Impulse Quotes - Page 37

• The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated—of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired.

  Havelock Ellis

  Sex, Race, Adoption

  Havelock Ellis (1910). “Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sex in relation to society”

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• Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Work, Dedication

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• I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Lying, Ambition, Sleep

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• Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.

  Aristotle

  Strong, Passion, Men

  Aristotle (2012). “Rhetoric”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• Did all the lets and bars appear
  To every just or larger end,
  Whence should come the trust and cheer?
  Youth must its ignorant impulse lend--
  Age finds place in the rear.
  All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
  The champions and enthusiasts of the state

  Herman Melville

  Cheer, War, Boys

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.22

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• Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

  Herman Melville

  Selfish, Military, Men

  Herman Melville (1966). “Billy Budd”, p.14, Hayes Barton Press

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• The way of even the most jusitifiable revolution is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.

  Joseph Conrad

  Way, Revolution, Creeds

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• The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

  Raymond Chandler

  Loneliness, Heart, Essence

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.120, Univ of California Press

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• There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things.

  Henry James

  Beauty, Beautiful, Useless Things

  Henry James (2016). “Italian Hours”, p.192, Youcanprint

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• Theology, I am persuaded, derives its initial impulse from a religious wavering; for there is quite as much, or more, that is mysterious and calculated to awaken scientific curiosity in the intercourse with God, and it [is] a problem quite analogous to that of theology.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Religious, Curiosity, Wavering

  Charles Sanders Peirce “Scientific meta-physics”

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• I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Thinking, Lakes, Long

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

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• If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn't prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Moving, Ships, Tone

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• What is desire?--
  The impulse to make someone else complete?
  That woman would set sodden straw on fire.

  Theodore Roethke

  Fire, Desire, Straws

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.161, Anchor

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• One becomes more interested in a job of work after the first impulse to drop it has been overcome.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Jobs, Overcoming, Firsts

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• Let no one say that taking action is hard. Action is aided by courage, by the moment, by impulse, and the hardest thing in the world is making a decision.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Courage, Decision, World

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• School success is not predicted by a child's fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.

  Daniel Goleman

  Teacher, Children, School

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• Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the awful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style.

  Christina Stead

  Strength, Art, Errors

  Christina Stead (1992). “A Web of Friendship: Selected Letters, 1928-1973”, Angus & Robertson Publishers

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• Great ages of art come only when a widespread creative impulse meets an equally widespread impulse of sympathy . . .

  Harriet Monroe

  Art, Creative, Age

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• Go away, dig a hole, do something else, come back and it magically rejuvenates your creative impulses and stuff.

  Mel Gibson

  Creative, Going Away, Stuff

  "Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Director Martin Campbell and Graham King Interview EDGE OF DARKNESS". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. January 27, 2010.

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• It was my first impulse, but I chose to play the priest as a true believer who was an absolute man of faith that absolutely supports the church.

  William H. Macy

  Men, Play, Support

  Source: collider.com

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• The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.

  William James

  Religious, Love Life, Development

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.507, Courier Corporation

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• Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Selfish, Ignorance

  Thomas Sowell (1987). “Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays”, William Morrow

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• Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

  William Moulton Marston

  Enough, Currents, Stifling

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• The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?

  Adrienne Rich

  Real, Tunnels, Voice

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations”, p.78, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The subconscious mind is more susceptible to influence by impulses of thought mixed with 'feeling' or emotion, than by those originating solely in the reasoning portion of the mind.

  Napoleon Hill

  Feelings, Mind, Emotion

  Napoleon Hill (2015). “Think and grow rich: Brazilian edition”, p.174, CDG Edições e Publicações LTDA

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