiss

  Law, Growth, Growing

  "Hothouse". Book by Brian Aldiss, 1962.

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• All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Trust, Forgiveness, Powerful

  1883-92 Also sprach Zarathustra ( Thus Spake Zarathustra) (translated by R J Hollingdale).

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• For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Perseverance

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from The Hague, www.webexhibits.org. October 22, 1882.

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• Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Children, Grief, Eye

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.115, Vintage

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• All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.

  Aime Martin

  Reflection, Movement, Firsts

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• Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

  David Seabury

  Love, Jealousy, Hate

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• The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

  Agnes Repplier

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

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• Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Logic, Failing, All The Best

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau”, p.51, Library of Alexandria

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• Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Thanksgiving, Gratitude, Kindness

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• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Life, Leadership

  Address to American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, Philadelphia, Pa., 8 July 1896

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• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Life, Strong, Freedom

  Speech to 140th Indiana regiment, 17 Mar. 1865

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• Act on your impulse, swallow the bottle, cut a little deeper, put the gun to your chest.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Cutting, Gun, Bottles

  Ellen Hopkins (2008). “Impulse”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

  Augustus Hare

  Men, Thinking, Principles

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• One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

  William Wordsworth

  Nature, Educational, Men

  1798 'The Tables Turned', stanzas 6-8.

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• "One impulse from a vernal wood

  William Wordsworth

  Nature, Tree, Woods

  1798 'The Tables Turned', stanzas 6-8.

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• The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars.

  Max Weber

  Artist, Soldier, Gains

  1904-5 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (translated by Talcott Parsons,1930).

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