"Impelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... up impelling her to tell him of Barney's savage yet unformulated threat. The warning got as far as her ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... 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
... it. He recalled his benumbed state, his 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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... almost terror, but also love: he was convinced of that. His companion in adventures which she shared with a good fellowship that excluded any awkwardness between them, she had suddenly taken fright; and a sort of modesty, mingled with a certain coquetry; was impelling her to hold back. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... to have been forgotten; but the subject afterward started into very general notice in a form in which it could not possibly be attended with success. A sort of mania began to prevail, which, indeed, has not yet entirely subsided, for impelling boats by steam-engines. Dr. Franklin proposed to force forward the boat by the immediate application of the steam upon the water. Many attempts to simplify the working of the engine, and more to employ a means of dispensing with the beam ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... of a strong force within, impelling him forward, whose source he could not divine, neither could he free himself from it. Fortunate person whose sails are filled with breezes from heaven, for craft of this kind go forward guided rightly, almost without the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... slippery rowlocks to impel the whole. Sale Taylor took the canoe and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he went inshore, and passed us a little after, with his arms folded, and two strong Samoans impelling him Apia-ward. This was too much for Belle, who hailed, taunted him, and made him return to the boat with one of the Samoans, setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our torment, Sale and the Samoan took the oars, sat on the same thwart (where they could get no swing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness—that fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The physical brain is a limitation of consciousness, ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... his head forward as though butting against a wind that would beat him back. "Go on, go on," he cried, sometimes addressing the mule, sometimes himself. "Go on, go back, go back. I WILL go back." It was as though he were climbing a hill that grew steeper with every stride. The strange impelling instinct fought his advance yard by yard. By degrees the dentist's steps grew slower; he stopped, went forward again cautiously, almost feeling his way, like someone approaching a pit in the darkness. He stopped ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... without sign of anger, like a machine, wonderfully trained; missing no point, regardless of punishment. He knew that if he went down once, all rules of battle would be discarded; a powerful blow sent him staggering to the wall; he leaned against it an instant; waited, with the strong, impelling look people had noticed on his face when he was fighting in a different ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... closed eyes floating 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 each letter with ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... fire burning within the heart of Jeremiah, impelling him to prophesy. He could not help himself! He ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... by step. That little journey across the square under the elms and cottonwoods was for her a veritable chemin de la croix. Every step was an agony; every yard covered only brought her nearer the time and place of exposure. It was all the more humiliating because she knew that her impelling motive was not one of duty. There was nothing lofty in the matter—nothing self-sacrificing. She went back because she had to go back. Little material necessities, almost ludicrous in their ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... call the work of these padres impressionless, when it has permeated all California? The open-hearted hospitality of the Spaniards is a canonical law throughout the West, and their exuberant spirit of festivity still remains, impelling us to celebrate every possible ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... 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 same. But the second had ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... unfortunates, condemned by modern industrialism to a life of the Inferno. I asked Hauptmann what an effect an artistic, dramatic representation of such a fate could possibly have. He replied that his inclinations were more for summernight's dreams toward sunny vistas, but that an impelling inner force urged him to use this appalling want as an object of his art. As for the hoped-for effect, human beings are not insensible; even the most satisfied, the most comfortable or rich must be gripped in his innermost depths when pictures of such terrible human ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked her ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inherited habit, that is from instinct? This instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimau dog, may have acquired an instinct impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... The correspondents forgot to write, and, like the audience, hung upon every word and gesture of Jimmy Grayson, as he made his great denunciatory speech; they felt that he was stirred by something unusual, that some great and extraordinary motive was impelling him, and they followed ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... burst into a war that deluged the vine-clad slopes of Rhineland and the fair plains of Lorraine with blood and fire, making havoc everywhere. Now, however, looking back on all the events of that terrible struggle and duly weighing the surroundings and impelling forces leading up to it, allowing also for all temporary excuses and pretexts, and admitting all that can be said for partisanship on either side, there can be no use in blinking at the pregnant fact that the real cause of the war arose from a desire to settle whether the French or the Germans ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... forever in behalf of all those who rely upon it with firm and unshaken faith." Yet he clearly taught that men are not, because of the grace of Christ, free to continue in sin. "Wherever there is faith in God, there God is; and wherever God abideth, there a zeal exists urging and impelling men to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Sylvie, something stronger than herself had sent her that night,—one of those powerful, impelling influences that few can resist. And Sylvie was wise enough not to lose her hold. She drew her in very gently, she preached no ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the result of great subtlety on Mr Wegg's part, but assuming the mask of careless yielding to a fortuitous combination of circumstances impelling him towards Clerkenwell, had enabled him to complete his bargain ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... set out to discover the impelling forces, which, acknowledged, or unacknowledged, and for the most part unacknowledged, stand behind historical figures, and constitute the true final impulses of history, we cannot consider so much ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... came a rush of feet upon the balcony above them and a torrent of angry shouting. Stephanie shrank against a pillar, but in a moment Pierre's arm encircled her, impelling her irresistibly, and they fled across the terrace through the darkness. The man was still laughing as he ran. There seemed to her something devilish in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... voyagers themselves, and listen to their story, we should find it animating enough. Each enterprise, as we have it now, with its bare statistics, seems a meagre affair; but it was far otherwise to the men who were concerned in it. Of the motives[4] impelling men to engage in such expeditions, something has already ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... there to whip or spur those magnificent horses. They were fresh; the course was open, and smooth as a racetrack, and the impelling chorus of the hounds was in full blast. I gave Satan a loose rein, and he stayed neck and neck with the bay. There was not a log, nor a stone, nor a gully. The hollows grew wider and shallower as we raced along, and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the silence, which many would have considered the most probable of all—he might be married. Not deliberately, but suddenly; drawn into it by some of those impelling trains of circumstance which are the cause of so many marriages, especially with men; or, impelled by one of those violent passions which occasionally seize on an exceedingly good man, fascinating him against his conscience, reason, and will, until he wakes up to find ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... 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 ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... sure to burst 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 their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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
... making for a light which filtered through a window of many-coloured glass, until at last she stood in front of it, and dimly saw the overhanging jasmine and the great, white flowers of the magnolia. For a moment the perfume, like an angel guardian, uttered protest and dared approach, but the spirit impelling that form enveloped in soaking garb was one not long to be brooked by sentiment, and she moved like a panther carefully forward, and peered through the casement left open to admit the perfumed air. She gazed anxiously ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... of 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 ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... it. Hardly ever does there appear any delicate, convincing analysis of the mysterious behavior of true genius. Mr. Dreiser's artists are hardly persons at all; they are creatures driven, and the wonder lies primarily in the impelling energy. The cosmic philosopher in him sees the beginning and the end of the artistic process better than the novelist in him sees its methods. And the peasant in him, though it knows the world of art ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... with intermittent agriculture. Doubtless, they were attracted by the splendor of Rome, its wealth and its luxury, but primarily they were seeking a chance to live. It was the old luring food quest, which is the foundation of most migrations, that was the impelling force of their invasion. In accordance with their methods of life, the northern territory was over-crowded, and tribe pressed upon tribe in the struggle for existence. Moreover, the pressure of the Asiatic populations drove one tribe upon another and forced ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... less. Nothing ever hurts me." The big man's laugh had in it a touch of bitterness. "Where are you bound for? Come along with me in the car; I'll take you where you want to go." He seized Carey by the shoulder, impelling him with boisterous cordiality towards the vehicle. "Jump in, my friend. My name is Coningsby—Major Coningsby, of Crooklands Manor—mad Coningsby I'm called about here, because I happen to ride straighter to hounds than most of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... crisis of healthy disgust. His instinct was impelling him to eliminate from his life all the undigested elements ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... vast solidarity as now exists in the world of labor. Like food and drink, the organization of labor satisfies an inherent necessity. The workers crave its protection, seek its guidance, and possess a sense of security only when supported by its solidarity. Only something as intuitively impelling as the desire for life could have called forth the labor and love and sacrifice that have been lavishly expended in the disheartening and incredibly tedious work of labor organization. The upbuilding of the labor movement has seemed ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... be permitted a concluding reflection, projected in clear outline on the background of those thrilling days now forever over. That reflection, in silhouette, is this—the great crises of life—whether decisive of weal or of woe, are, to the soul of normal man, God impelling! In direct ratio as danger and death impended in the gloomy wastes of No Man's Land, all soldiers grew religious and turned instinctively to God. In the zero hour the profane grew silent and the curse died unuttered on his lip. All, all, realized God! The ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... bowl, the trio, moved by some vague impelling impulse, locked arms, walked toward the side door, crossed its threshold in some confusion, owing to a unanimous determination to pass out at one and the same time, and went forth into the tranquil night, leaving Barnes and Saint-Prosper the sole occupants of the kitchen. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... would not satisfy her. There was something strong and fierce and primitive in her nature—something that had come down to her through the generations from some harness-girded ancestress—something impelling her instinctively to choose the fighter; to share with him the joy of battle, healing his wounds, giving him of her courage, exulting with ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... did, and in her devotion to him she must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses, like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words; she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw, any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the emotions, and this was surging ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... develops his subject after the high scholastic and theologic manner. Calling attention first to the divine command in the New Testament, "Remember Lot's wife," he argues through a long series of chapters. In the ninth of these he discusses "the impelling cause" of her looking back, and introduces us to the question, formerly so often treated by theologians, whether the soul of Lot's wife was finally saved. Here we are glad to learn that the big, warm heart ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... brought within a step or two of madness." Sterne's conception seems to me 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 the book that his ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... consent in his pettiest walk with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... and never fail to recapitulate them to their companions afterwards, with triumph and satisfaction.—But it is not so with the adult. As soon as the reasoning powers are developed, the legislative functions of conscience begin to act, enabling and impelling the person to decide at once on actions, whether they are right or wrong, good or evil. Such a person, therefore, could not strike nor abuse his parents, without knowing that he was doing wrong; nor could he tantalize or injure the aged or the helpless, without conscience putting him upon ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... reciprocally both a result of impassioned feeling and a cause of it: hence its double function in poetry. It springs, on the one hand, from "the high spiritual instinct of the human being impelling us to seek unity by harmonious adjustment and thus establishing the principle that all the parts of an organized whole must be assimilated to the more important and essential parts." On the other hand, it "resembles (if the aptness of the simile may excuse its meanness) ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... by its vibrations his whole life was being tuned anew. Something of the 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 ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... declaration that he made before the alcalde-in-ordinary of this city, Don Martin de Herrera—received and testified before the notary-public, Juan de Villa Marin—the patron, Don Bernardino, declares that the impelling motive for undertaking and perfecting the work of church and convent was his great devotion to San Nicolas de Tolentino, and his having recognized in the discalced Augustinian religious, from the time of their arrival in this city, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... and his conduct then and at other times, indicate a man of plain good 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, filling a large ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... excited our discontent; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future — the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shows his antipathy by his love ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... pass very slightly over the interview with a still more remarkable creation—the Hebrew physician and astrologer Sephardo—except as we have in this interview further illustration of the character of Don Silva, and of the direction in which the self-love of passion is impelling him. We see conscience seeking from Sephardo—and seeking in vain—confirmation of the purpose already determined in his own heart; striving toward self-justification by every sophistry the passion-blinded intellect can suggest; struggling ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... Word thoroughly taught: he prays that the heart may taste the Word and that it may be effectual in the life. Thus the apostle contrasts a knowledge of the Word with the power of the Word. Many have the knowledge, but few the impelling and productive power that the results may be as we teach. Hence they are criticised and not without reason. But our enemies cannot censure and reproach us to greater extent than to say that we preach ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... is never commonplace—she is the victim of her qualities; and these qualities in the case of Madame Guyon were high ambition, great intellect, impelling passion, self-reliance. Had she been less of a woman she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... feel the roll of the open sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The Nome was pounding ahead at full speed, and Alan's blood responded suddenly to the impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between him and Unalaska, midway ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... proper to set his child a crying.{3} We had crossed the road, in the direction of Chancery-lane, expecting to have met with a hackney rattler, but not one was to be found upon the stand, when Bob espied the broad tilt of a jarvey perched upon his shop-board, and impelling along, with no little labour of the whip, a pair of anatomies, whose ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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." To the great majority of people, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... equator to the poles; so that if we conceive the two currents to meet about latitude 30d, there will be a second intermingling, and the current from the poles will again occupy the surface. Thus, we regard a part of the effect of the trades to the rotation of the earth, which is the chief impelling power at the poles, as the sun is at the equator; and the latitudes 60d and 30d will be marked by some especial phenomena of temperature, and other meteorological features which do actually obtain. These would be much more marked if the irregular configuration ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... this it might be inferred that they who adopt such a creed cannot be pantheists, but must be atheists. It is a rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that of Force. If it admits the existence of God, it declines him as a Creator. It asserts an impelling power in the universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It rejects inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and considers that phenomena alone can be dealt with by our finite minds. Not without an air of intellectual majesty, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... many hours when, plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for awhile. He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. And the thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a spectre impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, he was dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It seemed to be shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room through ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... of the 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
... vivid fiction of a gouty pamphleteer who wrote to catch the market and was hoisted into immortal fame by the effort: that his book should, like a spark falling on straw, fire the brains of a French shoemaker's apprentice and a Lincolnshire schoolboy, impelling each to a career crowded with adventure, and crowned with memorable achievements. There could hardly be better examples of the vitalising efficacy ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... immortality as a work of high art. For six years he had been plunged into every kind of vice and excess, pleading his shattered domestic joys, and his wife's obdurate heart, as the apology and the impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks and complaints concerning the slander which pursued him, while he filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new mistresses. During all these years, the silence of Lady Byron was unbroken; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... don't 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
... as "You ugly little—" and then, as he bore down upon her, turned to flee. He altered his course, and as she passed him on the way to the open door, the flat of the spade landed with impelling force upon the broadest part of her person. The sound was not so hollow as that which resulted from the wallop on Peggy's ribs, but its echo was a great deal more far-reaching. Indeed, Mrs. Fry's howl could have been heard a quarter of ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... single people even at the start. It becomes contagious either by example or by the subjection of several neighboring tribes to the same impelling force, by reason of which all start at or near the same time. We find the Cimbri and Teutons combined with Celts from the island of Batavia[143] in the first Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire. Jutes, Saxons and Angles ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... their labour in vain, endeavoured by hoisting the sails and by practising all possible manoeuvres to preserve the ship from impending destruction. But all was of no use; we were hard on a lee shore, to which the howling tempest was impelling us. About this time I was standing near the helm, and I asked the steersman if there was any hope of saving the vessel or our lives; he replied, 'Sir, it is a bad affair; no boat could for a minute live in this sea, and in less than an hour the ship will have her ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... that unfortunate boy the victim of examinations for commissions. Boys must be subjected to high pressure before they can thoroughly enter into the importance of the issues that depend upon it; and when a sluggish, dull intellect is forced beyond endurance, there is an absolute instinct of escape, impelling to shifts and underhand ways of eluding work. Of course the wrong is great, but the responsibility rests with the taskmaster in the same manner as the thefts of a starved slave might ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when he talked he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation; he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation; yet the next moment ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was thrust into the literary life of Charleston at a time when that life was most full of impelling force. It was a Charleston filled with memories quite remote from the poetry and imaginative literature which represented life to the youthful writers. It was a Charleston with an imposing background of history and oratory, forensic and legislative, against which the poetry and imagination ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... clarified from all 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
... 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, and so giving ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... labour; he drinks hard enough, but the liquor is as potent here 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, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... beginning to open itself before him, and the longing to do great things had taken possession of his soul. There were no more tears at being forced to work, for the greatest incentives to work—love and ambition—were now swaying him and impelling him onwards at a speed which nothing could check. Neefe's confidence and praise were more than justified, and before he had completed his thirteenth year Beethoven received his first official appointment at the hands of the Elector. He could now sign himself ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... violence committed in a quarrel between himself and his cousin over the possession of a woman, appealed to him. And even as instantly, his defiant heart accepted its shame and persisted in its fault. It is an extreme of love, indeed, if no circumstance however impelling raises a regret in the heart of a man; for he flung off with a weak gesture any chiding of conscience against cherishing his dream, and abandoned himself wholly to his yearning for the girl in the tissue ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... 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 ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 his nature. For the other he requires a skillful and careful training. If we find a dog who ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... with the original Britons. And in 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 was ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... 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, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... There was something impelling in his voice; but likewise she felt that there was sufficient strength in those hands that grasped her wrists, to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... was naturally of somewhat hasty temperament, so that with shame and anger mutually impelling each other, he inquired of him, "What's there to cough at? Is it likely you wouldn't have us speak ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... discipline, and to maintain this, He has given laws, letters, doctrine, magistrates, penalties. And this righteousness reason, by its own strength, can, to a certain extent, work, although it is often overcome by natural weakness, and by the devil impelling it to manifest crimes. Now, although we cheerfully assign this righteousness of reason the praises that are due it (for this corrupt nature has no greater good [in this life and in a worldly nature, nothing is ever better than ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... the Bloody Ground, and of Tennessee, until so many immigrants have followed in his steps, that he finds his privacy too strongly pressed upon; until he finds the buts and bounds of legal tenures restraining his free thoughts, and impelling him to the distant and unsettled shores of the Missouri, to seek range and solitude anew. We see him there, his eyes beginning to grow dim with the influence of seventy winters—as he can no longer take the unerring aim of his rifle—casting wistful looks in the direction ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... 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 very ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... want to talk to you in confidence about my guest, who, as you say, is a very sweet woman. You could do something for her which I couldn't do. I have none of your impelling gentleness. You know how to stir that which dwells in the inner sanctuary, to start it working for itself; I'm more apt to try to work for it, or at it. Perhaps I can rouse up a sinner and make him think. I've got a good bit of the instinct ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... their midst one thing stood aloof with the firmness of 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 ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... dwells on the chief causes impelling "wicked men," the privileged classes and their parasites, to stand up for ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... a convention of his cabinet for the discussion of questions politic and for the transaction of certain routine matters of state. The session had been signally tedious; the business and the wine prodigiously dry. A sudden, prankish humour of Don Sabas, impelling him to the deed, spiced the grave affairs of state with ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... bad oars and the two slippery rowlocks to impel the whole. Sale Taylor took the canoe and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he went inshore, and passed us a little after, with his arms folded, and TWO strong Samoans impelling him Apia-ward. This was too much for Belle, who hailed, taunted him, and made him return to the boat with one of the Samoans, setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our torment, Sale and the ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unimportant incident in the course of my scientific work— the presentation of a pair of dancing mice to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. My interest in the peculiarities of behavior which the creatures exhibited, as I watched them casually from day to day, soon became experiment-impelling, and almost before I realized it, I was in the midst of an investigation of their senses ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... moreover, had he spoken thus to older and more experienced auditors, they might have detected in the manner and matter of his talk, a certain hereditary reverence and awe, the growth of ages, mixed up with a newer hatred, impelling him to deface and destroy what, at the same time, it was his deepest impulse to bow before. The love belonged to his race; the hatred, to himself individually. It was the feeling of a man lowly born, when he ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... even centuries elapse! How solemn the consideration, that the flood of ages, which has swept from the surface of this globe so many millions of our predecessors, however firm may have been their health, or numerous their years, or eminent their characters, is daily impelling us forward to the "house appointed for all living." Their pilgrimage terminated, and so must ours: their earthly relations were dissolved, and their places in society were vacated; and soon the place which we occupy, shall ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... all, describe them as universally distinguished above their neighbors for their energy and vehemence of character, their mental and physical superiority, and for the wild and daring expeditions to which their spirit of enterprise and activity were continually impelling them. They built vessels, in which they boldly put forth on the waters of the German Ocean or of the Baltic Sea on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like their present posterity on the British isles and on the shores of the Atlantic, they cared not, in these voyages, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hand with his own, and as he had recoiled from Snap Naab so now he received another shock, different indeed but impelling in its power, instinctive of some great portent. Hare was impressed by an indefinable subtlety, a nameless distrust, as colorless as the clear penetrating amber lightness of the eyes that ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... brethren, earned his living by giving lessons in English, having first composed a grammar according to the Latin model for the use of his pupils. He also set up a printing establishment, publishing many controversial works prohibited in England, a proceeding which roused the wrath of Carleton, impelling him to do his best to have him thrown ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conduct, were things of the past. She felt herself idly swayed by conflicting influences, unable even to debate what course she should take; the one emotion of which she was clearly conscious was of so strange and disturbing a kind that, so far from impelling her to act, it seemed merely to destroy all her customary motives and leave her subject to the will of others. It was the return of weakness such as had possessed her mind when she lay ill, when she was ceaselessly troubled with a desire for she knew not what, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... without any occupants, but well stored with comb. Though dozens of empty hives may be in the Apiary, they never unless under such circumstances, enter a hive, of their own accord. It might seem as though an instinct impelling them to do so, would have been a most admirable one, and so doubtless, it may seem to some that it would have been much better for man, if the earth had only brought forth spontaneously all things requisite for the support of man and beast, without any necessity for ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... soul of the world, a momentary mirror of the eternal. Such an attitude towards the least controllable of passions has several drawbacks: it involves a certain inhumanity, and it is only possible for long to one who remains ignorant of himself and cannot see that part of the force impelling him is blind attraction towards a pretty face. It also has the result that, if the lover is a poet, his love-songs will be sad. Obsessed by the idea of communion with some divine perfection, he must needs be often cast down, not only by finding that, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the guidance of reason and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers. It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand. They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep things in their right places. Remember ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and they agree to rouse the people in resistance to the outrages of the nobles. Adriano is placed in an embarrassing position,—his relationship to the Colonnas urging him to join the nobles, and his love for Irene impelling him with still stronger force to make common cause with the people. He finally decides to follow Rienzi, just as the trumpets are heard calling the people to arms and Rienzi clad in full armor makes his appearance to ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... is not the need of 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. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... however, that the chevalier was not stating the true reason, and he felt also with equal force that he would keep secret in the face of all questions, direct or indirect, the motives impelling him. St. Luc asked him about his life in the Indian village with Langlade, and then came back presently to Paris and France, which he described more vividly than even Montcalm had done. He seemed to know the very qualities that would appeal most to Robert, and, despite himself, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a little decision, to save himself from this rushing current. One word to Alma—would it not suffice? But of all things he dreaded to incur the charge of meanness, of selfishness. That had ever been his weak point: in youth, well-nigh a cause of ruin; in later life, impelling him to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... experienced for the first time, and the picture which he paints, shaped with reference to his need and fulfilling it, is a new thing. In the work produced by this act of creation, the feeling which has prompted it finds expression. In the making of the hut, in the painting of the picture, the impelling need is satisfied. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... a triumphal close by 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 will go ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... waves of anger, and the thin lips writhed and lifted into ugly wrinkles, exposing the flesh-tearing fangs, cruel and menacing. Their very noses serrulated and shook in brute passion, and they snarled as the wolves snarl, with all the hatred and malignity of the breed impelling them to spring upon the woman and ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... themselves with the business facts, they get the business point of view and run the risk of centering attention too much on materials and material forces. Even psychological reactions of men and women may be analyzed from the standpoint of their mechanics, without ever going back to those impelling motives which have their roots in the human instincts and complex social reactions of which the men and ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5), mercy is heartfelt sympathy for another's distress, impelling us to succor him if we can. For mercy takes its name misericordia from denoting a man's compassionate heart (miserum cor) for another's unhappiness. Now unhappiness is opposed to happiness: and it is essential to beatitude ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... particular pains to guard against. The psychological processes of the animals are so simple, so obvious, in comparison with those of man, their actions flow so directly from their springs of impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives which are at any one moment impelling them. In my desire to avoid alike the melodramatic, the visionary, and the sentimental, I have studied to keep well within the limits of safe inference. Where I may have seemed to state too confidently the motives underlying the special ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rebuke in the world of business affairs, this revelation of trickery on the part of her husband's enemies filled her with a disgusted horror. There was in the girl-wife a strong quality of the protecting maternal love in her attitude toward her husband. It was in obedience to its impelling force that she had followed so steadfastly her ambition to help him in his business, to be his partner. It was the dominance of this feeling that had caused her to stay on in her husband's house to comfort him, and if possible ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... personal God-consciousness 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 it conflicts with their philosophy: for a real religious ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... get out of Peters just how he made the leap—whether with the legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling force; but it was no use. I believe that he does not himself know—he did it by an animal instinct, and that is all there is to be said. The old fellow does not really know his age, but I should place it, at the present ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... leading canoe passed the boy and girl, Little Tim yelling himself hoarse, with encouragement to Harvey and Henry Burns to come on. Surely if there had been any impelling power in noise, Tim's cries would have turned the scale in ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... that scarcely rustles the summer woods in the leafy month of June, and sometimes storms in wild tempest that dashes the seas against the rocks. So this mighty life- giving Agent moves in gentleness and yet in power, and sometimes swells and rises almost to tempest, but is ever the impelling force of all that is strong and true and fair in Christian hearts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... carriages and spiked the guns bearing upon Fort Sumter, he put 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 ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... gentlemanlike, and altogether a more polished hero than I had expected to see. To judge from the past, he will not long remain in his present state of inaction, besides having within him, according to Zavala, "a principle of action for ever impelling him forward." ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... ten years, will the final years of Mr. John Jones be years of acute psychic senility, as observed by Dr. Steinach in his rat? To the writer it seems a non sequitur. The cases are not parallel. The rejuvenated rat appears to regard his acquired vitality as impelling toward revelry and excess. It is necessary to emphasize the point that the pith and marrow of Dr. Brinkley's discovery is that since it is clearly shown that rejuvenation is accomplished by the restoration of activity to the sex-glands, therefore the preservation of this rejuvenation MUST ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... these Congressmen has been the subject of much adverse criticism. Not a few persons have considered as weakness the tendency to propose measures relating to local improvements, and those racial rather than national in character. The records of Congress show, however, that the motives impelling the Negro Congressmen to propose the type of legislation stated differed in no wise from those underlying similar actions of other Congressmen. Discussing the service of Congress, Mr. Munro, in his Government of the United States, says: "First among the merits of congressional ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the world has resting upon him an unseen hand reaching out from the past, pushing him out to meet his environment, and guiding him in the start upon his journey. This impelling and guiding power from the past we call instinct. In the words of Mosso: "Instinct is the voice of past generations reverberating like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system. We feel the breath, the advice, the experience of all men, from those who lived on acorns and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... 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 ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... 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 who knew him as "a harsh and choleric ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... pressures with increased vigour and perseverance. Whether it be owing to the natural progression of trade extending itself from its origin to its acme, or ne plus ultra, or to the encouragement given by the administration to monied men of all denominations; or to necessity, impelling those who can no longer live on small incomes to risk their capitals in traffic, that they may have a chance for bettering their fortunes; or lastly, to a concurrence of all these causes; certain it is, the national exports and imports have been sensibly increasing for these forty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 strand. The two men leaped instantly out of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... did not fully awaken to 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 to move. ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... blighting of the higher aspirations of the soul? This subject has been taken up in the narrative form, that the writer could the more easily, by incidents, and in the briefest way, bring out the peculiarities of the two systems in their workings and the animus impelling them. He has brought forward nothing in the line of facts and incidents except what had come under his own observation, or been so reported to him that he had no doubt of its truthfulness. Many of the incidents in Part II. he would gladly have passed in ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... 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, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... was, that the sudden and total dispersion of the rioters, when their vindictive purpose was accomplished, seemed not the least remarkable feature of this singular affair. In general, whatever may be the impelling motive by which a mob is at first raised, the attainment of their object has usually been only found to lead the way to farther excesses. But not so in the present case. They seemed completely satiated with the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that regular winds, arising from constant and extensive causes, can come into bodily conflict and preserve their identity and original impetus for days, without immediate and strongly impelling forces to sustain their motion, implies a profound ignorance of mechanical science, and is little better than those ancient superstitions which gave a personal identity to the winds. The momentum of ordinary winds is a feeble force ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selection of our bodily sustenance. But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of narrative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that never was and so forth. I did not say ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... France, this National Assembly. All work of Government has fallen into its hands, or under its control; all men look to it for guidance. In the middle of that huge Revolt of Twenty-five millions, it hovers always aloft as Carroccio or Battle-Standard, impelling and impelled, in the most confused way; if it cannot give much guidance, it will still seem to give some. It emits pacificatory Proclamations, not a few; with more or with less result. It authorises the enrolment of National Guards,—lest Brigands come to devour us, and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... tender time. He inclined forward that Ethelberta might give him her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met. Mastered by an impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, Ethelberta presented her cheek. Christopher kissed it faintly. Tears were in Ethelberta's eyes now, and she was heartfull of many emotions. Placing her arm round Picotee's waist, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... ludicrously-gruesome murder imbroglio, now this, now that one emerged with greater distinctness and reality, and the one that stood out finally as the most important, because her name was constantly brought forward, was the veiled lady with the green feather in her hat; nay, she gradually became the centre and impelling power of the bloody deed, perhaps only because her origin and existence remained a mystery. Many raised their voices in suspicion against Charlotte Arlabosse, but she was able to establish her innocence by ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... mount of God. What then are we to think, but that God will sometime bring us up out of the literature of the lower love, into that of the higher?—that as the age of passion yields to the age of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give place to the loftier, finer, more impelling love of God? And then around that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of literature, as much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more intellectual. Beauty, truth, and worship; song, science, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... made such a trip, and his services were sought for this occasion. As one who had his own subsistence to earn, with no capital but his hands, he accepted the proposition made him. Perhaps there was something of his inherited and acquired fondness for exciting adventure impelling him to this decision. With him were also employed his former fellow-laborer, John Hanks, and a son of his step-mother named John Johnston. In the spring of 1831 Lincoln set out to fulfil his engagement. The floods had so swollen the streams that the Sangamon ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without falling into some degree of bewilderment. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... build them in this great empire of the South; and they become doubly imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be saved now. The motives for home and foreign missions are thus combined, and impelling us for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, and for our country's sake, to give the gospel to ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... one somehow to be stirred into action and reality? Was there something in the background, which did not insist or drive or interfere with one's inclinations, because it knew that it would be obeyed and yielded to some time? Was it just biding its time, waiting, impelling but not forcing one to change? It gave him an impulse to look closer at his own views and aims, to consider what his motives really were, how far he could choose, how much he could prevail, to what ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drinking, The day before me and the night behind, The heavens above my head and under me the ocean. A lovely dream,—meanwhile he's gone from sight. Ah! sure, no earthly wing, in swiftest flight, May with the spirit's wings hold equal motion. Yet has each soul an inborn feeling Impelling it to mount and soar away, When, lost in heaven's blue depths, the lark is pealing High overhead her airy lay; When o'er the mountain pine's black shadow, With outspread wing the eagle sweeps, And, steering on o'er lake and meadow, The crane ...
— Faust • Goethe
... hearing of their deliberations, when the baroness put her hand to her round white throat, with an exaggerated gesture of oppression, and then waved it towards the window. Sacovitch bowed and rose from his place. I laid a hand on Hinge, impelling him downward as the Austrian police spy walked towards the window. We each glued ourselves to the wall, and prostrated ourselves on the rainy wood-work of the veranda walk. We heard the grating sound of the window as it rose; and the mingled voices of the people inside—all five speaking together—came ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... her. Yes, she was pretty. But it didn't dawn on me at first. I—I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but didn't think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before Jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy musing thought, and the next ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edge of the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong with Mary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had become impelling under the influence of her father's unusually long ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 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 characteristics. Oxford men started it and ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... chapter lix 4 SQUID > Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the causes impelling him to remain in Frankfort—in short, of everything that had disturbed his mind the evening ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... yet quite as impelling as the other, caused Peter to look up sharply. The mandarin ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... 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; ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... from time to time added new power to the steam-engine; and, by numerous modifications, rendered it capable of being applied to nearly all the purposes of manufacture- -driving machinery, impelling ships, grinding corn, printing books, stamping money, hammering, planing, and turning iron; in short, of performing every description of mechanical labour where power is required. One of the most ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... 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
... moreover, a keen perception of character and a tact that would preserve him from flagrant error in any society. Henry had not the restless energy of an Anglo-American. He was content to take things as he found them; and his chief fault arose from an excess of easy generosity, impelling him to give away too profusely ever to thrive in the world. Yet it was commonly remarked of him, that whatever he might choose to do with what belonged to himself, the property of others was always safe in his hands. His bravery was ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 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 of ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the sky floated the insistent call of the muezzin just as Damaris, followed closely by Wellington, her bulldog, turned out of the narrow street into the Khan el-Khalili. Shrill and sweet, from far and near it came, calling the faithful to prayer, impelling merchants to leave their wares, buyers their purchases, gossips their chatter, and to turn in the direction of Mecca and offer their praise ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... then awakened by the misery of this class has been an impelling force which has never ceased to make itself felt during forty years of active service in the salvation of men. During this time I am thankful that I have been able, by the good hand of God upon me, to do something in mitigation of the miseries of this class, and to bring not only heavenly ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... I think, that it ought to be the artist's, as it is the man's, last resort. We know that, in most civilized countries, suicide is greatly on the increase. It cannot be called an infrequent incident in daily life. It is certain, too, that the motives impelling to it are apt to be of a dramatic nature, and therefore suited to the playwright's purposes. But it is, on the other hand, such a crude and unreasoning means of exit from the tangle of existence that a playwright of delicate instincts ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... time you have committed yourself. Of 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
... impelling the government toward disunion are very powerful. They consist chiefly of two;—the one arising from the great extent of the country; the other, from its division into separate States, having local institutions and interests. The former, under the operation of the numerical majority, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... sense finds no microcosm in any single individual. Still less are the critical function and the animating function of a Parliamentary Minister likely to be perfectly exercised by one and the same man. Impelling power and restraining wisdom are as opposite as any two things, and are rarely found together. And even if the natural mind of the Parliamentary Minister was perfect, long contact with the office would destroy his use. Inevitably he would accept ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... nowhere 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 ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... be justly painted, but by assuming the colors of poetry; and an eloquent historian of Italy, in imitation of Camden, has asserted that the Armada, tho the ships bore every sail, yet advanced with a slow motion; as if the ocean groaned with supporting, and the winds were tired with impelling, so enormous a weight. The truth, however, is, that the largest of the Spanish vessels would scarcely pass for third rates in the present navy of England; yet were they so ill framed or so ill governed, that they were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... come, not seen her, and gone!... A wave of bitterness swept through Cally, impelling her to hit out ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... jockey, the muscular system of the horse would be relieved. At the same time no additional task is thrown on the bony frame of the horse, since, if the jockey had not used his muscular power on it in impelling his own weight, the muscular system of the horse must have been so employed. It is true, that not much is done after all with a prodigious exertion, but if that little gains six inches in a hardly contested race it may make the difference of its being lost or won. Thus an easy race is ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... that would have been ready to join him—could have made them available, to the extent of their talents, in bringing advanced ideas before the public—could have used the House of Commons as a rostra or a teacher's chair for instructing and impelling the public mind; and would either have forced the Whigs to receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead of the Reform party out of their hands. Such a leader there would have been, if my father ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at the behest of this vagabundo who impeached his English? The man, however, had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling. He decided to take the note to the ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... especially at first, Keith in an impulse would throw over his plans, and ask her to go to the theatre or a concert, of which there were many and excellent. She generally declined, not because she did not want to go, but because of that impelling desire, universal in the feminine soul, to be a little wooed to it, to be compelled by gentle persuasion that should at once make up for the past and be an earnest for the future. Only Keith took her refusal at its face value. Nan ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... of the Santa Hermandad, sternly. "The impelling of the Divine Spirit, whom you had profaned, and who in justice so distracted you, as to lead you blindly to your own destruction—no marvel the darkness oppressed, and the storm appalled you; or that heaven in its wrath should ordain ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the economic organism changes rapidly and yet, at any time in the course of its changes, is relatively near to a certain static model. It is clear, therefore, that it cannot, at different periods, conform even approximately to one single model. If the forces of change which in 1800 were impelling the industrial society of America to a forward movement had been suppressed, and if competition had been ideally free and active, that society would before long have settled into the shape then required by the forces which, in the preceding chapters, we have described. Some ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark |
