"Impelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sound. She went, bending as if there were a wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare. She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... concerned, and she would ply her work of flax-spinning while she gave me close and intense attention. At times, when the historian was at fault in his facts—and, to say the truth, that was more frequently the case than comports with veracious history—she would cease the impelling motion of her foot upon the pedal of her little wheel, drop her thread, and, gently arresting the fly of her spool, she would lift her iron-framed spectacles, and with great gravity say: "Read that again. Ah! it is ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... literary generalization was in his age unmatched. To reveal the distinctive virtue of a literary form, to characterize the sources of weakness or of strength in a new or a by-gone fashion of poetry, to analyze accurately the forces impelling a whole mighty age—these things, requiring a deep and steady concentration of mind, are among his most solid achievements. In a paragraph he distils for us the essence of what is picturesque and worth dwelling on in the comedy of the Restoration. In a page he triumphantly ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a little more subtle and less commonplace than that. Mr. Shandy, I imagine, is designed to personify not "crack-brained learning" so much as "theory run mad." He is possessed by a sort of Demon of the Deductive, ever impelling him to push his premises to new conclusions without ever allowing him time to compare them with the facts. No doubt we are meant to regard him as a learned man; but his son gives us to understand distinctly and very early in ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... do so. Nothing external can touch our volition, unless there be that within which corresponds to the impelling agent." ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... impelling Motives which have caused that treatment of objects which is now termed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... strain and fret Of hopes delayed, or perished quite, For kisses that I did not get On many a love impelling night, Time owes me such a heavy debt; How can he ever ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... But occasionally one gets a breath of mediaevalism and its haunting mysteries. The Sleeping Fury at Rome, for instance,[202] where sleep steals in during a moment of respite from torture, is superb, and, moreover, stands almost alone in its presentment of a certain impelling tragedy, which, with the advent of Christianity, became an integral and dominating feature ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... colors and reflected light, flashed more than one cascade of pure fresh water, and the light breeze, as it blew against its vertical walls, or perhaps some currents deep down below the surface, was impelling the huge mass, and the line of floes pushed before it, down the lane of open water, which led to the floating home of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... He lets us have a glimpse into the innermost chambers of His heart, in so far as the impelling motives of His course are concerned. But here He lays them bare. 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... along the widely scattered frontier. He, like the mountain doctor, was truly counselor and friend. The people looked to him to tell of things that would be happening in the near future. They hung upon his every word from the pulpit. His reasoning in spiritual matters was sound and his eloquence impelling. His sermons often combined quotations from the early writers of England, passages from Shakespeare, true echoes of Elizabethan English, as might be expected considering his ancestry. Words flowed freely from his lips. The mountain preacher to this day has a natural gift of oratory. It has been ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... largest the human ill most vivid in our minds. We have been giving, and are giving now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government's part toward resuming productivity and promoting fortunate and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the life-worship to which God calls us consists in abandonment and surrender to an animating, impelling spirit. "The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy, and thou shalt be turned into another man. And it shall be, when these signs are come upon thee, that thou shalt do as occasion serve thee, for the Lord is with thee." "Whither the Spirit was to go, thither ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... more fully developed characters and more of dramatic action, were required by a beauty loving and pleasure seeking race; and the leisure of peace and the demands of refined luxury furnished the occasion and the impelling motive to this more extended species of epic song." From the highly esteemed work of Dr. Felton we transcribe some observations on the beauties of the Ionian dialect, and on the poetical taste and ingenuity that finally developed ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... this fact until a much later period, when, in answering an advertisement which described a highly advantageous tenement, I was referred to the house I then occupied, and from which a thousand inconveniences were impelling me ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Plymouth, in Devonshire. Tristram was entering manhood's prime—thirty-three years of age. He had a family of five children. Quite likely the political troubles between the King and Parliament, the rising war cloud, was the impelling motive that induced the family to leave country, home, friends, and all dear old things, and become emigrants to the New World. Quite likely Tristram, when a youth, in 1620, may have seen the Mayflower spread her white sails to the breeze ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... mean in contrary passions stands in the same ratio to both, even as in the natural order there is but one mean between contraries, e.g. between black and white. Secondly, because there are different passions contradicting reason in the same manner, e.g. by impelling to that which is contrary to reason, or by withdrawing from that which is in accord with reason. Wherefore the different passions of the concupiscible faculty do not require different moral virtues, because their ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... scarcely a whiff of the blessed night air. Them she went back out on the door-step and again seated herself. As she sat there the scent of the lilies came more strongly than ever, and now with a curious effect. It was to the girl as if the fragrance were twining and winding about her and impelling her like leashes. All at once an impulse of yielding which was really freedom came to her. Why in the world should she not cross the little north yard, step over the low hedge, and go into that lily-garden? She knew that it would be beautiful there. She looked ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... moment forced against a resisting body, then A is also liable to suffer fracture. If fracture in one place be attended with counter-fracture in another place, as at the opposite points A and B, then the fracture occurs from the force impelling, while the counter-fracture happens by ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... else, till, after the lapse of ages, he had developed invention and adaptability. Besant and Rice, in "Ready-money Mortiboy," speak of Divine Discontent as the motive power impelling man to progress. Not till the chalk and the limestone shelters were stocked, and could hold no more, would men be driven to invent for themselves other dwellings. The first men being sent into the world without a natural coat of fur or feathers, would settle into caves or ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... "The devil impelling a mortal to wrong courses, is thereby known to be the devil. He, on the contrary, who exciteth to good is no devil, but an angel of light, or under the guidance of one. The devil driveth unto his own home; so doth the south wind, so doth the ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... possession of them. Morgan bade him sit down and have his meal, but the man, his face shining with good-humour, insisted he must not disturb him, but would go and stand at the bar. He took only two of the potatoes, his good-nature impelling him to leave the other two for Morgan, with the hearty, encouraging remark: "Pull ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... be the impelling motives when the gathering to the great conflict comes, one thing is certain: Armageddon is to bring triumph and world dominion to no earthly power. As the nations gather, the Lord intervenes from heaven, and the history of the kingdoms of this world is closed ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Each hour more active, more intent, Unarm'd and unassail'd he went; While every weapon glanc'd aside, His armour every lance defied. The blow that could that soul subdue At length was struck—but not by you! It fell upon a mortal part— A poison'd arrow smote his heart; The winds impelling, when they bore Wrecks of the ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator nor ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... upon them in all its resistless fury, and before its raging power she felt her strength would be utter weakness. She must fly for aid. Perhaps even now some invisible being, conscious of their danger, might be impelling ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seized hair. Eurytus snatches up Hippodame, {and} the others such as each one fancies, or is able {to seize}; and there is {all} the appearance of a captured city. The house rings with the cries of women. Quickly we all rise; and first, Theseus says, 'What madness, Eurytus, is impelling thee, who, while I {still} live, dost provoke Pirithoues, and, in thy ignorance, in one dost injure two?' And that the valiant hero may not say these things in vain, he pushes them off as they are pressing on, and takes her whom ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... first call? The sociableness, the discipline, the division of responsibility make factory work a dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls, impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes: sport, college education, machinery—each is a factor in the gradual transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a collection of individuals with ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... unsuspicious of fraud. It was not until he had experienced the intoxication of litigation that he felt, somehow, that he was a wronged and defrauded man, but with the obstinacy of defrauded men, preferred to arraign some one fact or individual as the impelling cause of his wrong, rather than the various circumstances that led to it. To his simple mind it was made patent that the "Blue Mass Company" were making money out of a mine which he claimed, and which was not yet adjudged to them. Every dollar they took out ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the chief causes impelling "wicked men," the privileged classes and their parasites, to stand ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... tortured into caricature. Amory has indeed all my sympathy, so badgered is she by Mr. ONIONS, so relentlessly forced into ignominious positions; and I cannot feel, as I should do, that she would have achieved those ignominies without Mr. ONIONS' impelling hand behind her. I have myself considerable sympathy for cranks, and perhaps that is why I regard Mr. ONIONS' satire as a dry, gritty business. His humour is, of course, always a delightful thing, but here I fancy that he has not drawn the true line between comedy and farce, between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... state is sovereign, but many contrary ones are mixed together. In that case one hears both "yeses" and "noes," and the "will" is called on then to solve the conflict. Take a soldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him towards various courses if his comrades offer various examples. His person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences; and he may for a time simply waver, because no one emotion ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... as two hundred miles away. He looks you steadily enough in the eye; and he begs his bread and commits his depredations half humorously, as though all this were fooling that both you and he understood. What his impelling motive is, I cannot say; nor whether he himself understands it, this restlessness that turns his feet ever to the pleasant California highways, an Ishmael of ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... towards the door, and Viner, until then a silent spectator, looked at Miss Wickham, something impelling him to address her ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... mighty rhythm. Or, he must have been like a powerful and excited steed, chafing his bit, mad to give his energy rein. His blood must forever have been craving the liberation of turgid and angular and irregular beats, must forever have been crowding his imagination with new and compelling combinations, impelling him to the movements of leaping and marching. For he seems to have found in profusion the accents that quicken and lift and lance, found them in all varieties, from the brisk and delicate steps of the ballets in "La Damnation de Faust" to the large, far-flung momentum that drives the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... has come to me. I am rising from my chair, without the least intention. I am on my feet, and something is impelling me toward the door that leads out into the gardens. I wish to stop; but cannot. Some immutable power is opposed to my will, and I go slowly forward, unwilling and resistant. My glance flies 'round the room, helplessly, and stops at the window. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... pursuing, The trembling dove thus flies, To shun impelling ruin, Awhile her pinions tries; Till, of escape despairing, No shelter or retreat, She trusts the ruthless Falconer, And ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... formal declaration of the equality of all men, nor is there any attack on the Brahman caste or any exaltation of the lower castes. The order drew its recruits at first from the ranks of the Brahmans. But the impelling motive of the new religion was compassion, and genuine compassion is not to be restrained in artificial limits. The salvation preached was fitted for all men. The disease to be cured was one from which ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Carolina in the attitude of an enemy of the United States; and yet he has not shown that there was any just cause for apprehension. Vague rumors had reached him—and causeless fear seems now to be the impelling motive of every public act—vague rumors of an intention to take Fort Moultrie. But, sir, a soldier should be confronted by an overpowering force before he spikes his guns and burns his carriages. A soldier should be confronted by a public enemy before he destroys the property of the United ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... damning story: the worst is this, that it gradually kills out the virtue, the manliness, the moral vitality of the nation that allows it; that it has done so in our own nation to an alarming extent is the great, the fear-impelling cause why it should be rooted out, abolished, as an influence in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... system, but that we cannot ameliorate it, lest we weaken the foundation. And yet all this seems as nothing when I recall a sin of greater magnitude-a sin that is upon me-a hideous blot, goading my very soul, rising up against me like a mountain, over which I can see no pass. Again the impelling force of conscience incites me to make a desperate effort; but conscience rebukes me for not preparing the way in time. I could translate my feelings further, but, in doing so, the remedy seems still ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... for secession and the formation of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal party, except that, by impelling the democratic leaders to really national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly aided in the development ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... course you told me! What more natural than for you to blazon forth that prepared and unsolicited statement to PREVENT accusation. Yet, as I said before, even that wretched attempt to cover up your tracks was not enough. I still had to find that overwhelming, impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you. That motive I found in the strongest of all impulses—Love, I suppose you would call it," he added bitterly, "that night you called! You had brought the most conclusive proofs of ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... went on Clark's voice with a subtle and impelling note, "and it only took a year or so to find it. The country was unexplored, that is, in a scientific manner, and no geological maps worth anything were in existence. We have proved by now not less than fifteen million tons of excellent ore. The formation near ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Hardwicke laughed merrily at Frank Halton's last graceful touches. "A romantic gratitude to a retired British officer, who had once befriended the Prince's august father, was the one impelling cause of a visit, in which the strictest retirement would be guarded by the dweller on the Roof of the World," etc., etc. So read out Madame Delavigne, closing with the remark that the "Moonshee had already visited ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... freebooters were the terror of all honest laborers and tradesmen. Skulking along the coast, pushing up rivers and creeks, landing anywhere and every where without warning, they mercilessly destroyed the native villages and swept the inhabitants into captivity. Or else, impelling with the force of fifty men their snaky craft, which were swift as race-boats and noiseless as beasts of prey, they would surprise at dead of night some defenceless merchantman, overwhelm their victims with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... sunrise, when Uncle Venner made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, potato-skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... husband's side, but she felt, how bitterly felt, she had no power to avert his fate. Despair was upon her, cold, black, clinging despair, and she clung to the vain dream of imploring Edward's mercy, feeling at the same moment it was but the ignis fatui to her heart—urging lighting, impelling her on, but to sink in pitchy ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... fact of the exemption having ceased for the great part in the kingdoms of Nueva Espana and Peru, did not arise from the said privileges having been revoked (for they are not, especially that of St. Pius V) but only and necessarily because the impelling cause for conceding such exemption did not actually exist. For, in those kingdoms, the number of secular ecclesiastics increased so greatly that enough of them were found to administer the holy sacraments to their inhabitants. Since ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... firmly established, on reliable evidence, than that of the berserkr rage being a species of diabolical possession. The berserkir were said to work themselves up into a state of frenzy, in which a demoniacal power came over them, impelling them to acts from which in their sober senses they would have recoiled. They acquired superhuman force, and were as invulnerable and as insensible to pain as the Jansenist convulsionists of S. Medard. No sword would wound them, no fire would barn them, a club alone ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... necessary preparations could be made, a party of five left Plainton for New York, and a very well-assorted party it was! Mr. Burke, who guided and commanded the expedition, supplied the impelling energy; Mrs. Cliff had her check book with her; Willy was ready with any amount of enthusiasm; and the past life of Miss Eleanor Thorpedyke and her sister Barbara had made them most excellent judges of what was appropriate for the ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... by the laws of a universal magnetism whose cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to unite by an accelerated impelling force which we call GRAVITATION. It is gravitation which causes unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which gives them weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live. Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the ancients from believing ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,—for the sake of "her own life," her intellectual ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... plant becomes older, little more protein is added, but more and more carbon is taken from the air to form the fats, starches, sugars, and other non-nitrogenous substances. Consequently, the proportion or percentage of protein becomes smaller as the plant becomes older. The impelling purpose of the plant is to produce seed. Whenever the water supply begins to give out, or the season shortens in any other way, the plant immediately begins to ripen. Now, the essential effect of dry-farm conditions is to shorten the season; the comparatively young plants, yet ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... wanted to do something—I didn't know what. I hadn't drunk or smoked for twelve years, but that' night I did both. The brandy steadied, the cigarette quieted my nerves. I sat there alone over the half-cleared dinner table, resolutely impelling calmness. The ticket stared at me, a symbol of Jerry's destiny.... My thought shifted curiously to the placid Miss Gore. Whatever Fate had in store for Jerry, this phase of his life would pass as she had said, the mind would survive. Something told me that tonight would mark a turning point ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... October day the migration of the year had ceased. To my coarse senses the sunlight was of equal intensity, the breeze unchanged, the whole aspect the same—and yet something as intangible as thought, as impelling as gravitation, had ceased to operate. The tension once slackened, the butterflies took up their more usual lives. But what could I know of the meaning of "normal" in the life of a butterfly—I who boasted a miserable single pair of eyes and no greater number of legs, whose shoulders supported ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love and curiosity are the great impelling forces of life. When the little boy found that the light did not move he drew closer to it, and at last, emboldened by curiosity, he stepped right into it and found that it was not a thing at all. The instant that he stepped into the light ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... onwards. Now he is far from shore, and the multitudinous feet of the current are hurrying him away. The slow-moving boat is much nearer than it was a minute ago,—seems to be rasping towards him, in spite of the laziness of the impelling breeze. The boy, as yet unconscious of his peril, now glances shorewards, and sees the banks wheel past. The crowd of bathers is already far beyond hearing yet, frightened and tired, he wastes his remaining strength in fruitless ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the tortures of initiation. A man, he journeyed in strange lands beneath a scorching sun, or felt the biting winter blasts. Again his heart beat high with hope, only to be cast down by the crushing defeat of his plans. But still, upborne by almost superhuman strength, urged by some strange, impelling power, he must battle for his race. The restless river, as it fretted the sides of the little island placed so protectingly against the Canadian shore, sang of battle, whose outcome none might guess. Suddenly he was aroused from his waking dream by shouts ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... something within us impelling us to do something which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or enabling us to do something which we could not have done alone. "It is God which worketh in you." ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... indeed, precluded indifference there; but otherwise it was much the same. The whole guild of criticism was thrown into perplexity, into sorrow; everywhere was dissatisfaction open or concealed. Official duty impelling them to speak, some said one thing, some another; all felt in secret that they knew not what to say. Till the appearance of Schlegel's /Character/, no word, that we have seen, of the smallest chance ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... God's providence and to take up the consideration of their own natures, for "the proper study of mankind is man." Pope points out that the two cardinal principles of man's nature are self-love and reason, the first an impelling, the second a regulating power. The aim of both these principles is pleasure, by which Pope means happiness, which he takes for the highest good. Each man is dominated by a master passion, and it is the proper function ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... curiosity was impelling him to take a part in this drama. "What reason had you for ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... deeply with the sense of her deceit, was informed by her guilty conscience of that nasty man's suspicions, and therefore gave a smack with her fern whip to Lord Keppel, impelling him to join, like a loyal little horse, the pursuit of his Majesty's enemies. But no sooner did she see all the men dispersed, and scouring the distance with trustful ardor, than she turned the pony's head toward the sea again, and rode back round the bend of the hollow. What would her mother ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Spanish sailors El Cordonazo de San Francisco.) and in the granite of Lower Peru between Truxillo and Lima. A project was formed at the Canary Islands for placing a machine at the issue of the compressed air and allowing the sea to act as an impelling force. While the autumnal equinox is everywhere dreaded in the sea of the West Indies (except on the coast of Cumana and Caracas), the spring equinox produces no effect on the tranquillity of those tropical ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... you may be surprised yet. I've also a hunch, my boy, that there will be another claimant for the honors of this campaign. Sometimes surprises spring out of the very earth. Watch!" said Frank, laying a hand on the gun of his chum, as though impelling him to ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... her, and gone!... A wave of bitterness swept through Cally, impelling her to hit ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... apply in the last resort to life. The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to be and to act. Beneath all man's activities, as their source and spring, there is ever some dim perception of an end to be attained. 'The ultimate end,' says Paulsen, 'impelling men to meditate upon the nature of the universe, will always be the desire to reach some conclusion concerning the meaning of the source and goal of their lives.' The origin and aim of all philosophy is consequently to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... force impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement of dinner-tables, was brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessive laughter at Rose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... swore again, and stood. He was a great man, and full of expedients, but the position was novel. Yet, after a minute's thought, he had an idea. He started off again, taking Bazan's arm, and impelling him onwards, with the same haste and violence. "To Simon's! to Simon's!" he cried as before. "Courage, my friend, I will play him for you and win you: I will redeem you. After all, it is simple, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... saw her youthful dreams of fortune realized—nay, surpassed—and in the consciousness of liberty which she now enjoyed, elevated by the success gained by the person she loved best, she again followed her lover's motto. With the impelling "More, farther" before her eyes, she took care that she did not lack the admiration for which she had never ceased to long, and to which, in better days, she had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they all are, and it is I alone who make them so; for out of these common soldiers I have created respectable officers, and have converted serfs into barons and gentlemen! I thank you, Alexis, for impelling me to become an empress. It is a noble pleasure, and I should now be unwilling to return to that still and uneventful life that formerly pleased me so well! I will so manage that the Empress Elizabeth shall be as little ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... painful effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain more than a few moments. In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we hardly ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... thought of it, nor of the Object of it, nor returned thanks for my being delivered, till the lioness had just left me; and then I felt near the same force urging me to return thanks for my escape, as I had impelling me to prayer before; and I think I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose between yielding to the demands ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... rock. This was the belief—unassailable, absolute—that he could not by any human means turn from the direction his life was pointing. He felt this profoundly. His mind kicked and held back against it, but a great something was calmly impelling him on. He hated this inexorable force; he cursed it; for he did not realize that it ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... had stared at his new friend in this solemnity, turned a serious face toward the clawlike branches of his linden in its gauntness of late autumn-tide. This meaning of the animus that was impelling his odd and yet so normal German household, he began to see, was substantiated by a score of acts and attitudes in its daily life. He scarcely deemed it proper ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... trunk of a cotton tree; a many-tined antler was stuck in the prow, and dried legs and haunches of venison lay in the fore part of the boat; towards the stern sat a young girl, partially enveloped in a striped blanket, but naked from the waist upwards, impelling the boat in the direction of the deer by long graceful sweeps of her oar; in front of her was a squaw of maturer age, performing a like labour. In the centre of the canoe were two children, queer guinea-pig-looking little devils, and near these lay a man in all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... young, should become familiar with the life of Washington; it will confirm their patriotism and strengthen their loyalty. Such a character will become an inspiration to them, eliciting nobler aims, and impelling to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... movement going on within the National Young Women's Christian Association. The reason for this stand being taken by women's organizations was characteristic. The impelling force that urged those women on was something far deeper than mere philanthropy. It was the acceptance by a whole group of women of the old responsibilities of motherhood, in the new form that these ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... affected me with a kind of playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... John's great impelling pictures. The first shows us the Person, the Man Jesus, God with us, God making a world, and then, in homely human garb walking amongst ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... surged up impelling her to tell him of Barney's savage yet unformulated threat. The warning got as far as her tongue, and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... concluded that you belong to that dependent family of plants, I pity you sincerely, and beg that you will not put me in any such category. Duty may be a cold shadow to you, but it is a vast volcanic agency constantly impelling me to action. What was my will given to me for, if to remain passive and suffer others to minister to its needs? Don't talk to me about woman's clinging, dependent nature. You are opening your lips ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... capacities, and it certainly is possible that they may pass into each other by insensible gradations. Still, practically, and in reference to our treatment of any intelligent nature which is in course of gradual development under our influence, the difference is wide. The dog has an instinct impelling him to attach himself to and follow his master; but he has no instinct leading him to draw his master's cart. He requires no teaching for the one. It comes, of course, from the connate impulses of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... change. It is rather the fear of what I love, the mistrust of what charms me, the unrest of happiness. What a bizarre tendency, and what a strange nature! not to be able to enjoy anything simply, naively, without scruple, to feel a force upon one impelling one to leave the table, for fear the meal should come to an end. Contradiction and mystery! not to use, for fear of abusing; to think one's self obliged to go, not because one has had enough, but because one has stayed awhile. I am indeed always the same; the being who wanders ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a vague fear for him impelling ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... not have gone thither had it not been for an unaccountable desire impelling me. Obedient to my impulse, I soon found myself on this odd planet which ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... and become mere executives of the priestly will, while the heroic efforts of Junipero Serra to convert the natives, his courage in the face of danger, his sublime zeal, and his unwearied devotion, make him the impelling factor ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... ancient examples and modern instances, mostly worn bright by familiarity with the popular mind, but all converging toward the conclusion striven for, and the shakiest of them accepted in childlike faith. Integrally, that essay conveyed the idea of two mighty glaciers of theory, each impelling its own moraine of facts toward a stated point of confluence—represented by a magnificent postulate—where one section, at least, of the Universal Plan would attain fulfilment, and the Eternal Unities would be so far satisfied. There was something in it that was more like an elusive ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... generally acted. By the more moderate section and by the public generally he was hailed as the champion, if not the deliverer, of those who were really alarmed at the rapid strides towards disloyalty and revolution, to which these extreme men were impelling the people. This feature of the unlooked for and bitter controversy, which followed the publication of these "impressions," ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... personalities and ambitions and national antagonisms that its purity and grandeur will furnish new inspiration to all workers in our cause. We must strike a note in this meeting so full of sisterly sympathy, of faith in womanhood, of exultant hope, a note so impelling, that it will be heard by the women of all lands and will call them forth to join ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... away on a sea of horror. Several times her hand quivered towards the tabloids and came back to the pencil. The shadows seemed to jostle each other about the room. Kraill's eyes shone out of them for an instant, blue and impelling. She got a grip on herself and wrote, a word at a time, making ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... thoughts on matters that interested him, with a perfect consciousness of his remarkable powers of statement and argument, with a constitutional impetuosity blended with caution which showed itself when anything appealed to his deeper feelings or called for his help; yet with all these impelling elements, his instinct was always to shrink from putting himself forward, except when it was a matter of duty. He accepted recognition when it came, but he never claimed it. And this reserve, which marked his social life, kept him back from saying in a permanent form much that he had to say, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... bent to the work before him; for the tide was already beginning to run up, and the course he had to take brought him dead against it for the first two or three miles, after which the tide would be with him, and, if there should not be too much sea, the labor of impelling the boat would ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... ask,—can this be true? Here, however, both Vaux and Ward offer him some assistance; the similarity of their accounts, though destitute of so many wonders, corroborating the probability of his. The three narratives are quite in keeping. We find in each the same restlessness, the same blind passion impelling to deeds of vice and desperation, and the same proofs of treachery amongst their companions. Each, too, has furnished so many means of detection, by names of persons, dates, and places, that,—no attempt at refutation having been made by persons ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... such an impression on his mind that he began prayerfully to consider whether it was not God's call, and whether a field more suited to his gifts was not opening to him. The following Lord's day, preaching on the Lord's coming, he referred to the effect of this blessed hope in impelling God's messenger to bear witness more widely and from place to place, and reminded the brethren that he had refused to bind himself to abide with them that he might at any moment be free to follow ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... old boyishness and impetuosity was gone, a new purposefulness—not of the will but rather of the spirit—had supplanted it and engendered an unwonted serenity. Was it born of the words of the strange mountain prophet, or the impelling appeal of the no-less-strange mountain child, whose mysterious smile, though seen less frequently than on his first visit, still cast a spell over his senses, even in memory? He ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... her place on the edge of the couch, where with her forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie to see her own duty ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... ascribed to matter. We find by experience, that a body at rest or in motion continues for ever in its present state, till put from it by some new cause; and that a body impelled takes as much motion from the impelling body as it acquires itself. These are facts. When we call this a vis inertiae, we only mark these facts, without pretending to have any idea of the inert power; in the same manner as, when we talk of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... that stage in the Church revival of this century which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use its nickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences and conditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but the impelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which these pages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associated with Oxford, from which it received some of its most marked ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... others,—since the government subsidies would, in time, together with the demand for this additional highway across the continent, enlist men of resolute character and ample means,—yet, withal, every new and great undertaking has somewhere a correspondingly great spirit, impelling self and co-workers to the contest and achievement of the desired ends, and we recognize in this vast enterprise the hand of this indefatigable man. Of course the able and influential associates in the board of directors must share in the honor of this national work, and their names ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... blood from the heart through the arteries, among which may be named,—1st. The contraction of the muscular walls of the heart. 2d. The contractile and elastic middle coat of the arteries aids the heart in impelling the blood to the minute vessels of the system. 3d. The peculiar action of the minute capillary vessels is considered, by some physiologists, as a motive power in the arterial circulation. 4th. The pressure of the muscles ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... the lion conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the infinitely great; the train-bearer—whose proper part is to sit at his cardinal's feet like a faithful hound—in reality reigning over him, and impelling him in whatsoever direction he chooses. Ah! the Jesuit! the Jesuit! Mistrust him when you see him gliding by in his shabby old cassock, with the flabby wrinkled face of a devout old maid. And make sure that he isn't behind the doors, or in the cupboards, or under the beds. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... treadle motion is operated the impelling diaphragm is rapidly vibrated, and through the medium of the air contained in the flexible tube it communicates motion to the pen diaphragm and consequently to the needle bar and needle. If, while the needle is reciprocated in this way, the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... violently mingled with the original Britons. And in more modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Spain, France, and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign shores. But in these various expeditions, trade or war was the impelling motive. Too often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the colony ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... by giving the information I most needed? And yet I was advised to remain until the weather became more mild. I had a severe cough that followed an attack of pneumonia, and physicians had advised me to spend the Winter in a milder climate. But this bereavement seemed impelling me to return to my afflicted children. But more than all other considerations was to learn the state of that dear child's mind as he was about leaving the land of the dying for the spirit world of the living. He had been a living Christian, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... land or life, so we confiscated both. The British Islands were infested with criminals from the earliest times. Our ancestors were all pirates, and we have inherited from them a lurking taint in our blood, which is continually impelling us to steal something or kill somebody. How to get rid of this taint was a problem which our statesmen found it difficult to solve. In times of war they mitigated the evil by filling the ranks of our armies from the gaols, and manning our navies ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... passing through that crisis of healthy disgust. His instinct was impelling him to eliminate from his life all the undigested ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... is the one impelling cause of those moral struggles, sacrifices and purifications, those costing and heroic activities, to which all greatly spiritual souls find themselves drawn. We note that these souls experience it even when ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... however, is distinguished very essentially from Darwin's by the entire absence of the principle of useful variations and their natural selection: and my fundamental conception is this, that a great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... of "The Calling of Dan Matthews" so it was in the writing of "The Eyes of the World," the sense of duty stood highest. The modern trend in books and music and art and drama had so incensed the author that "The Eyes of the World" was the result of his all impelling desire for cleaner living and thinking. As is true of all writers, there are sometimes those who fail to catch the message in Mr. Wright's books. He is occasionally misunderstood, and that was especially true with "The Eyes of the World." ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... not journeyed a half-hour, when his idea of his own position was just the opposite of truth. As he had not yet become aware of it, however, it perhaps was just as well as if he had committed no error. He was pressing forward, with that peculiar impelling feeling that it was only necessary to do so ultimately to reach his destination, when a star-like glimmer caught his eye. Teddy stopped short, and his heart gave a great bound, for he believed the all-important opportunity had now come. He scanned the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the torch against the blackness of the stockade. He strained his hearing for a possible volley of musketry fire but no sound came to him over the broad surface of the lagoon. Over there the man with the torch, the other paddler, and Jaffir himself impelling with a gentle motion of his paddle the canoe toward the shore, had the glistening eyeballs and the tense faces of silent excitement. The ruddy glare smote Mrs. Travers' closed eyelids but she didn't open her eyes till she felt the canoe touch ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... again, his hands clasped behind his neck The excitement of what he had just gone through was still quivering in him and impelling him to speak, dreamily, a little as if intoxicated. "Oh really, nobody thinks of that!—what sort of people are you?—I thought of it the moment you suggested that we go swimming; after all, we don't have the catechism in our bodies by way of a soul. Doing, yes, that's ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Scotland of course follows in the wake of its great neighbour,) of seeing any traveller arise of lasting celebrity, or book of travels written which shall attain to durable fame. The native vigour and courage, indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon race, is perpetually impelling numbers of energetic young men into the most distant parts of the earth, and immense is the addition which they are annually making to the sum-total of geographical knowledge. We have only to look at one of our recent maps, as compared to those which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... It is not enough to have an impelling force—we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem to be against us, but really are furthering our way ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... each seized a pole and began impelling the raft from the shore. The Indians, seeing that we were about to escape, ran forward, uttering loud shouts and calling on us ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Sergeant Dunham, his daughter, and the Pathfinder. Accustomed to the canoe, Mabel took her seat in the centre with great steadiness, her father was placed in the bows, while the guide assumed the office of conductor, by steering in the stern. There was little need of impelling the canoe by means of the paddle, for the rollers sent it forward at moments with a violence that set every effort to govern its movements at defiance. More than once, before the shore was reached, Mabel repented of her temerity, but Pathfinder encouraged her, and really manifested ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... then three distinct passions impelling him to the stern threat— three reasons, any of them sufficient to ensure his keeping it. First, his own wrongs. True the attempt at assassinating him had failed; still the criminality remained the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... aroused by the melody of the prayer. As if to fulfil all conditions of the unity which marks the sublime, this calm and collected group were bathed in the fading light of the setting sun; its red tints coloring the room, impelling the soul—be it poetic or superstitious—to believe that the fires of heaven were visiting these faithful servants of God as they knelt there without distinction of rank, in the equality which heaven demands. Thinking back to the days of the patriarchs my mind still further ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... branches; as I approached the top, however, the difficulty became greater, and likewise the danger; but I was a light boy, and almost as nimble as a squirrel, and, moreover, the nervous feeling was within me, impelling me upward. It was only by means of a spring, however, that I was enabled to touch the top of the tree; I sprang, touched the top of the tree, and fell a distance of at least twenty feet, amongst the branches; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... directions through the wire. The presence of these currents evokes a force of repulsion between the magnet and the wire; and to cause the one to approach the other, this repulsion must be overcome. The overcoming of this repulsion is, in fact, the work done in separating and impelling the two electricities. When the wire is moved away from the magnet, a Scheidungs-Kraft, or separating force, also comes into play; but now it is an attraction that has to be surmounted. In surmounting it, currents are developed in directions ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... yerk^; kick, calcitrate^; butt, strike at &c (attack) 716; whip &c (punish) 972. come into a collision, enter into collision; collide; sideswipe; foul; fall foul of, run foul of; telescope. throw &c (propel) 284. Adj. impelling &c v.; impulsive, impellent^; booming; dynamic, dynamical; impelled &c v.. Phr. a hit, a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... masters, thus reducing the economic powers of resistance of the South, and then to make these ex-slaves directly useful in winning the war. But after the war, even here and there during it, a theory was advanced that an impelling motive with the President had been the hope of influencing favourably foreign governments and peoples by stamping the Northern cause with a high moral purpose. In popular opinion, Lincoln came to be regarded as a far-visioned statesman ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... see much difference. The same thing is said, only in the one case it is a command and in the other it is an impelling suggestion." ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... governing memory, the psychical mechanism by means of which ideas are formed, the laws governing the association of ideas, by means of which very gradually ideas proceed to the most sublime activities, impelling the child to reason. It is he who, knowing all these things, must build up and enrich the mind. And this is no easy matter, because, in addition to this difficult work, there is always the difficulty of difficulties, that of inducing the child ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... motives are, ex hypothesi, not so closely related to utility as the social motives, and the dissocial motives manifestly stand at the bottom of the scale. In respect to any particular action there may be a conflict of motives, some impelling towards it, others restraining from it; and any motive may come in conflict with any other motive. It will be found hereafter that in the case of some offences the motive is material in the highest degree, and in others ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... only knew that she had felt an impelling influence—a call to her spirit—to come out among the slumbering roses. She had not questioned nor sought to define it. She had heard it, and she had obeyed. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... It is the power on which the Spirit rides. Who is there, thinking, has felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking forth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his imagination grow kingly in contemplation—he has known its impelling power; the white ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... is a basis of truth in it. People who labor much will be cross if they do not obtain that for which they labor; those who desire vehemently will be vexed if they do not obtain that which they desire. As is the strength of the impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is the pain which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are set on what is high will be proportionately offended by the intrusion of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described by those ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sense, with a large share of quiet resolution, and but little of an enterprising spirit, unless aroused by external circumstances. The Methodistic principles, with which he was slightly tinctured, instead of impelling him to extravagance, assimilated themselves to his orderly habits of thought and action. Thus respectably endowed, we find him, when near the age of fifty, a merchant of weight in foreign and domestic trade, a provincial counsellor, and colonel of the York County militia, ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
