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More "Impulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With the passionate and impulsive nature of a Greek fanatic, he burst forward through the crowd, towards the steps which led to the choir, and above which, in front of the altar, stood the corpse of Ammonius, enclosed in a coffin of glass, beneath a gorgeous canopy; and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... great deal about Dr Muir as a preacher, and we went to hear him; but not being very certain of the church, we inquired at a gentleman's servant, dressed in splendid livery, very civilly, the way to Dr Muir's church. Instead of giving a civil reply, "Oh," he said, "Aberdeen awa'!" Thom, who was very impulsive, came across the side of the fellow's head with his umbrella, and laid him flat on his back in the middle of the street, with his heels in the air. I made no remark, Thom said as little, but walked on as if nothing had happened. We heard our friend calling after us he would have his revenge; ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... the impulsive reply. "In my cave there back of that cypress; no one is allowed to enter but me; there I say my prayers, and my father says it is sacred to me alone. Good-bye, Henry," and she sped like a deer into the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... grave conceits toil'd Hero's spirits; For, though the light of her discoursive wits Perhaps might find some little hole to pass Through all these worldly cinctures, yet, alas! There was a heavenly flame encompass'd her,— Her goddess, in whose fane she did prefer Her virgin vows, from whose impulsive sight She knew the black shield of the darkest night Could not defend her, nor wit's subtlest art: This was the point pierc'd Hero to the heart; 290 Who, heavy to the death, with a deep sigh, And hand that languished, took a robe was nigh, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... respectful; when she saw him bend and whisper to the witching girl and hang delighted on her "low replies," her own confidence was shaken. What could he mean? Was it possible that instead of being merely impulsive and erring, he was deliberately wicked? No, no, never! Yet, what could be his intentions? Did he really wish to win Angelica's heart? Alas! whether he wished so or not, it was but too evident to all that he had gained her preference. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... officers floated down the lovely river, which we had ascended with hopes so buoyant; and from that day to this, the reasons for our recall have never been made public. It was commonly attributed to proslavery advisers, acting on the rather impulsive nature of Major-General Hunter, with a view to cut short the career of the colored troops, and stop their recruiting. But it may have been simply the scarcity of troops in the Department, and the renewed conviction at head-quarters that we were ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... without any real gifts for this science, as so few are who undertake it at charity bazaars, yet she told me not a few things that were significant: that my somewhat cold exterior and air of sternness were but a mask to shield a too-impulsive nature; that I possessed great firmness of character and was fond of Nature. She added peculiarly at the last "I see trouble ahead, but you are not to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... had sworn to get even with Threewit. An added incentive to this course was the fact that he knew them both to be on very good terms with his chief enemy. Without doubt Chad would do his best to stimulate the insurgent leader to impulsive violence. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... Hall. My opportunities of improving my acquaintance with her had not been so numerous as I could have desired, and I sincerely regretted it. She had produced a very favorable impression on me. Singularly inexperienced and impulsive—with an odd mixture of shyness and vivacity in her manner, and subject now and then to outbursts of vanity and petulance which she was divertingly incapable of concealing—I could detect, nevertheless, under the surface the signs which told of a true and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... she answered, instinctively suppressing a sigh. She began to realize a little what a strange being she had married. With an impulsive need of protection she held him close, hiding her face in his neck. The reality of his arms ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... often to the unscrupulous than to the strong. His wife's injustice cut Desmond to the quick. Impulsive renunciation sprang to his lips; and was only checked by the remembrance that he had given Honor ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... then, is presented to us in the beginning of the play as perfect, a model to young and old, of irreproachable virtue and of all wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to musing; a poet—ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the point of demanding the heaviest punishment for them; now swearing that ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... earth, He took a few of His disciples with Him upon the mountain and there transfigured Himself. He clothed Himself in heavenly beauty and splendor; He arrayed Himself in His Godlike power. These men were so overjoyed at this manifestation of His glory and power, that old Peter, impulsive as he was, spoke out and said: 'Lord, it is good for us to be here, if it be Thy will, let us build here three tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias.' The place was so glorious that they wanted ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... 1189.—Richard was accepted without dispute as the master of the whole of the Angevin dominions. He was a warrior, not a statesman. Impulsive in his generosity, he was also impulsive in his passions. Having determined to embark on the crusade, he came to England eager to raise money for its expenses. With this object he not only sold offices to those who wished to buy them, and the right ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Silverbel on the 22d of September, and was quickly conducted to Sibyl's room. She had not seen Sibyl for a couple of months. When last they had met, the child had been radiant with health and spirits. She was radiant still, but that quick impulsive life had been toned down to utter quiet. The lower part of the little body was paralyzed, the paralysis was creeping gradually up and up. It was but a question of time for the loving little heart to ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... other hand, woman is by nature more impulsive than man; she reflects less than he; she has more abnegation, is naiver, and hence is governed by stronger passions, as revealed by the truly heroic self-sacrifice with which she protects her child, or cares for relatives, and nurses them in sickness. In the fury, however, this passionateness ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... showed much likeness to either in after life. Her genius was unquestioned even from her precocious babyhood, and she was the wonder and admiration of all the brilliant circle of her father's friends. Her temperament was most vehement and impulsive, and her vivacity a wonder even to the Parisians. She seemed to know everything by intuition, and made light of the hardest tasks which could be given her. The streams of her childish eloquence seemed ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and the comments in silence, not knowing what to say. Had he been very impulsive, he would have come out instantly with his suspicions; but he had a habit of reflection, and was inclined to consider before acting or speaking. At this moment, however, his thoughts were confused, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was of Adelaide that Florian thought: of the tall, impulsive, and yet timid, fair girl who was both shrewd and innocent, and of her tenderly colored loveliness, and of his abysmally unmerited felicity in having won her. Why, but what, he reflected, grimacing—what if he ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... beaten. Also he knew she was right and that he had been an impulsive fool—depressing convictions both. For a moment he stood nonplussed while Tara fingered a long chain he had given her, and absently studied a daisy-plant that had dared to invade the oldest, loveliest lawn in that part ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... that Rachel is perfect. She would be desperately uncomfortable as a friend if she were. Her failings are those belonging to a frank, impulsive, generous nature, which I myself find it easy to forgive. Her gravest fault is a witty tongue. That which many people would give years of their lives to possess is what she has shed the most tears ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... the more conscious acts of control should be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that the one performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of understanding what he is told about its outcome ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... opinion the judge was right. I do not think Penreath is insane, or even subject to fits of impulsive insanity. If you ask my opinion, I think he is still suffering from the effects of shell shock, and, like many other brave men who have been similarly affected, he endeavoured to conceal the fact. I have come to the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... inequality of fortune amongst mankind, and instanced himself as a striking example of the fate of those men, who, according to all the rules of right, ought to be near the top, instead of at the foot of the ladder of fortune. "But," said he, springing to his feet with impulsive energy, "I have now the means at my command of rising superior to fate, or of inflicting incalculable ills upon the whole ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... was impulsive, even impetuous. Beneath his seeming cold exterior and admirable self-control—the discipline of the master artist—lay the moods and tenses of the musical temperament. He knew little or nothing outside of music and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... which medical science is now pronouncing to be ineradicable and which they will transmit in some form or other to their children after them. We want a strong cord made up of every strand we can lay hold of, and one of these strands is doubtless self-preservation, though in impulsive youth I do not think it the strongest. But to give these warnings is manifestly the father's duty, and not the mother's; and I hope and believe that the number of fathers who are beginning to recognize their duty in this ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... avowal of readiness to bear anything, if only he was with Christ, is the genuine utterance of a warm impulsive heart, which took too little heed of Christ's solemn warning, and fancied that the tide of present feeling would always run as strong as now. Emotion fluctuates. Steadfast devotion is chary of mortgaging the future by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... evokes a sort of deep compassionateness and affection, such as is evoked by an impulsive, headstrong, engaging child. One desires to have sheltered him, to have advised him, to have managed his affairs for him; one ends by forgiving him all, or nearly all. His character was essentially a noble one; he hated all oppression, injustice, arrogance, selfishness, coarseness, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and was gliding kitty-corner fashion, across the floor. Presently she and the stunning girl had saluted each other after the impulsive fashion of American girls, and were playing cat- in-the-cradle, to the amusement of those foreigners nearest. A nod, and I was threading ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... same family; after a time I learned that he had obtained employment in a distant village. The next tidings I heard of him was that he had been implicated in a petty robbery, and had run away. His impulsive disposition rendered him very easy of persuasion, for either good or evil; and he seldom paused to consider the consequences of any act. From what I could learn of the matter it seemed he had been ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... and formed school boy associations, his impulsive and rather reckless character brought him frequently into collision with his companions, and he gained a reputation which was by no means good. Every now and then some one would complain to Mr. Howland of his bad conduct, when he, taking all for granted, ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... from the deck. Miko was near me! So he had dared to show himself here among us! But I realized that he could not be aware we knew he was the murderer. George Prince had been asleep, had not seen Miko with Anita. Miko, with impulsive rage, had shot the girl and escaped. No doubt now he was cursing himself for having done it. And he could very well assume that Anita had died without regaining consciousness to tell ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... bookseller, as may well be supposed, soon repaid him in full with many acknowledgments of his disinterestedness. This anecdote has been called in question, we know not on what grounds; we see nothing in it incompatible with the character of Goldsmith, who was very impulsive, and prone to acts of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... friends, forget the vagaries of an impulsive but generous soul. To subdue my passions shall hereafter be my law. After conquering all the nations in the universe, it is ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... thing which places William at a disadvantage is his excessive frankness, which is, in him, almost a fault, for if he couched his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... Douglas made an impulsive movement, as though to reply; but he hesitated, and did not speak. Marian was not looking at him. She ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... hours' march from this same spot, on the very edge of the city, Andres Bonifacio and his literally sansculottic gangs of cutthroats were, almost with impunity, soiling the fair name of Freedom with murder and mutilation, rape and rapine, awakening the worst passions of an excitable, impulsive people, destroying that essential respect for law and order, which to restore would take a holocaust of fire and blood, with a generation of severe training. Unquestionably did Rizal demonstrate himself to be a seer and prophet when he applied to such a system the story ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... poses unsought, all groupings accidental, all action unaffected and unconscious. One meets Nature at every turn,—not braced up in prim forms, not conscious in manners, not made up into the fashionable or the proper, but impulsive, free, and simple. With the whole street looking on, they are as unconscious and natural as if they were where no eye could see them,—ay, and more natural, too, than it is possible for some people to be, even in the privacy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... well-bred. But besides what was pointed out to me, I noticed many other things which ought to be toned down in my nature and habits, if I meant to acquire what I heard called lady-like manners. I was at that time very vivacious, merry, and impulsive, and so long as I had lived in France this natural disposition had been looked upon as a happy one, and rather pleasant than otherwise; but I did not notice anything resembling it in our visitors, who were said to be real ladies, or lady-like. They looked to my French ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... beings, adopted with the enthusiasm of their years the Utopian doctrines of the Revolution, while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family fought inch by inch for the retention of those privileges which had placed them socially above their fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive, thoughtless, not calculating the purport of her words, still smarting under the terrible insult her brother had suffered at the Marquis' hands, happened to hear—amongst her own coterie—that the St. Cyrs were in treasonable correspondence ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... bearing of these remarks, let CD (Fig. 32) represent the section of a fault and EF that of the surface of the earth, and suppose the rock-mass A to slip slightly and suddenly downwards. Then the particles of A at the surface of the fault will, by impulsive friction, be drawn sharply upwards, and those of B correspondingly downwards; so that the earth-waves in the two rock-masses will start in opposite phases of vibration. Along the line of fault, every particle of rock, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... assertions. What wonder, therefore, that the thoughts of these people turned toward the possibility of diverting the treasures of the Transvaal into their own direction. Rhodes was brought into contact with the idea that it was necessary to subdue President Kruger. With a man of Rhodes' impulsive character to begin wishing for a thing was sufficient to make him resort to every means at his disposal to obtain it. The Boer War was the work of the Rhodesian party, and long before it broke out it was expected, spoken of, and ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of its reality, he yet could not see it. The thing existed in his mind, not as a picture, but as a piece of irrefutable evidence. Larry had not meant to do it, of course. But it was murder, all the same. Men like Larry—weak, impulsive, sentimental, introspective creatures—did they ever mean what they did? This man, this Walenn, was, by all accounts, better dead than alive; no need to waste a thought on him! But, crime—the ugliness—Justice unsatisfied! Crime concealed—and his own share in the concealment! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... might call prairie. He was a 'backwoodsman,'—liked the wild hunter's life better than sticking at home looking after sheep. He had the attractive characteristics of that kind of men, as well as their faults. He was frank, impulsive, generous, incapable of persevering work or of looking ahead, passionate. His descendants prefer cattle-ranching and gold-prospecting to keeping shops or sitting with their lungs squeezed against ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... are near enough, please make an analysis of her atmosphere, so that we can break out masks, if necessary." Hendricks, while young and rather too impulsive, was a good rough-and-ready scientist, as well as a courageous and dependable officer. "When Mr. Correy relieves you, please inform him that I am taking a watch below, should he need me." Hydrot was looming up in the television disk, and ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... don't mind scar tissue on your toes," he murmured, bending his cheek in impulsive caress. He wished that he were nineteen again and could still dream. Twenty-seven seemed so aged and battered and cynical. And dreams can ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... one hand reached over and rested on his. The impulsive gesture brought warmth flooding ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... the edge of the flat-topped desk, leaned suddenly forward and gently tilted Miss Lee's face upward. There was nothing in the impulsive movement to offend; his face was ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... angusta domi" is almost always there; but away from his home, your literary man is often a prince and a millionaire. Or, if he be a man of domestic habits, if he spends little on tavern suppers, little on wine, little on cab hire, the probability is, that he is still impulsive and improvident, still little capable of self-denial; that he will buy a costly picture when his house-rent is unpaid; that he will give his wife a guitar when she wants a gown; and buy his children a rocking-horse when they are without ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... going to do about it?" Mabel demanded at last. "Believe me, old dear, he's got a bad eye. Now listen here," she said with impulsive generosity. "I've got a scheme. I'll draw enough ahead to send you back. I'll do it to-morrow, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... well-assured belief that the impulsive affection of her youth had become gradually tempered by lapse of years into a chaste and sisterly friendship, and that the pleasant memories which clustered about her heart and made her look back half regretfully upon those former days would be cherished only ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... likin' Bill; he allus played in the open an' when he kept score, he give you all the points you made without fussin' over 'em; but I didn't like the look o' that new outfit on his hip. He was too impulsive to carry a gun, an' he was too young. Take it when a man has had some experience in gun-fightin', he gets purty sober over the effect of it; but a young feller—well, who on earth knows what way a young feller is goin' to jump when he ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... an arm of succor, the artillery serves, 1st, to give impulsive force to the attacking columns; 2d, to assist in arresting, or at least in retarding, the offensive movements of an enemy; 3d, to protect the avenues of approach, and to defend obstacles that cover a position; and, 4th, to cover a ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... easy to see that, in their manners and traits, they had a great resemblance to the Celts, before they were subdued and civilized, but were not so passionate, nor impulsive, nor thoughtless, nor reckless as they. Nor were they so much addicted to gluttony and drunkenness. They were more persevering, more earnest, more truthful, and more chaste. Nor were they so much enslaved by ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... pendulum vibrates, and its hands move, not simply by reason of the situation and figure of its weight and wheels, but also because some intelligent person, by winding up the clock, has communicated an impulsive force to the weight and wheels. Waterworks perform all sorts of antics, not solely because the pipes are skilfully constructed and arranged with a view to such end, but because also an intelligent engineer has turned running water into the pipes. But the only intelligent agent to whom Descartes ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the suppression of piracy in the Channel rewarded by an unjust imprisonment. He was now in the first vigour of manhood, with a mind exquisitely cultivated and familiar with the poetry and learning of his day, a nature singularly lofty and devout, a fearless and vehement temper. There was a hot impulsive element in his nature which showed itself in youth in his drawing sword on a neighbour who denounced him to his father, and which in later years gave its characteristic fire to his eloquence. But his intellect was as clear and cool as his temper was ardent. What he believed in was the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: "But I couldn't stand the sight; no, I couldn't! I'm an awful coward when it comes to things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me to look at the woman or her room. But I should ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... rule, all that can be taught and learned; and what is thus derived from others by docility and discipline, what is range, comes to have in him, and in his work, an equivalent weight with what is unique, impulsive, underivable. Raphael—Raphael, as you see him in the Blenheim Madonna, is a supreme example of such scholarship in the sphere of art. Born of a romantically ancient family, understood to be the descendant of Solon himself, Plato had been in early youth ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... her say so, knowing what I knew, but looked where she pointed. Her son sat opposite to us, next to the pretty Ellen Mayford. She had dropped the lids over her eyes and was smiling. He, with his face turned toward her, was whispering in his eager impulsive way, and tearing to pieces a slip of paper which he held in his hand. As the firelight fell on his face, I felt a chill come over me. The likeness was so fearful!—not to the father (that I had been long accustomed to), but to the son, to the half-brother—to the poor lost young soul I had ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Lascelles would do anything for Philippe, deny himself anything almost. Asked if Monsieur Lascelles had not given some reason for his objection to Philippe's being nursed at his house when he came home the second time, she was embarrassed and distressed. She said Philippe was an impulsive boy, fancied himself in love with his brother's wife, and Armand saw something of this, and at last upbraided him, but very gently. There was no quarrel at all. Was there any one whom Monsieur Lascelles had been angered with on her account? She ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... thought; it was not the first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn drunkard's taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill drew up. "You must take me from this place to-night," he said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. "When we're on the road we can arrange matters, but ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... gold. He was implored by General Sutter to keep the mill operatives in ignorance of his discovery, for fear they should desert their work. But how could such a secret be kept, especially by a man of generous and impulsive instincts? At any rate the news leaked out ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... this, a deep, significant, impulsive world had already interested me. Through my adventure with Gretchen and its consequences, I had early looked into the strange labyrinths by which civil society is undermined. Religion, morals, law, rank, connections, custom, all ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... for him," Paredes answered. "She's made most of her money on this side, you know. And she's as loyal and generous as she is impulsive. Undoubtedly she had the doctors do what they could for her father, and when she got track of Silas Blackburn through you, Bobby, she nursed in the warped brain that dominant idea with her own Latin desire ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... soberly, as industrious peasants do. Married at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and after her death, impulsive and gay as his nature was, he had never played nor trifled with another. He had borne a real sorrow faithfully in his heart, and it was not without misgiving nor without sadness that he yielded to his father-in-law; but that father had always governed the family wisely, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... tribe threw up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and upward glance of gratitude, came the friends of peace. The impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in the other's rank a loved one of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... precepts and commands, and by this articulating process become much more firmly entrenched. Then from the existence of miscellaneous maxims and prohibitions, taught by the elders and linked with whatever impulsive and haphazard punishments are customary, to the formulation of legal codes, with definite penalties attached to specific infringements, is an easy transition. With the invention of written language these laws could become still better fixed and more clearly known. The appointment of certain men ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of abstract and ideal justice; while Cassius holds it both a wrong and a blunder to go about such a thing without making success his first care. This, accordingly, is what he works for, being reckless of all other considerations in his choice and use of means. Withal he is more impulsive and quick than Brutus, because less under the self-discipline of moral principle. His motives, too, are of a much more mixed and various quality, because his habits of thinking and acting have grown by the measures of experience; he studies to understand ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... confidence, a terrible reaction of apprehension overcame her. Could it be that the angry look was for her, and that it could be justified by any word that she had ever spoken or any duty that she had neglected? With one hand lightly resting upon the table, her right foot thrown forward in impulsive readiness to spring into his extended arms, but her whole form drooping and shrinking with dismay, her face pale, and the smile which she had called upon it now faintly and painfully flickering in a deathlike manner about her whitened lips, as it glided ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the door-knob, but she turned with an impulsive motion and went back to him. "I am so glad to see you," she said, giving him her hand again, and "Mammy," she called, "Mr. Northcope is an ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... like twilight on a harsh landscape, softening it until it is tolerable. The complexity is too subtle, too varied; the values are changing utterly with each lesion of vitality; it has begun to appear that we can learn nothing from the past with which to face the future—so we cease to be impulsive, convincible men, interested in what is ethically true by fine margins, we substitute rules of conduct for ideas of integrity, we value safety above romance, we become, quite unconsciously, pragmatic. It is left to the few to be persistently concerned with the nuances of relationships—and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to an impulsive decision. We couldn't leave Jimmie to his fate. The men were ready to give up the fight if the thing could be put to them right. The time to strike was now, in the absence of Bothwell, while they were out of heart at ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... "insincerity." Well, perhaps some of the impulses of sincerity are better held in check; they are too closely allied to the humoring of our cherished prejudices. If "tact consists in knowing what not to say," etiquette consists in knowing what not to do in the direction of manifesting our impulsive likes and dislikes. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... a little impulsive, dear, at times, although you seem so thoughtful," Lady Conyers continued. "Don't rush at any conclusion about these two men. Sometimes I have fancied that there is a great well of feeling behind Hugh's silence. And more than that—that there is something in ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... solution would have denied the purpose of all his life. So he looked about him and discovered amongst his friends a man whose character he knew well, a man idealistic and foolish and romantic, like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch, only caring more for ideas, more impulsive and more reckless. He found this man and made him his friend. He played with him as a cat does with a mouse. He enjoyed life for about a year and then ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... tall, sunburnt, soldierlike man of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... natures, was frank and confiding. She was warm-hearted, impulsive, and quick to show gratitude. After the society of the Mowbrays, she found that of Little Dudleigh an inexpressible relief. What struck her most about him was his unvarying calmness. He must have some personal regard for her, she was sure, for on what other grounds would he come to see her so incessantly, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... of evidence, or sentience, if you like, is combustible; we don't command the spark; it may be late in falling. And you argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous and impulsive girl, outwearied ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to be calm, serene and collected. There are plenty who seem to be wild, impulsive creatures, driven on by sanguinary fury, while others disclose the vanity of the chorus girl, or a self- ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... at last, 'and answer me. Let me see that your morals are not yet utterly corrupt, and that you are still capable of listening to the voice of reason. Impulsive folly I can overlook, but stubborn obstinacy—never! My son...' there was a catch in his breath... 'Mihail Semyonitch has promised to marry you? Hasn't he? Answer ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... my dear, why? You are really too impulsive. Ezra has his faults, but what man has not? He has been a little wild in his youth, but he is settling down now into an excellent man of business. I assure you that, young as he is, there are few names more respected on 'Change. The way in which he managed the business of the firm in Africa was ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her feet. Impulsive, loving and quick to act, she put her hands on Hester's shoulders and touched her lips warmly and affectionately. "But you have friends. I want to be one, Hester. You know I've always liked you and I'd love you if you'd give ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... at the purser's office and helped himself to the register, finding the name of Romola Borria in full, impulsive handwriting, giving her address as Hong Kong, Victoria; and a long list of Dutch names, representing quite likely nothing more harmful than sugar and coffee men, with perhaps a sprinkling of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different, again, from the Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely Celtic. The meridional has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived from the conquerors of ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in speech, hot-tempered, and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... was affectionate and impulsive, good-humored, with generous instincts and a quick temper; but she was also ambitious and exceptionally clever. She loved Greville warmly; but she took to heart the hard truths of his teachings, and they sank deep in a congenial soil. Under the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... pale eyes. He wanted to cry—he—Bruce Burt! He fought the inclination furiously. It was too ridiculous—weak, sentimental, to be so sensitive to kindness. But he was so tired, so lonely, so disappointed. He touched Ma Snow's ginger-colored hair caressingly with his finger tips and the impulsive, boyish action made ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... fell to the share of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham—may we not say that the community makes the brewer, and that if the brewer's stuff mars the community we have no business to howl at him. We are answerable for his living, and moving, and having his being—the few impulsive people who gird at him should rather turn in shame and try to make some impression on the huge, cringing, slavering crowd who make the plutocrat's ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... time, if you'll ask me. Not to-day," she said. And left rather precipitately. It hurt her, rather, to have Natalie, with an impulsive gesture, gather the flowers out of a great jar and insist on her carrying them home with her. It gave her a miserable sense of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... he will not be able to complete. Very likely there is not the remotest risk of any such shortage arising, but, in the excess of his anxiety, he buys too heavily, and at too high a price. His actions become impulsive rather than reasoned. It is true that in the perfectly balanced temperament action will follow on judgment so quickly that the two operations cannot be distinguished. Such decisions may appear to be precipitate ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... standing at the gate, and began his solitary walk back to Cacouna, he was almost as happy as she was. A kind of intoxication had swept away out of his very recollection the selfishness and policy of his habitual humour,—all that was youthful, generous, and impulsive in him had sprung suddenly to the surface, and so for the moment transformed him, that he was literally a different man to what he had ever been before. He pictured to himself the lovely bright face of the young girl as his daily companion—a Utopian vision of a small home where he was to be content ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... step backward, then with an impulsive movement strode close up to him, his face unnaturally flushed and his eyes glittering with ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... distinguished for the strength of his conceptions, and for his resolute and persistent determination to apply himself only to great subjects, than for his skill in designing or for beauty in his colouring. His drawing is rarely good, his colouring frequently wretched. He was extremely impulsive and unequal; sometimes morose, sometimes sociable and urbane; jealous of his contemporaries, and yet capable of pronouncing a splendid ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... mood passed, and with his eyes on the star, his mouth settled into the lines of smiling patience which suffering brings to the brave. He had never been a coward and he was not one now. The years had taught him nothing if they had not taught him the wisdom most needed by his impulsive youth—that so long as there comes good to the meanest creature from fate's hardest blow, it is the part of a man to stand up and take it between the eyes. In the midst of his own despair, of the haunting memories of that bland period which was over for ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... out to the better end what is the good of it—where does it lead? Why should a man be tied to one woman when he has love enough for twenty? The pretty slender girl whom he chose as a partner in his impulsive youth may become a fat, coarse, red-faced female horror by the time he has attained to the full vigor of manhood—and yet, as long as she lives, the law insists that the full tide of passion shall flow always in one direction—always ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... The Green Orchard (CASSELL), was too modern to have much acquaintance with the works of the late WILLIAM BLACK. Which was a pity, as a recollection of A Daughter of Heth might have withheld her from her impulsive marriage with Martin Wilderspin, or from feeling so much like a gold-fish out of water when he took her away from Paris to share a life that was a dreary contrast to all her previous experience. In any case I cannot hold her blameless for the resulting shipwreck. A bride who comes down late ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... Paris, was carried away by the French Revolution, and Muirhead suggests that the prime minister must have confounded father and son, but it seems unreasonable to suppose that he could have been so misled as to mistake the doings of the famous Watt in Birmingham for those of his impulsive son in France. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... continued to advance, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to open the accursed door which was stuck fast, and making signs to the engine-driver. The engine was not answering. "Stop, stop, there!" It did not stop. Losing patience, he jumped on to the velvet-covered step, and in that fiery, impulsive manner of his which had so delighted the old Bey, he cried, his woolly head at the door, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... not a gallop. The Anura among the Amphibia are saltatory, but their leaps are usually single, or repeated only a few times, not sustained gallops. The exceptions among the Mammalia still more tend to prove the close correspondence between the 'impulsive' mode of progression and the dislocation of the male gonads. In the Monotremata there is no scrotum, the testes are in a position similar to that which obtains in Reptiles, and they are the only Mammals in which these organs are anterior to the kidneys. In locomotion they are sluggish, there is no ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... by nature the most impulsive woman I ever saw," he said, much amused, "and Eustaquia's lion is a kitten to the one that sleeps in you. You have cold deliberation enough, but it is manufactured, and the result of pretty hard work at that. Like all ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... read a dozen times, and each time with tears and laughter as genuine and impulsive as at the ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... the years since what a real queen she was. Smiling, she extended her hand—but not to be touched. It was a little wave, a little imitation of my own impulsive outstretching to a friend; then her eyes went to the next person, and I was on my way, having been presented at court and done what "is not ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... Princess is an impulsive, a passionate, a distinctly primitive woman, with a good deal of the wild animal in her still. Plots or political necessities are not likely to count a snap of ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... devoted most of his leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real philosopher by habit and profession. And in this point of view his very inconsistencies have their charm, as illustrating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impassible Stoic, but a passionate, warm-hearted man, who could break into a flood of unrestrained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57] and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and little ones. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... is restored to its mother's arms. By means of his little instrument, "King Kennedy" can track a criminal not only all over his own district, but all over the Union. He is firm in the exercise of his authority—often harsh and too impulsive, but on the whole as just as human nature will allow a man ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... "You are very impulsive, Rosy—in spite of your years," said Oliver, with his usual quietness. "I assure you I do not wish to interfere; and you must set it down to brotherly affection if I sometimes feel inclined to wonder ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... won the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle's again and again; they invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of the East Seventies. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, nee Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer. Miss Merriam was a combination of curves, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... after her wonderingly, saw young Allyne standing near, his eyes turned wistfully upon herself. She flushed a little, and so did he; then, with an impulsive movement, he made a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... was a long report—sheet after sheet closely written. And in the middle of his work he broke off to read again the letter that he had written the night before. With a quick, impulsive gesture he kissed the name it bore. Then he turned ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... always lived soberly, as industrious peasants do. Married at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and after her death, impulsive and gay as his nature was, he had never played nor trifled with another. He had borne a real sorrow faithfully in his heart, and it was not without misgiving nor without sadness that he yielded to his father-in-law; but that father had always governed the family ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... with imposing ceremonies, the public and official coronation of John and Blanche was celebrated. At the same time, Blanche's son Charles was recognized as his mother's successor in her ancestral kingdom. But Navarre was not a congenial territory for King John, who was of a restless, impulsive disposition; and he was so bored by the provincial gayety of Pamplona that after a very short stay he could endure it no longer, and set off for Italy, leaving Blanche in entire control as before. Navarre was a sort of halfway ground ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... turned white. The visitor, more with his eyes than by the slight impulsive motion of his hand, entreated her to be reassured and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... prejudices of the other, the friendship might have continued. Much as he desired this, it does not seem to have occurred to him to even try to make a good impression. Utterly lacking in self-control, he remained the same headstrong impulsive creature, while in Goethe's company, that he had always been. Whether or not the story is true of his meeting the Imperial family while with Goethe and disdaining even to answer their salutations, walking on and compelling the party to divide so as to give him the middle ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his appointed task. Forty-seven ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... and the other always cool and good-natured—only increased their mutual attachment to each other, and Motley's dependence upon Stackpole. Never were two friends more constantly together or more affectionately fond of each other. As Stackpole was about eight years older than Motley, and much less impulsive and more discreet, his death was to his friend irreparable, and at the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had fallen apart a little while before, but Isobel, with an impulsive gesture, stooped down and raised the fingers of his left hand to her lips. I turned away. It seemed like sacrilege to watch a man's soul shining in his eyes. I walked to the other end of the long narrow room, and examined the swords which lay ready for use against the wall. It was not many minutes, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... resign the posts he occupied, lost much of the sympathy of the Cape Dutch. The Uitlanders, also, who had previously enjoyed this sympathy now forfeited it, all the Dutch being inclined to quote the impulsive act of Dr. Jameson as an example of British treachery, and to look upon Mr. Kruger in the light of a hero. Indeed, many of the British, who took merely an outsider's interest in the state of affairs, laboured under the impression ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... inexpressible sense of satisfaction at having had the happiness of conferring a service upon the Queen of France, the wife of the king, the mother of the future king,—not merely in the purchase of the diamonds which she desired, but still more in preventing the young and impulsive woman from taking the unbecoming step of applying to any other gentleman of ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... here the story of Sigismund's journey, though it abounds with illustrations of his impulsive character and of the attitude of the western states toward the imperial pretensions. It furnished conclusive proofs, if any were needed, that however the council, for its own ends, might welcome the authority of a secular head, national sentiment was far too strongly developed to give any ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... With the impulsive inconsistency which, in spite of his shrewdness, sometimes marked his conduct, Jones alternately demanded a court-martial for Simpson and recommended him to the command of the Ranger, he himself hoping for a more important ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... of affection swirled in the breast of the lad. Plain Anglo-Saxon as he was, with all that implies as to the avoidance of displays of emotion, nevertheless he had been for a long time in lands far from home, where the habits of impulsive and affectionate peoples were radically unlike our own austerer forms. So now, under the spur of an impulse suggested by the dalliance with the buxom secretary, he grinned widely and ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... carried down I experienced a sensation similar to that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea. However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague. I remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me was an imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I should be taken to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single street of Paris, and I was ignorant of the position of the large burial grounds (though of course I had occasionally heard their names), and yet every effort of my mind was directed ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... sure you will!" exclaimed Gerald, sorry for his remark; for though impulsive, and in the habit of blurting out anything that came uppermost, he was ever ready to ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... part of Germany with the cynical repudiation [cheers] of a solemn treaty on the avowed grounds that when a nation's interests required it, right and good faith must give way to force. ["Hear, hear!"] The war has been carried on, therefore, with a systematic—not an impulsive or a casual—but a systematic violation of all the conventions and practices by which international agreements had sought to mitigate and to regularize the clash of arms. [Cheers.] She has now, I will not say reached a climax, for we do not know what may yet be to come, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... nothing more dangerous than that impulsive intimacy strangers sometimes adopt when an atmosphere of mutual sympathy takes them by surprise, for it is akin to the false frankness friends affect when telling "candidly" one another's faults. The mood is invariably regretted later. Henriot, however, yielded to it now ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Nella burst out in her pouting, impulsive way. 'You surely can't think of such a thing. Why, the fun has only ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... imagine I think him capable of coolly plotting his cousin's death; but it is not outside the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times may have happened once more. Men less impulsive than Richard"— ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in general, I think it may be justly remarked that if the qualities rehearsed above constitute hysterical neuropathy, then every testy, sensitive, impulsive, and benevolent person is neuropathically hysterical. In particular we may demur to the terms "puerile ideas," "unreasonable vanity regarding external appearances." It would be difficult to discover puerility in any of Buonarroti's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... more she meditated, the more she questioned the virtue of her conduct in checking him so peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction. On looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest consideration. She recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he had told her he was ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... greeting had come, and then many months had elapsed. As she unfolded the sheet she saw, with sorrow, that in several places it was blotted with tears; and the contents, written in a paroxysm of passion, disclosed a state of wretchedness which Beulah little suspected. Pauline's impulsive, fitful nature was clearly indexed in the letter, and, after a brief apology for her long silence, she ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of Adelaide that Florian thought: of the tall, impulsive, and yet timid, fair girl who was both shrewd and innocent, and of her tenderly colored loveliness, and of his abysmally unmerited felicity in having won her. Why, but what, he reflected, grimacing—what ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... pity, of course, but Manning was always the impulsive type. Not very definite in his attitude and emotionally unstable," commented Alfie when the story ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... Emma and patronized her by turns, the latter being too timid to resent it openly; and Frances enjoyed playing the part of protector and defender. Naturally this state of affairs sometimes led to war, for Frances was quick-tempered and impulsive, and Gladys very stubborn. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... Service" which, on being opened, was found to contain his commission in the army. We may be sure that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion. There cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impulsive features, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe present to the power expressed in the commanding brow, the settled look, and the evil eye [Footnote: The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba, used ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... had there not been some common friend who had in his character some points of contact with both. That common friend was Charles Wesley. Full of sterling common sense, highly cultured and refined, possessed of strong reasoning powers, and well read like his brother, he was impulsive, demonstrative in his feelings, and very tenderhearted like Whitefield. Whitefield never quite appreciated John Wesley, but Charles he loved dearly, and so did John. As we have seen, the one solitary instance of the strong man's breaking ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... you're sorry to be done with her," asserted the boy mischievously. A second later, however, he regretted his impulsive jest, for ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... such a minor fact as the saving of her lands and estate, but to the two little old ladies his sympathy had made him give the words of reprieve with his first free breath. The bundles on the floor and the old trunk had smote his heart with a fierce pain that the impulsive warmth of his greeting and the telling of his rescue could only ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... concentration had progressed thus far, when an impulsive outburst of sympathy evoked a singularly inconsiderate and rash movement on the part of the division on the Maumee, the commander of which seems to have been rather under the influence of his troops than in control of them. Word was brought to the camp that the American settlement of Frenchtown, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Gaskell's book was very interesting,' she says. 'She seems a hasty, impulsive person, and the needful drawing back after her warmth gives her an inconsistent look. Yet I doubt not her book will be of great use. You must be aware that many strange notions as to the kind of person Charlotte really was ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... but only genius can give to its creations the divine power of winning love and veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, While talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... here in broad daylight," she protested. "Oh, you big, foolish, impulsive dear! Don't you realize I want to protect you from the tongue of scandal? If you persist in forgetting who you are, does it follow that I should ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Blue! He made the riffle too! he's all to the good!" was the way the impulsive Andy announced his discovery to Frank, who just then could not spare even a second to take his attention off ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... decisions, the convictions, the reputations of pitchers and fielders evolve around the great hitter. Plain it was that the vast throng of spectators, eager to believe in a new find, wild to welcome a new star, yet loath to trust to their own impulsive judgments, held themselves in check until once more the great Lane ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetorella), the blossoms of which, large and pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a Thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... was a house with twenty rooms, was located in a grove of high trees. The boathouse, ample and attractive in every way, and the sight of several skiffs that had been made fast to the dock caused George to exclaim in his impulsive manner, "There isn't a place like it in all the world! I never saw such a spot ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... him. A most interesting conversation followed with these two wonderful old men at 80 and 86 (coming next birthday) respectively, both in the fullest possession of their faculties, Brougham vehement, impulsive, full of gesticulation, and not a little rambling, the other calm and clear as a deep pool upon rock. Lord Lyndhurst is decidedly against the bill, Brougham somewhat inclines to it; being, as Lord Lyndhurst says, half a ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... until, at the latest epoch, man entered upon the scene, the head of animated nature as at present constituted, with powers and capacities well adapted for the full enjoyment of the augmented riches of the earth. And the end is not yet. "The present race, rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things in the world; but the external world goes through slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a much serener field of existence. There may then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity, which ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... breeding agitations enough to keep stagnation away and to secure a steady and irresistible progress. Its truest devotees will remain in principle what they are, losing gradually the external characteristics of the school as it is now known,—while the great mass of its disciples, unthinking, impulsive, will sink back into the ranks of the old school, carrying with them the strength they have acquired by the severe training of the system, so that the whole of English Art will be the better for Pre-Raphaelitism. But with Ruskin's influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly 'safe'—very meaning epithet—there ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... exclaimed Captain Cai. His action, however, was less impulsive than his speech: he removed the hat carefully, lowering his head and clutching the brim between both hands. A small parcel ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... remark, and instantly I bethought myself of the character for fastidiousness which Hubert had given him, and resolved to be less impulsive in expressing my feelings. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... to be pitied: they are a collection of human individuals with like capacities to our own. The surroundings into which they are born furnish little chance for them to develop their minds and their tastes, but their souls suffer nothing from working in squalour and sordidness. Certain acts of impulsive generosity, of disinterested kindness, of tender sacrifice, of loyalty and fortitude shone out in the poverty-stricken wretches I met on my way, as the sun shines glorious in iridescence on the rubbish heap that goes to fertilize ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... stenographer whose pages were put on the machine and handed in strips to the staff members, like a last-minute news story to compositors. ...One of the hardest things Boylan ever did was to speak to Dabnitz as follows: "I'd better be there if you take the others and leave—leave Peter Mowbray. He's impulsive. You ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... moralled, and worst fated of all—is a jewel and a cynosure compared with that other class of girl; while Raymonde (whose maltreatment of M. de Prefontaine is to a great extent excused by her mother's bullying, her real father's weakness, and her own impulsive temperament); the Therese of Le Fils Maugars; and the Marianne of Le Don Juan de Vireloup are, in ascending degrees, girls of quite a right kind. Only, it is just a little too much the same kind. And without unfairness, without even ingratitude, one may say ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a slight impulsive gesture, as if she would have drawn nearer to him, but checked herself, still smiling, and without embarrassment. It may have been a movement of youthful camaraderie, and that occasional maternal rather ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... from the careless to the earnest student of theology. Clarke's spirituality and purity of life, his singleness of aim, his earnest striving after a standard of holiness seldom to be found even amongst those who professed to practise the higher life, aroused the deep admiration of the impulsive and warm-hearted Dalaber. He sought his rooms, he loved to hear his discourses, he called himself his pupil and his son, and was the most regular and enthusiastic attender of his ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Somers, auburn-haired and ofttimes impulsive, now looked as sober as a judge as he sat perched up in the conning tower, beyond which, at that depth, he could not see a thing. However, a shaded incandescent light dropped its rays over the surface of the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... to me most probable that the vortex theory cannot fail in any such way, because all I have been able to find out hitherto regarding the vibration of vortices,[2] whether cored or coreless, does not seem to imply the liability of translational or impulsive energies of the individual vortices becoming lost in energy of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... was frank and confiding. She was warm-hearted, impulsive, and quick to show gratitude. After the society of the Mowbrays, she found that of Little Dudleigh an inexpressible relief. What struck her most about him was his unvarying calmness. He must have some personal regard for her, she was sure, for on what other grounds would he come to see ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... holiday upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the hollers from all those things what hollers." And so, in happy watching and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street, the first and most popular entrance to the park, before an interested ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... He wished Hermione were less generous-hearted, less impulsive. She looked on him as a guide, a check. He knew that. But this time he would not exercise his prerogative. Ruffo he did not mind—at least he thought he did not. The boy was a sea creature. He might even be an inspiring force ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... "Idiot!" the impulsive Frenchman told him. "Haven't you heard of Germans hiding up in a hayrick—hiding as spies? It's a chance; let's take ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... impulsive, enthusiastic. He was well acquainted with his own ability; indeed he was inclined to set almost too high a value upon it. He could bear no restraint. If Lawrence had attempted to impart instruction to him, he would probably have resisted ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... it subtle beyond the coarser perceptions of the man. He knew himself for what he was, knew himself unworthy; and that part of him which was unaffectedly French, whether by accident of birth or influence of environment, and so impulsive and emotional, reacted in spontaneous gratitude to this implicit acceptance of him for what he strove ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... his ambition always to be calm, oracular, weighty; always to be sure of himself; but his temperament was incurably nervous, restless, and impulsive. He could not be still, he could not wait. Instinct drove him to action for the sake of action, instinct made him seek continually for notice, prominence, comment. These fundamental appetites had urged him into public life—to the Borough Council and ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... future, if he brought her up as a member of the family with his own boy, and if the two young people became at a later period attached to each other. How had the wise foresight, which offered such a contrast to the poor Minister's impulsive act of mercy, met with its reward? Fate or Providence (call it which we may) had brought Dunboyne's son and the daughter of the murderess together; had inspired those two strangers with love; and had emboldened them to plight their troth by a marriage engagement. Was the man's betrayal of the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... or founding magnificent institutions at Alexandria, to add to the glory of the city, and to widen and extend their own fame. Cleopatra, on the other hand, as was, perhaps, naturally to be expected of a young, beautiful, and impulsive woman suddenly raised to so conspicuous a position, and to the possession of such unbounded wealth and power, expended her royal revenues in plans of personal display, and in scenes of festivity, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... William Pitt, Earl of Chatham—may we not say that the community makes the brewer, and that if the brewer's stuff mars the community we have no business to howl at him. We are answerable for his living, and moving, and having his being—the few impulsive people who gird at him should rather turn in shame and try to make some impression on the huge, cringing, slavering crowd who make ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... found one day at the house of a friend a M. de Paratte, a colonel in the king's army, and who afterwards became major-general, but who at the time we are speaking of was commandant at Uzes. He was of a very impulsive disposition, and so zealous in matters relating to the Catholic religion and in the service of the king, that he never could find himself in the presence of a Protestant without expressing his indignation at those who had taken up arms against their prince, and also those ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by which bodies fall to the ground. If the planets are kept in their orbits by a force which draws the particles composing them toward every other particle of matter in the solar system, they are not kept in those orbits by the impulsive force of certain streams of matter which whirl them round. The one explanation absolutely excludes the other. Either the planets are not moved by vortices, or they do not move by a law common to all matter. It is impossible ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... husband London free lump empty liberty rational capital impotent reason Capitol impetuosity irrationality grave impulsive double calf. ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... a young Queen's counsellor, she told him with a simple and girlish frankness that she was sorry to have to part with her late Minister, of whose conduct she entirely approved, but that she bowed to constitutional usage. [Footnote: Justin Macarthy.] Sir Robert took the impulsive speech in the straightforward spirit in which it was spoken, while time was to show such a good understanding and cordial regard established between the Queen and her future servant, as has rarely been surpassed in the relations of sovereigns and their advisers. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... surprise, far from being displeased, Mrs. Payton seemed rather to enjoy her daughter's impulsive outburst, merely cautioning her not to overheat and overexcite herself too much, as the day gave promise of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of the time that was spent on the coast that I did not enjoy myself. I found the Californians a warm-hearted, genial and impulsive people, in whose make-up and habits of life there still live the characteristics of those early pioneers who settled ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... occupying men's minds. A great number of comparative facts concerning the factory children in England and America; a mass of evidence used by Mr. Fowell Buxton in his arguments for the abolition of slavery; and many other things, originated in the impulsive activity, now settled into mature manly energy, of Mr. Guy Halifax, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... ringing statement: "Of this I am certain, that true refinement is the effect of true virtue; that virtue is truth, and good; and that beauty dwells in them, and they in her." And the next chapter begins: "Taste seems to be an inherent impulsive tendency of the soul towards true good." On the other hand, she sees that the arts are not to be encouraged because such encouragement is apt to lead to the destruction of moral virtue—the desire for fame and wealth. The value of art as education is dismissed as ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... also another reason, which he thought a commendable one. Jessy had obviously taken a certain interest in Vane, but it could not have gone very far as yet, and Vane did not reciprocate it. His comrade, however, was impulsive, while Jessy was calculating and clever; and Carroll foresaw that complications might follow any increase of friendliness between her and Vane. He thought it might be wise to warn her to ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... They constitute the inseparable affinities, attraction and repulsion, of everything within the realm of manifested being. In this mystic constellation, we see the first ideas of maternal instinct arise. This is a necessary result of the impulsive action of the heart in Leo—the reaction from a state of imperious, defiance. The heat of rage or energy and deathless courage results in the IDEAS of something to be encountered, overcome, and of self-preservation. The dual soul descends still another volve ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... comparison. Ato looked like a man who could calmly send a hundred-thousand to their deaths for one objective, while Wolden would have theorized and rationalized until the objective was lost. The old comparison between the impulsive executive and the liberal arts man who has learned that there are only one or two positive decisions available in all the world ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... was infinitely welcome after the arid desolation and stinking swamplands of the inner planets, an airy jewel of a world that might have been designed specifically for the hard-earned month of rest ahead. Navigator Farrell, youngest and certainly most impulsive of the three-man Terran Reclamations crew, would have set the Marco Four down at once but for the greater caution of Stryker, nominally captain of the group, and of Gibson, engineer, and linguist. Xavier, the ship's little mechanical, had—as was usual and ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... one of the boldest and most impulsive men in the army, immediately asked for the command. The next morning the drums beat, and before noon eight hundred volunteers were enrolled. Arnold at once advanced, but, feeling that his force was too weak, stopped at Fort Dayton till reinforcements ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reality she was woman clear through. Eve lurked in the depths of her blue eyes, for all they hung out the colours of simple honesty; and Eve winked at him out of every fold of her rich chestnut hair. She was quick and impulsive in her motions; and although she showed such a blank front to the man opposite, her lips flickered with the desire to smile; and tiny frowns came and went between the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... not take them. The satchel upon Miss Greatorex's lap was open, her own and Molly's purses lay within. To snatch them both up and rush away was her impulsive act and to scamper back across the deck, wherever she could find a passage, took but a moment longer. But she was none ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... think it was. If I had not thought so I should not have said it. But that makes no difference. You and I are strangers, almost, and I had no right to speak as I did. I am impulsive, I know it, and I often do and say things on impulse which I am sorry ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... self-control," says Herbert Spencer, "consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive—not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost—but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined—that ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... "but if she had not the studied perfection of Rachel, which was always the same and could not be altered without harm, she had at least a capacity of impulsive self-adaptation about her which made her for the time the character she personated,—not always the same, but such as the woman she represented might have been in the shifting phases of the passion that possessed her. And to think that she died at eight-and-twenty! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... travelling with a man of genius, original, picturesquely ugly, with an amusing simplicity; like a child prematurely old and abandoned, full of vices, yet with a certain degree of innocence. The doors closed. She expected him no longer. She should not have counted on his impulsive and vagabondish mind. At the moment when the engine began to breathe hoarsely, Madame Marmet, who was looking out of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... gently, and her impulsive thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive person than ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... proved to be successful. Shelley's ardent and impulsive nature could not bear to see a girl in tears and appealing for his help. Hence, though in his heart she was very little to him, his romantic nature gave up for her sake the affection that he had felt for his ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... what they counted scholarship, they could hardly believe him interested. Cosmo regarded everything from amidst associations of which they had none. In his instinctive reach after life, he assimilated all food that came in his way. His growing life was his sole impulsive after knowledge. And already he saw a glimmer here and there in regions of mathematics from which had never fallen a ray into the corner of an eye of those grinding men. That was because he read books of poetry and philosophy of which they ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... glances upon her at breakfast, and at once divined how the matter stood. She was of a nature so delicately sensitive to the most refined shades of honor, that she apprehended at once that there must be a conflict,—though, judging by her own impulsive nature, she made no doubt that all would at once go down before the mighty force of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "too gory." One governess after another was tried, But none of them stopped and one suddenly died. Then she went for a while to a wonderful school Which was run on the plan of the late Mrs. BOOLE; But no "ethical safeguards" could ever restrain So impulsive a heart and so fertile a brain; And a fire, for the kindling of which she was held Responsible, led to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... can't. They don't know themselves; they think they're in love when they're not. She was very impulsive, and of course she was flattered by it; he was so intellectual. But at last she found that she couldn't bear it, and she ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... occupy the least space. They are not always, for that reason, altogether entertaining reading. One would be glad, occasionally, to exchange their sonorous and rounded periods for any expression of quick, impulsive feeling. "I return you," he writes to Pendleton, "my fervent congratulations on the glorious success of the combined armies at York and Gloucester. We have had from the Commander-in-Chief an official report of the fact,"—and ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... a pamphlet of 162 small pages—"Thoughts on the Education of Daughters"—and got ten pounds for it. This she gave to her friend's parents to enable them to go back to their kindred. In all she did there is clear evidence of an ardent, generous, impulsive nature. One day her friend Fanny Blood had repined at the unhappy surroundings in the home she was maintaining for her father and mother, and longed for a little home of her own to do her work in. Her friend quietly found rooms, got furniture together, and told her that her little home ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... confidence increased; she stepped more firmly, removed her hat, shook out her long black tresses, listened to the songs of birds piping in the tops of trees, and exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid her cheek against it and kissed the bark. She was prompted by the same instinct which made St. Francis de Assisi call the flowers "our little sisters,—" ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... resolution give way under my persuasive methods [working with a small thumbscrew]. In the nice regulation of a thumbscrew— in the hundredth part of a single revolution lieth all the difference between stony reticence and a torrent of impulsive unbosoming that the pen can scarcely follow. Ha! ha! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... not depend upon rapidity of speech, as certain impulsive persons seem to think. I acknowledge that much of the interruption in conversation, and much of the monopoly, and a large number of the quick, almost angry words, result from eagerness rather than conceit or selfishness. If one cannot be animated without rapid speech, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... that Laura herself was strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie had been one of the notoriously handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the women—an easy, light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man—generous to a fault—constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were the facts we knew—such was the character ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... were you, I'd go to bed," continued Wally, all gentle solicitude. She took an impulsive step ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... my dear Peter," Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But Billy's impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is neither. Anyway, Billy's at the age now when she can't think of anything but herself. Her frocks, her parties, her friends—that's all ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... and saw him vanish. She had counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive nature crept back upon itself, abashed—like something discarded, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Show no effort or contraction of the face in sustaining voice or pronouncing words. In other words, never sing on the outside of the face. Mouth and face must be left free and pliable for the outline of form and for expression. Use words and sentences in an impulsive, impressive ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... at Coppet, her place in Switzerland; and her ten years' exile began with a sojourn among the brightest intellects of Germany. She was cordially received at Weimar, especially by the Court, although the dictator of German literature did not like her much. She was too impetuous, impulsive, and masculine for him. Schiller and Wieland and Schlegel liked her better, and understood her better. Her great works had not then been written, and she had reputation chiefly for her high social position ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... atmosphere of flattery not being spoiled; but unless they are angels—which is a very exceptional case—it cannot be otherwise. Richard Luscombe was a good fellow in many ways; liberal with his money (indeed, apt to be lavish), and kind-hearted, but self-willed, effeminate, and impulsive. He had also—which was a source of great alarm and grief to his father—a marked taste ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... that he first gave utterance to his feelings in verse. Impulsive and impassioned naturally, his first strong attachment roused the deepest feelings of the man, and awoke the dormant passion of the poet. The non-success of his first wooing only made his song the more vehement for a while, but as no flame can burn intensely for ever, his love became more subdued, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... but of course I guessed, the cause of his sudden change of plan. I could not help thinking Juanita had done right, for he was in reality a comparative stranger; and except that he was a warm-hearted, impulsive young man, we knew little of his principles or character. Carlos, on hearing of his intention to go with us, exclaimed, "I am very glad of it; he'll make a capital companion: he sings a good song, and I dare say will prove a ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... disagreeable incident we have just related as one that could not have occurred, if she had had beside her Prince Albert "to talk to and employ in explaining matters," while she refused the suggestion that her impulsive resistance had been advised by any one about her. "It was entirely my own foolishness," [Footnote] she is said to have added—words breathing that perfect simplicity of candour which has always been one of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... his wife's death, and about a year afterwards he returned to England, an enormously changed man, with that slight lameness, which seemed somehow to draw a sharp, dividing line between the splendid, impulsive youth who had gone abroad, and the reserved, and self-contained man of thirty-two—pessimist and dilettante—who had returned. His lameness he ascribed to an accident in the Alps, but would never say anything more about it; and his friends presently learned to avoid the subject, and to forget ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nevertheless I want to get as much wheat into our hands as possible, especially if it comes from the Pharaoh. You do not seem to appreciate the real reason, but blindly chase after the bauble of fortune. It was the same when I first saw you in Chicago, and now you are just as impulsive and thoughtless. I have no doubt but you have already computed a hundred times how rich you are in Earthly ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... stood before him with downcast and averted head, but he could still see the tears falling like diamond-drops in the clear moonlight. He turned irresolutely away, but he had made only a single step before he was vividly back again with an impulsive and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... what it was that ailed her. Hitherto love was a thing that was a stranger to her, though she was no stranger to intense and impulsive affection like that which she felt for Aunt Jeannie. But how mysterious and unaccountable this was. It seemed to her that the phenomenon known as "love at first sight," of which she had read, was a thing far less to be wondered at. There ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... his white, haggard face and nervous, timid manner, she was almost shocked, and exclaimed, with impulsive sympathy, "Mr. Arnold, you have been ill. I have ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... in his own way literary, and had written two or three pamphlets, one on his favourite subject—that of health. He seems to have been a man of much originality, many peculiarities, and much kindness of heart. He was evidently impulsive, like his celebrated son, and he certainly made a culpable mistake, and a cruel one for his family, when he rashly concluded that he would always remain a bachelor, and arranged that his income should die with him. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... one breathless torrent of words that would undeceive her. The strain of repression lent him added brusqueness when he strove to explain, and his coldness left her sorely hurt. His indifference filled her with a sense of betrayal; it chilled the impulsive yearning in her breast. She had battled long with herself before coming and now she repented of her rashness, for it was plain he did not need her. This certainty left her sick and listless, therefore she bade him ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... a girl of great reserve. She shrank from making her plans or her thoughts public. But with all her repression there was possible in her an occasional sudden breaking out that was simply an impulsive, thoroughly frank, truthful expression of her most inner personal feeling. She spoke now in reply to Madam Page in one of those rare moments of unreserve that added to the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... words of the girl had electrified Cornelia Vertessy; indeed, she, the gentler, calmer of the two, was quite carried away by Maria's courage, energy, readiness of resource and impulsive enthusiasm, so that she considered the most fantastic projects which the Polish lady elaborated on the spur of the moment with the rapidity of cloud formation, as perfectly ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Loring. "He's so interested in the impulsive attempt to make his million dollars that I think I could persuade him. He seems to be really serious about ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... the Begam's little army had never recovered the taint thrown over the service by its original founder, the miscreant Sumroo, and the merits of the gallant young Irishman, tall, handsome, intrepid, and full of the reckless generosity of his impulsive race, soon raised him to distinction. About his military genius, untaught as it must have been, there could be no doubt in the minds of those who had seen the originality of his movement at Golkalgarh; his administrative talents, one would suppose, must have given some indication by this time ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... never having violated one prohibitive commandment, and yet at last be fit only for the place of the unprofitable servant—he may not have committed either sin or crime, yet never have felt the pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsive nature into fault after fault—shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all for the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisee—fitter, because against the catalogue of faults there could perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative generosity ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Nottingham Friends saw the vehement, impulsive boy, his thin frame trembling, his eyes glowing, as he poured forth his difficulties, naturally their thoughts went back to the other lad who had also passed through severe soul struggles in this same neighbourhood, some ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... stature. His countenance was sharp, and his eye intelligent, though frenzied with excitement. He always expressed himself in the language of enthusiasm, despised prudence and common sense, and commended the impulsive and fanciful. He published, in 1816, a small volume, entitled "The African Slave; with other Poems and Songs." Some of his lyrics are not unworthy of a place in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his present thought; it was not the first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn drunkard's taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill drew up. "You must take me from this place to-night," he said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. "When we're on the road we can arrange matters, but ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... the puffs under his eyes swelled into bags and the pallor of his skin changed to the gray which makes the face look as if a haze or a cloud lay upon it. I pitied him so profoundly that, had I ventured to speak, I should have uttered impulsive generosities that would have cost me dear. How rarely are our impulses of generosity anything but impulses to folly, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... resolutions were forgotten, swept away as it by the hand of grief. All his pre-imagined repression vanished. He was but the heart-broken jester now, impulsive, outspoken. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... negro be free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks—not in sectional estrangement—not in the hope of political dominion—but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote—clannish, credulous, impulsive and passionate—tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... substance an abundant chyle is obtained. The chyliferous vessels derive a very great proportion of reparative materials; there is found but little excrementitious residue, the blood is enriched and its course accelerated, while the impulsive force of the heart and arteries is strong and more lively. Under the influence of this regimen a greater quantity of heat is developed and, in a given time, there is a greater absorption of oxygen than during a vegetable one; the respiration is performed more ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... half-holidays was required for the catechism, and the only relaxation from the three church services on Sunday was the reading of "Pilgrim's Progress." This cold and severe discipline at home would have been intolerable but for the more lovingly demonstrative and impulsive character of the mother, whose gentle nature and fine intellect won the tender veneration of her children. Of the father they stood in awe; his conscientious piety failed to waken any religious sensibility in them, and they revolted from a teaching which seemed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... perfect man of the world—a term that had ceased to make with her, as previously, for opprobrium. Then, a few moments later, she would forget that they had been talking jocosely and would mention with impulsive earnestness some expedition she had enjoyed in his company. She would say: "Oh, I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Bantling. I was bound to see it thoroughly—I warned him when we went out there that I was thorough: so we spent three ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the value of prudence in Jerusalem. "The chairman agrees," he said judicially, "that in the circumstances, this is perhaps an excellent solution, perhaps the only solution. But this has been, to say the least, somewhat impulsive. Let me suggest both sides return to their governments and consider this well. Then, if you are both still willing, let us meet here one week from today, in this room—and the ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... as thine, scarce can it bear love's name, Deaf to the pleading notes of his sweet lyre, A frank, impulsive heart I wish to claim, A heart that blindly follows its desire. I wish to embrace a woman full of flame, I want to kiss a ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... thank God!" and she turned suddenly away, and with the impulsive nature of her class, burst into violent sobbing ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... I should have no fear of the result. If she showed anything like love for Ludovic, he would be at her feet in a moment. He is impulsive, but she is not." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... which her own heart yearned almost convulsively; there was no sparkling glance—no precipitate emotion—no gushing of tears—no mother's love—in short, nothing of what her noble and loving spirit could, recognize as kindred to itself, and to her warm and impulsive heart. The moment—the glance—that sought and found not what it looked for—were decisive: the arms that had been extended remained extended still, but the spirit of that attitude was changed, as was that eager and tumultuous delight which had just flashed ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... among you and Bell chose me for her friend; and I think that if you knew how grateful I am for my beautiful summer, dear Dr. Paul and Aunt Truth, you would be glad that you gave it to me, and I love you all, dearly, dearly, dearly!' Whereupon the impulsive little creature finished her maiden speech by dashing round the table and giving Mrs. Winship one of her 'bear hugs,' at which everybody laughed and rose from ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... else from sheer instinctive sagacity, he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive unreflecting desertion of a jump into ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... moment—the hunting of a wild flower or a four-leaved clover, or the exploration of some little nook in the forest toward which she would lead him—but Jane did not at first take the hint and kept close at her heels. Mary's impulsive nature was not much given to hinting—she usually nodded and most emphatically at that—so after a few failures to rid herself of her waiting lady she said impatiently: "Jane, in the name of heaven don't keep so close to us. You won't move out of ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... when Wesley Tiffles broke suddenly from his companion, rushed into the entry of a photographic establishment, and examined numerous square feet of show portraits with profound interest. Marcus explained these impulsive movements on the supposition that Tiffles sought to escape from approaching duns. He noticed that that individual, while observing people who streamed by him on either side, kept one eye, as it were, about a block and a half ahead. In some parts of the world, Marcus ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... involuntary betrayal of muscles tensing for the fatal spring; and Breed's own flattening ears each time evidenced his readiness to counter. Shady sensed the enmity between them without knowing the inevitable result. Her mode of fighting was the impulsive way of the dog, the act almost simultaneous with the desire, and this protracted, cold-blooded ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... a photograph show the clean, sanguine temperament of a man, his impulsive generosity, and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... She was by no means one of those dreamy, thoughtful, often melancholy children who startle us by the precocious grasp of their intellect, by their intuitive perception of truths which we had deemed far above their comprehension. Madelon's precocity was of quite another order. In her quick, impulsive, energetic little mind there was much that was sensitive and excitable, little that was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her impulses would ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Handsome, impulsive Rex Lyon, owner of several of the most extensive and lucrative orange groves in Florida, would have bartered every dollar of his worldly possessions ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... was a somewhat impulsive man. It is the nature of the Celt to be impulsive. His nervous system is far more finely strung than that of the plethoric or adipose Saxon, and it vibrates to the slightest breath of emotion. Mind, I ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... regular army, to the general in the field who should first achieve an important and decisive victory. Grant very quietly folded up the letter, put it by for future reference, and proceeded with the plans of his campaign, saying nothing. To Rosecrans's open, impulsive, and honorable nature, engaged with all his powers in furthering the interests of the Government and the general welfare of his command, this letter was an insult, and he treated it accordingly. On March 6th he prepared his reply, and forwarded it to Washington. In this letter he informs ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... 1912. In this little talk he endeavoured in an intimate way to analyze himself for my benefit. "You know, Tumulty," he said, "there are two natures combined in me that every day fight for supremacy and control. On the one side, there is the Irish in me, quick, generous, impulsive, passionate, anxious always to help and to sympathize with those in distress." As he continued his description of himself, his voice took on an Irish brogue, "And like the Irishman at the Donnybrook Fair, always willin' to raise me shillalah and to hit any head which stands firninst ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... form their own ideals, dear lady, and she may have had a man in view whom she did look up to, honor, and love. Is not that a reasonable theory?" And the doctor's eyes, full of sympathy and deference, watched his impulsive patient narrowly withal. How well he knew her! She fell instantly ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... little nettled, and his first impulse was, to rise and express his astonishment, as Squire Flutter had done in the "March meeting," at the motion of his friend on the other side of the table: but the impulsive youth had learned quite recently that a second thought is oftentimes much better than a first, and he reserved the expression of his surprise till a later stage ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... pause. Was Peter Klausson fit company for Aksel Aaroe? Her husband's boon companion! Aaroe, who will have nothing but what is genuine. But as she thought this, she had to admit that Peter Klausson's impulsive nature was perfectly truthful, which indeed it was. The waiter came in with a basket of wine, but did not shut the door after him until he had lifted in some more ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the part of Germany with the cynical repudiation [cheers] of a solemn treaty on the avowed grounds that when a nation's interests required it, right and good faith must give way to force. ["Hear, hear!"] The war has been carried on, therefore, with a systematic—not an impulsive or a casual—but a systematic violation of all the conventions and practices by which international agreements had sought to mitigate and to regularize the clash of arms. [Cheers.] She has now, I will not say reached a climax, for we do not know what may yet ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Clara departed from the house of Mr. Charlston than Frederick, from some impulsive motive, glided out of the room; and having hastily disguised himself in his father's great coat, hat and muffler, hurried out, and followed in pursuit of Clara. In the vicinity of the house at which she had ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... the capture of Soochow. It would be diminished and cast into the shade were another Imperial commander to defeat Chung Wang and close the line of the Grand Canal. If Gordon detached himself from General Ching, he could not feel sure what folly that jealous and impulsive commander might not commit. He would certainly not pursue the vigilant defence before Soochow necessary to guard the extensive line of stockades, and to prevent its large garrison sallying out and assailing his own rear. Gordon ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... no right—that he feels—to presume upon this semi-confidence of an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty in that last glory of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But he has no right, and there's an end on't! "I will tie Achilles up," he says. "I should not like him to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... party among the Roman Catholics of the lower class valued Emancipation itself principally as a measure to another end—a separation from England. Pitt, meanwhile, hopeless of reconciling the leaders of the different parties—the impulsive enthusiasm of Grattan with the sober, practical wisdom of Fitzgibbon—pursued his own policy of conciliation united with vigor; and one of the measures which he now carried subsists, unaltered in its ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... for that cue," she said, a little tremulously. "The business in the script is, 'Showing that she is touched by Roderick's nobleness, lifts handkerchief impulsive gesture to eyes.'" ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... look for the Erringtons. But they were not to be found. It was only late in the afternoon that he met Mrs. Errington in the hall of the hotel. He dragged her into a corner and in his impulsive fashion told her everything. She listened white faced, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... and followed him, and let him see it. Their long familiarity had made this surrender somewhat easier for her. After all, in the countless daily contacts, they had grown accustomed to minor self-exposures—and Hilda more so than George Cannon; Hilda was too impatient and impulsive not to tear, at increasingly frequent intervals, the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of the towns were well pleased with Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared, they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... come and go in her white throat, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she held out her hand to him. For a moment he held it close. Her little fingers tightened about his own, and the warm thrill of them set his blood leaping with the thing he was fighting down. She was so near that he could feel the throb ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... an affectionate, impulsive woman, with more emotional sympathy than practical wisdom in worldly matters. But her claim on the gratitude of the British nation is that she brought up her illustrious daughter in habits of simplicity, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... clearer impressions in the mould than the man. Yet on the floor of the carriage there is no trace of her shoes. Again I say there is something here which I do not understand." And he spread out his hands with an impulsive gesture of despair. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... afforded little opportunity to the play of indignant wit; but the nine years' reign of Julius II., which followed, was a period whose troubled history is recorded in the numerous epigrams and satires to which it gave birth. The impulsive and passionate vigor of the character of Julius, the various fortunes of his rash enterprises, the troubles which his stormy and rapacious career brought to the Papal city, are all more or less minutely told. The Pope began his reign with warlike enterprises, and as soon as he could gather sufficient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... deep, significant, impulsive world had already interested me. Through my adventure with Gretchen and its consequences, I had early looked into the strange labyrinths by which civil society is undermined. Religion, morals, law, rank, connections, custom, all rule only the surface of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Harding," he resumed, "I accept. It would astonish them as has only known H. H. on his financial side to see him agree to a reduction of profits like this without a kick. But I'm a man of impulse, I am. Get me on my soft side and a kitten ain't more impulsive than old H. H. And o' course the business of this expedition ain't jest business to me. It's—er—friendship, and—er—sentiment—in short, there's feelin's that is more than worth their ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... time his correspondence with Rosa took on such a nature that his volatile, impulsive nature was stirred with a desire to see her again. It was not often that once out of sight he looked back to a victim, but Rosa had shown a daring and a spirit in her letters that sent a challenge to his ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the streets leading to the smaller squares and parks, all contributed to the holiday upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the hollers from all those things what hollers." And so, in happy watching and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street, the first and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... greeting between the cousins was very affectionate. Lady Glencora received her as though they had been playmates from early childhood; and Alice, though such impulsive love was not natural to her as to the other, could not bring herself to be cold to one who was so warm to her. Indeed, had she not promised her love in that meeting at Matching Priory in which her cousin had told her of all ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... She had not turned her head away as had her sister. In fact, in spite of being two years younger than Ruth, Alice often showed more spirit. She was of an impulsive nature, and Mr. DeVere used to say she was very like her dead mother. Ruth was tall and fair, and of a romantic ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... anyway; and he had also another reason, which he thought a commendable one. Jessy had obviously taken a certain interest in Vane, but it could not have gone very far as yet, and Vane did not reciprocate it. His comrade, however, was impulsive, while Jessy was calculating and clever; and Carroll foresaw that complications might follow any increase of friendliness between her and Vane. He thought it might be wise to warn her ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... his impulsive manner in strange contrast to that of his listener, "that if I had been behaving myself all this time, I might have ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... way. It was the impetuous act of a poet roused to enthusiasm, as were thousands of his fellow-countrymen at the time, by what was thought to be the beginning of universal brotherhood in France. But whatever may be said as to the impulsive imprudence of the step, it is not to be condemned as a most absurd and presumptuous breach of decorum. We were not at war with France at this time; had not even begun to await developments with critical suspicion. Talleyrand had not yet been slighted by our Queen, and protestations ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... wouldn't think it very queer of her, hurrying out to meet Mr. Hilliard the moment she heard he was near. Of course, she might have waited for him to come back to Wawona, they said he would be back by ten. But she was so impulsive! And she had wished to see the redwoods by sunset and moonrise. She knew Mr. Hilliard wouldn't want to bother about bringing her here next day, after he had just seen the trees himself, and for the second time, too. This had been too good a chance to lose. The trees were wonderful, weren't they? ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... was developed, and another thing might in due time be expected. The thing developed was a social life, in the favored class, which has an almost unique charm, a power of being agreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an impulsive warmth, a frankness in the expression of emotion, and that delightful quality of manner which puts the world at ease and makes life pleasant. The Southerners are no more sincere than the Northerners, but they have less reserve, and in the social traits that charm all who come in contact ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... discovered in the streets of St. Giles and his scheme concerning her. The duke laughed at the poet's visions, but the duchess was fascinated. Anything of the unusual at once appealed to the warmhearted, impulsive, somewhat eccentric, lady. Her enthusiasm where she was interested always carried her away, and her impatience and energy would not let her rest ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... B. C. and in the third century B. C. invaded Asia Minor and northern Greece. A part of them remained in Galatia. predominating in the mixed population formed out of the Greek, Roman and Jewish people. They were quick-tempered, impulsive, hospitable and fickle people. They were quick to receive impressions and equally quick to give them up. They received Paul with enthusiastic joy, and were then suddenly turned from him ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... affectionate and impulsive, good-humored, with generous instincts and a quick temper; but she was also ambitious and exceptionally clever. She loved Greville warmly; but she took to heart the hard truths of his teachings, and they sank deep in a congenial soil. Under the influence of the two motives, she ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... disguise from us how utterly natural and simple it all is. I do not think that reverence and tradition and awe have done us any more grievous injury than the fact that we have made the Saviour into a figure with whom frank communication, eager, impulsive talk, would seem to be impossible. One thinks of Him, from pictures and from books, as grave, abstracted, chiding, precise, mournfully kind, solemnly considerate. I believe it in my heart to have been wholly otherwise, and I think ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very, very slowly, upon the first scene of Barnard Haw's masterpiece of satire; and the lovely firing-line quivered, blue batteries opening very wide, lips half parted in breathless anticipation. And about that time Harrow almost expired as a soft, impulsive hand closed nervously ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... clearly see that his tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under the circumstances I ultimately wasn't sorry that he refused. In truth, there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this impulsive fisherman ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... old father would go down with sorrow to the grave. Still, what is glory without risk? Were he my own son, I should say, 'let him go.' Only, brother earl, caution thy noble son and heir, that the youngster is very much more likely to fail in discretion than in valour. He is one of those excitable, impulsive creatures who will, as I expect, fight like a wildcat, and show as ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... front of what had almost become an unreasoning mob, George and Ralph tried by their strength to resist the impulsive dash forward, at the same time that they shouted at the full strength of their lungs the reason why the work nearer the town ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... supposed, soon repaid him in full with many acknowledgments of his disinterestedness. This anecdote has been called in question, we know not on what grounds; we see nothing in it incompatible with the character of Goldsmith, who was very impulsive, and prone ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... elderly man, impulsive as a child, wearing his heart on his sleeve, crying before him like a little child, moved Innes's contempt as much as it did his pity. "All the same he is suffering, and it is clear that he loves her very deeply." So perforce he had to answer that Evelyn ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... rather impulsive young lady," said Miss Davis disapprovingly. "I wish she had taken a fancy to some one else than my pupil. You must try to forget her, Hetty. Girls like her, with wealth and power and nobody to control them, are apt to become capricious, ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... promised herself much pleasure in travelling with a man of genius, original, picturesquely ugly, with an amusing simplicity; like a child prematurely old and abandoned, full of vices, yet with a certain degree of innocence. The doors closed. She expected him no longer. She should not have counted on his impulsive and vagabondish mind. At the moment when the engine began to breathe hoarsely, Madame Marmet, who was looking out of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... friends with me! " she exclaimed. "You would have told me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!" with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, "you good ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... child's own experience. It is as if they said: Is life petty, narrow, and crude? Then studies reveal the great, wide universe with all its fulness and complexity of meaning. Is the life of the child egoistic, self-centered, impulsive? Then in these studies is found an objective universe of truth, law, and order. Is his experience confused, vague, uncertain, at the mercy of the moment's caprice and circumstance? Then studies introduce a world arranged ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... country, which we might call prairie. He was a 'backwoodsman,'—liked the wild hunter's life better than sticking at home looking after sheep. He had the attractive characteristics of that kind of men, as well as their faults. He was frank, impulsive, generous, incapable of persevering work or of looking ahead, passionate. His descendants prefer cattle-ranching and gold-prospecting to keeping shops or sitting with their lungs ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... deciphers the broken inscriptions, gathers a little crowd of plebeians about him and tells them of ancient Rome, and of the rights of the people in old times. All at once he rises, a grand shadow of a Roman, a true tribune, brave, impulsive, eloquent. A little while longer and he is half mad with vanity and ambition, a public fool in a high place, decking himself in silks and satins, and ornaments of gold, and the angry nobles slay him on the steps of the Aracoeli, as other nobles long ago slew Tiberius Gracchus, a greater ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... course, a most unorthodox thing for Ingred to blurt out family affairs, and Father and Mother would have been justly indignant had they known, but she was impulsive, and without much worldly wisdom, and Mr. Hardcastle seemed sympathetic, so on the spur of the moment she told him the urgency of Athelstane's need, and how she was trying to meet it. He sat quite quiet for a short time, staring into the fire, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hoisted the sail and felt for the tiller in the dark, he was, perhaps, meditating on this momentous reply, or perhaps he had made up his mind long before, and would hold to the decision even to his own undoing, as men do who are impulsive and not strong. The water lapped and gurgled round the bows, for the wind was almost ahead, and it was only by nursing the heavy boat that he saved the necessity of making a tack across the narrow creek. In the morning he had, as usual, run down into the river and to the slip-way, ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the closed door; gazing at it as if he expected it to open, and a loved hand to beckon him within. But it remained pitilessly shut, and the little boy had to accommodate himself as well as he could to a new phase in his mental history—the being excluded—left out in the cold. After making an impulsive step toward the door he turned, plunged his hands into his pockets as if to keep them from attacking the handle of that closed door, and walking to the window, gazed out, silent and motionless. I watched; I was compelled to watch. He was listening with every faculty, every ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... on the instant, pursue his seeming advantage, the result of an impulsive bravery requiring a greater effort on his part than the courage he had shown in conflict with many a beast of the forest. He did not talk to the young woman. But he thought to himself, while his ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... possible, by making him a member of the Council of State. Goethe was the more willing to remain, since he detested his law practise, and his income from authorship was pitifully small. Moreover, he saw in the boyish, impulsive, sport-loving prince a sterling nature that might be led in the ways of wise rulership. For the nonce this was mission enough. He took his seat in the Council in June, 1776, with the title of Councilor of Legation. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and with an undeniable likeness to a Prince whom she only knew by his photographs. And for this young man, who on five or six separate occasions had so hindered her with his attentions, she had a deep and impulsive liking which, as it ran counter to her plan of life, she did ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... kitchen table to write to me, and the cook overturned her ink, making a blot upon the page: all of these little details made up a perfect picture of her life. Of course the letter was full of "my husband," and the signature was no longer the impulsive, girlish—"With a thousand kisses, my darling, ever your own Teresita," but a decorous and matronly ending: "Yours ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... heresy was very much alive; it was consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. One may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive, passionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot upward, and fell to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible circumstances. In certain counties of England there are at the present day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few hundreds of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... William," she said. "I have lived a thousand years in the past brief moments. I have learned in the face of death how to live. I do not wish to hurt you more than is necessary; but I can no longer bear to live out the impossible position I have attempted because of a false sense of loyalty to an impulsive promise I made you. ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... make yourself comfortable, Eric! Of course, the first cigarette I drop on your adorable grey carpet—you see how it matches my dress?—the first cigarette spoils it for ever. And the roses!" With a characteristically impulsive jerk she dragged the tulle band and artificial flower from her hair, tossed them to Eric and stretched her hand up for a red rose to take their place. "Ah! beloved celibate! not a mirror in the room! ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in the life of boys. However, it was a very mild form of runaway, twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of the sea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in the hay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, an impulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from a future, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which I ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... not discover myself to the slaves. I knew their impulsive natures, and that a scene would be the result. I should be the recipient of their salutations and entreaties, uttered loud enough to draw the attention ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... reader is convinced after reading this short sketch of Belgium's history that Belgian nationality is more than a vain word, and that the attitude adopted by the Belgian people in August 1914, far from being an impulsive movement, was merely the result of the slow and progressive development of their national feeling throughout the ages, he will also realize that this development has received many checks, and is therefore very different from that which may ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... you find you want me when you get settled, I'll come," she answered, and, giving Leslie's little gloved hand an impulsive squeeze, she ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... yet is not always accepted by Frenchmen or the world at large. It represents her as neither saint nor sinner, but as a pure, fascinating woman, always chaste, though somewhat rash and frivolous. Proud and energetic, if inconsiderate in her political actions and somewhat too impulsive in the selection of friends upon whom to bestow her favors, she is yet worthy of the title of queen by the very dignity of her bearing; always a true woman, seductive and tender of heart, she became a martyr "through the extremity of her ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... He was considered by most people handsome—but to some his eyes, of the real Trojan blue, were too cold and impassive. He gave you the impression of some one who watched, rather disdainfully, the ill-considered and impulsive actions of ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... of earnest politics, of good company, wrapped in his own scheming, not impulsive, doing nothing beyond that which he intended, without abruptness, without hard words, discreet, accurate, learned, talking smoothly of a necessary massacre, a slaughterer, because ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... cushions of his carriage, with closed eyelids (from which the hot tears dripped), he gave himself up to the temptation of a renewal of his life. It was harder to go, infinitely harder, because of that impulsive, sweet caress. Her face was so beautiful, too, with that upward, tender, pitying look ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... about—a regular schemer—a woman I never could abide. She had married off her own daughters, and wanted her niece to practise on, that was the fact. Victoria says she always knew that she, Maude I mean, was very impressionable and impulsive, and so she wanted to have her out of harm's way; but one could not prevent her aunt from getting hold of her and taking her out. Then people told us of her goings on with that scamp Clanmacklosky ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... oppressed with the fulness of her heart. Margaret began to love her again; to see in her the same sweet, faulty, impulsive, lovable creature she had known in the former Mary Barton, but with more of dignity, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Russia to make those candles of human tallow by whose light thieves hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen. But whether the influences that make for further progress, or those that threaten to undo what has already been accomplished, will ultimately prevail; whether the impulsive energy of the minority or the dead weight of the majority of mankind will prove the stronger force to carry us up to higher heights or to sink us into lower depths, are questions rather for the sage, the moralist, and the statesman, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... well entertained as the eye—with charming melodies, Sicilian airs, dances, Saltorelli, Canzoni a ballo—a long medley woven together like a garland. The youngest princess, an impulsive little creature, about my own age, kept nodding her head in time to the music. Her smile and her eyes with their long lashes I can see to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... cigar; I saw him reel back against the ledge on the inside of the door; I heard him exclaim: "O God!" or "O my God!" and nothing more or longer (as reported by several witnesses), for even that exclamation was faint; and then, making an impulsive rush, as it were, to reach the entrance to the House on the opposite side for safety, I saw him totter forward, not half way, and drop dead between the four pillars which stood there in the centre of the space, with a slight trace of blood issuing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... more conciliating, Irene," he would often say to his daughter. "Hartley is earnest and impulsive, and you should yield to him gracefully, even when you do not always see and feel as he does. This constant opposition and standing on your dignity about trifles is fretting both of you, and ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... Compare the self-control of Damfreville's speech with the impulsive shout of the preceding stanza. What is the resulting difference ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... at this distance of time, and with our colder Northern temperament, to comprehend the romantic feelings of attachment subsisting between Schubert and some of his friends,—feelings which, however, are by no means rare among the impulsive youth of South Germany,—but his naive simplicity, cheerful and eminently sociable disposition, insensibility to envy, and incorruptible modesty, were qualities calculated to transform the respect due to his genius into a ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... put out a hand in impulsive sympathy to touch his own, so transparent now in its emaciation. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... not assume that they were free from the whims and foibles of womankind,—and sometimes of man-kind,—of all ages. They were, doubtless, contradictory and impulsive at times; they could scold and they could gossip. We believe that they laughed sometimes, in the midst of dire want and anxiety, and we know that they prayed with sincerity and trust. They bore children gladly and they trained them "in the fear and admonition ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Oh, can't you understand that it can only be— disturbing to both of us for an impulsive, emotional creature like yourself to keep up acquaintanceship with a woman who takes life as I do? We'll drop each other, leave each other alone. [She walks away, and stands leaning upon the ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... ready, and indeed Jenny gave him no time to make one: she went off with a sob in her voice, and left the impulsive old matchmaker very unhappy indeed. For he had an unmitigated sense of having acted most imprudently, and moreover, a shrewd suspicion that Jenny's analysis of Deacon Strang's tactics was a correct one. For the first ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was jealous lest Bridget should have overheard it. But Bridget was at the other end of the room. How foolish it had been of her—just because she was so happy, and wanted to be nice to everybody!—to have asked Bridget to stay with them! She was always doing silly things like that—impulsive things. But now she was married. She must think more. It was really very considerate of Bridget to have got them all out of a difficulty and to have settled herself a mile away from them; though at first it had seemed rather unkind. Now they could see her always sometime in the day, but ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to her daughter's education; but the same moderation which she had had in her love, held in check the impulsive and morbid quality which is sometimes in motherhood, when the child is the only creature upon whom the woman can expend her jealous need of loving and being loved. She loved Minna much, but was clear in her judgment of her, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of an untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan's answer; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I almost yearn to go too. We have fallen into a pit here in Paris, upon evil days and rooms, an impulsive friend having taken an apartment for us facing the east, insufficiently protected, and with a bedroom wanting, so that we are still waiting, with trunks unpacked, and our child sleeping on the floor, till we can get emancipated anyhow. Then, through the last week's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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