Impulse Quotes - Page 18

• There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Dream, Heart, Smell

  Zora Neale Hurston (1990). “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Harper Perennial

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• In good philosophy, the word cause ought to be reserved to the single Divine impulse that has formed the universe.

  Louis Pasteur

  Philosophy, Atheism, Causes

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• Samoa culture demonstrates how much the tragic or the easy solution of the Oedipus situation depends upon the inter-relationship between parents and children, and is not created out of whole cloth by the young child's biological impulses.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Science, Oedipus

  Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

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• There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Faith, Determination, Compassion

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.520, Psychology Press

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• Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Heart, Men, Compassion

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: with a biographical memoir of the author, written expressly for this edition”, p.325

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• In human history there has been a continuous and growing impulse toward the regeneration and transformation of humanity.

  Barbara Marx Hubbard

  Humanity, Growing, Evolution

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• The Holy Spirit gives us joy. And he is joy. Joy is the gift in which all the other gifts are included. It is the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with ourselves, that which can only come from being in harmony with God and with his creation. It belongs to the nature of joy to be radiant; it must communicate itself. The missionary spirit of the Church is none other than the impulse to communicate the joy which has been given.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Expression, Giving, Joy

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• The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders, into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.

  James Madison

  Passion, Yield, Leader

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2007). “The Federalist Papers”, p.474, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• The experience of treaties being broken with impunity provide an afflicting lesson to mankind how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith; and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest and passion.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Passion, Broken, Justice

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• Only our deep moral values and our strong social institutions can hold back that jungle and restrain the darker impulses of human nature.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strong, Moral, Human Nature

  Reagan, Ronald (1982). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981”, p.845, Best Books on

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• Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And dose it need superhuman efforts to recognize that revenge never can be duty? I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but that he is by no means wise.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Wise, Revenge, Mean

  Maurice Maeterlinck (2015). “Wisdom and Destiny: Works of Maeterlinck”, p.46, 谷月社

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• My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.

  Ellen Willis

  Attitude, Optimistic, Optimism

  Ellen Willis (2012). “Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-And-Roll”, p.80, U of Minnesota Press

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• Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility

  Immanuel Kant

  Choices, Independence, Human Nature

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• A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Wisdom, Truth, Lying

  "The Brothers Karamazov". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1879 - 1880.

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• There is a difference between motivation and inspiration. Motivation is when you get hold of an idea and don't let go of it until you make it a reality. Inspiration is the reverse-when an idea gets hold of you and you feel compelled to let that impulse or energy carry you along. You get to a point where you realize that you're no longer in charge, that there's a driving force inside you that can't be stopped.

  Wayne Dyer

  Letting Go, Spiritual, Motivation

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• The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Emotional, Ideas

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.690, GENERAL PRESS

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• In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

  Eric Hoffer

  Loyalty, Ignorance, Men

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The pure, the beautiful, the bright, That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulse to a wordless prayer, The dreams of love and truth, The longings after something lost, The spirit's yearning cry, The strivings after better hopes, These things can never die.

  Sarah Doudney

  Beautiful, Dream, Prayer

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• Love is a very important part of life, and you have to give in to it. But after a while it ceases to be such an important force in life, and that's the time when you should give in to age and stop doing it, if you don't have the impulse any more.

  Judith Wright

  Love, Giving, Important

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• That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its form beforehand.

  Judith Wright

  Love, Art, Thinking

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• An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Artist, Self

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.466, Vintage

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• Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Lying, Writing, Advice

  James J. Kilpatrick (2010). “The Writer's Art”, p.39, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Spring, Book, Writing

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

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• At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'.

  Paul Caponigro

  Photography, Art, Creativity

  Paul Caponigro (2002). “New England Days”, p.38, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

  Brooks Atkinson

  Photography, Artist, Giving

  Brooks Atkinson (1951). “Once Around the Sun”

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