"Impulsiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any man in our public life during this long period merits more than he the name of statesman, it would be hard to say who he may be. But in his boyhood he gave promise of anything but the sort of career which he has dignified. He had all the impulsiveness of his famous brother, General Sherman, and something more than his turbulence. He himself, with that charming frankness which seems peculiarly a Sherman trait, tells in his autobiography what reckless ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... unpopular courses whenever there was a chance to strike a blow at those high in authority? They are justifiable questions, and they can be answered quite shortly. Heaven had given Lloyd George, together with much impulsiveness, the most sensitive of souls and a kindly heart, together with the imagination of a poet. Even when he was a boy resentment blazed from him as he realized the injustices which were suffered by the poorer people, people who could ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... either," she answered with quick impulsiveness. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll get married and put a stop to ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... delicate rendering of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. The fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament—all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. The signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a Bohemian too. There is a ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... white, her eyes shone, her lips expressed a firm and almost obstinate determination. With all her usual impulsiveness, she decided on a course of action—she snatched up a piece of paper and scribbled a ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... there when the building was used for a store-house, we could hear everything that was said in the hall below. One night there was a discussion in which E. D. Baker took part. He was a fiery fellow, and when his impulsiveness was let loose among the rough element that composed his audience there was a fair prospect of trouble at any moment. Lincoln was lying on the bed, apparently paying no attention to what was going on. Lamborn was talking, and we suddenly heard Baker ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... they said smilingly. Trusia held out her hands to them with sweet impulsiveness. In turn they took them and carried them to their lips. Sobieska turned to Carter for a parting word. "The charcoal burner is loyal. He can hide you by day and guide you by night. None knows better all the byways and secret paths in the forests. By to-morrow evening you ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... she will keep it; and yet, somehow, I fear I was too hasty. One would think it had grown too big for me to keep. But, pshaw! it's not a life and death matter, and I wanted to give a new impulse to that poor child's thoughts. But I must try and cure myself of this impulsiveness, just as if it were not 'bred in the bone,' for it was an impulse that made me whisper my secret to Sybil; and once, it has got me into serious trouble." And her brow darkened, as she thought of the feud thus raised between herself ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Merritt—" he began, but his chief turned sharply round on him. The boy, for all his impulsiveness, could read a face, and he checked himself. "Thank you very much, indeed," he ended quietly. He got out the Supervisor's horse, and as the latter swung himself into the saddle, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... scullery door being open when she went downstairs on the night of the disappearance of the bank-notes. The scullery door had not been open. The lie was clumsy, futile, ill-considered. It had burst out of the impulsiveness and generosity of her nature. She had perceived that suspicion was falling, or might fall, upon Louis Fores, and the sudden lie had flashed forth to defend him. That she could ultimately be charged with ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Southern trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this new point of view. Many things which now fell under his observant eye in the Southern States greatly irritated him and with his characteristic impulsiveness he pictured these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere of shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities; the gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway stations; the listless Negroes that seemed ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the use of having an unwavering basis of thought which gave unity to his sixty years of work, and yet avoided the peril of monotony. An immense diversity animated his unity, filled it with gaiety and brightness, and secured impulsiveness of fancy. This also differentiates him from Tennyson, who often wanted freshness; who very rarely wrote on a sudden impulse, but after long and careful thought; to whose seriousness we cannot always climb with pleasure; who played so little ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... impulsiveness of character, which made Hatty open to temptation from a hasty temper, now made her ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... sleep and work in it. She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. Leighton's price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her father refused to have any bargaining, with a haughty self-respect which he softened to deference for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the way for some confidence from her, and before the affair was arranged she was enjoying in her quality of clerical widow the balm of the Virginians' reverent sympathy. They said they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... asked her father, cheerily, as he entered the door. He is worth looking at as he stands on the threshold, almost filling the doorway with his large and muscular frame. He had a hearty, ruddy, English look, a frank and honest expression in his light blue eyes, and an impulsiveness of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... is closely allied with the last: unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may, however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower human races with the higher, appear generally to show that, along with brevity ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... gipsy in his nature. He is to some extent eccentric, and he indulges his eccentricity. And the misfortunes of men of letters—the vulgar and patent misfortunes, I mean—arise mainly from the want of harmony between their impulsiveness and volatility, and the staid unmercurial world with which they are brought into conflict. They are unconventional in a world of conventions; they are fanciful, and are constantly misunderstood in prosaic relations. They are wise enough ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... absolutely quiet, but something in his utterance or the sigh that preceded it—or possibly some swiftly-piercing light of intuition—seemed to send a galvanizing current through Robin. With clumsy impulsiveness he came to ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... it amazed her cousins in the extreme, was certainly highly satisfactory. The boys, when they realized that she had no desire to wrest their pets from them, waxed suddenly friendly. With the naive impulsiveness of childhood they gave her a full account of what they had ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... vivacity of children, people did their best to raise the impulsiveness and movement of their characters, what might we not expect ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... you—call your bluff," said Roscoe, with a sudden return to that gay impulsiveness which was so natural to him. "Here's the cord from ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... and brown eyes; and a certain warmth of coloring which showed through the deep bronze of his skin hinted at a sanguine and somewhat impatient temperament. As a matter of fact, the man was resolute and usually shrewd; but there was a vein of impulsiveness in him, and, while he possessed considerable powers of endurance, he was on occasion troubled by ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have to find himself ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... possessed them, we should miss them. Their place would be supplied by no others. They have that about them, moreover, which renders it almost certain that they will frequently be resorted to in future time. There are none in the language more quotable. Even where impulsiveness and want of patience have left them most fragmentary, this rich compensation is offered to the reader. There is hardly a conceivable subject, in life or literature, which they do not illustrate by striking aphorisms, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... young she was. On her horse, defiant almost to the point of impudence, she had a manner that belied her years. But when she fled to her champion, she was revealed as only a little girl with a child's impulsiveness in speech and action. The young man slipped his foot from a stirrup and held his hand to her. She sprang to him, standing in ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... open-handed to a fault, slow to condemn, quick to forgive, and gifted with a power of immediately inspiring affection and keeping it forever after, such as I have never known in any one else, he grew to be (for all his quick-tempered impulsiveness) one of the gentlest and meekest ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... many of the old Riverbend girls and boys, but she did not mention Guy Franklin or Scott Spinny, except to say that her father had got work in Scott's hardware store. She begged me, putting her hands on my shoulders with something of her old impulsiveness, to come and stay a few days with her. But I was afraid—afraid of what she might tell me and of what I might say. When I sat in that room with all her trinkets, the foolish harvest of her girlhood, lying about, and the white curtains and the little white rug, I thought of Scott Spinny ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... me," she said. "In a moment of absurd impulsiveness I had overlooked that fact. Also, thank you ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... couldn't make me change my mind about you. I've grown to—to like you a great deal too much for that in this short time—a great deal more than is good for me, I believe," he added, with a sort of rough impulsiveness. "Not that I'm at all surprised, you know," he continued with an attempt at a laugh. "One can't see a person like you, most of the day, for ten days or a fortnight, without—well, you know, admiring you most tremendously—can one? I dare say you think ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... indignantly. "He is mercurial, and has the quick impulsiveness of his race, but I believe him as sane as any who sat with him on the board. There must be some mistake, or you haven't got the whole story." Nevertheless, I did not care to discuss an old friend with a mere acquaintance, and I felt ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... him as he moved away. "I sometimes wonder what I should do if anything were to happen to the Fraides," she said, a little wistfully. Then almost at once she laughed, as if regretting her impulsiveness. "You heard what he said," she went on, in a different voice. "Am I really to ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... he took out a white pocket-handkerchief, and passed it lightly across his eyes. "But I have startled you, and I am sorry. I have sprung upon you, suddenly and thoughtlessly, what I ought to have only hinted at. I have erred from lack of delicacy. Forgive me my impulsiveness, my ardour. I was ever a blunt man, little versed in the arts of diplomacy and finesse. For years I have looked forward to this moment; in my dreams, in my waking ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... curious psychological question; it is this: F.'s victims have not in general been the frank, open, free-giving, or trustful class of men; on the contrary, they have usually been close-fisted, cold, cautious people, who weigh carefully what they do, and are rarely the dupes of their own impulsiveness. F. is an Irishman, and yet his successes have been far more with English—ay, even with Scotchmen—than with ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... to a further expression of anger. While she spoke he watched her eyes shine green in the sunlight, and he told himself that despite her passionate loyalty to her mother, the blood of the Gays ran thicker in her veins than that of the Merryweathers. Her impulsiveness, her pride, her lack of self-control, all these marked her kinship not to Reuben Merryweather, but to Jonathan Gay. The qualities against which she rebelled cried aloud in her rebellion. The inheritance she abhorred endowed her with the capacity for that abhorrence. While she ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... the fine jet of delivery wherewith the mastered lover is taught through his ears to think himself prompted, and submit to be controlled, by a creature super-feminine. She must make her counsel so weighty in poignant praises as to repress impulses that would rouse her own; and her betraying impulsiveness was a subject of reflection to Diana after she had given Percy Dacier, metaphorically, the key of her house. Only as true Egeria could she receive him. She was therefore grateful, she thanked and venerated this noblest of lovers for his not pressing to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... homeward steps had been taken. Whatever had been made known to her by Juan had received its fulfilment. She was assured and happy. She slept till they reached the victorious camp, and her husband awakened her with a kiss. She answered him with her old childish impulsiveness. And among the first words she said, were "Roberto, my beloved, I ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Harrison and went in to his belated dinner somberly reflective. He was not sorry to find that his mother and father had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to try to think himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl of misunderstanding in which his impulsiveness ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde |
