Impulse Quotes - Page 33

• Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Spring, Men, Feelings

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1871). “The original Plymouth pulpit”, p.349

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• I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Dog, Want, Register

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2011.

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• Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires.

  Edward Everett

  Country, Character, Thinking

  Edward Everett (1839). “Selections from the Works of Edward Everett: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.127

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• It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Desire, Income, Wealth

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2016). “Familiar Studies of Men and Books: Stevenson's Vol. 16”, p.62, VM eBooks

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• But what is life to a lichen ? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.

  Bill Bryson

  Strong, Believe, Rocks

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.308, Lulu Press, Inc

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• For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven.

  John Armstrong

  Flames, Heaven, Earth

  John Armstrong (1770). “The forced marriage, a tragedy. Sketches: or, Essays on various subjects, by Launcelot Temple, Esq”

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• Love is the impulse which directs the world, And all things know it and obey its power. Man, in the maelstrom of his passions whirled; The bee that takes the pollen to the flower; The earth, uplifting her bare, pulsing breast To fervent kisses of the amorous sun;-- Each but obeys creative Love's behest, Which everywhere instinctively is done.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Love, Uplifting, Flower

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.553, Delphi Classics

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• In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Country, Exercise, Self

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• If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Teacher, Children, Memories

  "Reflections and Maxims". Book by Luc de Clapiers, translated by E. Lee, pp. 185-186, 1903.

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• The monsters act out our rage. They act on their worst impulses, which is appealing to a certain part of us. They get punished for it, but we've enjoyed the spectacle of their liberation.

  Clive Barker

  Monsters, Rage, Certain

  FaceBook post by Clive Barker from Jan 06, 2013

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• I'm not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don't really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches. I'm just not a good candidate for conversion.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Religious, Thinking, Ideas

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• Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Thinking, Two, Years

  "Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights". Book by William Ernest Hocking, Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 30, p. 68, 1926.

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• The vital energies regulate themselves naturally without compulsive duty or compulsive morality both of which are sure signs of existing antisocial impulses.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Energy, Morality, Antisocial

  Wilhelm Reich (1973). “The Discovery of the Orgone”

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• Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Stars, Children, Dark

  H.P. Lovecraft (2005). “At the Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition”, p.107, Modern Library

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• Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.

  J. L. Austin

  Latin, Simplicity, Done

  "A Plea for Excuses". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, www.ditext.com. 1956.

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• Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Law, Energy, Principles

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.264, Macmillan

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• The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thinking, Effort, Soul

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

  William James

  Race, Vagueness, Free Will

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.58, 谷月社

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• The sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs.... It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our impelling power; we have no other.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Emergencies, Approval

  Mark Twain (2016). “What Is Man? And Other Essays”, p.21, Xist Publishing

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• I think we need to change that old saying, "I don't need a building to fall on me." Because two did and we still don't get it. I think we all stick our head in the sand as a deep human impulse.

  Bill Maher

  Fall, Thinking, Two

  "When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden". Book by Bill Maher, 2002.

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• The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Race, Evil, Faces

  Theodore Dreiser (2016). “The Financier”, p.217, Open Road Media

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• Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice - a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

  Davy Crockett

  Struggle, Flirting, Justice

  Davy Crockett (1859). “Life of Col. David Crockett”, p.7

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• The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature - translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.

  Hans Hofmann

  Art, Lying, Expression

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 55, 1948.

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• The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Artist, Expression

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 58, 1948.

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• The taboos that constitute a man's intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check.

  Theodor Adorno

  Strong, Men, Intellectual

  "Minima Moralia". Book by Theodor W. Adorno, 1951.

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