"Impelled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is from the too flagrant neglect of this most essential part of our duty that I have been impelled to write in confidence to your lordship on the subject, with the hope that proper means will be ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... was determined to turn his back as soon as he decently might on Littlefield and its people, with the perversity of mankind he was equally determined to see them brought to confusion before he left them—see them impelled to admit that in the case of Mrs. Carstairs they had been unjust, prejudiced, and, most galling of all, misled; and the question of his own vindication was only a ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... eye-witness. She wrote fine things in other veins, in different scenes, and she conceived other characters and new situations. But for all practical purposes Adam Bede was the typical romance, which everything she had thought or known impelled her to write, in which she told the best of what she had seen and the most important of what she had to say. Had she never written anything but Adam Bede, she would have had a special place of her ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... watch, was convinced we were upon the edge of the Arguin Bank. The Captain said to him, as well as to every one, that there was no cause of alarm. In the mean while, the wind blowing with great violence, impelled us nearer and nearer to the danger which menaced us. A species of stupor overpowered all our spirits, and every one preserved a mournful silence, as if they were persuaded we would soon touch the bank. The colour of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... did not want to make confidences to him, and yet she felt irresistibly impelled to do so. He was a strange compound of wisdom and levity, in her opinion, and his light-hearted moods were those which she most resented. She was never sure whether he was in reality tactless, or frankly brutal. She inclined to the latter ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... stranger had stirred up. How academic it seemed, compared with the passionate realities of life. But somehow he found himself lingering on at the academic discussion, postponing the realities of life. Every now and again, he was impelled to glance at his watch; but suddenly murmuring, 'It is very late,' he pulled himself together, and took leave of his learned brethren. But in the street the sight of a telegraph office drew his steps to it, and almost mechanically he wrote out the message: ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... was implanted within me; and, impotent to resist, I was impelled onward, and onward, till a chasm yawned at my feet. Yet a moment I trembled on the brink, then plunged desperately forward. Mary, listen. I knelt on the damp, glistening deck, and implored Almighty God to register my words in heaven. In his awful name and presence, I solemnly swore ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... the great galleon crept toward the roadstead, impelled by the dying sea-breeze, and at length, as the wind dropped altogether and the waters of the bay became a flawless mirror reflecting the gorgeous tints of a flaming sunset, she dropped her ponderous anchor about half a mile from the shore; her gaily painted sails were slowly clewed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... her hands, stood Cora. The instant her brother and Nigel were on board, she gave it a dexterous turn, and the canoe shot away from the shore, impelled by the strokes of two lads who formed the crew. Nigel and an Indian seized two other paddles, and with all their strength urged on the canoe. There was no time to be lost; already they could see a number of dark forms emerging from the wood, while numerous bullets splashed into the water ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... effectually have prevented any wanton use of his holy name, let the neighbours feel or think as they might on the subject. In this way Deacon Pratt might be said to have respected most of the commands of the decalogue; not, however, because the spirit of God impelled him, through love, to reverence and obey, but because he had been brought up in a part of the country where it was considered seemly and right to be moral, to the senses, at least, if not to the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world and its allurements were vanishing from his thoughts, when a dark line whirled over him, and fell thrashing upon the very wave which covered his face. An instinctive grasp caught it, and the young soldier felt himself impelled ahead. He had seized the rope which the mariner had not ceased to throw, as the fisherman casts his line, and he was at the side of the bark, before his confused faculties enabled him to understand the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... was going on, the two boats were side by side, so gently impelled that their progress was moderate and conversation pleasant. Thinking that the Professor had slept long enough, and that he ought to know the news, Fred Ashman turned to wake him; but to his surprise, the German met his look with a smile ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... he exclaimed, "I have been impelled by an irresistible power to endeavour to see you, and I am more fortunate than I expected. Will your fair friend favour me by going on a few paces before us, while I speak what I wish to reach no ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... supply us and True with food for a couple of days, at all events. By that time Duppo might have finished his fishing-lines, and we might be able to catch some fish. Had we been on a raft, we might have impelled it towards an island; but we had no control over the huge tree which supported us. All we could do therefore was to sit quiet and watch its progress. Sometimes I doubted whether it was getting nearer, and my hopes of obtaining a dinner ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... place below, while Bismarck, as an angel, flutters vaguely about the bedroom windows. But for his Old Masters he is quite content to go to the public galleries; and "the Celebrity at Home" not having as yet taken its place amongst the institutions of the Fatherland, he is not impelled to waste his, money turning his house into an old ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... mischief, because of that which I did with his brothers." Then said Judar, "O King of the age, it beseemeth not the like of thee to wrong the folk and take away their good." Replied the King, "O my lord, deign excuse me, for greed impelled me to this and fate was thereby fulfilled; and, were there no offending, there would be no forgiving." And he went on to excuse himself for the past and pray to him for pardon and indulgence till he recited ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... this did not truly represent her husband's position. But an uneasiness of conscience impelled her to harsh speech. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... alternative is between design and chance—then they prove it with all the proof the case is susceptible of, and with complete conviction. For we cannot doubt that the watch had a watchmaker. And if they prove it on the supposition that the unseen operator acted immediately—i.e., that the player directly impelled the balls in the directions we see them moving, I insist that this proof is not impaired by our ascertaining that he acted mediately—i.e., that the present state or form of the plants or animals, like the present position of the billiard-balls, resulted from the collision of the individuals ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... declared to be an offering to the god of the place. Among the crowd you see men with matted hair and body bedaubed with ashes, who have broken away from all domestic and social duties, and devote themselves to what is called a religious life. Some of these ascetics are no doubt impelled to follow the life they lead by a superstitious feeling, but many are idle vagabonds ready for the practice of every villainy, who find it more pleasant to roam about the land and live on others than support ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... was created and set in motion, it was upon principles by which it is impelled on to perfection—a state of irresistible progress in improvement. This is the theory of Moses: and Bunyan's exposition is, that all was finished, even to the creation of all the souls which were to animate the human race, and then God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... slavery. He could favor whatever policy the Constitution required, or precedents favored, or public expediency demanded; if his enemies were to be believed, he could take whatever course ambition and self-interest impelled him to. Never once during his long wrestling with the slavery question did he concede that any account should be taken of the moral character of the institution, or intimate that he believed it wrong for one man to ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... appearance was left of an engagement of cavalry; since the men, long keeping their ground with difficulty, were forced along with the bodies of the horses; and frequently, straggling chariots, and affrighted horses without their riders, flying variously as terror impelled them, rushed obliquely athwart or directly through ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... stop till I had placed twenty paces between myself and the bear, scarcely looking to see the effect of my shot. When the smoke cleared off, I saw the monster struggling on, with the aim, it seemed, of catching me. I was thankful that I had been impelled to spring back as I had done, for I certainly had not previously intended doing so. I knew how hard the old grizzlies often die, and so I put some dozen or more yards between me and him. He fell, then got up once, and made towards me ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... which boded so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief, was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... she must not be confounded with some female orators of the present age, who often succeed in turning preaching into a hideous caricature. She was evidently ripening for her remarkable work, and while doing so was occasionally irresistibly impelled to give utterance to "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Still, after reaching the quiet of Plashet, and reviewing calmly her new form of service, she thus wrote, what seemed to be both a sincere and common-sense judgment ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... record it to have been found only twice in Great Britain. From all these relations it plainly appears that these long-legged plovers are birds of South Europe, and rarely visit our island, and when they do, are wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so distant and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for which we are not able to account. One thing may fairly be deduced, that these birds come over to us from the continent, since nobody can suppose that a species not noticed once in an age, and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... devote herself to liberate her country from the English invaders, selling the very bed she slept upon to aid in the equipment of soldiers for the field. Joan was but eighteen years old when she appeared before Charles VII. and told him that she was impelled by Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct him to Rheims to be crowned. She was young and beautiful; the king believed in her; the soldiers thought she was inspired, and so followed her to victory. ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... have nothing further to add; if I have failed in my duty as a soldier, I have, at least, fulfilled that of a man; and although the violation of the first entail upon me the punishment of death, the motives which impelled me to that violation will not, I trust, be utterly lost sight of by those by whom my punishment is to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Tenbruggen was familiar with his name, and reverenced his fame as a preacher. When he had generously received his poor helpless cousin under his own roof, Miss Jillgall's gratitude and sense of duty impelled her to write and tell Mrs. Tenbruggen how happy she was as a ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... had that day driven them apart. He had been afraid of himself, and she too had felt afraid. During these seven days she had rushed recklessly on as though impelled by a fatality, never pausing to consider how near she might be to a precipice. Whenever possible, she had ridden out with Maule and Ninnis, or with Maule alone. She found relief from painful thoughts of Colin in the excitement and emotion with which Maule's society provided ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... her, and prepared their humble meals over the camp-fire. Job was going home; the old man would expect him on the Fourth, and that keen sense of duty which was ever stronger than his longing to linger near Jane, impelled him to go. He had come to say good-by. Old Tom Reed, sick and selfish, had been blind to the new light in Jane's eyes and did not know the secret which the birds and trees and sky had learned and seemed never to cease whispering about ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... precise method of fixing the plates firmly together was urgently wanted. Mr. Fairbairn's machine completely supplied the want. By its means the rivet was driven into its place, and firmly fastened there by a couple of strokes of a hammer impelled by steam. Aided by the Jacquard punching-machine of Roberts, the riveting of plates of the largest size has thus become one of the simplest ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the Sound, Captain Parry says that it is more easy to imagine than to describe the almost breathless anxiety which was visible in every countenance, as the breeze, which had hitherto impelled the vessels, increased to a fresh gale. The mast-heads were crowded by the officers and men looking out; and an unconcerned observer, if, on such an occasion, any could be unconcerned, would have been amused by the eagerness with which the various reports ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... impelled not by my own will, but by some unknown powerful force acting within and around me. I trace upon the tablet one word only; it is a name that startles me even while I myself write it down—HELIOBAS. Scarcely have I written it when a thick white cloud veils the ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... and ridiculous enterprise, to attack such an army under such complicated disadvantages; but here was no room for hesitation. The king's affairs seemed to require a desperate effort, and perhaps he was partly impelled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the intensity that characterises the best of them. The superior and more evenly sustained energy of the sonnets is to be attributed, not to the accession of power that comes with increase of years, but to the innate principles of the poetic form, and to metrical exigencies, which impelled the sonnetteer to aim at a uniform ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Impelled by circumstances to leave the pines before their inspiring breath had given him of their life, he had little strength to renew the battle for existence, and of the sacrifice of his possessions to which he had been forced to resort he writes to Hayne: "We have ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... and then, impelled by the strange appearance of surprise on the man's countenance, I added, "don't I look ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte (the best, perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at his side toasting fish for the last time and eating the cake that somehow did not taste quite so good as usual. As she said good-bye to him before she went the round of the village bidding everyone good-bye, something impelled her to kiss his brown cheek. The last she saw of him was his bent figure silhouetted in the doorway of the hut with a fire glow behind it, and the setting sun shining on his eyes that were ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... cold of the season was becoming rapidly less dangerous as they threaded the different mazes through the snow-banks that led to their respective dwellings. Then driving clouds began toward morning to flit across the heavens, and the moon set behind a volume of vapor that was impelled furiously toward the north, carrying with it the softer atmosphere from the distant ocean. The rising sun was obscured by denser and increasing columns of clouds, while the southerly wind that rushed up the valley brought the never-failing symptoms ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... literary institution in any other age or country, exhibit a scene so interesting as this? And what are the circumstances of these youth? They are not students who prosecute a dead language with uncertain purpose, impelled only by natural genius or love of fame. But having been appointed to the important offices of administering the government of the country in which these languages are spoken, they apply their acquisitions immediately to useful purpose; in distributing ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the steps I noticed a small pile of furniture on the sidewalk. Something impelled me ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... he was forced to realize that it was necessity, not desire, that impelled her to thrust him from her. He must fight his hard battle alone—he must fight without even the thought ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... disciple and martyr of freedom,—he was eminently a representative man, whom freemen should delight to honor; and while it then gratified our sense of the appropriate that this distinction and resource should cheer his declining years, we are impelled, now that death has canonized misfortune and integrity, to avail ourselves of the occasion to rehearse the incidents and revive the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... and she was close to the breaking waves. Everyone held his breath as, impelled by a great breaker, she dashed into the surf with the swiftness of an arrow. There was a shock, followed by a grating noise, and then the brig ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... like the lesser Englishman that he was, his own tastes to those of the alien West. In the present instance he felt it incumbent upon him not only to assert his principles, but to act upon them with his usual energy. How far he was impelled by the half-contemptuous passiveness of his companions it ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... printed formula in all cases, indeed, where one feels not impelled, but obliged to write, would save both time and temper. We lay down nine out of ten of our letters with feelings of disappointment. Were we to imitate the Scotch servant who returned hers to the postmaster, after a glance at the address had assured her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gave his camel bell to his oldest son Mujrim, and forced his beast up beside mine, seeming to think silence might ruin the nerve of such a raw hand as myself. Or perhaps it was pride of race and country that impelled him. Even the meanest Arab thrills with emotion when he contemplates his ancient heritage, just as he rages at the prospect of seeing the Jews return to it, and Ali Baba, though a prince of thieves, was surely not a man ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stroke correctly. His unmeaning grin of good-natured acquiescence in whatever I bade him do, was more provoking than downright rebellion could have been; and I secretly agreed with my friends that the attempt would prove a complete failure, while impelled, I hardly could tell how, to persevere with redoubled efforts. Jack's uncouth bristly hair fell in a straight mass over one of the finest foreheads ever seen, and concealed it. I happened one day to put aside this mass, for the benefit of his sight, and was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... and, while the ships moved up the river, marched upon Baltimore. For the first six miles no opposition was offered, but as Baltimore was approached a detachment of light troops were noticed occupying a thick wood through which the road passed. Impelled by the daring for which he was distinguished, General Ross immediately advanced with the skirmishers to the front, and it was not long before the general received a wound, which so soon proved fatal that he had barely time to recommend his wife and family to the protection ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Adroitly she eluded his grasp and mingled with the throng. Gerbert followed with bursting heart, seized her in his arms, and found that the other phantoms had surrounded them. Something in the unearthly music fascinated him; he felt impelled to dance round and round, till his head reeled. And still he danced with his phantom bride, and still the maidens whirled about them. On the stroke of one the dancers vanished and the knight sank to the ground, all but dead with fatigue. In the morning he was found by the kindly nuns, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... sir, never better!" responded John Herlihy, weightily; but something in his cool eyes, grey and wise as a parrot's, impelled Larry, in his new-born sense of responsibility, to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... reflected from the new planes in a direction different from that in which they used to be reflected, and that also afterwards when they strike against these new planes by their own spontaneous motion, they are reflected in the same way as when they were impelled towards those planes by external bodies. Consequently those fluid bodies produce a modification in the human body while they keep up this reflex motion similar to that produced by the presence of an external body. The mind, therefore, will think as before, that is to say, it will again contemplate ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and it would now be impossible for those nations to enter upon the aggressive and nakedly ambitious wars which they were accustomed to undertake before the nineteenth century. We have a genuine abhorrence of the "lust for land" which has impelled Germany to plunge Europe into war. But until a century or two ago that lust for land was considered a legitimate appetite in Europe, and the clergy crowded with the people to greet the warriors who came home with the news ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... and acts also in Satan and in the wicked. But He acts in them precisely according to what they are and what He finds them to be (agit in illis taliter, quales illi sunt, et quales invenit). That is to say, since they are turned away [from Him] and wicked, and [as such] are impelled to action by divine omnipotence, they do only such things as are averse [to God] and wicked, just as a horseman driving a horse which has only three or two [sound] feet (equum tripedem vel bipedem) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... to thy voice, Impelled beyond the power of will or choice, And to those simple notes' mysterious chime, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... changed his religion from interested motives: his cheap shabby clothes, his going on living at the expense of the convent, and the uncertainty of his future, did not look like interested motives. There was nothing for it but to accept the idea that my companion had been impelled to change his religion by the same restless spirit which had flung him like a chip of wood from town to town, and which he, using the generally accepted formula, called the craving ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... than a minute the Robin was upon the gravel path hard at work picking up the dainty white crumbs. The Blackbird still hesitated on the laurel branch, loth to remain, yet fearful to advance, but at last, impelled by a sudden pang of hunger, he ventured to join his ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. For as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how the fluid may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones; it must be further asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity of this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... conveyed momentous intelligence. It is necessary to admit that Mr. Lincoln was making his one grand blunder, for which there is not even the scant salvation of possible doubt. All that can be said in palliation is, that he was governed, or at least strongly impelled, by the urgent advice of the secretary of war, whose hasty telegrams to the governors of several States show that he was terror-stricken and had lost his head. Mr. Blaine truly says that McDowell, thus suddenly dispatched by Mr. Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... feet of them, and at sight of him an exclamation rose to David's lips and died there in an astonished gasp. He seemed to be swaying, like a sick man, in the moonlight, and impelled by the same thought Mukoki and David moved toward him. The Missioner extended an arm, as if to hold them back. His face was ghastly, and terrible—almost as terrible as Tavish's, and he seemed to be struggling with something in his throat ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... 'I feel impelled to help unveil the Truth to these men assembled. If my act be good the result will be good; if bad, may it affect ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... canal-boats, at intervals of a quarter of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, and one by one disappeared round a point above. With their broad sails set, they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some mysterious counter-current. It was a grand motion, so slow and stately, this "standing out," as the phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady progress of a vessel, as if it were by mere rectitude and disposition, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... at twilight, as Allie was returning from giving a lesson to one of her pupils, she had to pass by Porter's hotel on her way home, and, when opposite the bar-room door, she heard her father in loud conversation with some one inside. Impelled by an impulse to rescue him from impending evil, she opened the door and walked in. She found herself in the midst of a bar-room full of drunken, ruffianly-looking men, a long row of whom were standing at the bar, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... rose and began to sing their final song; and Dale observed that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... people, much indignation was expressed at any parallel between their particular doctrine and practice and those of their exploded predecessors. "The motives," says the disinterested Mr. Perkins, "which must have impelled to this attempt at classing the METALLIC PRACTICE with the most paltry of empyrical projects, are but too ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... plebeian name of farmer, offers to enlist. Standing with his back against the halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours to reach it by rising on tiptoe. This artifice, to which he is impelled by towering ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at—and the serjeant is a hero, and a great man in his way; "your hero always must ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... feet, Madge?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer, drew up a footstool and planted himself so close to her knees that the sense of propriety felt by all fine women with any experience of life impelled her to withdraw them some three inches farther from his shoulder. At the same time she bent her head a very little forward and gently drew in her breath. The late Captain Dunbar had possessed in addition to the virtues of a dashing temperament, certain of its failings, and her cousin's demeanor ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... forbids yielding to the promptings of egoism or to those of the narrower moralities when this involves a violation of the precepts of the wider morality is axiomatic. Criminal and anti-social actions are not excused by the fact that motives which impelled their commission were ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers loitered as they walked, and hung indecisively about corners and archways. I walked along, hardly knowing where I was going or what I did there, but feeling impelled, as one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... contention was made, in some respects more curious than any other: it was, mainly, that Galileo "was no more a victim of Catholics than of Protestants; for they more than the Catholic theologians impelled the Pope ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... dream' in a waking moment. I made my way home as fast as possible, dreading, at every step, that I should commit some extravagance. In walking, I was hardly sensible of my feet touching the ground, it seemed as if I slid along the street, impelled by some invisible agent, and that my blood was composed of some ethereal fluid, which rendered my body lighter than air. I got to bed the moment I reached home. The most extraordinary visions of delight filled my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... incident occasioned much discussion among his friends, who of course were ignorant alike of the person who had attempted his assassination, and of the motives which could have impelled him to such a crime. Several opinions were advanced upon the circumstance, but as it had failed, his triumph over the Dead Boxer, as unexpected as it was complete, soon superseded it, and many a health was given "to the best man that ever sprung from the blood of the Lamh Laudhers!" ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold,—an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like them too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation; but its most conspicuous optical sign is the existence of a transparent atmosphere,—of a firmament, stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below. But darkness descends for ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... he now said what he did, as he did? She thought she had known this man, had fathomed him as to faults and virtues, though at some times she rated their combination more reverently than at others. Truth to tell, she had known him well; her judgment, impelled by the suggestion of his possible love, had scanned him patiently. Yet now she owned herself at fault, unable to construe the manner of this action or assign a particular motive with which it was in harmony. It is by manner ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... chapels were a number of statues, in marble and bronze, most of them rude, antique, yet not of indifferent workmanship, especially one before which the jestress, in spite of the exigency of the moment, stopped as if impelled by an irresistible impulse. This monument, so read the inscription, had been erected by the renowned Constable of Dubrois to his young and faithful ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... bottom. Its contents were about 22,000 cubic feet, and it accordingly displaced a volume of air weighing 1,980 1bs. The weight of the gas was nearly half the weight of the air, for it weighed 990 lbs., and the machine itself, with the frame, weighed 500: it was, therefore, impelled upwards with the force of 490 lbs. Two men sufficed to raise it and to fill it with gas, but it took eight to hold it down till the signal was given. The different pieces of the covering were fastened together with buttons and button-holes. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Truck, looking up at the uncouth sails that hardly impelled the vessel a mile in the hour through the water, "would soon furl all our canvas for us, and we are in the very place ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... when I think of unfolding the sad story of my life to you; and yet, I am impelled to do so by this hunger for sympathy that is so constantly gnawing at my heart. As I have told you before, my heart strangely turns to you in sorrow. In the three years that I have known you, and we have seen each other daily, I have never known you guilty of a single ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... transferred to his painting in all their original beauty. Round him were grouped some of the celebrated cavaliers of his party; and the back-ground, occupied by troops not in regular battalions, but as impelled by some whelming feeling of national excitement, impossible to be restrained. Answering to this was a full length of the infanta Isabella I., in the act of refusing the crown offered by the confederates. ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... incidents of masonry, child and rose culture, and shore-conservation. It was not to tell others how to build a house or plant a garden, or how to conduct one's life on a shore-acre or two. Not at this late day. I was impelled rather to relate how we found plenty with a little; how we entered upon a new dimension of health and length of days; and from the safe distance of the desk, I wanted to laugh over a city man's adventures with ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... wonderful mission which, under God's providence, they are called to fulfill in that great land of the Vedas. For nearly a century the commercial motive was not only paramount but was practically the only motive which impelled the Anglo-Saxon in his contact with India. Everything Indian had value in his eyes in proportion as it added to his revenues. For many years he excluded the Missionary of the Cross from his domains in the East, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... (1156-1158), but he made his influence felt from the cloister throughout the long period of thirty-four years (1158 to 1192), directing the administration from his "camera palace" (Inchu) during the reigns of five Emperors. Ambition impelled him to tread in the footsteps of Go-Sanjo. He re-opened the Office of Records (Kiroku-jo), which that great sovereign had established for the purpose of centralizing the powers of the State, and he sought to recover for the Throne ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... he realized any change in himself, and not until he returned from Litchfield did his father perceive it. His conversion was thorough. Not only was he turned about,—his face God-ward instead of self-ward,—but he was impelled toward "those sitting in darkness." In his childhood, from his mother's lips, he often heard stories from the lives of Brainerd, Eliot, and other missionaries. He heard her prayers for them and their great undertakings. Once he heard her ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... so embolden the savages as to expose him to great peril. Should he avoid the conflict, to which he was challenged, and endeavor to escape, by fleeing before his enemies, he would draw them down upon him with resistless fury. Thus again he found himself impelled to rouse all the energies of his army for the slaughter of ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... he comes to you to ask you to tell him a story. While listening to the story, his muscles are resting, and the force is spending its strength in working the mechanism of the brain. If you make your story too long, the brain, in turn, becomes fatigued, and he feels instinctively impelled to divert the vital force again ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... take her in his arms, he was impelled to turn away from her and to view that silent figure still leaning against the calico bag, whose head was lifted haughtily in deference ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... what came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time—as, for instance, in America—when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... funeral ode, and in composing a Preface, in vindication of the English hexameter, he took occasion "incidentally to repay some of his obligations to Lord Byron by a few comments on Don Juan" (Letter to the Rev. H. Hill, January 8, 1821, Selections, etc., iii. 225). He was, no doubt, impelled by other and higher motives to constitute himself a censor morum, and take up his parable against the spirit of the age as displayed and fostered in Don Juan (see a letter to Wynne, March 23, 1821, Selections, etc., iii. 238), but the suppressed "Dedication" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... he took great pleasure in a friendly correspondence with Mr. W. Clark Russell. Mr. Russell had taken many occasions to mention Melville's sea-tales, his interest in them, and his indebtedness to them. The latter felt impelled to write Mr. Russell in regard to one of his newly published novels, and received in answer the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous of the self-assumed title of Czar, became ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... to snap!' he thought. Impelled to justify this fancy, he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap. The way you look ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... capital in order. He was rather handicapped by an expensive father, who, however, had no particular objection to repairing religious institutions, his trouble being that he generally had no money left for constructive work after he had been round dealing out destruction, impelled thereto by his chivalrous conceit. I can quite imagine John as a man subconsciously religious and intermittently pious, so, for instance, he would probably invoke all the saints he could think of, to aid him in some warlike enterprise, then dash into the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... could bear music," thought Dick, as he closed the instrument, little guessing that a vein of sentiment in Uncle Ebeneezer's hard nature had impelled him to keep the prosaic melodeon forever sacred to the slender, girlish fingers that had last brought music from its ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... seemed now to be the burden of her thought. At first she felt impelled to telegraph Ray to come and attend to the matter; then she feared the man and woman would both disappear before he could arrive, and she felt that some immediate action should ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... escaped him, and to prepare himself far a task, the successful discharge or failure in which must, he was aware, have the deepest influence upon his fortunes. He had pride, was not without a consciousness of talent, and the sense of his father's feelings upon the subject impelled him to the utmost exertion. Above all, he had that sort of self-command which is essential to success in every arduous undertaking, and he was constitutionally free from that feverish irritability by which those whose over-active imaginations exaggerate ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... denied. In the sight of the same God who abhors the iniquity of the African slave-trade, neither the American slave-trade nor slavery itself can be held guiltless. From the suppression of the African slave-trade, therefore, the British Parliament, impelled by the irresistible influence of the British people, proceeded to point the battery of its power against slavery itself. At the expense of one hundred millions of dollars, it abolished slavery, and emancipated ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... on. Saltash's arm went round Juliet like a coiled spring. He impelled her unresisting to the door. Her hand rested on his shoulder as she stepped down from the platform. She went with him ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... an old friend of mine—a Colonel Liscannon," said Druro, speaking in a low voice and rapidly. He would have preferred not to discuss Gay at all, but his natural generosity impelled him to accord her such dignity and place as belonged to her and not to leave her where Mrs. Hading's words seemed to place her—just the other side of some ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... years commencing in 1729 and ending in 1732, more than thirty thousand Salzburgers, impelled by the fierce persecutions of Leopold, abandoned their homes in the broad valley of the Salza, and sought refuge in Prussia, Holland, and England, where their past sufferings and present wants enlisted the profound sympathy of Protestant communities. In the public indignation ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... one. I imagine that the cultivators, in the course of ages, must have tracked the element and followed it up, as a terrier will pursue a rabbit in its burrow, planting trees in proportion as they laid bare its once subterranean bed. Thus, the supply of liquid being constant, the oasis is impelled to wander in the direction of its springs; the more you add to the head, the shorter grows the tail. In prehistoric days, maybe, the water gushed out somewhere near the Chott; the charming depression of the "corbeille" is perhaps ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... cunning creature, moreover, in spite of his cleverness, sometimes gets caught. Mr Paul Kane, in one of his journeys across the country, had left a cache composed of logs built together, something like a log-house, but not very closely fitted. Impelled by hunger after a long journey, he and his companion on their way back reached their cache, and began throwing off the heavy logs which covered the top and concealed it. The Indian, hearing a great disturbance within, called to Mr Kane to fetch the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... [Page 71.] "When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction," etc. Further down: "God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bluntly, angry at being tricked, but inwardly glad to be free of the business, for he pictured to himself that girl at the tiller—he had seen her as she went aft—in a police court at Quebec. Yet his instinct for war and his sense of duty impelled him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Carlyle assumes this to be the fault of the latter—due to sawdust or other cheap filling in the head of the menial. Yet, may not the valet be wiser in this matter than the world? The hero, the greatest genius, is not always aflame with celestial fire, impelled by that mysterious power which comes from "beyond the clouds"— may be, for most part, the commonest kind of clay, a creature in nowise to be worshiped. The eagle, which soars so proudly at the sun, will return to its eyrie with drooping wing; the condor, whose shadow falls from afar ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hurries the Wehr-Wolf—impelled, lashed on by an invincible scourge, and filling the woods with its appalling yells—while its mouth scatters foam like thick flakes of snow. Hark, there is an ominous rustling in one of the trees of the forest; and the monster seems to instinctively ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... to be wondered at, should it not indeed be forgiven him, if, impelled by the anxieties and privations at home, the unfortunate poet, driven to the brink of madness, plunged still deeper into the Slough of Despond? Unable to provide for the pressing necessities of his beloved ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... If he be pure in his will, how can he commit impurity? If a woman be sacred in his eyes, how can he profane her? It is not that men have not the power of restraint, the power to do right; it is that they lack the motive. They have lost the sense of right; they are even impelled to do wrong by the pressure of opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often more to do with ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... in the common ranks of life; but it has done him good to be a nobleman. Not that his tact is quite perfect. In going up to breakfast, he made me precede him; in returning to the library, he did the same, although I drew back, till he impelled me up the first stair, with gentle persistence. By insisting upon it, he showed his sense of condescension much more than if, when he saw me unwilling to take precedence, he had passed forward, as if the point were not worth either asserting or yielding. Heaven knows, it was in no humility that I ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tell about it more than once. I make these statements here not in any sense to apologize for anything I shall say in my book, but merely to forestall the criticism of highly cultivated and truly scientific readers who, after a lifelong study of the habits of these creatures may feel impelled to question the accuracy of my statements and add to my perplexities by so advertising my book that I shall be put to the arduous necessity of chiseling out another edition, a labor which I have no desire ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... felt inclined to lie, but something impelled him, almost against his will, to speak ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... to its generator, while that developed on the rupture of the circuit coincided in direction with the inducing current. It appeared as if the current on its first rush through the primary wire sought a purchase in the secondary one, and, by a kind of kick, impelled backward through the latter an electric wave, which subsided as soon as the primary current was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... responsibility which can not be divided without a far more than proportionate diminution of its force. Their valuable services would become still more so when separately appropriated to distinct portions of the great interests of the Navy, to the prosperity of which each would be impelled to devote himself by the strongest motives. Under such an arrangement every branch of this important service would assume a more simple and precise character, its efficiency would be increased, and scrupulous economy in the expenditure of public ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... advert more particularly to the laws of New York, as they are stated in the record. The first was passed March 19th, 1787. By this act, a sole and exclusive right was granted to John Fitch, of making and using every kind of boat or vessel impelled by steam, in all creeks, rivers, bays, and waters within the territory and jurisdiction of New York for ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... therefore less able to profit by the meritorious features and at the same time withstand the weakening influences attendant upon the system. Indeed, I think its adoption in the secondary schools would be nothing short of a calamity. Another reason why I feel impelled to speak is that reference is made in Mr. Secor's article to the working of the system in the institution with which I am connected as "highly satisfactory." In justice to the system itself and certainly ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... out sharply, for, mistaking her silence, he had stooped to her with the directness which impelled all his movements, which so easily brushed aside and discarded intervening encumbrances, and had kissed ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... us return then to our history and to what the Admiral resolved to do in the place where he was, and that is, going as fast as possible, he wished to come to this Espanola, for some reasons which impelled him greatly: one, because he was going with great anxiety and affliction, as he had not had news of the condition of this island for so many days; and it would seem that he had some, premonition of the disorder and the losses and the travail which ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... represented a recognized state of probation before their re-entree into civilization again. "I reckon, if you don't mind, miss," said the spokesman of one party, "ez this is our first call, we'll sorter hang out in the hall yer, until you'r used to us." On another occasion, one Whiskey Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted by him afterwards at the bar ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte |
