"Impelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot follow up the matter in further detail. It must here suffice to suggest that this conception of instinct as a primary form of experience lends itself better to natural history treatment than Darwin's conception of an impelling force, and that it is in line with the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the further damage sustained—our situation immediately became one of the extremest peril, a circumstance which, coupled with the tragic disappearance of their leader from their midst, completely cowed and subdued the survivors, to the extent, indeed, of impelling them to come aft and implore me to take full command of the brig. Needless to say I made no difficulty about acceding to this request; for prompt measures were imperative if the vessel was to be saved, and, with her, Florence's and my own life; so without pausing to read ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... in my lowest soul I hate thee as the Night, which is thy colour. To sweep thee from the face of Earth, I feel Some irresistible desire impelling me. Who art thou? Lift thy visor: had not I Seen Talbot fall, I ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose between yielding ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... is easy. Why is it easy? Why but that already in each man's very nature this principle is supreme? He feels within his soul a silent drifting motion impelling him downward with irresistible force. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... crew, on becoming acquainted with the circumstance, were upon the point of tossing him into the sea; and would no doubt have carried their design into execution, but for the presence of the appalling danger impelling them to look to their own safety. The negro knew, therefore, that, were he to seek safety on the great raft, it would only be to throw himself into merciless hands, certain to spurn him back with vengeful indignation, or fling him into the jaws of the hideous monsters already ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... places. Here was a case in point. This particular basket had contained materials for Oriental bead-work; and no sooner had it reached the floor than each item of its contents appeared to become possessed of a separate and particular devil impelling it to travel at headlong speed to some remote and unapproachable corner as distant as ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... made by civilised thought, our concepts and hypotheses, not excepting those deemed most fundamental, are being constantly modified. How much more would change prevail in ages when structured knowledge had hardly come into existence. But whether the pace of change be slow or rapid, the same impelling cause is at work—man's determination to find fuller expression for his intuitional experience. Animism developed into mythology, mythology into gnomic philosophy, and this again became differentiated into science, art, philosophy, and theology. In the earlier stages, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... 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 women are ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... 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 extent he could really do as he hoped and desired. He was often haunted by ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... untrained soul of hers—was rushing with her and impelling her onwards, kindling her countenance with a new ardour. With her hands she clung to the ivy, with her naked feet she clung to the projections and the crevices to push ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... individual. It begins by urging men to abandon vain questionings of God's providence and to take up the consideration of their own natures, for "the proper study of mankind is man." Pope points out that the two cardinal principles of man's nature are self-love and reason, the first an impelling, the second a regulating power. The aim of both these principles is pleasure, by which Pope means happiness, which he takes for the highest good. Each man is dominated by a master passion, and it is the proper function of reason to control ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... amazed her was Winnington's place in this world of labouring folk. He had given it ten years of service; not charity, but simply the service of the good citizen; moved by a secret, impelling motive, which Delia had yet to learn. And how they rewarded him! She walked beside a natural ruler, and felt her heart presently big ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the south. Several explanations have survived as to the cause of his departure, one being that his interest in the rising tide of Methodism had made him uncongenial to his Church of England relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, it may safely be assumed that the impelling motive was that love of seeking out new things, of constructing a new home in the wilderness, which has never forsaken his descendants. His son, Anderson Page, manifesting this same love of change, went farther south into Wake County, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... 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 palpable ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Metaphysics and Pedagogics"[81] says, "Every one admits that there is much that must be done by the child in his elementary education which is a task, for the reason that his ideas of its worth to himself cannot be sufficiently appreciated to arouse a lively and impelling interest in the doing of it," and he adds, "Garfield once complained that he had done so long those things in which he was interested that he was losing his power to do that which did not interest him, which suggests ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... organization—fifteen dollars to the deputy, and not infrequently a small sum to the state Grange. What was left went into the treasury of the local Grange. Thus by the end of 1871 the ways and means of spreading the Grange had been devised. All that was now needed was some impelling motive which should urge the farmers to enter and support ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... 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
... the matter aside as impossible. But I know now that the thing was of God. As months, even years, passed, the impelling sense that the record of answers to prayer must be written ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... ever defining more clearly the object of his blind dash. That dash is likely, however, at any moment, to turn into a definite charge should the rhinoceros happen to catch sight of his disturber. Whether the impelling motive would then be a mistaken notion that on the part of the beast he was so close he had to fight, or just plain malice, would not matter. At such times the intended victim is not interested in the rhino's ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... flax-spinning while she gave me close and intense attention. At times, when the historian was at fault in his facts—and, to say the truth, that was more frequently the case than comports with veracious history—she would cease the impelling motion of her foot upon the pedal of her little wheel, drop her thread, and, gently arresting the fly of her spool, she would lift her iron-framed spectacles, and with great gravity say: "Read that again. Ah! it is not as it happened, your grandfather was in that fight, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... literally, signified senior or elder, whether in the family or the State. How an elder came to be associated with religion was in this wise. Every philosopher and anthropologist has been constrained to admit the presence in man of an instinct of unity, impelling him not merely to society or intercourse with his fellows, but to communion with a power unseen. This instinct, as already defined in a former chapter, is religion. Now the initiatory development of this aboriginal instinct was very humble, and if we wish ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... of the tradition of the English navy impelling Hughes to attack, the influence of which appears plainly between the lines of his letters, Suffren had, in moving toward Trincomalee, a threat which was bound to draw his adversary out of his port. Nor did Trincomalee ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... what one may really do, and for impelling one toward the practicable best, I find this book worth a moonful of "Consuelos." The latter work has, indeed, beautiful pictures; and simply as a picture of a fresh, sweet, young life, it is charming. But in its aim at a higher import I find it simply an arrow shot into the air, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... noble feeling each step impelling, They gained the home of their Father soon. That ample city shall be their dwelling, Whose light depends not on sun and moon: For greater light, Than the sun containeth, Has He, whose might From the throne there reigneth, With grace ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... 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 useful modifications ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... not, but turned her luminous eyes upon me with a sort of wide dazzling wonder. Some strange impelling force bore me onward, and before I could realize it I was alone. Alone, in a vast area of light through which I floated, serene and conscious of power. A sound falling from a great height reached me; it was first like a grand organ-chord, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... said of Milton. His early poems show great variety. There are the dirge notes in Lycidas; the sights, sounds, and odors of the country, in L'Allegro; the delights of "the studious cloister's pale," in Il Penseroso; the impelling presence of his "great ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... strongly by religious aspirations, although combining with these impelling political convictions. In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time remained a ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... shining 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, and duty, will all be unfolded together in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... look her in the eyes, since nothing else would do her; and, as I did so, all the might of manhood in me rose up in hot revolt against the lie I would have told her. That unfaltering, impelling gaze of hers drew the truth from my lips ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thought to himself, as he walked along the Embankment between Westminster and Waterloo, some weeks later—the day of Herr Max's trial,—'I had a sort of impulse to come down here alone this afternoon: I felt as if there was an unseen Hand somehow impelling me. Depend upon it, one doesn't have instincts of that sort utterly for nothing. The Finger that guides us guides us always aright for its own wise and unfathomable purposes. What a blessing and a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... felt strongly impelled towards it. Let us not yet scrutinize too closely the main impelling forces. Few human actions originate solely in what we try to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... mother's wail, Once more uplifted on the gale, Moaning The Red who ne'er returned— His cheeks with sudden passion burned; And darkly frowned that valiant man, As through his quivering body ran The lightnings of impelling ire And impulses of fierce desire, That surged, with a consuming hate Against a world made desolate, Unceasing and unreconciled, And ever clamouring ... like wild, Dark-deeded waves that stun the shore, And through the anguished twilight roar The ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Spirit rides. Who is there, thinking, has felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking forth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his imagination grow kingly in contemplation—he has known its impelling power; the white horse ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... atmosphere in which men live and have their being. Fierce battles take place between the adherents of the idea and the opponents. Blind prejudice and hatred are encountered. Martyrs are made. The crusade is hallowed by suffering and sacrifice. It becomes an impelling spiritual necessity, an expression of religion. Gradually the forces of the opposition are weakened. Concessions and compromises are offered. There are signs of the contagiousness of the idea even in the house of the adversaries. The triumph comes with time, and the turbulent waves of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... that, by the laws of a universal magnetism whose cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to unite by an accelerated impelling force which we call GRAVITATION. It is gravitation which causes unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which gives them weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live. Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the ancients from believing in the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... some way has a cause. For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. But that anything fail from its natural and due disposition can come only from some cause drawing it out of its proper disposition. For a heavy thing is not moved upwards except by some impelling force; nor does an agent fail in its action except from some impediment. But only good can be a cause; because nothing can be a cause except inasmuch as it is a being, and every being, as such, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... little after 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 were accustomed to put aside, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... glorious beauty I had known on earth covered her, and like a mystic light shone from her face and person. I was myself again, young, and she was the same. The impelling sense of a superhuman Destiny bringing us together again in this new world, forced from me an ejaculation of thankfulness. The cry was not loud, but audible to her ears, and she turned toward us. Yes! it was Martha, as I knew her in those raptured days of love ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... of begging Divine assistance as can be conceived, I never once thought of it, nor of the Object of it, nor returned thanks for my being delivered, till the lioness had just left me; and then I felt near the same force urging me to return thanks for my escape, as I had impelling me to prayer before; and I think I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... deeply with the sense of her deceit, was informed by her guilty conscience of that nasty man's suspicions, and therefore gave a smack with her fern whip to Lord Keppel, impelling him to join, like a loyal little horse, the pursuit of his Majesty's enemies. But no sooner did she see all the men dispersed, and scouring the distance with trustful ardor, than she turned her pony's head toward the sea again, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Brereton, whose curiosity was impelling him to take a part in this drama. "What reason ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... 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
... having showers of arrows for its watery downpour, the rattle of car-wheels for its roar, the out-stretched bow for its volume, long shafts for its lightning-flashes, darts and swords for its thunder, wrath for the winds and urged on by those steeds that constituted the hurricane (impelling it forwards), rushed towards him, addressed his charioteer and smilingly said, "O Suta, proceed quickly and cheerfully, urging the steeds to their greatest speed, against that heroic Brahmana, fallen off from the duties ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... despondency— almost despair. Yet this is for the best, as it strengthens a resolution already in their thoughts, but not finally decided upon. This is to build a boat. Nor, in this case, is necessity—mother of invention—the sole impelling influence. Other circumstances aid in suggesting the scheme, because they favour its execution. There is timber in plenty on the spot, needing only to be hewn into shape and put together. The oars, mast, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the necessary preparations could be made, a party of five left Plainton for New York, and a very well-assorted party it was! Mr. Burke, who guided and commanded the expedition, supplied the impelling energy; Mrs. Cliff had her check book with her; Willy was ready with any amount of enthusiasm; and the past life of Miss Eleanor Thorpedyke and her sister Barbara had made them most excellent judges of what was appropriate for the worthy furnishing ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... disaster. In speaking of this period in his life Mr. Mitchell says: "The poverty and hardships that followed were marked by one circumstance that is imprinted indelibly upon my memory and which has had an impelling influence upon my whole life. My father had served a full term of enlistment as a volunteer in the Civil War. When he was discharged from the army he brought home with him his soldier's clothes, and I remember so well that when we had not sufficient bed clothing to keep us warm in the cold ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... come to the animal life, you find the same thing. The swift foot, the flashing wing, the beauty of color, all the wonders of animal life have simply been developed in accordance with this method and under this impelling force which we call evolution, which is only a name ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... hers, impelling her gently in the direction of the house, and, rather to her own surprise, she found herself accompanying him ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... or from an 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, when ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Hardwicke laughed merrily at Frank Halton's last graceful touches. "A romantic gratitude to a retired British officer, who had once befriended the Prince's august father, was the one impelling cause of a visit, in which the strictest retirement would be guarded by the dweller on the Roof of the World," etc., etc. So read out Madame Delavigne, closing with the remark that the "Moonshee had ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... are made unconsciously, are the results of apparently trivial, often unnoted impulses. Susan, like all our race, had always had vague secret dreams of ambition—so vague thus far that she never thought of them as impelling purposes in her life. Her first long forward stride toward changing these dreams from the vague to the definite was when Rod, before her on the horse on the way to Brooksburg, talked over his shoulder to her of the stage and made her feel that it was the life for her, the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... that an individual should thus 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 with their dead,—that something like the furor which affects the domestic cattle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... masses eventually were forced violently into neighbor masses which were not so tightly squeezed. These movements far below the surface shifted the surface balance and became one of many complicated and little known causes impelling the crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall. Thus in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and became land, while lands elsewhere settled and became seas. There are areas which have alternated many times between land and sea; this is why ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... 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 it on ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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
... 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
... system, but that we cannot ameliorate it, lest we weaken the foundation. And yet all this seems as nothing when I recall a sin of greater magnitude-a sin that is upon me-a hideous blot, goading my very soul, rising up against me like a mountain, over which I can see no pass. Again the impelling force of conscience incites me to make a desperate effort; but conscience rebukes me for not preparing the way in time. I could translate my feelings further, but, in doing so, the remedy seems still further ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... were the enemy. We are out to conquer and enslave it. Our inheritance, on the other hand, is the impelling force we obey in setting forth to fight; it tingles in our blood, and nerves the muscles of our arm. This force of heredity, however, abstractly considered, is blind. Yet, corporately and individually, we fight with eyes that see. This ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... so afraid, I should have lost my senses, all alone in a house at your age," said Mrs. Anderson, all the time gently impelling the girl along with her. "Of course there is nothing to be afraid of, but one imagines things; and you came here all alone at this time of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives. He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this night of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless movements of his master's body, and listened with burning eyes to the name which he had spoken three times in the last five minutes of ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... selection, as the writer from the first has insisted, is not a vera causa, an initial or impelling cause in the origination of new species and genera. It does not start the ball in motion; it only, so to speak, guides its movements down this or that incline. It is the expression, like that of "the survival of the fittest" of Herbert Spencer, of the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... restraining from it. For men fully acquainted with the object of the Veda have made the following declaration, 'The purpose of the Veda is seen to be the injunction of actions' (Bhashya on Jaimini Sutra I, 1, 1); 'Injunction means passages impelling to action' (Bh. on Jaim. Su. I, 1, 2); 'Of this (viz. active religious duty) the knowledge comes from injunction' (part of Jaim. Su. I, 1, 5); 'The (words) denoting those (things) are to be connected with (the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... that stage in the Church revival of this century which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use its nickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences and conditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but the impelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which these pages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associated with Oxford, from which it received some of its most marked characteristics. Oxford men started it and guided it. At Oxford were raised its first hopes, and Oxford ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... horizontal impulse of his own weight, and exactly in proportion to the muscular power exerted by the 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 ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... no answer to the impelling voice which spoke. The girl, with her varying moods and changing conceits, who had so amused him, had vanished, and in her place he saw the woman, supreme in the strength of asserting that which is ever woman's creed,—justice and right. He could sense, in her attitude, as in her words, that ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... me were similar to those that come to one standing on the edge of a great precipice gazing downward into the vast, black depths yawning at his feet. The giddiness that once, many years before, came upon me as I stood on the brink of the Niagaran cataract, which seemed irresistibly impelling me to join the mad rush of the waters, surged over me again, and I forced myself backward into the room, shutting out the sight, lest I should cast myself forth into the infinite space beyond. I threw myself down upon a couch and covered my eyes with my hands and tried to realize ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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
... becoming clear that the cause of suffrage is more valuable to the individual woman than she is to the cause. The reason is that this movement has the great though silent force of evolution behind it, impelling it slowly forward; whereas the individual is largely dependent for her development on her own powers and especially on those expressions of life with which she brings herself into contact. The woman suffrage movement offers the broadest field for contact with life. It offers cooperation of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... have 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 of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... disturbance has been attributed to various causes. From the regularity of its appearance, it must be the result of some impelling force of a generally similar character. My opinion is, that the period of twenty years being the average time of man's active business life, the actors of the second period have not the benefit of the experience gained ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... animals. The 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 ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... 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 external appearance ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... on the philosophical discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton says: "In all cases when bodies seem to act upon each other at a distance, and tend towards one another without any apparent cause impelling them, this force has been commonly called Attraction, and this term is frequently used by Sir Isaac Newton. But he gives repeated caution that he pretends not by the use of this term to define the ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... is often asked where the ravens got the cooked meat and bread for the prophet. Knowing their impelling instinct to steal, the Creator felt safe in trusting his prophet to their care, and they proved themselves worthy his confidence. Their rookeries were near the cave where Elijah was sequestered. Having keen olfactories, they smelt ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 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 his ...
— Faust • Goethe
... organic unity and symmetry of all existence. I am alluding to the sense of cloying and restlessness which comes to most of us (save when tired or convalescent) after a very few days or even hours shut up in quite the finest real gardens; and to that instinct, impelling some of us to inquire about the lodges and the ways out, the very first thing on coming down into some private park. Of course they are quite exquisite, those flowery terraces cut in the green turf, and bowling greens set with pines or statues, and balustraded steps with jars and vases. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... to imagine that because there has been a respite for a hundred years the precedent of six thousand years has now to be disregarded? By the recent reconquest of the Sudan it has been shown that the old political necessities still exist for Egypt in the south, impelling her to be mistress of the upper reaches of the Nile. Is there now no longer any chance of her expanding in other directions should ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... and impelling motive was to detach his beloved cousin, if possible, from the dangerous and discreditable machinations in which he suspected her to have engaged, or, on the other hand, to discover that she really had no concern with these stratagems. He should know ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... A man, he journeyed in strange lands beneath a scorching sun, or felt the biting winter blasts. Again his heart beat high with hope, only to be cast down by the crushing defeat of his plans. But still, upborne by almost superhuman strength, urged by some strange, impelling power, he must battle for his race. The restless river, as it fretted the sides of the little island placed so protectingly against the Canadian shore, sang of battle, whose outcome none might guess. Suddenly he was aroused from his waking dream by shouts of joy ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... 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 intuition is always accepted ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it would be ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and came to be regarded as an instinct not differing in any essential from hunger and thirst, and existing, like them, from the beginning, eternal and immutable, manifesting itself with equal force in the heart of man and woman, and impelling them towards each other. But Emil Lucka, in his remarkable new book, The Three Stages of Love (which was recently published in Berlin, and has already created a sensation in literary circles abroad), leads us on to speculative heights from which we may look back upon the whole theory of evolution ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,—for the sake of "her own life," her intellectual ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... affected me with a kind of playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... stopping at their door. But on the oceanic coast the marine pulsation vexes the army of the waves, hurrying them daily to their assault of the steep cliffs, making them roar with fury among the islands, promontories and straits, and impelling them to swallow up extensive lands ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impelling power which Frederick William could not resist. Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the treaty of Kalish, already ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... wooes him imperceptibly 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 shouts. Now the deceitful eddies, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 memory? He could ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... fetch one a blow; poke at, pink, lunge, yerk[obs3]; kick, calcitrate[obs3]; 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[obs3]; booming; dynamic, dynamical; impelled &c. v. Phr. "a hit, a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... we 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 ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... many do, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... each seized a pole and began impelling the raft from the shore. The Indians, seeing that we were about to escape, ran forward, uttering loud shouts and calling on us to ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 at times like constructing a house of ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... 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
... description of the Napier bed and platen press (the "Nay-Peer," he called it) finds a peculiar advantage in that "it supersedes the necessity of steam power, as the motion of this machine is gained by two men turning a fly-wheel which acts as the impelling power." ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... thus congratulating himself, he sees what causes his heart again to go down within him, bringing back keenest apprehensions. The strange vessel is still a far distance off, and the breeze impelling her, light all along, has suddenly died down—not a ripple showing on the sea's surface—while her sails now hang loose and limp. Beyond doubt ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... beggar in a foreign land, attempting to find through fasting and contemplation the truth that must lie behind the changing forms of life, for he knew well that there must be some deep cause for all the things that he had witnessed and some impelling force behind the universe. Otherwise the whole earth and all that was in it and all things that breathed upon its bosom would be idle and wicked delusions. And the Prince knew too that in him lay the power to discover the truth ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the American Revolution with the great events preceding accompanying, and following it, had wrought an immense and almost universal change in the public sentiment of the nation of the subject, powerfully impelling it toward the entire abolition of the system—and that it was the general belief that measures for its abolition throughout the Union, would be commenced by the individual States generally before the lapse of many years. A great mass of testimony establishing this position is at ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... psychologic means to secure the fulfilment of laws, never the reasons for the laws, nor the motives to action. It is easy and necessary sometimes to praise and justify eudemonism, but, as Lazarus adds, 'Not a state to be reached, not a good to be won, not an evil to be warded off, is the impelling force of morality, but itself furnishes the creative impulse, the supreme commanding authority' (Ethics of Judaism, I. chap, ii.). And so the Rabbi of the third century B.C., Antigonos of Socho, put it in the memorable saying: 'Be not like ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... continued calm as a mirror. On we went—our eyes were on the ship's sails. Alas! a light cat's-paw skimmed across the ocean—the topgallant-sails of the barque blew out; but before they had any influence in impelling her through the water, they again drooped as before. Another cat's-paw came stronger than the first, and rippled the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... him proudly. A prelate of the Roman Church spoke thus to him. A number of illustrious people had come thither on his account. It seemed to him that an invisible power was impelling him on. He would become one of the masters of the country—he, the son of the poor peasants of Canteleu. He had given his parents five thousand francs of Count de Vaudrec's fortune and he intended sending ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... exhibiting 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 as vivid ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... 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 ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... but this," said he at last, "that I have felt as though sailing for years over infinite seas. Wave after wave has been impelling us on. A Hindu servant guided the boat. But I lay weak, with my head supported by you, and your arms around me. Yet, of all the days and all the years that ever I have known, these were supreme, for all the time was one long ecstasy. And now, if there ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... surged up impelling her to tell him of Barney's savage yet unformulated threat. The warning got as far as her tongue, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they had been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had been an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or impelling habits. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... best of my very small ability, having from nature no gift except the dull one of persistence. And throughout that struggle I had felt quite sure that a noble yearning for justice and a lofty power of devotion were my two impelling principles. But now, when I saw myself sprung of low birth, and the father of my worship base-born, down fell all my arduous castles, and I craved to go under the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... very repulsive and odious details before us, may it not be well to inquire whether the punishment of death be beneficial to society? I believe it to have a horrible fascination for many of those persons who render themselves liable to it, impelling them onward to the acquisition of a frightful notoriety; and (setting aside the strong confirmation of this idea afforded in individual instances) I presume this to be the case in very badly regulated minds, when I observe the strange ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... which in his case was certainly generalised at a very early age, arose from a still earlier experience, viz., the chance sight of his mother's nates, when she urinated in his presence. His whole account of the matter suggests the existence of a fetichism directed to the nates, impelling him to the most disgusting acts, which he has several times performed. A similar case, but on a homosexual basis, will be found recorded as Case 20 in ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... forward a pace or two, until their gaze commanded the whole stretch of the upper slope. 'Bias, stolidly impelling his team— a roan and a rusty-black—had, in the difficult process of steering the turn, been too closely occupied to let his gaze travel aside. He was off again: his stalwart back, stripped to braces and shirt, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the kind that storm would be 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 father ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but himself shall be permitted to trade in peltry and other merchandise, for the period of one year only, in the lands, regions, harbors, rivers, and highways throughout the extent of his jurisdiction: this We desire to have fulfilled. For these causes and other considerations impelling us thereto, We command and decree that each one of you, throughout the extent of your powers, jurisdictions, and precincts, shall act in our stead and carry out our will in distinctly prohibiting ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... window and looked out a moment, and presently, when he turned toward Bo, he seemed a stronger, loftier, more impelling man, with all his emotions ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... water—rose nearly a hundred feet into the air. From its sides, resplendent with prismatic colors and reflected light, flashed more than one cascade of pure fresh water, and the light breeze, as it blew against its vertical walls, or perhaps some currents deep down below the surface, was impelling the huge mass, and the line of floes pushed before it, down the lane of open water, which led to the floating home ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... further, and dabbled in hopeless projects for secession and the formation of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal party, except that, by impelling the democratic leaders to really national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly aided in the development of nationality ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various |
