Impulse Quotes - Page 12

• Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

  Annie Dillard

  Giving, Ashes, Safe

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.88, Canongate Books

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• ...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, People, Feelings

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.

  Jean Rhys

  Wind, People, Unhappy

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• He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.

  John Steinbeck

  Inspirational, Motivational, People

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.52, Penguin

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• After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment.

  Douglas Coupland

  Suicidal, Thinking, Doors

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• An Irish Airman foresees his Death I Know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

  William Butler Yeats

  Country, Lonely, Cheer

  "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 1 (1919)

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• I'm really not good with impulse control.

  Richelle Mead

  Impulse Control, Rose, Vampire

  Richelle Mead (2007). “Vampire Academy”, p.277, Penguin

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• A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to committ outrages.

  Hermann Hesse

  Strong, Mad, Normal

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

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• The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.

  John Berger

  Medicine, Soul, Mountain

  John Berger (1995). “Adventure of painting”

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• The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.

  Thomas Nagel

  Passion, World, Maelstrom

  Thomas Nagel (2010). “Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008”, p.34, Oxford University Press

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• You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

  Terry Pratchett

  Finding Yourself, Influence, Driven

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• What I'd show you is much more bizarre than anything we have looked at so far, and I warn you in advance that the first impulse will be to laugh. That's all right. Laugh if you must. Just don't take your eye off what you see, for even in your imagination, here is a creature who can do you damage.

  Stephen King

  Eye, Imagination, Laughing

  Stephen King, Michael Whelan (2004). “The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower”, p.160, Simon and Schuster

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• There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Travel, Lost Ones, World

  Audrey Niffenegger (2009). “Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel”, p.264, Simon and Schuster

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• I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible. And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.

  Anne Rice

  Dream, Loss, Long

  Anne Rice (2010). “Interview with the Vampire”, p.262, Ballantine Books

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• It sometimes happened that you might be familiar with a man for several years thinking he was a wild animal, and you would regard him with contempt. And then suddenly a moment would arrive when some uncontrollable impulse would lay his soul bare, and you would behold in it such riches, such sensitivity and warmth, such a vivid awareness of its own suffering and the suffering of others, that the scales would fall from your eyes and at first you would hardly be able to believe what you had seen and heard. The reverse also happens.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Believe, Fall, Eye

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• You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

  Philip Roth

  Thinking, Exhibitionism, Awful

  Philip Roth (1997). “American Pastoral”, p.90, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I know whom we must fight...it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse.That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.

  Philip Pullman

  Fighting, Feelings, Church

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• Then, driven by the same impulse, they kissed him--Aylss on the let cheek, Evanlyn on the right. And then they glared daggers at each other. -pg 372

  John Flanagan

  Daggers, Driven, Cheeks

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• In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Spring, Heart, Love Is

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• What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?

  Nikolai Gogol

  Passion, Age, Desire

  Nikolai Gogol (1985). “The Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• You take I-55 south, and you'll run into I-20. Or you could take..." I was about to be overloaded with information. "Oh that sounds just perfect. Let me do just that, or I'll lose track." Sure, glad I could help." Oh, you surely did." We beamed at each other, just two nice women. I had to fight an impulse to say "I have a tortured vampire in my trunk," out of sheer giddiness.

  Charlaine Harris

  Running, Nice, Fighting

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Club Dead”, Ace Trade

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• If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.

  Beryl Markham

  Inspired, Guilty, Hunches

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.55, Open Road Media

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• Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Inspirational, Men, Two

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2003). “Discourses on Livy”, p.302, OUP Oxford

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• A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Expression, Desire

  John Stuart Mill (2015). “On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays”, p.59, OUP Oxford

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• There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.

  Christopher McDougall

  Running, Two, Way

  FaceBook post by Christopher McDougall from Jul 13, 2011

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