"Impulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convinced us that its seat is immediately above the ear." The truth is that the convolutions which terminate on the temporal bone over the ear are only on the border of Destructiveness, and produce only an irritable and impulsive temper. The true Destructiveness extends fully an inch under the surface of the middle lobe, along the petrous ridge of the temporal bone, and is manifested externally just behind the ear by the prominence of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... and musical artist from his fellows generally is a great evil. Much that society complains of in the lives of artists would never exist but for this isolation, in spite of the fact that the artistic temperament is so moody and so impulsive, so little regardful of ordinary conventionalities. That it is so is partly the fault of society. It is quite true that because of journeying, rehearsals, etc., the travelling artist has little time to meet ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... relations she had succeeded to such an extent and in such detail as no examining magistrate could have accomplished. And there now lay before him letters, explanations, evidence, which the deponent was ready to swear to, besides letters from Angelika herself: imprudent letters which this impulsive creature could perpetrate in the midst of her schemes; or deeply calculated letters, which directly contradicted others which had been written at a different period, based on different calculations. These documents were only the accompaniment of a ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... end of Madison's administration was broken by new troubles with the southern Indians. General Jackson by his impulsive manner of dealing with the Indians of Florida nearly forced the United States into a war with Spain and England. The Indians had reason to complain of the injustice that had marked their treatment by the whites. Florida had become a refuge for runaway slaves from Georgia and South Carolina. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... got, if they had left "The Excursion" for the smaller pieces on the Daisy, and the Celandine, the Broom, the Thorn and the Yew. In thus talking he gained his end without knowing it, for, instead of a mere routine lawyer and impulsive Irishman, Miss Carmichael found in her companion an intelligent, thoughtful, and cultured acquaintance, whose society she thoroughly enjoyed. Occasionally an unconscious and half-timid lifting of her long eye-lashes ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... younger sister. So Rubens painted his own wife at one time an angel, and at another in the likeness of Herodias. It is still more probable that Pearl is a picture of Hawthorne's own daughter, who was of the right age for such a study, and whose sprightly, fitful, and impulsive actions correspond to those of Hester's child. This would also explain why her father gave Una so much space in his Note-book. He may have noticed the antagonism between her and the Whig children of the neighborhood and have applied it to Pearl's ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... shutting our eyes. You misconceive me if you imagine I think him capable of coolly plotting his cousin's death; but it is not outside the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times may have happened once more. Men less impulsive than Richard"— ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... several occasions during the previous afternoon and evening he had meditated somewhat uneasily upon the domestic difficulties which might inhere in this impulsive engagement of Miss Winstock as a private secretary, but since waking up the affair had not presented itself to his mind. He had indeed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... we would think of doing," answered Mrs. Carnaby, who was more impulsive than her sister, also less straightforward. "How often we have wished that our poor lost brother had not been deprived of them! But our father's will was sacred, and you told us we were helpless. We struggled, as you know; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... vanish. She had counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive nature crept back upon itself, abashed—like something discarded, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... very attractive, though somewhat contradictory in his moods. He was generous and genial, lovable and affectionate; he was also contradictory and impulsive, not to say capricious. His wife and he had little quarrels which they settled in this wise: When Gainsborough had spoken to her unkindly, he would quickly repent, and write a note to say so, and address it to his wife's spaniel, called "Tristram," and sign it with the name ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... points on the lunar surface, by this time hardly more than fifteen or eighteen thousand miles distant, that the velocity of the Projectile instead of accelerating was becoming more and more uniform. This was another proof that there was no perpendicular fall. However, though the original impulsive force was still superior to the Moon's attraction, the travellers were evidently approaching the lunar disc, and there was every reason to hope that they would at last reach a point where, the lunar attraction at last having ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... already wrought; it has only to find the means of directing through a mass of air a bubble of lighter air; it has already obtained the bubble of air, and keeps it imprisoned; it has now only to find the impulsive force, only to cause a vacuum before the balloon, for instance, only to burn the air before the aerostat, as the rocket does before itself; it has only to solve this problem in some way or other; and it will solve it, and do you know what will ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Billee had said, probably an older and more experienced rancher would have put up with a few losses for the sake of peace and quietness. But Bud, like most lads of his age, was impulsive. And, as he had said, the loss of even a few steers meant possible failure to him and his cousins, just starting in the ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Tell me nothing." He checked the impending confession hastily. He guessed that it had some hearing upon her marriage with Trenby. If so, it would be better left unsaid. Just now she was tired and unstrung; later, she might regret her impulsive confidence. He wanted to save ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... were fancies, when oh, horror! the child's heart seemed to leap into her throat; there, almost close to her, was a hideous creature, which her startled imagination conjured up into something terrible to behold, snorting, growling, and bearing down upon her. Poor, impulsive, silly Mab: before she well knew what she was doing she had sprung aside, anywhere to be out of the way of the beast—a wolf she thought it was—and that anywhere was into the brook, the prankish brook, just where it joined hands with its wild companion. The very trees seemed ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Summer's heat, Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat, Have taught no feverish lure; Whose Muse, benignant and serene, Still keeps his Autumn chaplet green ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... everything that was bright and pleasant. Once she had always been that way and at times she would tell Keith what a wonderful time she had as a girl, and how she used to be the centre and inspiration of every social gathering in which she took part. She had a quick mind, too, and a heart full of impulsive generosity. But from one extreme she would go to another, so that, when the dark moments came, she would even regret kindnesses conferred while the sun was still shining. In such moments she would sometimes speak to the boy of her ailment ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... city of New York came but one Republican, William Laimbeer, a man of high character and large business experience; impulsive, but always for right against wrong; kindly in his nature, but most bitter against Tammany ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... transient emotion stirred by dream or romance. If they had listened to the discourse, they had evidently forgotten what they had been at no pains to remember. No new experience befell this man of artistic and impulsive temperament. I heard a sermon a short time ago preached in a seaside church, which deeply moved me; a sermon I was thankful to have heard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again. As I stood outside the building waiting for a friend, the congregation came out, and I ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... intelligence thus defined Fabre has considered these nervous aptitudes, so well adjusted, according to the evolutionists, by ancient habit, that they have finally become impulsive and unconscious, and, properly speaking, innate. He has demonstrated, with an abundance of proof and a power of argument that we must admire, the blind mechanism which determines all the manifestations, even the most extraordinary, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... accursed door which was stuck fast, and making signs to the engine-driver. The engine was not answering. "Stop, stop, there!" It did not stop. Losing patience, he jumped on to the velvet-covered step, and in that fiery, impulsive manner of his which had so delighted the old Bey, he cried, his woolly head at the door, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... last be fit only for the place of the unprofitable servant—he may not have committed either sin or crime, yet never have felt the pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsive nature into fault after fault—shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all for the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisee—fitter, because against the catalogue of faults there could perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative generosity ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Jasper, "when I think how he saved your eyes, Polly! He's the best fellow I know!" he finished in an impulsive burst. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... behind you, and shut you in,—there to remain till some supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank the foundations of the mountains in the depths of the earth, and built ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... "He was impulsive and acted on the spur of the moment," Darrell replied; adding, in lower tones, "the mistake was in giving one so young and inexperienced a commission involving so ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... edge of the flat-topped desk, leaned suddenly forward and gently tilted Miss Lee's face upward. There was nothing in the impulsive movement to offend; his face ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... around, and Prudence and Carol's turn came again. Carol was a thoughtless, impetuous, impulsive girl, and her prayers were as nearly "verbal repetitions" as any prayers could be. So on this morning, after the reading of the chapter, Carol knelt by her chair, and began ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... published her Poems, which, though somewhat impulsive and overwrought, met with remarkable public favor. Such poems as "The Cry of the Children," which voices the protest of humanity against child labor, appealed tremendously to the readers of the age, and this young woman's fame as a poet temporarily overshadowed ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... This will doubtless be the last time he will wander off in this way—he is impulsive and yielding, and you, who are less so, must guard ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... you want me when you get settled, I'll come," she answered, and, giving Leslie's little gloved hand an impulsive squeeze, she said, "Good-night," ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... nature is commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either God is there or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him. Timoleon's victories are the best victories, which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, we must thank ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... family and on board of the Bellevite, appeared to be even more astonished than his mother at the singular conduct of his father; but he saw how intense was his agitation, and he did not follow him in his impulsive flights ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Mridional. Born a Provenal, he never lost his early affection for the South. Impulsive, fiery in temper, and rather given to exaggeration, he possessed beneath a cheerful and handsome exterior a kind, sympathetic heart, and was generous to a fault. Having known what it was to suffer extreme poverty and feel the pangs of ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... retirement, as in his active business life, he enjoyed the friendship of a very large social circle, to whom his frank, generous manners, warm attachments, and spotless honor commended him. He was a favorable specimen of the old school gentleman, warm and impulsive in his nature, quick to conceive and prompt to act, cordial in his greeting, strong in his attachments, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... joy the Lady of the Lake took his cheeks in her hands and gave him an impulsive kiss. "You are the loveliest being on earth," ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... insanity, to feel no apprehension of private plot or latent conspiracy-to stay out, fearlessly, among his people, and so benevolently to see himself to the safety of one who had raised her arm against his life,—these little traits, all impulsive, and therefore to be trusted, have given me an impression of respect and reverence that I can never forget, and never think of but with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... generally "nervous," quick, and impulsive. His ideas flow too rapidly for speech. He is "nervous;" hence, when he is alone, and with those he loves, he oftentimes speaks fluently and well; he stammers more both when he is tired and when he is out of health—when the nerves are either weak or exhausted. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... one's surprise, far from being displeased, Mrs. Payton seemed rather to enjoy her daughter's impulsive outburst, merely cautioning her not to overheat and overexcite herself too much, as the day gave promise of being ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... had known him was the most generous but most quick-tempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was half-way up his tongue. But there was no need for it to have traveled even so far, for Frank laughed again with ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... with the lights. In fact, the former may be said to set off the latter, and there are many shortcomings, especially those which the French, so graphically describe as petits vices,—small vices—which, resulting from a generous and impulsive temperament, serve, like the Rembrandt shadow of a portrait, to render the subject ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... discovered at length that moonlight meetings between two untrained, impulsive youths, had a natural result, and they were now doubly earnest in their endeavours to compel ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... signed Jefferson Davis's bail-bond made the "crow" more palatable to the Southern Democrats. In the campaign Greeley's brilliant speeches were listened to with great respect. His tour was a personal triumph; but the very voters who hung eagerly on his speeches felt him to be too impulsive and opinionated to be trusted with presidential powers. They knew the worst which might be expected of Grant; they could not guess the ruin which Greeley's dynamic powers might bring on the country if he used them unwisely. ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... came of a Celtic father, gay, humorous, full of impulsive chivalry and intense Irish patriotism, and of a practical New England mother, herself of Revolutionary stock, clear of judgment, careful of the household economy, upright, exemplary, and "facultied." In the daughter these inherited qualities blended in a most harmonious whole. Grant Allen, the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... reiterated patiently. "It isn't the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that Freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart. And if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future—in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness. The very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove that ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and self-possessed; his antagonist impulsive and self-confident: the Englishman was the product of a volunteer army of professional soldiers; his antagonist was the product of a drafted ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... nature, great or little, finds what it has in common, and directly shows itself up. The natural strength of such literature will, of course, be in the line of its tendencies; in transparency, variety, and directness. To the unembarrassing matter, the unembarrassed style! Steele is, perhaps, the most impulsive writer of the school [12] to which he belongs; he abounds in felicities of impulse. Yet who can help feeling that his style is regular because the matter he deals with is the somewhat uncontentious, even, limited soul, of an age not imaginative, and ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... comprehension found but one theory, and that was freely advanced by the rash and imputative in the community of Kensington: The murderer was he who had the only known temptation and object in such a crime. Who could gain anything by it but Andrew Zane, the impulsive, the mischief-making and oft-restrained son of his stern sire, who, by a double crime, would inherit that undivided property, free from the control ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... out my baggage check and ran to get my small trunk, which I dragged forward while grandfather backed the wagon up to the platform. We drove off much reassured in each other; and I remember still that the old gentleman's kind words stirred me to an impulsive boyish resolve never to disappoint his confidence; but it was a resolve that I often lost sight of in the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... no means of avoiding the inevitable, he said doggedly: "I thought to make, of course, or I would not have gone into the scheme." Then something in her face held him, and at the same time his impulsive boyishness—a little dramatic, perhaps, but only so much as is consistent with his race—carried him into ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... like to take with you the pretty little Betty?" Rios's eyes were full of insinuation. Kendric felt an impulsive desire to kick him but for the time kept his head ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... and pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a Thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... had told Pompton to take a box, as in the small enclosure it was easier to keep an eye on the children, and make sure they did nothing they ought not to. For the little Maynards were impulsive, and though Pompton was wise and sensible, he was not entirely accustomed to ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... sadly at the impulsive Irishman's remark. He could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of atrocities and sufferings ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Channel, and he plied his companion with questions. And so they jogged along in pleasant converse, and De Lacy saw that the reserved and quiet Dacre was in fact as sincere and good-hearted as the generously impulsive De Wilton. And he warmed to them both; for he had anticipated cold looks, hatred, and jealousy, such as under like conditions he would have met with ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the towns were well pleased with Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared, they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against the Bavarian troops. When an Austrian garrison ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... death of millions, which raised a mortal, not otherwise formed for greatness, so far above common humanity to a semblance of divinity. Perhaps it was the instinctive craving to take part in the grand impulsive expression of thousands of others that had carried away each individual. It was beyond a doubt a mysterious force which had compelled every one to do as his neighbors did as soon as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and impulsive, had never fully harmonized with the politicians of Virginia in their political doctrines, but had been inclined to ridicule the rigid and non-progressive principles of her statesmen, who, always cautious, were now slow to ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the passionate and impulsive nature of a Greek fanatic, he burst forward through the crowd, towards the steps which led to the choir, and above which, in front of the altar, stood the corpse of Ammonius, enclosed in a coffin of glass, beneath ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Hicks, the lovable, impulsive, and irrepressible, with his invariable sunny disposition, his generous nature, and his democratic, loyal comradeship for everybody, was loved by old Bannister. The students forgave him his pestersome ways, his frequent torturing of them with banjo-twanging ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: "But I couldn't stand the sight; no, I couldn't! I'm an awful coward when it comes to things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me to look at the woman or her room. But I should like—" here both her dimples came into ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... sympathy, with eager readiness; and learned that, if he lacked that fiery and impetuous core of emotion, which can make the whole world different to those who can light their torches at its glow, yet he could smoothe the path and comfort the steps of less ardent, less impulsive spirits. He could add something of light and warmth to the cold world. If sometimes those who were attracted by his genial bearing and sympathetic kindness were disappointed and troubled at finding how slender a stream it was, well, that was inevitable. He realised himself ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it, Little Captain!" cried Mollie with an impulsive embrace. "The picnic by all means, and please let's take plenty of crackers ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... was Joe Atwood, a boy of about his own age and the son of a leading doctor of the town. While both were tall, Joe was of a fair complexion while Bob was dark, and the dissimilarity extended to other things than mere appearance. Joe was impulsive and quick-tempered, and apt to act on the spur of the moment, while Bob, although never shirking trouble or a fight if it came his way, was more self-controlled. But their points of likeness were more numerous than their points of difference, and they were ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as I believe, backed by surly rancor or ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... not one of those fair and fanciful creations, endowed with such exquisite sensibilities as to perceive and return the admiration of a young knight-errant with whom she had been associated by any romantic circumstance. Nor was her disposition of that impulsive kind which will permit the impression of a moment to overthrow the prejudices of years. But to her joy and surprise, she found that, far from rejoicing at Gilbert's misfortune, she had regretted it; and regretted it, not merely because it might stigmatize the fair name ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive, unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of her instructor in the English language and literature, gave him a thousand daily opportunities to touch and stimulate all that class of finer faculties, so restless and so perilous, and which a good man approaches always with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... bright little woman, emphatic and impulsive, but "something worn by anxiety. She had repressed many pretty tastes and bright fancies, and substituted instead schools, soup, flannel, coals, and all the week-day cares and Sunday coughs of a large population, young and old."—C. Dickens, Our Mutual ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... too impulsive, I think," was his answer, after a minute's silence; "and your speech smacks of the amateur. You say, 'Let me cease to be your burglar and let me be your butler.' The aspiration is respectable; but a man might as well say, 'Let me cease ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sally; I don't know! She was high-spirited as a girl, a little willful and impulsive, but with the best heart in the world. She lost her mother too soon; and in her girlhood we had no home—not even the half-homes possible to naval officers. She had a good natural voice and wanted to study music, so after we had been settled at Madison College a year I ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... in his for a moment. She was not disappointed because he neither spoke nor moved, nor took any sudden advantage of her rather timid admission, for his silence made her trust him more than any passionate speech or impulsive action could ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... distance of time, and with our colder Northern temperament, to comprehend the romantic feelings of attachment subsisting between Schubert and some of his friends,—feelings which, however, are by no means rare among the impulsive youth of South Germany,—but his naive simplicity, cheerful and eminently sociable disposition, insensibility to envy, and incorruptible modesty, were qualities calculated to transform the respect due to his genius into a strong personal liking. Schubert was, in truth, a child of nature, one ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... without catching the sound of his name, and turned to her quickly, impulsive speech ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... troublesome children, were darting in and out amidst the carriages, flys, and omnibuses; and Gerald and Tod had enough to do to keep them out of danger. It was so like Lady Augusta—bringing them all to the station to welcome their uncle! Warm-hearted and impulsive, she had little more judgment than a child. Constance had in vain protested against herself and Annabel being pressed into the company; but her lady-ship looked upon it as a sort of triumphal expedition, and was ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... back to the house, Thatcher with a masculine sense of being unreasonably afflicted, Carmen with a woman's instinct of being hopelessly crushed. No word was spoken until they reached the door. Then Carmen suddenly, in her old, impulsive way, and in a childlike treble, sang out merrily, "Good night, O Don Royal, and pleasant ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... through Jack Prince, of Sam's money making and of his ability and prospects and, for a time, had designs upon his affections. Several times when they were alone together she gave his hand a characteristically impulsive squeeze and once upon the stairway beside the grocery store offered him her lips to kiss. Later there sprang up between her and Jack Prince a passionate love affair, dropped finally by Prince through fear of her violent fits ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the keys, and slips them into her pocket) A bunch of his keys; they are safer in my pocket than in Izod's—poor Izod is so impulsive. (she crosses to R. C., goes up the steps and calls at door. Calling) Squire! Squire! Here's Gilbert Hythe with two men. Don't let 'em bring ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... every time and every way; feels, I say, that something new, something unexpected is really about to happen: something that will surely leave a deep mark on his imagination, and last through all his life. I mean that peculiar radiation of impulsive energy issueing from anything really great, vibrating and palpitating from afar, fitting the soul to emotion ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... old Lady Conway came about—a regular schemer—a woman I never could abide. She had married off her own daughters, and wanted her niece to practise on, that was the fact. Victoria says she always knew that she, Maude I mean, was very impressionable and impulsive, and so she wanted to have her out of harm's way; but one could not prevent her aunt from getting hold of her and taking her out. Then people told us of her goings on with that scamp Clanmacklosky and that sister of his. Victoria talked to her by the yard, but she denied it, and we thought it all ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed into the face of Lucy Tempest; hot words rose to her lips. Hasty, thoughtless, impulsive words, to the effect that she could not pay a visit to the chosen wife ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... practices are held, Before bright pencils mark the April earth—— Where grasses learn how gaiety is spelled, And jonquils trace the golden writs of mirth; Some slow, imperfect patterns must be wrought Some, cast aside in dark, abandoned crypts, Before the swift, impulsive hands are taught To shape the ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman of sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen and only drop in a few groats which he knew to be ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... crape fan and swayed it. In the dining-room my guests proceeded with their lonely salad toward a probable lonely dessert. At thought of that dessert and of that salad, a suggestion, partly impulsive and partly flavoured with some faint reminiscence, at once besieged me, and in it I divined ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... preserved, even while her heart was full of sympathy and pity for his trouble, a certain dignity even in her kindness, an arm's length repellant stateliness, that galled and tormented the ardent, impulsive, and too eager young man. With Evan she was all pity, all sympathy, full of familiar ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... or embarrassment she might have felt vanished at the instant when their hostess appeared on the piazza and both her hands were outstretched in welcome. "Did you ever see a lovelier expression in a woman's face?" was her first impulsive exclamation when she and Grace were shown to their rooms. Yet, once her guests were up-stairs and out of the way, Mrs. Stannard's brow clouded not a little as she descended to the piazza, where she had left Mr. Gleason superintending the unloading ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... his glorious Paris. My solemn asseverations that my patroness—no doubt only in fun—was deliberately distorting my account of my former visit to him, apparently pacified him so far as I was concerned, and, on the other hand, he had no doubt already formed his own opinion of the impulsive singer. He certainly regretted that he could not remember my visit in Paris, but it nevertheless shocked and alarmed him to learn that any one should have had reason to complain of such treatment at his hands. The hearty sincerity of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in that form might have wrought. What would have been the consequences to America and humanity had the Rebellion, even then being vaguely devised by Southern Hotspurs, burst upon the nation in the winter of 1856, with the nation's sword of commander-in-chief in the hand of the impulsive Fremont, and Lincoln, inheriting the patient wariness and cool blood of three generations of pioneers and Indian-fighters, wielding only the powerless gavel of Vice-President? But the hour of destiny had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... mild form of runaway, twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of the sea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in the hay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, an impulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from a future, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which I ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed with her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and then, and suddenly she said, "You have looked at this ring before now. Do you know that if you had it on your finger you would be more worth robbing than with eighty pounds in ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... yearn to go too. We have fallen into a pit here in Paris, upon evil days and rooms, an impulsive friend having taken an apartment for us facing the east, insufficiently protected, and with a bedroom wanting, so that we are still waiting, with trunks unpacked, and our child sleeping on the floor, till we can get emancipated ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... variance, and the attempt to conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... opportunities of improving my acquaintance with her had not been so numerous as I could have desired, and I sincerely regretted it. She had produced a very favorable impression on me. Singularly inexperienced and impulsive—with an odd mixture of shyness and vivacity in her manner, and subject now and then to outbursts of vanity and petulance which she was divertingly incapable of concealing—I could detect, nevertheless, under the surface the signs which told of a true and generous nature, of a simple and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... naturally a girl of great reserve. She shrank from making her plans or her thoughts public. But with all her repression there was possible in her an occasional sudden breaking out that was simply an impulsive, thoroughly frank, truthful expression of her most inner personal feeling. She spoke now in reply to Madam Page in one of those rare moments of unreserve that added to the attractiveness of ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... in certain prospect. But the British sprang upon the invaders, bayonet in hand, and drove them back to the shelter of the woods. The Irish regiments, especially, were considered invincible in this "cold steel" method of attack, their national impulsive ardor carrying them in a fury through the ranks of an enemy. But at Mons always the Germans returned in ever greater numbers. The artillery increased the terrible rain of shells. Pen pictures by British soldiers vividly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... same case: 'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... seemed a most trivial incident, but it had an amazing sequel. On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Fisher, the caretaker, always came to sweep and tidy up the church in preparation for Sunday. She was a little, thin, sharp-nosed, impulsive woman, and just at present her nerves were rather in a shaky condition for fear of Zeppelins. She lived in perpetual terror of bombs or German spies, and always slept with half her clothing on, in case she should ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of the boldest and most impulsive men in the army, immediately asked for the command. The next morning the drums beat, and before noon eight hundred volunteers were enrolled. Arnold at once advanced, but, feeling that his force was too weak, stopped at Fort Dayton till ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in this adjuration did not discredit it with Odo, to whom the words were as caustic on an open wound. He turned to make some impulsive answer; but as he did so he caught sight of the towers of Pianura rising above the orchards and market-gardens of the suburbs. The sight started a new train of feeling, and Gamba, perceiving it, said quietly: "But this is no time to speak of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not be, then, that the hope of meeting them was in Edith's mind, and yet, her whole soul yearned to meet them—to ask their forgiveness, if no more. To clasp Trixy's hand once again,—honest, loving, impulsive, warm-hearted Trixy,—to feel her arms about her as of old, it seemed to Edith Catheron, she could have given half her life. Of any other, she would not let herself think. He had passed out of her life forever ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... underestimated. Later after he went into business for himself, the young men of Frankfort had never urged him to take part in their pleasures. He had not been asked to join the tennis club or the whist club. He envied Claude his fine physique and his unreckoning, impulsive vitality, as if they had been given to his brother by unfair means and should rightly have ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... of the two gentlemen, Colonel Daniel Craven, affects the bluff, simple veteran, and carries it off pleasantly and well, having a fine upright figure, and being, in fact, a goodnaturedly impulsive, credulous person who, after an entirely thoughtless career as an officer and a gentleman, is now being startled into some sort of self-education by the surprising ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... from her chair, and dismayed at the astonishing swiftness of her changed mood, Halloway took an impulsive step toward her. His arms were still receptively outstretched, but suddenly he felt that attitude to have become absurd. An altered light shone in her eyes now, and it was unpleasantly suggestive of contempt. She turned, absent-mindedly carrying ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... had already vanished in the thicket with the undeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentary rustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. The hidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distant woodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... absurdity of this theory, showing that social institutions, terribly imperfect as they are, are by no means chiefly bad but rather represent the slow gains of thousands of years of painful progress; none the less the theory was bound to appeal irresistibly to such an impulsive and inexperienced idealism as that of Shelley. It was really, of course, not so much against social institutions themselves that Shelley revolted as against their abuses, which were still more flagrantly apparent ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... papers began to threaten disunion because LINCOLN did not suit the South, I was not one who abused or denounced them. I knew the temper of some of the politicians in the free States. I knew the action of the South was not impulsive. I knew there was a reason for it. They said their capital was to be rendered worthless—their property to be destroyed, and their country made desolate. God forbid that I should chide them ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... For the second time that night I was going beyond myself—venturing out of what I looked on as my natural habits— speaking in an unpremeditated, impulsive strain, which startled me strangely when I halted to reflect. On rising that morning, had I anticipated that before night I should have acted the part of a gay lover in a vaudeville; and an hour after, frankly discussed with Dr. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... will do!" he pronounced enthusiastically, and with Seaton's own impulsive good will he shook hands and wished them ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby |
