Impulse Quotes - Page 19

• For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.

  Ruth Bernhard

  Spiritual, Photography, Emotional

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• Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one's consciousness, for death itself. Even on the level of simple physical sensation and mood, making love surely resembles having an epileptic fit at least as much as, if not more than, it does eating a meal or conversing with someone.

  Susan Sontag

  Love, Simple, Desire

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• By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest... The latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man.

  James Madison

  Passion, Men, Numbers

  "Federalist No. 10 (The Federalist Papers)". Essay by James Madison, November 23, 1787.

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• Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

  Max Weber

  Mean, Forever, May

  Max Weber (2012). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.17, Courier Corporation

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• A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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• Giving is the vital impulse and moral center of capitalism.

  George Gilder

  Generosity, Giving, Moral

  George Gilder (2012). “Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century”, p.35, Regnery Publishing

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• Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Nature, Children, Home

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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• Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  Life, Full Potential, Fields

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• It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.

  James Madison

  Self, Germs, Constitution

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution: Written in 1788”, p.219

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• The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Wise, Ignorance, Men

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• What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.

  Mark Twain

  Love, Life, Success

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• Bu is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Love, Deeds, Neighbor

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• I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Love, Running, Fate

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.247, Cambridge University Press

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• We have the responsibility to ensure that our first impulse in foreign affairs is one of bipartisanship.

  Richard Lugar

  Responsibility, Firsts, Affair

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• So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.

  Ronald Reagan

  Struggle, Pride, Race

  Remarks at Annual Convention of National Association of Evangelicals, Orlando, Fla., 8 Mar. 1983 See George Lucas 11

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• ...it would be a mistake...to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Mistake, Eye, Men

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• My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

  Sue Grafton

  Husband, Lying, Book

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• A large proportion of my best friends are a little bit crazy. ... I try to be cautious with my friends who are too sane. Depression is itself destructive, and it breeds destructive impulses: I am easily disappointed in people who don't get it.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Crazy, People

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.

  Helen Keller

  Spring, Heart, Sea

  Helen Keller (2010). “The World I Live In and Optimism: A Collection of Essays”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• There exist certain individuals who are, by nature, given purely to contemplation and are utterly unsuited to action, and who, nevertheless, under a mysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a speed which they themselves would have thought beyond them.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Nature, Action, Mysterious

  Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.38

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• I am a director because I believe in my own impulses and my own point of view, and that belief encourages me to tell stories that will move, provoke, and change people. But I became a director because I wanted to be a part of the world.

  Anna D. Shapiro

  Believe, Moving, Views

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• Nothing poisons love more than honesty. If love lasts until the day we die, we will live without showing our real self to our beloved until the day we die. Love makes us more beautiful and distorts us. Love takes our impulse to lie to an extreme.

  Yang Gui-ja

  Beautiful, Honesty, Lying

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• Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.

  Sven Birkerts

  Dream, Reading, Book

  Sven Birkerts (2006). “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age”, p.168, Macmillan

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• Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

  Christopher Walken

  Artist, Night, Thinking

  "Fictional character: Duane". "Annie Hall", www.imdb.com. 1977.

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• There was always a creative impulse in me but I never felt rooted to anything.

  Fred Ward

  Creative, Felt, Rooted

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